title: Senior leaders’ approaches to transition to primary school: A discourse analysis

authors: Souness, Katherine

subjects: Transition to school

abstract: For most children in New Zealand, starting school is a significant life event. The move from early childhood education (ECE) to primary school has been well documented and researched internationally and locally. The current body of literature draws on the voices of children, families, ECE teachers, and primary school teachers. However, the experiences of school leaders, who frequently direct a school's approach to transitioning students in their first year, are rarely addressed in the literature. My research addresses this gap by investigating the practices and underpinning beliefs of five primary school senior leaders (team leaders, syndicate leaders, and associate or deputy principals) with responsibility for the transition to school at large primary schools in Auckland, New Zealand.

Underpinned by a post-structural conceptual framework, my research draws on interviews with school leaders to examine discourses that constructed these leaders' approaches to the transition from ECE to primary school. Three post-structural concepts were critical to the conceptual framework: identities (understood to be fluid and continuously renegotiated), contexts (situated, professional, material and external), and discourse (language in use). The main research question asked "How do school senior leaders discursively construct approaches to transition to school and their own and others’ identities within their contexts?" Semi-structured interviews yielded rich data on how participants build their own identities and those of others, including children and whānau, in the transition to school process.

Four localised discourses were identified in the interview data: structural, relational, pedagogical and achievement discourses. Leaders drew upon these and other broader, big “D” Discourses including those of school readiness, neoliberal policies, and conceptualisations of senior leadership roles in New Zealand primary schools, in interplay with many others. The interview data showed evidence of school leaders both resisting and submitting to discourses. School-specific contexts shaped participants' (conscious or unconscious) reproduction of discourses in their decisions and practices. Participants used many common transition-to-school practices. However, how those transition practices and relationships with stakeholders were discursively constructed and enacted in their school-specific contexts varied.

The range of discourses drawn upon and reproduced by school leaders demonstrates the complex and deeply contextualised nature of constructing transition to school approaches. This study privileges the voices of school leaders to add a fresh perspective to the body of literature about children's transition from early childhood education to primary school. The findings reveal opportunities for leaders to critically examine the discourses that shape their constructions of reality within their schools, both in their leadership in general and, more specifically, in their leadership of the crucial first moments of children's school lives.

text: Senior leaders’ approaches to transition to primary school: A discourse analysis For most children in New Zealand, starting school is a significant life event. The move from early childhood education (ECE) to primary school has been well documented and researched internationally and locally. The current body of literature draws on the voices of children, families, ECE teachers, and primary school teachers. However, the experiences of school leaders, who frequently direct a school's approach to transitioning students in their first year, are rarely addressed in the literature. My research addresses this gap by investigating the practices and underpinning beliefs of five primary school senior leaders (team leaders, syndicate leaders, and associate or deputy principals) with responsibility for the transition to school at large primary schools in Auckland, New Zealand.

Underpinned by a post-structural conceptual framework, my research draws on interviews with school leaders to examine discourses that constructed these leaders' approaches to the transition from ECE to primary school. Three post-structural concepts were critical to the conceptual framework: identities (understood to be fluid and continuously renegotiated), contexts (situated, professional, material and external), and discourse (language in use). The main research question asked "How do school senior leaders discursively construct approaches to transition to school and their own and others’ identities within their contexts?" Semi-structured interviews yielded rich data on how participants build their own identities and those of others, including children and whānau, in the transition to school process.

Four localised discourses were identified in the interview data: structural, relational, pedagogical and achievement discourses. Leaders drew upon these and other broader, big “D” Discourses including those of school readiness, neoliberal policies, and conceptualisations of senior leadership roles in New Zealand primary schools, in interplay with many others. The interview data showed evidence of school leaders both resisting and submitting to discourses. School-specific contexts shaped participants' (conscious or unconscious) reproduction of discourses in their decisions and practices. Participants used many common transition-to-school practices. However, how those transition practices and relationships with stakeholders were discursively constructed and enacted in their school-specific contexts varied.

