Alternative education in Aotearoa New Zealand

The politics and poetics of authorisation

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26686/nzaroe.v26.6899

Keywords:

alternative education, education policy, poetic inquiry, concrete poetry

Abstract

Secondary students who become disenfranchised from mainstream schools are directed to attend Alternative Education (AE) centres. AE was a grassroots’ initiative in the 1990s led by youth organisations, iwi, community social service agencies and churches to meet the education and pastoral needs of rangatahi. Due to the tenuous links held between AE and the mainstream system and with no government policy work occurring within the sector for the decade prior to 2009, the sector struggled for adequate resourcing and professional recognition. Through a poetic inquiry approach this paper explores three key AE government policy directions over a ten-year period, from 2009 to 2019. Unbuckling prose found within official documents, concrete (visual) poems were created to perform a critical reading of policy. The policy poems form a narrative arc that show the discrediting of AE providers and demonising of students in AE has recently given way to more hopeful directions in policy.

 

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Author Biography

Adrian Schoone, Auckland University of Technology

Adrian Schoone is a senior lecturer in Education at AUT. With a background in primary teaching, Adrian worked within alternative education centres for 14 years. As an academic, Adrian’s research focuses on understanding social pedagogical approaches and teacher and tutor identity within alternative educational settings. Adrian is an arts-based researcher with expertise in poetic inquiry.

References

Boston, J., & Gill, D. (Eds.). (2017). Social investment: A New Zealand policy experiment. Bridget Williams Books.

Faulkner, S. L., & Cloud, A. (Eds.). (2020). Poetic inquiry as social justice and political response. Vernon Press.

Gerritsen, J. (1999b). An educated alternative. New Zealand Education Gazette, 78(14), 1, 4–9.

Higgins, J., & Nairn, K. (2014). "Out of sight, out of mind?" Education provision for learners disengaged from school. In V. Carpenter, & S. Osborne (Eds.), Twelve thousand hours: Education and poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand (pp. 145-164). Dunmore Publishing.

Schoone, A. (2021). Can concrete poems fly? Setting data free in a performance of visual enactment. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(1), 129-135. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419884976 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419884976

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Published

2021-07-01

Issue

Vol. 26 (2020): New Zealand Annual Review of Education

Section

Articles

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