title: Dialogue, dialogue – Talking our way into leadership: An exploration of the influence of extended professional dialogue on school leaders

authors: Tebbutt, Carol Joy

subjects: dialogue

abstract: The complex and multilayered world of the 21st century no longer appears to support the conventional idea of great leadership being the result of the efforts of a single individual. Indeed the idea of learning communities, where educators are seen as active participants in developing educational procedures at all levels and are at the centre of the educational change process, is now widely promoted. In order to succeed in the process of building leadership in a learning community, relationships and communication are seen as key aspects, with some authors promoting dialogue as integral to the process.

This small-scale qualitative study uses a semi-structured interview process to gather data from eight educational leaders, working within New Zealand, who had participated in extended professional dialogues at the International Leadership Institutes (ILI) in the Waikato. The study explores the influence of that process on their professional capabilities as leaders and considers the nature and extent of their learning. It also looks at how dialogue continues to impact on their leadership practice after they have experienced repeated ILIs.

Theoretical and empirical research suggests that professional dialogue promotes critical thinking and inquiry through a process of consent and dissent to achieve a co-construction of knowledge. Dialogue enables a group to explore why certain presuppositions, ideas and beliefs exist within the group and to reveal why they are interacting in certain ways. It is a process that observes, collectively, how hidden values and intentions can control our behaviour and seeks to surface these in order to construct new ways of interacting and new knowledge. This study found that by working in groups through a process of dialogue, not only did the group extend its capabilities beyond that of the sum of the individuals, but that self awareness and understanding developed and continued to have an effect on thinking and behaviour long after the actual ILI was completed.

The findings are of use for those who seek to use dialogue as a successful communication tool in their own leadership contexts. While the findings are specific to the program under investigation, including its structure and local, historical context, they can be related to the wider world of education which asks for all involved to be focused on learning. How we learn and how we learn together is a major concern of leaders in learning. This study calls on educational leaders to explore dialogically how to enable their colleagues to be more successful in the work at hand and how to develop collective thinking, closer relationships and an ongoing way to approach diversity and change in our society.

text: Dialogue, dialogue – Talking our way into leadership: An exploration of the influence of extended professional dialogue on school leaders The complex and multilayered world of the 21st century no longer appears to support the conventional idea of great leadership being the result of the efforts of a single individual. Indeed the idea of learning communities, where educators are seen as active participants in developing educational procedures at all levels and are at the centre of the educational change process, is now widely promoted. In order to succeed in the process of building leadership in a learning community, relationships and communication are seen as key aspects, with some authors promoting dialogue as integral to the process.

This small-scale qualitative study uses a semi-structured interview process to gather data from eight educational leaders, working within New Zealand, who had participated in extended professional dialogues at the International Leadership Institutes (ILI) in the Waikato. The study explores the influence of that process on their professional capabilities as leaders and considers the nature and extent of their learning. It also looks at how dialogue continues to impact on their leadership practice after they have experienced repeated ILIs.

Theoretical and empirical research suggests that professional dialogue promotes critical thinking and inquiry through a process of consent and dissent to achieve a co-construction of knowledge. Dialogue enables a group to explore why certain presuppositions, ideas and beliefs exist within the group and to reveal why they are interacting in certain ways. It is a process that observes, collectively, how hidden values and intentions can control our behaviour and seeks to surface these in order to construct new ways of interacting and new knowledge. This study found that by working in groups through a process of dialogue, not only did the group extend its capabilities beyond that of the sum of the individuals, but that self awareness and understanding developed and continued to have an effect on thinking and behaviour long after the actual ILI was completed.

