News 12/8 – Teacher Ed & Public Health Research/Advocacy

August 12th 2010 at 8:10am, By Dave Guerin

  1. Quality Teacher Education Lynn Tozer, an Otago Uni teacher education academic, has writen an op-ed in the ODT about the impacts of squeezing practical elements out of the teacher education programmes in universities. Overall, I think she’s right and that the incorporation of colleges of education into universities had more to do with dreams of higher professional status for teachers than any on the ground impact in classrooms. Restructuring at Otago and other universities is simply a natural consequence of the merger decisions, which were always going to lead to more theory and fewer academics.
  2. Mighty Manawatu Massey University researchers are involved in developing the new management plan for the Manawatu River catchment.
  3. Smoking with Kids? University of Otago researchers have surveyed MPs and officialsabout banning adults smoking in cars if kids are also in the car. Unsurprisingly, they don’t like the results, but they obviously did the research to create this media release to further their lobbying aims for a ban. If you don’t think they’re lobbying, explain why the only quote used in the media release was from John Key, but seemingly not from the survey. I agree that people shouldn’t smoke with kids in the car, but let’s not pretend that the linked media release is a report on research – it’s a lobbying effort. I think academics should participate in public debate, but if they announce research along with a lot of political comment and don’t differentiate the two, then they devalue both the research and their credibility.  I’m not down on Otago public health academics in general, the public health team have also developed a building quality index and want to make it available for wider use.
  4. Top Teacher I missed this profile earlier in the week, from the Wanganui Chronicle, of Marty Vreede, supreme winner at the Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards. He’s from Whanganui UCOL.
  5. Otago Poly Peter Coolbear, head of Ako Aotearoa, has now joined the Otago Poly Council. CE Phil Ker says that the Poly will continue to enrol young students in low level quals, regardless of their dropout risk, although his Poly’s stats suggest that they have very low dropout risk. He makes a great quote “I don’t think any polytechnics will game the system”, which seems rather unlikely – I imagine every TEO will try to game the system.
  6. DNA $$ Massey biochemist Wayne Patrick’s DNA work is being marked to offshore investors in what looks like a possible large deal.

5 Responses to News 12/8 – Teacher Ed & Public Health Research/Advocacy

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Eric Crampton

August 12th, 2010 at 10:20 am

It would be mildly interesting for someone to go through the output of the public health school at Wellington to see what proportion counts as lobbying and what proportion counts as actual research. If National ever gets around to cleaning house at MoH to bin the zealots brought in under Labour, who fund a good chunk of the lobbying work, it would be interesting to see how that proportion changes over time.

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Dave Guerin

August 12th, 2010 at 10:23 am

I’d be pretty sympathetic to such a review. I’d always been aware iof the issues, but covering the media releases and stories through this blog exposes the scale of it all.

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NBH

August 12th, 2010 at 11:53 am

I don’t really want to start an argument Dave, but with regard to the smoking research have you actually looked at the article in question before dismissing the work out of hand? I think it’s unlikely that the researchers undertook the work, the HRC funded it, and a major international journal accepted the article, all with the intent of producing a single press release that will be forgotten tomorrow. Just because you don’t like the opinions of the researchers doesn’t make their work ‘lobbying’, and I’d argue that one of the really good things about the public health research community is that they’re very strongly focused on outcomes and into “use-inspired” research.

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Dave Guerin

August 12th, 2010 at 12:05 pm

NBH, I didn’t dismiss the research. In fact, I have little doubt that it is of reasonable quality, even though I haven’t read it. But I think the way that they have presented it devalues what they have done. I’ve even compared it to a similar release on the same day by academics from the same university (and I think the same dept) that took quite a different approach.

I could have been more restrained in my comment around their initial motivation, but it’s pretty clear to me from the release that the smoking researchers are engaged in a lobbying exercise. That’s fine and it is their right, but they can’t be expected to be treated as disinterested researchers at the same time. They will instead get the sceptical reception that most other lobbyists do when they present research.

And I don’t actually dislike the views of the researchers – I’m largely in agreement with them on this one.

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NBH

August 12th, 2010 at 3:36 pm

Fair enough.

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