Priority learners in New Zealand include thosewho have special educational needs, yet gifted learners with multiple exceptionalities arevariably identified, understood or provided forin our schools. International research advocatesthe use of interprofessional practice (IPP) teams,with competency across shared values, roles and responsibilities, communication, and teamwork, to support gifted learners with multiple exceptionalities. This study explored the experiences and understandings of IPP teams supporting students with multiple exceptionalities in New Zealand. The study found that IPP team identity is still in its infancy and core competencies are still evolving. Shared values towards inclusive practices were hampered by limited knowledge and expertise across the IPP team. Limited understandings of teamwork processes and limited recognition of the importance of communication within the IPP team were also common themes. Parents and students were typically not recognised
as part of the IPP team identity and processes. The article concludes that gifted learners with multiple exceptionalities may not have adequate support at a systems level, and development of interprofessional practice competencies may be one way to ensure their full inclusion in our education system. Implications for policy and practice are described.
Teachers’ lives are multi-faceted and their practice is influenced by personal and contextual enablers and barriers to their well-being and identity. Current initiatives, including the focus on teacher wellbeing, pose new tensions. This research is timely as it investigates an emerging group of professionals, specialist teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand. From their own perspectives, sought through participatory narrative inquiry, we come to better understand how teachers experience and position themselves within and against pressures posed by an increasingly complex world. Research findings informed the development of a framework for teacher fulfilment through fierce practice comprised of stance, supports and stamina. This framework has utility at the individual level, supporting the fulfilment of individual teachers. At the systems level, the framework may be of interest to tertiary teachers and institutions wishing to help teachers to develop and sustain meaningful and satisfying lives.
This research provides chalk-face insights from a group of predominantly Pakeha teachers grappling with culturally-responsive relational practice (CRRP), in a time and environment where external factors can affect self-efficacy and limit personal agency. Itdetails a two-phased professional inquiry undertaken with fourteen teachers from one Ka hui Ako, whereby themes from a larger cross-school online survey were unpacked through a series of semi-structured focus groups. In every phase of this research, including this final telling, the emphasis was on foregrounding the stories of teachers. Findings critique taken-for-granted assumptions about teachers’ roles and responsibilities for embedding CRRP, and stress that in our efforts to stop deficising students, we do not unintentionally deficise teachers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.