title: Boat electrofishing survey of fish abundance in the Ohau Channel, Rotorua, in 2016

authors: Hicks, Brendan J.

abstract: The aim of the survey was to provide on-going monitoring of the fish communities and abundance by boat electrofishing in the Ohau Channel, especially fish species that are taonga to Maori (tuna, or eels, morihana, or goldfish, and kōura, or freshwater crayfish). In the current study, we present the findings from the tenth year of sampling (2016) and a summary of previous surveys.

text: Boat electrofishing survey of fish abundance in the Ohau Channel, Rotorua, in 2016 The aim of the survey was to provide on-going monitoring of the fish communities and abundance by boat electrofishing in the Ohau Channel, especially fish species that are taonga to Maori (tuna, or eels, morihana, or goldfish, and kōura, or freshwater crayfish). In the current study, we present the findings from the tenth year of sampling (2016) and a summary of previous surveys.

year: 2017

title: Population diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Insights from the CaDDANZ research programme

authors: Stone, Geoff

abstract: CaDDANZ was a New Zealand Government-funded project studying the impacts of growing population diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand. The project ran from 2014 to 2020 and was extended to March 2021 due to the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Staffed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers, CaDDANZ aimed to identify changing demographics and the impacts of ethnic and demographic diversity on aspects of economic and social change. This report has synthesised a bundle of key insights that could only have surfaced through the reflection on the interplay between the research questions that the original bid set out to address. While we, as a project team, did not intend to produce transdisciplinary or even interdisciplinary work on migration, diversity or the diversity dividend, setting a goal to synthesise something from the project as a whole has produced this report. Using social cohesion as a sorting mechanism for the insights has meant this overview is selective and high level. Not all the projects can be read against a social cohesion or even social inclusion lens. In particular, many of the econometric outputs explicitly addressed aspects of diversity as an economic dividend and that work is not highlighted in the synthesis. 
Three broad themes are addressed 
1. Immigration and diversity – understanding population trends 
2. [Re] conceptualising ethno-demographic diversity in Aotearoa – Tangata whenua perspectives 
3. Diversity in context – in different settings and over time 
The report concludes with four high-level insights 
1. Immigration policy needs to re-examine its position in relation to Tiriti o Waitangi where any Crown partnership relationship is currently lacking. 
2. Despite social cohesion being a negotiated term, its use as a framing for the impacts of migration on both the host country and individual migrant lives is underpinned by its use in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques on 15 March 2019 and is preferable to the concept of a diversity dividend.1 
3. While ethnocultural diversity is the default for ‘diversity dividend’ research, the concept of the social organisation of difference has broader relevance to social justice-oriented policy development.2 
4. The use of wide range of different methodologies is vital for the production of wellevidenced, theory-informed strategies and policies.

text: Population diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Insights from the CaDDANZ research programme CaDDANZ was a New Zealand Government-funded project studying the impacts of growing population diversity in Aotearoa New Zealand. The project ran from 2014 to 2020 and was extended to March 2021 due to the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Staffed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers, CaDDANZ aimed to identify changing demographics and the impacts of ethnic and demographic diversity on aspects of economic and social change. This report has synthesised a bundle of key insights that could only have surfaced through the reflection on the interplay between the research questions that the original bid set out to address. While we, as a project team, did not intend to produce transdisciplinary or even interdisciplinary work on migration, diversity or the diversity dividend, setting a goal to synthesise something from the project as a whole has produced this report. Using social cohesion as a sorting mechanism for the insights has meant this overview is selective and high level. Not all the projects can be read against a social cohesion or even social inclusion lens. In particular, many of the econometric outputs explicitly addressed aspects of diversity as an economic dividend and that work is not highlighted in the synthesis. 
Three broad themes are addressed 
1. Immigration and diversity – understanding population trends 
2. [Re] conceptualising ethno-demographic diversity in Aotearoa – Tangata whenua perspectives 
3. Diversity in context – in different settings and over time 
The report concludes with four high-level insights 
1. Immigration policy needs to re-examine its position in relation to Tiriti o Waitangi where any Crown partnership relationship is currently lacking. 
2. Despite social cohesion being a negotiated term, its use as a framing for the impacts of migration on both the host country and individual migrant lives is underpinned by its use in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques on 15 March 2019 and is preferable to the concept of a diversity dividend.1 
3. While ethnocultural diversity is the default for ‘diversity dividend’ research, the concept of the social organisation of difference has broader relevance to social justice-oriented policy development.2 
4. The use of wide range of different methodologies is vital for the production of wellevidenced, theory-informed strategies and policies.

year: 2021

title: Remapping the assessment landscape: primary teachers reconstructing assessment in self-managing schools

authors: Hill, Mary

abstract: This participative case study took as its starting point a current “problem”, namely teachers’ concerns about assessment in self-managing primary schools. Prompted by teachers’ stress and confusion about their assessment role, I investigated how, in the 1990s, New Zealand teachers responded to multiple competing discourses of assessment, and the effects these discourses had on their teaching practices. Central to this thesis is the notion that, since compulsory schooling began in 1877, teachers’ assessment practices have been both constituted by and constitutive of dominant educational and assessment discourses. Taking account of the Foucauldian stress on discontinuity, this thesis argues that traces of teachers’ assessment practices can be found in earlier dominant discourses. 