The range of discourses drawn upon and reproduced by school leaders demonstrates the complex and deeply contextualised nature of constructing transition to school approaches. This study privileges the voices of school leaders to add a fresh perspective to the body of literature about children's transition from early childhood education to primary school. The findings reveal opportunities for leaders to critically examine the discourses that shape their constructions of reality within their schools, both in their leadership in general and, more specifically, in their leadership of the crucial first moments of children's school lives.

year: 2022

title: Towards a neoliberal citizenship regime: A post-Marxist discourse analysis

authors: Hackell, Melissa

subjects: discourse

abstract: This thesis is empirically grounded in New Zealand's restructuring of unemployment and taxation policy in the 1980s and 1990s.  Theoretically it is inspired by a post-Marxist discourse analytical approach that focuses on discourses as political strategies.  This approach has made it possible, through an analysis of changing citizenship discourses, to understand how the neoliberalisation of New Zealand's citizenship regime proceeded via debate and struggle over unemployment and taxation policy.  

Debates over unemployment and taxation in New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s reconfigured the targets of policy and re-ordered social antagonism, establishing a neoliberal citizenship regime and centring political problematic.  This construction of a neoliberal citizenship regime involved re-specifying the targets of public policy as consumers and taxpayers.  In exploring the hegemonic discourse strategies of the Fourth Labour Government and the subsequent National-led governments of the 1990s, this thesis traces the process of reconfiguring citizen subjectivity initially as 'social consumers' and participants in a coalition of minorities, and subsequently as universal taxpayers in antagonistic relation to unemployed beneficiaries.  These changes are related back to key discursive events in New Zealand's recent social policy history as well as to shifts in the discourses of politicians that address the nature of the public interest and the targets of social policy.  

I argue that this neoliberalisation of New Zealand's citizenship regime was the outcome of the hegemonic articulatory discourse strategies of governing parties in the 1980s and 1990s.  Struggles between government administrations and citizen-based social movement groups were articulated to the neoliberal project.  I also argue that in the late 1990s, discursive struggle between the dominant parties to define themselves in difference from each other reveals both the 'de'contestation of a set of neoliberal policy prescriptions, underscoring the neoliberal political problematic, and the privileging of a contributing taxpayer identity as the source of political legitimacy.  

This study shows that the dynamics of discursive struggle matter and demonstrates how the outcomes of discursive struggle direct policy change.  In particular, it establishes how neoliberal discourse strategies evolved from political discourses in competition with other discourses to become the hegemonic political problematic underscoring institutional practice and policy development.

text: Towards a neoliberal citizenship regime: A post-Marxist discourse analysis This thesis is empirically grounded in New Zealand's restructuring of unemployment and taxation policy in the 1980s and 1990s.  Theoretically it is inspired by a post-Marxist discourse analytical approach that focuses on discourses as political strategies.  This approach has made it possible, through an analysis of changing citizenship discourses, to understand how the neoliberalisation of New Zealand's citizenship regime proceeded via debate and struggle over unemployment and taxation policy.  

Debates over unemployment and taxation in New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s reconfigured the targets of policy and re-ordered social antagonism, establishing a neoliberal citizenship regime and centring political problematic.  This construction of a neoliberal citizenship regime involved re-specifying the targets of public policy as consumers and taxpayers.  In exploring the hegemonic discourse strategies of the Fourth Labour Government and the subsequent National-led governments of the 1990s, this thesis traces the process of reconfiguring citizen subjectivity initially as 'social consumers' and participants in a coalition of minorities, and subsequently as universal taxpayers in antagonistic relation to unemployed beneficiaries.  These changes are related back to key discursive events in New Zealand's recent social policy history as well as to shifts in the discourses of politicians that address the nature of the public interest and the targets of social policy.  

I argue that this neoliberalisation of New Zealand's citizenship regime was the outcome of the hegemonic articulatory discourse strategies of governing parties in the 1980s and 1990s.  Struggles between government administrations and citizen-based social movement groups were articulated to the neoliberal project.  I also argue that in the late 1990s, discursive struggle between the dominant parties to define themselves in difference from each other reveals both the 'de'contestation of a set of neoliberal policy prescriptions, underscoring the neoliberal political problematic, and the privileging of a contributing taxpayer identity as the source of political legitimacy.  