The findings are of use for those who seek to use dialogue as a successful communication tool in their own leadership contexts. While the findings are specific to the program under investigation, including its structure and local, historical context, they can be related to the wider world of education which asks for all involved to be focused on learning. How we learn and how we learn together is a major concern of leaders in learning. This study calls on educational leaders to explore dialogically how to enable their colleagues to be more successful in the work at hand and how to develop collective thinking, closer relationships and an ongoing way to approach diversity and change in our society.

year: 2012

title: Testing the efficacy of motor analogies for landing safely from falls

authors: Oladi, Sana

subjects: Older adults

abstract: Fall-related injuries are a major concern in countries with an aging population. One approach for reducing the likelihood of fall injuries is to teach older adults how to land safely. However, different safe landing techniques are required for different types of fall and direction of fall. Additionally, after a fall is initiated there is insufficient time to choose and use an appropriate safe-landing technique—particularly for older adults, who frequently display age-related cognitive deficiencies. Literature suggests that motor analogies are easy to retrieve from memory, can rapidly deploy attention during movement, and may even speed up the motor learning process. This thesis explores whether motor analogies can be utilized as a rule-of-thumb to promote safer landing (i.e., reduced risk of injury). Two laboratory experiments were conducted to examine the effect of motor analogies on biomechanical factors associated with landing by young adults (Chapters 2 and 4). A series of three online experiments examined whether motor analogies invoke mental representations associated with characteristics of safe landing (Chapter 3). Finally, a clinically-registered randomised controlled protocol was designed to investigate motor analogies in older adults (Chapter 5) (due to Covid-19 restrictions, the trial has not yet been completed). The findings suggest that an appropriate motor analogy can invoke mental representations associated with safe landing, and that participants instructed to use a motor analogy land in ways that are likely to result in less severity of injury, regardless of the direction in which they fall. The research provides preliminary evidence for the potential of motor analogies to reduce fall-related injuries, paving the way for future clinical studies.

text: Testing the efficacy of motor analogies for landing safely from falls Fall-related injuries are a major concern in countries with an aging population. One approach for reducing the likelihood of fall injuries is to teach older adults how to land safely. However, different safe landing techniques are required for different types of fall and direction of fall. Additionally, after a fall is initiated there is insufficient time to choose and use an appropriate safe-landing technique—particularly for older adults, who frequently display age-related cognitive deficiencies. Literature suggests that motor analogies are easy to retrieve from memory, can rapidly deploy attention during movement, and may even speed up the motor learning process. This thesis explores whether motor analogies can be utilized as a rule-of-thumb to promote safer landing (i.e., reduced risk of injury). Two laboratory experiments were conducted to examine the effect of motor analogies on biomechanical factors associated with landing by young adults (Chapters 2 and 4). A series of three online experiments examined whether motor analogies invoke mental representations associated with characteristics of safe landing (Chapter 3). Finally, a clinically-registered randomised controlled protocol was designed to investigate motor analogies in older adults (Chapter 5) (due to Covid-19 restrictions, the trial has not yet been completed). The findings suggest that an appropriate motor analogy can invoke mental representations associated with safe landing, and that participants instructed to use a motor analogy land in ways that are likely to result in less severity of injury, regardless of the direction in which they fall. The research provides preliminary evidence for the potential of motor analogies to reduce fall-related injuries, paving the way for future clinical studies.

year: 2022

title: Te Reo Tātai: The Development of a Mathematics Register for Māori-Medium Schooling

