Browsing by Author "O'Neill J"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Adolescents’ Understanding of Their Rights and Experiences of Autonomy
    (Pennsylvania State University, 2021) McCluskey E; O'Neill J
    Article 42 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) states that children’s rights must be widely known by children and adults alike. Research on children’s rights has found that children and adolescents often have limited or incorrect knowledge and understandings of rights and how they apply to their everyday lives. Despite New Zealand ratifying the convention in 1993 it appears that children may continue to have little knowledge about rights. This research explored adolescents’ knowledge and understanding of their rights and UNCRC, where their knowledge and understanding come from, and how student experiences of autonomy may influence these understandings. Semi-structured interviews were used with 10 secondary (high) school students aged 14-15. Thematic analysis revealed that students may still hold limited and varied knowledge and understanding of their rights, and sources of this knowledge include inconsistent education at school, and television. It was also found that rights may not be a common discourse among adolescents. Teacher and government responsiveness towards adolescent students, and choices offered to them appeared to have an impact on student experiences of autonomy. These findings could have important implications for government policy and legislation, and rights education within New Zealand schools.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Charities and state schooling privatisations in Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Routledge, 2020-10-08) O'Neill J; Powell D; Hogan, A; Thompson, G
    This chapter provides a local vernacular analysis of recent education privatisations in Aotearoa New Zealand. Specifically, it examines contemporary charitable activity in the New Zealand state schooling sector, and its emergent impact on schooling policy trajectories and effects. A focal point is the discursive manner in which it is possible for charities to have become softly incorporated within the language, practices and relations of state schooling policy networks, contributing to what Ball and Junemann conclude is a new form of education governance. The chapter discusses the key vernacular dimensions of state schooling in New Zealand that have lubricated changing views of the boundaries between 'public' and 'private' goods. Education organisations in New Zealand, especially the that are registered charities, are made viable and visible by partnering with a messy mix of organisations across multiple sectors. Charities and philanthropic actors have now emerged as important contributors to this economised state schooling discourse at both central and local levels.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Children's informal learning at home during COVID-19 lockdown
    (NZCER, 2021-08-24) Bourke R; O'Neill J; McDowall S; Dacre M; Mincher N; Narayanan V; Overbye S; Tuifagalele R
    The national COVID-19 lockdown during school Term 1 2020 provided a unique context to investigate children’s experiences of informal, everyday learning in their household bubble. In Terms 3 and 4, 178 children in Years 4–8 from 10 primary schools agreed to participate in a group art-making activity and an individual interview about their experiences. The research adopted a strengths-based approach on the basis that most children are capable actors in their social worlds. This report documents children’s accounts of the multiple ways in which they negotiated the novel experience of forced confinement over a period of several weeks with family and whānau. The report is rich with children’s own accounts of their everyday living and learning during lockdown. To foreground children’s descriptions and explanations of their lockdown experience in this way is an acknowledgement of their right to express their views on matters of interest to them in their lives, and to have those views listened to, and acted on, by adults. Similarly, the approach reflects a growing educational research interest in student voice: enabling children to articulate their experiences so that adults can use this knowledge to better respond to and support children’s learning aspirations and needs. This research report does not speak for all children or all children’s experiences. Nevertheless, it does provide valuable insights about the phenomenon of children’s informal and everyday learning during lockdown, gained from a group of children for whom it was a mostly positive experience, and through which they learned much about themselves as persons and as members of a family and whānau. Several months after the event, children in this study were able and willing to recall their experiences of learning during lockdown. They could identify social, cultural, and historical dimensions of their learning at home. Some children were able to recount rich, detailed stories about their lockdown experience and the ways in which they organised their days and activities. For some others, their days were largely shaped for them by family and whānau members, but even so, the children were able to explain what they enjoyed, or did not, and why. Variations in children’s learning across the group highlighted the complexity of learning that each child experienced, and the importance of having social relations, environments, and contexts that encourage and support their learning. Children demonstrated an understanding and appreciation of the value of this learning.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Enabling Participation in Voice Research for Adolescent Children with Characteristics of Autism
    (Pennsylvania State University, 4/04/2022) MacRae E; O'Neill J
    The study on which this article is based concerned children’s sense of belonging at school. Their experience of inclusion within formal education was explored from a child rights perspective using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as a guide. Most research to date has focused on the inclusion of children with autism in education from the perspective of adults, not children. As children are “experts” in their own social worlds, for this study the views of children were sought directly from them regarding their everyday experience of being at school, what they believe supports their sense of belonging at school, and what aspects of their everyday schooling could be improved. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with seven children, all of whom had characteristics of autism. The focus in this article is methodological, specifically the decision framing and decision taking of the researcher about how to provide an enabling and inviting research participation experience so that children with autism feel sufficiently comfortable and encouraged to express their views. Two key considerations in the design of this study concerned: (a) participant recruitment and (b) interview process and procedures.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Recognition of Children’s Learning in Educational Research, Policy and Practice: Herbison Invited Lecture, NZARE Annual Conference 2022
    (Springer Nature, 2023-06) O'Neill J
    For Jean Herbison, learning in her early 20th century childhood world was relatively uncomplicated and predictable. Life was shaped by unambiguous family, faith and settler colonial prescriptions about how children should behave and what they should become. Approaching the centenary of her birth, children today must navigate a very different society of ‘unlimited can’; an achievement society that generates a debilitating compulsion to self-improve (Byung Chul-Han). In this Herbison lecture, I offer a personal reflection on the contemporary ‘triangle’ of education research, policy and practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Viewed as a culturally and historically specific ‘form of life’ (Rahel Jaeggi), I ask whether, over the last thirty five years, this triangle may have unwittingly contributed to a collective failure to give adequate recognition to children’s learning. Despite our best intentions, have we simply reified students and in doing so alienated them from learning in all its complexities and dimensions (Knud Illeris)? More than mere acknowledgement of ‘the other’, recognition theory highlights the importance of socially developed qualities such as confidence, respect and esteem (Axel Honneth) to each child’s capacity to develop meaningful relationships to or ‘resonance’ with an ever accelerating and uncontrollable world (Hartmut Rosa) and the people and communities in it. In practical terms, then, what can we draw on that is already immanent in our research, policy and practice triangle to transform children’s institutionalised learning?
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education?
    (Springer Nature on behalf of The Australian Association for Research in Education Inc, 30/09/2022) Keddie A; MacDonald K; Blackmore J; Boyask R; Fitzgerald S; Mihajla G; Heffernan A; Hursh D; McGrath-Champ S; Moller J; O'Neill J; Parding K; Salokangas M; Skerrit C; Stacey M; Thomson P; Wilkins A; Wilson R; Wylie C; Yoon E-S
    The series of responses in this article were gathered as part of an online mini conference held in September 2021 that sought to explore different ideas and articulations of school autonomy reform across the world (Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, the USA, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand). It centred upon an important question: what needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education? There was consensus across the group that school autonomy reform creates further inequities at school and system levels when driven by the logics of marketisation, competition, economic efficiency and public accountability. Against the backdrop of these themes, the conference generated discussion and debate where provocations and points of agreement and disagreement about issues of social justice and the mobilisation of school autonomy reform were raised. As an important output of this discussion, we asked participants to write a short response to the guiding conference question. The following are these responses which range from philosophical considerations, systems and governance perspectives, national particularities and teacher and principal perspectives.