School of Social and Cultural Studies

Head of the School of Social and Cultural Studies in Education and co-Director of Te Puna Rangahau i- Ako, the Digital Education Futures Lab at the University of Canterbury. I am a Commonwealth of Learning Chair with a research focus exploring (post)digital (in)equality in Tertiary Education with a particular focus on perspectives and opportunities in the Pacific region. 

Dr Helena Cook is a Samoan/Irish lecturer in the School of Social and Cultural Studies. Helena’s research centres on the experiences and aspirations of young people, with a focus on justice, cultural knowledge, and the reimagining of civic life in Aotearoa. Her current work is anchored in her Royal Society | Te Apārangi Mana Tūāpapa Future Leader Fellowship, through which she is leading an in-depth study of how Pacific young people understand and engage with politics. This project explores culturally grounded forms of political participation and the barriers and opportunities that shape meaningful youth civic engagement in Aotearoa. Alongside this project, Helena investigates how young people navigate and contest systems that shape their lives, and the ways those systems might better support youth voice and leadership. Through this research, Helena aims to contribute to decolonial scholarship, culturally grounded practice, and more just educational and civic futures for Māori and Pacific youth 

Helena is the Programme Coordinator for the Youth and Community Leadership programme, and chair of the Civics and Citizenship working group of the New Zealand Political Studies Association. She sits on the board of Te Whare Kōhungahunga o UC I Early Childhood Learning Centre, is an Associate Editor for the New Zealand Journal of Teachers Work and has been a keynote speaker on the topics of identity, inclusive leadership, Pacific education, and political representation. Her professional experience has focused on the recruitment, retention, and success of Pasifika students at tertiary institutions and the academic support of international aid and development scholarship students, integrating her research with practitioner expertise.

Helena is excited to receive enquiries from students interested in fields of equity and education, Pacific education, civics and citizenship, youth voice, and political representation. She looks forward to also supervising interdisciplinary projects, particularly from politics and sociology.

As an educational and pedagogical ethicist, my research explores the moral dimensions of teaching and learning. I am interested in the complex dynamics between values and action – how values shape ethical assertions that, in turn, influence educational policy, practice, and images of the child. Drawing on a range of philosophical perspectives, my work engages concepts such as the moral imagination and the practice of attention to reimagine education in ways that recentre relationships, wellbeing, and human flourishing.

Love is a key dimension of attention, and is a key value and moral concept that informs my research inquiry. Love is not only a critical dimension of a life well-lived, it is also a lens through which teachers can interrogate the aims of their pedagogical approaches, to refine and reposition learning to see tamariki in their best light. A teacher's ability to see, empathise, and ethically respond to the child, their family members, and teaching colleagues can be greatly enhanced through an understanding and application of attention and the moral imagination in everyday situations. As co-lead of the Infant and Toddler Network and co-president of OMEP Aotearoa, my role as an early childhood ethicist supports actions of advocacy to advance Te Tiriti o Waitangi, address issues of social justice and sustainability, and enable teachers to recognise and respond to the agency of children within their everyday teaching practices.

I am co-lead of the research programme Re-imagining education for flourishing people and societies. 

Dr Jae Major is the Whakatū Nelson Campus Director and Senior Lecturer for the University of Canterbury Faculty of Education. Jae has taught in primary schools in New Zealand and London, and as a secondary ESOL teacher. She has worked in teacher education since 1995, teaching multicultural studies, English for speakers of other languages, and English literacy and curriculum. Jae was a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury, College of Education before moving to Charles Sturt University, Bathurst campus, NSW Australia in 2010. She returned to New Zealand and was employed at Victoria University of Wellington from 2017 - 2023 teaching primary English literacy and English as an Additional Language courses. She was the Associate Dean Teacher Education from 2021 to 2023, before moving to Whakatū Nelson to be with family.

Jae has a long interest in and commitment to social justice and equity in education, which is reflected in her research, teaching, and supervision.

In addition to her academic work, Jae is also Chair of the Teacher Education Forum Aotearoa New Zealand (TEFANZ). She represents this peak body on the Ministry of Education and Teaching Council Initial Teacher Education Steering group. Jae is a member of the Teaching and Teacher Education Special Interest Group of the New Zealand Association of Research in Education (NZARE).

Please note that Jae is not accepting new PhD students in 2026 or 2027.

Whose Mathematics Counts? 

My research programme is driven by a central question: what counts as legitimate mathematics, and what are legitimate ways of doing and learning mathematics? Drawing on Bakhtin's theory of dialogism and Foucault's concepts of discourse, power, and knowledge, I investigate how mathematics is not merely learned but continually negotiated through classroom interactions and institutional practices, and is informed by broader social and cultural realities. My work draws on my experience as a primary school teacher in Delhi and as a researcher in the culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms of Aotearoa New Zealand. 

In my research, I examine how learners construct and communicate mathematical meaning through language, gesture, prosody, and other semiotic resources. This work has explored multilingual mathematics classrooms, children's speech genres, classroom discourse, embodied communication, and the participation of linguistically diverse learners. Through these studies, I seek to understand how certain forms of doing and knowing mathematics become recognised as mathematically legitimate while other ways are overlooked or marginalised. A closely related focus of my work is the relationship between mathematics, culture, and diversity. I investigate how our teaching practice can move beyond a deficit or (limited-) resource perspective on language and cultural difference to recognise the rich potential of the meanings available in language/s and culture/s that learners bring to mathematics classrooms for meaning-making. This commitment is reflected in my work on multilingual learners, culturally responsive and language-responsive pedagogies, and the role of language in mathematics learning. 

My research sits at the intersection of equity, social justice, inclusion, and culturally grounded teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through my interdisciplinary work in early childhood education and family sociology, I examine how early childhood settings can become places where every family experiences belonging, and how teachers engage in socially just and inclusive practices while addressing issues of exclusion.

A core strand of my work investigates how teachers learn to enact pedagogies that honour the identities, languages, cultures, and relational worlds of the children and communities they serve. More recently, my research has expanded into Pacific education, particularly Samoan conceptual frameworks that re‑centre culture, values, and relationality as catalysts for learning.

My research focuses on problems of equity and social justice in and through education, exploring how the development of people’s own art of living supports personal and societal well-being, cohesion and equity. I am interested in the relationship between education and society. My research, which formulates an innovative approach to education and schooling based on Wilhelm Schmid’s concept of the art of living, is leading in the English-speaking academy. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on education, philosophy and psychology, I regularly present and publish at international conferences and journals. My current research projects include two international collaborative studies to develop practical tools to support teachers with inclusive practices and a re-imagination of education systems, policies and practices to strengthen equal educational opportunities for all students in society. I am also running an international comparative project exploring diverse cultural approaches to the art of living with implications for education.

I am particularly interested to supervise thesis students whose work directly links to my main research interests and ongoing projects (please see the 'Research' tab of my profile). I am also open to consider candidates with projects in the wider field of philosophy of education and educational theory.