Conference 2009 > Keynote Addresses

Keynote addresses 2009

Opening address

Prof Peter McLaren
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Peter McLaren, a Professor of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a leading educational theorist who has since the 1980s played a central role in the development of critical pedagogy worldwide and the organization of what he terms the "educational left". Tremendously prolific as an author, and known for his virtuosic rhetoric and conceptual imagination, over the course of his career McLaren has made wide-ranging contributions to myriad educational discourses including critical ethnography and qualitative research, educational policy debates, ritual and performance studies, literacy theory, multiculturalism and the development of postcolonial pedagogy, cultural studies, critical media pedagogy, curriculum studies, as well as work on globalisation in education.

Topic: Revolutionary critical pedagogy for a post capitalist future

Abstract: This address criticises the domestication of critical pedagogy by situating critical pedagogy within the context of the coloniality of power and the struggle for a socialist alternative to neoliberal capitalism. Topics include politics of race, criticial pedagogy as a social movement, socialism for the 21st century, and education and the Bolivarian alternative.

An edited version of the keynote address will appear in the fortcoming issue of the New Zealand Journal of Educational Research (NZJES).

Assoc Prof Graeme Aitken
The University of Auckland

Graeme Aitken is the Dean of the Faculty of Education. He has a background of 14 years secondary teaching in geography, history and social studies. He has held various leadership roles in initial teacher education since 1992 and established the inaugural secondary teacher initial teacher education programme at The University of Auckland in 1996. He won a Distinguished Teaching Award at the university for his role in establishing and leading this programme. Graeme has also presented many hundreds of workshops at conferences and to schools on teaching effectiveness, classroom management, and student motivation.

Topic: Faculties of Education as producers of research: where are we at, and where to next?

Abstract: This keynote draws on NZARE conference proceedings to analyse the nature of research in Faculties of Education in New Zealand and will identify the challenges that Faculties face in increasing research productivity. It will discuss the opportunities offered by a stronger focus on research about teaching and learning in higher education, and propose a research agenda based on this focus.

» Download keynote address: (forthcoming)

Dr Cathy Wylie
NZ Council for Educational Research - Herbison Lecture

» Go to Herbison lectures