title: Using theory to escape the descriptive impasse

authors: Bruce, Toni

subjects: theory

abstract: In this article, I focus on the importance of theory for undertaking and making sense of research. In particular, I consider one of the most common challenges for postgraduate students, which is how to shift from describing findings (what I found) to theorising about them (why my findings turned out this way). Using a case study approach, I describe my engagement with a particular set of data and demonstrate how different theories led me to focus on different elements and draw different conclusions. I conclude that explicitly shifting my theoretical approach ended up guiding me towards a much stronger interpretation of my descriptive findings.

text: Using theory to escape the descriptive impasse In this article, I focus on the importance of theory for undertaking and making sense of research. In particular, I consider one of the most common challenges for postgraduate students, which is how to shift from describing findings (what I found) to theorising about them (why my findings turned out this way). Using a case study approach, I describe my engagement with a particular set of data and demonstrate how different theories led me to focus on different elements and draw different conclusions. I conclude that explicitly shifting my theoretical approach ended up guiding me towards a much stronger interpretation of my descriptive findings.

year: 2010

title: Enhancing learner agency: Engaging appreciative inquiry to support school transitions

authors: McNae, Rachel Elizabeth

abstract: There is a growing body of literature highlighting the various challenges both teachers and students face when students transition between schools, (e.g. from intermediate to high school), with very little focus given to transitions within school contexts. The nature of common transition processes frequently positions students within a deficit model as individuals needing to be fixed, reflects managerial rather than pedagogical decision-making, (e.g. fluidity, staffing considerations, time management, maximising time on task and minimising disruption), and can lack overall pedagogical focus. As a team of educators and researchers, we strongly believed that Appreciative Inquiry had the potential to be an innovative practice which can aid in creating coherent learning pathways for a more seamless education experience.

text: Enhancing learner agency: Engaging appreciative inquiry to support school transitions There is a growing body of literature highlighting the various challenges both teachers and students face when students transition between schools, (e.g. from intermediate to high school), with very little focus given to transitions within school contexts. The nature of common transition processes frequently positions students within a deficit model as individuals needing to be fixed, reflects managerial rather than pedagogical decision-making, (e.g. fluidity, staffing considerations, time management, maximising time on task and minimising disruption), and can lack overall pedagogical focus. As a team of educators and researchers, we strongly believed that Appreciative Inquiry had the potential to be an innovative practice which can aid in creating coherent learning pathways for a more seamless education experience.

year: 2018

title: The embodied and lived experiences of welfare and care for highly impaired, high performance para-sport athletes in Aotearoa New Zealand

authors: Lowry, Amanda

abstract: Aligning with calls in critical disability studies to bring the body and impairment into disability sport, this thesis examines the welfare and care experiences of highly impaired athletes in high-performance sport. While a focus on athlete welfare has gained some international prominence, and a duty of care is increasingly invoked as an organisational and coaching responsibility, these developments remain largely disconnected from disability.  
The research is centred around two main objectives. First, to amplify the lived and embodied experiences of highly impaired, high performance disabled athletes as they prepare for, train, and compete in sport, and those who support them. Second, to understand how sporting institutions and regulations (within the broader context of government funding and national health care provision) influence welfare and care practices for high performance disabled athletes. 
Crip methodologies and Indigenous Māori storytelling methodologies such as pūrākau centres lived experience as a site of resistance and knowledge production. Using a reflexive, qualitative approach, including semi-structured interviews, autoethnographic vignettes, and visual ethnography, I expose how impairment effects are managed in ableist sporting environments that valorise normative athlete ideals. I interviewed 11 high-performance paraathletes, seven organisational representatives and two support workers. 
The research highlights the material, emotional, and temporal labour of care in highperformance sport. Findings are organised around three core themes: the embodied labour of care, impairment effects and interdependence; the tension between crip time, care time, and performance time; the intersecting structural, institutional, and ableist barriers that shape and constrain highly impaired athletes’ participation in disability sport.  
The first theme shows how high-performance sport privileges autonomous, efficient, and normative bodies, while marginalising those whose messy, gritty embodied impairment effects demand more time, support, and interdependence. The findings bring to the fore biosocial, psycho-emotional costs of navigating care and its impact on athlete welfare. The second theme uncovers how the rhythms of highly impaired bodies disrupt the linear, clockbound time of high-performance sport, revealing the incompatibility between care time and high performance cultures. It highlights the vital yet invisible labour of support workers, ii unacknowledged in contemporary sporting discourse. The third theme addresses the barriers that highly impaired athletes face when navigating ableist institutional and organisational structures. It exposes the complexity of the ableist disability sporting landscape and the gap between duty of care rhetoric and practice. 
Ultimately, this thesis calls for a radical reimagining of disability sport, one that centres interdependence, affirms bodily difference, and addresses the structural failures that marginalise highly impaired athletes.

text: The embodied and lived experiences of welfare and care for highly impaired, high performance para-sport athletes in Aotearoa New Zealand Aligning with calls in critical disability studies to bring the body and impairment into disability sport, this thesis examines the welfare and care experiences of highly impaired athletes in high-performance sport. While a focus on athlete welfare has gained some international prominence, and a duty of care is increasingly invoked as an organisational and coaching responsibility, these developments remain largely disconnected from disability.  
The research is centred around two main objectives. First, to amplify the lived and embodied experiences of highly impaired, high performance disabled athletes as they prepare for, train, and compete in sport, and those who support them. Second, to understand how sporting institutions and regulations (within the broader context of government funding and national health care provision) influence welfare and care practices for high performance disabled athletes. 
Crip methodologies and Indigenous Māori storytelling methodologies such as pūrākau centres lived experience as a site of resistance and knowledge production. Using a reflexive, qualitative approach, including semi-structured interviews, autoethnographic vignettes, and visual ethnography, I expose how impairment effects are managed in ableist sporting environments that valorise normative athlete ideals. I interviewed 11 high-performance paraathletes, seven organisational representatives and two support workers. 
The research highlights the material, emotional, and temporal labour of care in highperformance sport. Findings are organised around three core themes: the embodied labour of care, impairment effects and interdependence; the tension between crip time, care time, and performance time; the intersecting structural, institutional, and ableist barriers that shape and constrain highly impaired athletes’ participation in disability sport.  
The first theme shows how high-performance sport privileges autonomous, efficient, and normative bodies, while marginalising those whose messy, gritty embodied impairment effects demand more time, support, and interdependence. The findings bring to the fore biosocial, psycho-emotional costs of navigating care and its impact on athlete welfare. The second theme uncovers how the rhythms of highly impaired bodies disrupt the linear, clockbound time of high-performance sport, revealing the incompatibility between care time and high performance cultures. It highlights the vital yet invisible labour of support workers, ii unacknowledged in contemporary sporting discourse. The third theme addresses the barriers that highly impaired athletes face when navigating ableist institutional and organisational structures. It exposes the complexity of the ableist disability sporting landscape and the gap between duty of care rhetoric and practice. 
Ultimately, this thesis calls for a radical reimagining of disability sport, one that centres interdependence, affirms bodily difference, and addresses the structural failures that marginalise highly impaired athletes.

year: 2025-10