Evidence is presented to show that, in the latter half of the twentieth century, there was a discursive shift from education as a human right to education as a government investment, and that this shift refocussed public attention on both national standards and individual achievement. Through an examination of the structural changes to New Zealand education in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the managerial discourses that accompanied them, the reasons why new technologies for measuring and monitoring learning and performance evolved are examined. But, in contrast to these accountability discourses, it is further argued that other professional assessment discourses were also competing for teachers’ attention at the time this investigation took place. A review of the international assessment research literature reveals evidence to support the view that, instead of increasing accountability mechanisms to raise standards, formative assessment strategies are critical in promoting learning and raising standards. 

With these findings in mind, 12 teachers at two Waikato primary schools and 20 teachers at 13 other New Zealand primary and intermediate schools participated in semi-structured interviews about their assessment practices. Three teachers were then each observed in their classroom environment for a week. Foucault’s analytics of power (namely discourse, disciplinary power, hierarchical observation, normalisation and the “examination”), are used to explain how and why, even though they valued formative assessment and child-centred pedagogies highly, many teachers predominantly employed summative assessment for accountability reasons. Due to increased managerial surveillance through the mechanisms of school and syndicate teamwork, appraisal, performance management and external audit, teachers have put themselves under pressure to account for their own practice. They have done this by finding ways to meet the documentation demands of the system, and in the process produced a summative shift in their assessment practice. Furthermore, although teachers were observed using formative assessment strategies known to improve learning, most did not identify these strategies as assessment and often understood the use of continuous summative assessment as formative. To address these findings, a case is made for professional development in assessment for school leaders and education officials as well as teachers. It is recommended that national and school policies of assessment, teacher appraisal and performance management be examined and revised to ensure that they produce predominantly formative rather than summative assessment practices.

text: Remapping the assessment landscape: primary teachers reconstructing assessment in self-managing schools This participative case study took as its starting point a current “problem”, namely teachers’ concerns about assessment in self-managing primary schools. Prompted by teachers’ stress and confusion about their assessment role, I investigated how, in the 1990s, New Zealand teachers responded to multiple competing discourses of assessment, and the effects these discourses had on their teaching practices. Central to this thesis is the notion that, since compulsory schooling began in 1877, teachers’ assessment practices have been both constituted by and constitutive of dominant educational and assessment discourses. Taking account of the Foucauldian stress on discontinuity, this thesis argues that traces of teachers’ assessment practices can be found in earlier dominant discourses. 

Evidence is presented to show that, in the latter half of the twentieth century, there was a discursive shift from education as a human right to education as a government investment, and that this shift refocussed public attention on both national standards and individual achievement. Through an examination of the structural changes to New Zealand education in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the managerial discourses that accompanied them, the reasons why new technologies for measuring and monitoring learning and performance evolved are examined. But, in contrast to these accountability discourses, it is further argued that other professional assessment discourses were also competing for teachers’ attention at the time this investigation took place. A review of the international assessment research literature reveals evidence to support the view that, instead of increasing accountability mechanisms to raise standards, formative assessment strategies are critical in promoting learning and raising standards. 

With these findings in mind, 12 teachers at two Waikato primary schools and 20 teachers at 13 other New Zealand primary and intermediate schools participated in semi-structured interviews about their assessment practices. Three teachers were then each observed in their classroom environment for a week. Foucault’s analytics of power (namely discourse, disciplinary power, hierarchical observation, normalisation and the “examination”), are used to explain how and why, even though they valued formative assessment and child-centred pedagogies highly, many teachers predominantly employed summative assessment for accountability reasons. Due to increased managerial surveillance through the mechanisms of school and syndicate teamwork, appraisal, performance management and external audit, teachers have put themselves under pressure to account for their own practice. They have done this by finding ways to meet the documentation demands of the system, and in the process produced a summative shift in their assessment practice. Furthermore, although teachers were observed using formative assessment strategies known to improve learning, most did not identify these strategies as assessment and often understood the use of continuous summative assessment as formative. To address these findings, a case is made for professional development in assessment for school leaders and education officials as well as teachers. It is recommended that national and school policies of assessment, teacher appraisal and performance management be examined and revised to ensure that they produce predominantly formative rather than summative assessment practices.

year: 2000