This study shows that the dynamics of discursive struggle matter and demonstrates how the outcomes of discursive struggle direct policy change.  In particular, it establishes how neoliberal discourse strategies evolved from political discourses in competition with other discourses to become the hegemonic political problematic underscoring institutional practice and policy development.

year: 2007

title: Tephras and New Zealand archaeology

authors: Lowe, David J.

subjects: tephrochronology

abstract: Establishing an accurate date for earliest Polynesian settlement in New Zealand is essential for understanding patterns of settlement and associated environmental impacts, and the processes and rates of cultural change in Eastern Polynesia. Tephra deposits from five volcanic centres, together with exotic sea-rafted pumice, provide isochronous constraints on the timing of earliest settlement and human impacts in northern New Zealand. A local basaltic tephra from Rangitoto Island (Auckland) and locally distributed andesitic tephras from Egmont volcano directly date human occupation to c. AD 1400–1450. Distal andesitic tephras (Tufa Trig Formation) from Mt Ruapehu, Tongariro volcanic centre, help constrain the timing of earliest anthropogenic deforestation signals in Hawke's Bay. Sea-rafted Loisels Pumice(s), although of uncertain stratigraphic reliability in places, overlies cultural remains that can be no younger than c. AD 1350 along the east coast, North Island. The regionally extensive rhyolitic Kaharoa Tephra, which erupted from Okataina volcano between c. AD  1300–1390, is the critical “settlement layer” datum for dating prehistory in the North Island: no human artefacts are recorded beneath it and the earliest inferred environmental impacts by humans are dated to c. AD  1280, just prior to its deposition. This maximum date matches the earliest radiocarbon dates derived for both settlement and human impacts from archaeological and natural sites (c. AD 1250), and implies that the onset of deforestation was essentially contemporaneous with initial settlement.
The widespread rhyolitic Taupo Tephra, which erupted from Taupo volcano c. AD 200, provides an isochronous benchmark well before earliest settlement. The tephra may coincide approximately with a putative earlier transient contact in New Zealand based on Pacific rat-bone (Rattus exulans) dates. More precise calendrical dates on the tephras—via dendrochronology or ice-core records or other dating methods—would help refine assessment of the timing of earliest settlement, while extending the distributional range of critical tephra layers, through application of crypto-tephra analysis, could lead to a greater understanding of settlement patterns.

text: Tephras and New Zealand archaeology Establishing an accurate date for earliest Polynesian settlement in New Zealand is essential for understanding patterns of settlement and associated environmental impacts, and the processes and rates of cultural change in Eastern Polynesia. Tephra deposits from five volcanic centres, together with exotic sea-rafted pumice, provide isochronous constraints on the timing of earliest settlement and human impacts in northern New Zealand. A local basaltic tephra from Rangitoto Island (Auckland) and locally distributed andesitic tephras from Egmont volcano directly date human occupation to c. AD 1400–1450. Distal andesitic tephras (Tufa Trig Formation) from Mt Ruapehu, Tongariro volcanic centre, help constrain the timing of earliest anthropogenic deforestation signals in Hawke's Bay. Sea-rafted Loisels Pumice(s), although of uncertain stratigraphic reliability in places, overlies cultural remains that can be no younger than c. AD 1350 along the east coast, North Island. The regionally extensive rhyolitic Kaharoa Tephra, which erupted from Okataina volcano between c. AD  1300–1390, is the critical “settlement layer” datum for dating prehistory in the North Island: no human artefacts are recorded beneath it and the earliest inferred environmental impacts by humans are dated to c. AD  1280, just prior to its deposition. This maximum date matches the earliest radiocarbon dates derived for both settlement and human impacts from archaeological and natural sites (c. AD 1250), and implies that the onset of deforestation was essentially contemporaneous with initial settlement.
The widespread rhyolitic Taupo Tephra, which erupted from Taupo volcano c. AD 200, provides an isochronous benchmark well before earliest settlement. The tephra may coincide approximately with a putative earlier transient contact in New Zealand based on Pacific rat-bone (Rattus exulans) dates. More precise calendrical dates on the tephras—via dendrochronology or ice-core records or other dating methods—would help refine assessment of the timing of earliest settlement, while extending the distributional range of critical tephra layers, through application of crypto-tephra analysis, could lead to a greater understanding of settlement patterns.

year: 2000