authors: Trinick, Anthony

subjects: Indigenous Mathematics education

abstract: This thesis investigates the development of a lexicon and register to facilitate the teaching of mathematics in the medium of te reo Māori. This sociolinguistic development is situated within the wider Māori language revitalisation movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, of which Māori-medium education is a central component. 
Lexication of a language is a subdomain of corpus planning. Corpus, status and language-in-education planning are considered the three major interconnected domains of language planning and policy (LPP). For decades, the primary focus of LPP research has been on the activities of states and their agencies at the macro (national) level. The significance of this study is that it addresses this gap in the research, by investigating the development of LPP at the meso/micro-level—in this case, with respect to the development of a mathematics register for an endangered indigenous language, te reo Māori.
The thesis draws on two major participant data sources. The first is the narratives of key individuals at the forefront of lexical development for Māori-medium mathematics who recounted their experiences. The second is interviews with principals and teachers from two Māori-medium case study schools to examine their own learning and usage of the standardised pāngarau lexicon.
Two complementary theoretical frameworks were used to investigate the topic. First, an LPP theoretical framework was applied to investigate the complex relationships between the various levels of LPP that have impacted on the evolution of te reo Māori and Māori-medium schooling. Second, a linguistic framework, systemic functional linguistics (SFL), was used to investigate the linguistic and pedagogical issues.
Thesis findings show that the status of te reo Māori was variously affected by linguistic ideologies such as assimilation, which in turn led to such policies as English only in schooling. As a consequence, at the micro-level of LPP, Māori-medium mathematics development went into a hiatus for over 100 years, and at the macro-level, considerable language shift occurred to English, causing te reo Maori to become endangered.
In response to language revitalisation efforts, the (re) vernacularisation of te reo Māori over the past 30 years has exhibited a complex combination of both bottom-up and top-down LPP. Within this, early pāngarau lexical developments were largely driven by local schools and their communities, which sometimes centred on the maintenance of their tribal dialects, often in conflict with later LPP agency language goals. 
Subsequently, lexication for pāngarau was influenced by macro-level sociolinguistic beliefs such as linguistic purism, which in turn have influenced the technical approach to creating terms and may have created particular pedagogical issues, such as a lack of intertranslatability between te reo Māori and English at the higher levels of mathematics study. 
While Māori-medium schooling has contributed significantly to language revitalisation in the past 30 years, its development has been very ad hoc. In the absence of a “formal” language plan for Māori-medium education, policy has been significantly driven by national education (English-medium) imperatives since the late 1970s to the present day. On the other hand, these policies have favoured mathematics education and directly supported the development of the Māori-medium specialised lexicon and register.

text: Te Reo Tātai: The Development of a Mathematics Register for Māori-Medium Schooling This thesis investigates the development of a lexicon and register to facilitate the teaching of mathematics in the medium of te reo Māori. This sociolinguistic development is situated within the wider Māori language revitalisation movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand, of which Māori-medium education is a central component. 
Lexication of a language is a subdomain of corpus planning. Corpus, status and language-in-education planning are considered the three major interconnected domains of language planning and policy (LPP). For decades, the primary focus of LPP research has been on the activities of states and their agencies at the macro (national) level. The significance of this study is that it addresses this gap in the research, by investigating the development of LPP at the meso/micro-level—in this case, with respect to the development of a mathematics register for an endangered indigenous language, te reo Māori.
The thesis draws on two major participant data sources. The first is the narratives of key individuals at the forefront of lexical development for Māori-medium mathematics who recounted their experiences. The second is interviews with principals and teachers from two Māori-medium case study schools to examine their own learning and usage of the standardised pāngarau lexicon.
Two complementary theoretical frameworks were used to investigate the topic. First, an LPP theoretical framework was applied to investigate the complex relationships between the various levels of LPP that have impacted on the evolution of te reo Māori and Māori-medium schooling. Second, a linguistic framework, systemic functional linguistics (SFL), was used to investigate the linguistic and pedagogical issues.
Thesis findings show that the status of te reo Māori was variously affected by linguistic ideologies such as assimilation, which in turn led to such policies as English only in schooling. As a consequence, at the micro-level of LPP, Māori-medium mathematics development went into a hiatus for over 100 years, and at the macro-level, considerable language shift occurred to English, causing te reo Maori to become endangered.
In response to language revitalisation efforts, the (re) vernacularisation of te reo Māori over the past 30 years has exhibited a complex combination of both bottom-up and top-down LPP. Within this, early pāngarau lexical developments were largely driven by local schools and their communities, which sometimes centred on the maintenance of their tribal dialects, often in conflict with later LPP agency language goals. 
Subsequently, lexication for pāngarau was influenced by macro-level sociolinguistic beliefs such as linguistic purism, which in turn have influenced the technical approach to creating terms and may have created particular pedagogical issues, such as a lack of intertranslatability between te reo Māori and English at the higher levels of mathematics study. 
While Māori-medium schooling has contributed significantly to language revitalisation in the past 30 years, its development has been very ad hoc. In the absence of a “formal” language plan for Māori-medium education, policy has been significantly driven by national education (English-medium) imperatives since the late 1970s to the present day. On the other hand, these policies have favoured mathematics education and directly supported the development of the Māori-medium specialised lexicon and register.

year: 2015