title: Exploring female art-making through reflective practice: A multi-dimensional cultural, spiritual and embodied experience

authors: Bright, Deborah Ann

subjects: female

abstract: This thesis explores some of the many elements and influences of lived experience that are present in acts of art-making. Reflective practice in art-making adds the intentional and purposive act of reflective learning to the experience of art-making. In an academic context the challenge arises for a researcher to adequately represent the breadth and richness of the lived experiences of reflective practice in artmaking. This breadth and richness may embrace elements of art production and influences including gender, culture, spirituality, creativity, creative processes, embodied knowing, the place of conversations and learning as a result of facilitated reflective practice. Adequate representation is particularly vital because art-makers may communicate best through non-verbal means, including embodied knowing and their artmaking, rather than through words. Flexibility of approach and representation is even more important when the art-maker participants engage in various art-making areas and identify themselves as part of indigenous, dominant and/or non-dominant cultures within Aotearoa New Zealand. In this thesis, by applying a feminist participatory approach, informed by kaupapa Maori, I affirmed that the lived experiences of reflective practice in art-making can be adequately represented in a thesis. By such means, I sought to empower the participants, including myself, by providing a process through which they might increase confidence in their own art-making practices and professional artistry. This approach was necessary because no single or even double blending of worldviews can embrace such a range of variables. However, an interweaving of feminist and participatory, informed by indigenous peoples’ worldviews, provides the scope for such a study in terms of fundamental beliefs, ways of knowing, values, issues of power, methodologies and methods. The ways of knowing include collaborative, constructed, cultural, embodied, experiential, indigenous, presentational, propositional, spiritual and subjective and writing as a way of knowing; such a range was vital to this thesis. As artmaker co-participant, I was able to engage in conversation with the other art-makers as facilitator of their reflective practice in art-making and to represent their lived experiences of reflective practice in art-making through verbal and non-verbal means and art-making, in ways that were comfortable culturally to all participants. ii I represent and discuss my findings through formal academic writing, personal narrative and a DVD. The DVD includes a video montage and an image narrative that contribute to the discussion on embodied knowing (Chapter 7), a video of my own dance work, which contributes to the discussion on creativity and visual images (Chapter 6), and a copy of a poster referred to at various times in the findings and discussion chapters. Finally, I conclude that a feminist participatory approach, informed by indigenous peoples’ worldviews and including facilitated reflective practice, may have application to other fields of research and practice including other areas of the arts, teaching, sport and leisure and in the wider field of social sciences.

text: Exploring female art-making through reflective practice: A multi-dimensional cultural, spiritual and embodied experience This thesis explores some of the many elements and influences of lived experience that are present in acts of art-making. Reflective practice in art-making adds the intentional and purposive act of reflective learning to the experience of art-making. In an academic context the challenge arises for a researcher to adequately represent the breadth and richness of the lived experiences of reflective practice in artmaking. This breadth and richness may embrace elements of art production and influences including gender, culture, spirituality, creativity, creative processes, embodied knowing, the place of conversations and learning as a result of facilitated reflective practice. Adequate representation is particularly vital because art-makers may communicate best through non-verbal means, including embodied knowing and their artmaking, rather than through words. Flexibility of approach and representation is even more important when the art-maker participants engage in various art-making areas and identify themselves as part of indigenous, dominant and/or non-dominant cultures within Aotearoa New Zealand. In this thesis, by applying a feminist participatory approach, informed by kaupapa Maori, I affirmed that the lived experiences of reflective practice in art-making can be adequately represented in a thesis. By such means, I sought to empower the participants, including myself, by providing a process through which they might increase confidence in their own art-making practices and professional artistry. This approach was necessary because no single or even double blending of worldviews can embrace such a range of variables. However, an interweaving of feminist and participatory, informed by indigenous peoples’ worldviews, provides the scope for such a study in terms of fundamental beliefs, ways of knowing, values, issues of power, methodologies and methods. The ways of knowing include collaborative, constructed, cultural, embodied, experiential, indigenous, presentational, propositional, spiritual and subjective and writing as a way of knowing; such a range was vital to this thesis. As artmaker co-participant, I was able to engage in conversation with the other art-makers as facilitator of their reflective practice in art-making and to represent their lived experiences of reflective practice in art-making through verbal and non-verbal means and art-making, in ways that were comfortable culturally to all participants. ii I represent and discuss my findings through formal academic writing, personal narrative and a DVD. The DVD includes a video montage and an image narrative that contribute to the discussion on embodied knowing (Chapter 7), a video of my own dance work, which contributes to the discussion on creativity and visual images (Chapter 6), and a copy of a poster referred to at various times in the findings and discussion chapters. Finally, I conclude that a feminist participatory approach, informed by indigenous peoples’ worldviews and including facilitated reflective practice, may have application to other fields of research and practice including other areas of the arts, teaching, sport and leisure and in the wider field of social sciences.

