title: The doctoral writing conversation: establishing a generic doctoral writing programme

authors: Johnson, E. Marcia

abstract: Over the past few decades, the number of people enrolled in doctoral study has increased dramatically across the world. In practical terms, this has meant that universities now receive increasingly diverse students with regard to ethnicity, age, language, culture, and background preparedness for higher degree study. Students can, and often do, begin their doctorates with scant understanding of the precise expectations and rigorous demands of thesis writing. Yet, regardless of academic discipline, successful completion of a doctorate requires a written thesis. To help students master thesis writing requirements, a proliferation of self-help writing books, blogs, specific writing techniques, and programmes have emerged. This paper describes an approach developed at a New Zealand university where a generic doctoral writing programme, the Doctoral Writing Conversation, has evolved to make explicit to students the implicit language understanding that accomplished academic writers use to produce text. Utilising the idea of language as a tool to mediate understanding, the paper will explore how the programme is structured and functions but will also describe some of the insights I have gained along the way.

text: The doctoral writing conversation: establishing a generic doctoral writing programme Over the past few decades, the number of people enrolled in doctoral study has increased dramatically across the world. In practical terms, this has meant that universities now receive increasingly diverse students with regard to ethnicity, age, language, culture, and background preparedness for higher degree study. Students can, and often do, begin their doctorates with scant understanding of the precise expectations and rigorous demands of thesis writing. Yet, regardless of academic discipline, successful completion of a doctorate requires a written thesis. To help students master thesis writing requirements, a proliferation of self-help writing books, blogs, specific writing techniques, and programmes have emerged. This paper describes an approach developed at a New Zealand university where a generic doctoral writing programme, the Doctoral Writing Conversation, has evolved to make explicit to students the implicit language understanding that accomplished academic writers use to produce text. Utilising the idea of language as a tool to mediate understanding, the paper will explore how the programme is structured and functions but will also describe some of the insights I have gained along the way.

year: 2017

title: What Does it Mean to be a Man Today?: Bloke Culture and the Media

authors: Hodgetts, Darrin

subjects: community

abstract: Psychologists have paid scant attention to the positive relationships and community contributions of working class men who are not in trouble, and have focused instead on men who are ‘in trouble.’ In addressing this oversight, we draw on insights from ethnographic observations, life narrative interviews, photographic techniques and media items, which have been compiled by 12 working class men from a shared community of practice in New Zealand. We illustrate how these men often appropriate aspects from contemporary media deliberations regarding what it means to be a man today in order to make sense of their own lives. The implications of participants’ emphasis on friendship, support, familial obligations, and community participation are discussed in relation to the place of working class men in society.

text: What Does it Mean to be a Man Today?: Bloke Culture and the Media Psychologists have paid scant attention to the positive relationships and community contributions of working class men who are not in trouble, and have focused instead on men who are ‘in trouble.’ In addressing this oversight, we draw on insights from ethnographic observations, life narrative interviews, photographic techniques and media items, which have been compiled by 12 working class men from a shared community of practice in New Zealand. We illustrate how these men often appropriate aspects from contemporary media deliberations regarding what it means to be a man today in order to make sense of their own lives. The implications of participants’ emphasis on friendship, support, familial obligations, and community participation are discussed in relation to the place of working class men in society.

year: 2010

title: Maori Flourishing in a Fast Changing World - Inaugural Professorial Address

authors: Nikora, Linda Waimarie

subjects: Indigenous psychology; Maori flourishing; social identity; social and emotional wellbeing

abstract: A strong sense of who one is and that one’s life matters is vital to health and wellbeing. Without meaning and belonging many people, families and communities lie open to the risk of mental illness, addiction, transience, criminality, suicide and so on. In a rapidly changing social and technological environment where being Maori is enacted in the face of a dominant Pakeha majority, and in an increasingly diverse Maori world, staying well is an important challenge that we cannot underestimate or take for granted. There are many unwellness forces upon Maori in this fast changing world. Some are obvious and readily felt, others not so easy to apprehend or explain. Surveying almost 30 years of research, Professor Nikora will examine some of these unwellness forces and responses Maori make within the broader quest to remain indigenous and to flourish.

text: Maori Flourishing in a Fast Changing World - Inaugural Professorial Address A strong sense of who one is and that one’s life matters is vital to health and wellbeing. Without meaning and belonging many people, families and communities lie open to the risk of mental illness, addiction, transience, criminality, suicide and so on. In a rapidly changing social and technological environment where being Maori is enacted in the face of a dominant Pakeha majority, and in an increasingly diverse Maori world, staying well is an important challenge that we cannot underestimate or take for granted. There are many unwellness forces upon Maori in this fast changing world. Some are obvious and readily felt, others not so easy to apprehend or explain. Surveying almost 30 years of research, Professor Nikora will examine some of these unwellness forces and responses Maori make within the broader quest to remain indigenous and to flourish.

year: 2015-11-17