title: The importance of whakapapa for understanding fertility

authors: Rarere, Moana

abstract: The Māori fertility transition—which saw a shift from high to low birth rates between 1966 to 1976—was one of the most rapid fertility declines observed anywhere in the world. Since then, Māori fertility has hovered around replacement level (2.1 births per woman), somewhat above that of Pākehā (European) New Zealanders. More striking are differences in timing with Māori women bearing their children younger and over a longer duration. This paper sits within a broader research project that asks: What are the important influences that have sustained contemporary Māori fertility patterns? Drawing on Mana Wahine (Māori women’s discourses) and whakawhiti kōrero (interviews) with wāhine Māori (Māori women) this paper highlights whakapapa (genealogy) as an important concept in broadening and deepening our understandings of fertility, and situating individual fertility and reproduction within a broader set of relations.

text: The importance of whakapapa for understanding fertility The Māori fertility transition—which saw a shift from high to low birth rates between 1966 to 1976—was one of the most rapid fertility declines observed anywhere in the world. Since then, Māori fertility has hovered around replacement level (2.1 births per woman), somewhat above that of Pākehā (European) New Zealanders. More striking are differences in timing with Māori women bearing their children younger and over a longer duration. This paper sits within a broader research project that asks: What are the important influences that have sustained contemporary Māori fertility patterns? Drawing on Mana Wahine (Māori women’s discourses) and whakawhiti kōrero (interviews) with wāhine Māori (Māori women) this paper highlights whakapapa (genealogy) as an important concept in broadening and deepening our understandings of fertility, and situating individual fertility and reproduction within a broader set of relations.

year: 2022

title: Supervision of Maori doctoral students: A descriptive report

authors: McKinley, Elizabeth

subjects: Maori education

abstract: This report follows up a previous paper that outlined the goals and plans of a research project that focused on both theoretical and cultural questions regarding the supervisory process for Māori doctoral students (McKinley, Grant, Middleton, Irwin, & Williams, 2007). The major goal of the project is to enhance understanding of the teaching and learning process of supervision for students and supervisors, particularly around issues of culture that arise in research methodologies and practices. This paper reports on the completed project by providing further operational background, design features, the nature of the student and supervisor samples and a summary of interview findings. The results show that there are indeed distinctive issues arising within the supervision of Māori doctoral students. Some of these are to do with both pleasures and challenges found in the supervision relationship, while others relate to the kinds of projects the students undertake. Many projects for example, push at the disciplinary boundaries of Western knowledge and are often rooted in a political desire to enhance the everyday lives of Māori. Yet others are connected to identity formation processes that concern many Māori during their years as doctoral students. A central message for supervisors from this work is that the supervision of Māori doctoral students may require unfamiliar forms of engagement but that these are likely to be deeply rewarding in many different ways.

text: Supervision of Maori doctoral students: A descriptive report This report follows up a previous paper that outlined the goals and plans of a research project that focused on both theoretical and cultural questions regarding the supervisory process for Māori doctoral students (McKinley, Grant, Middleton, Irwin, & Williams, 2007). The major goal of the project is to enhance understanding of the teaching and learning process of supervision for students and supervisors, particularly around issues of culture that arise in research methodologies and practices. This paper reports on the completed project by providing further operational background, design features, the nature of the student and supervisor samples and a summary of interview findings. The results show that there are indeed distinctive issues arising within the supervision of Māori doctoral students. Some of these are to do with both pleasures and challenges found in the supervision relationship, while others relate to the kinds of projects the students undertake. Many projects for example, push at the disciplinary boundaries of Western knowledge and are often rooted in a political desire to enhance the everyday lives of Māori. Yet others are connected to identity formation processes that concern many Māori during their years as doctoral students. A central message for supervisors from this work is that the supervision of Māori doctoral students may require unfamiliar forms of engagement but that these are likely to be deeply rewarding in many different ways.

year: 2009

title: Active scheduling for hybrid flowshop with family setup time and inconsistent family formation

authors: Luo, Hao

subjects: hybrid flowshop scheduling

abstract: This research is motivated by a real-life hybrid flowshop scheduling problem where jobs are organized in families according to their machine settings and tools. This type of problem is common in the production process of standard metal components. The problem is complicated by the requirement of family setup time when a machine changes from processing one job family to another and the formation of job families varies in different stages. This problem has been previously solved with a non-delay scheduling heuristic in which no machine is kept idle. This research illustrates that inserting intentional idle time into a non-delay schedule can further reduce the total setup time as well as makespan. With the inserted idle time, the non-delay schedules are extended to active schedules. This paper presents a mechanism to determine the locations and lengths of intentional idle times in the efficient active schedules. Four active scheduling approaches are developed by integrating two types of waiting factor operators into two non-delay approaches. Computational experiments have been conducted to compare the proposed active scheduling approaches in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. The results have shown that the proposed active scheduling approaches are superior to non-delay scheduling. The analysis of variance has been applied on the factors related to scheduling environment, problem size and scheduling approach. The analysis has identified factors that are most influential on the scheduling result.

text: Active scheduling for hybrid flowshop with family setup time and inconsistent family formation This research is motivated by a real-life hybrid flowshop scheduling problem where jobs are organized in families according to their machine settings and tools. This type of problem is common in the production process of standard metal components. The problem is complicated by the requirement of family setup time when a machine changes from processing one job family to another and the formation of job families varies in different stages. This problem has been previously solved with a non-delay scheduling heuristic in which no machine is kept idle. This research illustrates that inserting intentional idle time into a non-delay schedule can further reduce the total setup time as well as makespan. With the inserted idle time, the non-delay schedules are extended to active schedules. This paper presents a mechanism to determine the locations and lengths of intentional idle times in the efficient active schedules. Four active scheduling approaches are developed by integrating two types of waiting factor operators into two non-delay approaches. Computational experiments have been conducted to compare the proposed active scheduling approaches in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. The results have shown that the proposed active scheduling approaches are superior to non-delay scheduling. The analysis of variance has been applied on the factors related to scheduling environment, problem size and scheduling approach. The analysis has identified factors that are most influential on the scheduling result.

year: 2013