year: 2010

title: Maori land in Hauraki

authors: Hart, Philip

abstract: Imagining the Hauraki Peninsula to contain payable goldfields and knowing that land to the south of Thames had great agricultural potential, Pakeha were determined to acquire it, and were frustrated by what was considered to be ‘Maori intransigence’. For their part, Maori landowners were justifiably concerned about losing their land, and hindered and delayed opening it to settlement for as long as possible. A major difficulty for officials seeking to acquire land was how to determine boundaries between different blocks and how to identify the true owners when there were rival claims put forward by hapu and individuals. Land purchase agents used a variety of means to get blocks through the land court and then to individualize the title, notably the controversial ‘raihana’ policy, which benefited some landowners at the expense of others. The expensive legal process involved often forced those who had proved their ownership to sell land to pay for their success, a success which resulted in grantees treating the land as their personal property rather than tribal property. Some Pakeha as well as many Maori protested at the unfair process; even James Mackay, the most effective practitioner of raihana, came to lament his success and its consequences for the younger generation of Maori (he blamed the system, not himself). When far too late, it was urged that land should have been leased rather than sold and that proceeds from sales should not have been squandered.
Instead of having commissions of enquiry, as some suggested, the land court system meant that judges determined ownership on the evidence presented to them, even though some owners were not present nor had their interests represented. Sometimes the evidence was false, as was admitted by some witnesses when their perjury was exposed. And in the case of the Ohinemuri district, for which the records survive, when the land was sold to the Crown some Maori received too much money, some too little, and some missed out altogether. The struggles to open Ohinemuri to miners and settlers is examined in detail, revealing that some rangatira expected economic gain and that Te Hira’s party, who opposed the opening, were undermined by some of Te Hira’s followers: being ‘Hauhau’, they refused to take money from the Crown but instead took raihana, meaning goods which were charged against their land in a way they did not understand. Nor did anyone fully understand the system apart from Mackay, whose policy was eventually repudiated by the politicians who had encouraged it previously. Not all land was lost, but because the government did not assist landowners with advice and finance until well into the twentieth century what land that was retained could not be developed adequately.

text: Maori land in Hauraki Imagining the Hauraki Peninsula to contain payable goldfields and knowing that land to the south of Thames had great agricultural potential, Pakeha were determined to acquire it, and were frustrated by what was considered to be ‘Maori intransigence’. For their part, Maori landowners were justifiably concerned about losing their land, and hindered and delayed opening it to settlement for as long as possible. A major difficulty for officials seeking to acquire land was how to determine boundaries between different blocks and how to identify the true owners when there were rival claims put forward by hapu and individuals. Land purchase agents used a variety of means to get blocks through the land court and then to individualize the title, notably the controversial ‘raihana’ policy, which benefited some landowners at the expense of others. The expensive legal process involved often forced those who had proved their ownership to sell land to pay for their success, a success which resulted in grantees treating the land as their personal property rather than tribal property. Some Pakeha as well as many Maori protested at the unfair process; even James Mackay, the most effective practitioner of raihana, came to lament his success and its consequences for the younger generation of Maori (he blamed the system, not himself). When far too late, it was urged that land should have been leased rather than sold and that proceeds from sales should not have been squandered.
Instead of having commissions of enquiry, as some suggested, the land court system meant that judges determined ownership on the evidence presented to them, even though some owners were not present nor had their interests represented. Sometimes the evidence was false, as was admitted by some witnesses when their perjury was exposed. And in the case of the Ohinemuri district, for which the records survive, when the land was sold to the Crown some Maori received too much money, some too little, and some missed out altogether. The struggles to open Ohinemuri to miners and settlers is examined in detail, revealing that some rangatira expected economic gain and that Te Hira’s party, who opposed the opening, were undermined by some of Te Hira’s followers: being ‘Hauhau’, they refused to take money from the Crown but instead took raihana, meaning goods which were charged against their land in a way they did not understand. Nor did anyone fully understand the system apart from Mackay, whose policy was eventually repudiated by the politicians who had encouraged it previously. Not all land was lost, but because the government did not assist landowners with advice and finance until well into the twentieth century what land that was retained could not be developed adequately.

year: 2016

title: The evolution of my identity as a teacher

authors: Schoenberger-Orgad, Michèle Anne

subjects: education

abstract: Thinking about the evolution of my identity as a teacher made me realise that I needed to reflect on myself as a learner first. The evolution of teacher identity is intimately tied to learner identity for it is only natural to aspire to the role models you have encountered.

text: The evolution of my identity as a teacher Thinking about the evolution of my identity as a teacher made me realise that I needed to reflect on myself as a learner first. The evolution of teacher identity is intimately tied to learner identity for it is only natural to aspire to the role models you have encountered.

year: 2011