The notions of inclusion and diversity are increasingly used in a wide variety of areas in public debate and policy, as well as in educational curriculum and policy documents in New Zealand and internationally since the UNESCO Salamanca Statement in 1994. What is meant by inclusion and diversity in many of these contexts is often rather unclear,…

In this dissertation I present research on the creative aspect of language use. I focus on Blind Variation and Selective Retention, a process whereby a creative system produces an outcome by first generating with no imposed constraints all variant outcomes and then retains from these variegated candidates the optimal outcome by gradually…

Systems thinking is an important skill in science and engineering education. Our study objectives were (1) to create the basis for a systems thinking language common to both science education and engineering education, and (2) to apply this language to assess science and engineering teachers' systems thinking. We administered two assignments to…

The aim of this study is to develop a reference model for intervention in the language processes applied to the transformation of language normalisation within organisations of a socio-economic nature. It is based on a case study of an experiment carried out over 10 years within a trade union confederation, and has pursued a strategy of a…

As with any field, technology education and its close relatives have numerous strengths and weaknesses. One of these weaknesses has too long been overlooked, and it is the subject of this article. One might think of technology education as empowering students, divergently fostering their own creativity. An abundance of design briefs shows that…

This paper discusses a cybernetic model of politeness strategies used in the process of making a request. The concept of systems, cybernetic models, and politeness strategies are reviewed, and the way they work together in the proposed model is examined. Politeness strategies are communication strategies used to change behavior enough to achieve…