title: The development of tools and guidelines for surfing resource management

authors: Atkin, Edward Anthony

subjects: Surf

abstract: Surfing is a mainstream pastime and competitive sport in many countries and provides a full range of economic, social, physical, and mental health benefits. Maintaining the integrity of surf breaks has proven to be a challenge, with a litany of degraded or destroyed surfing locations worldwide. This is attributed to a deficiency in expertise and experience in implementing surf science and management within governing authorities, associated consultants, or stakeholder groups; combined with a lack of value recognition and identification. This work considers how surf breaks as coastal resources could be better managed. 
A literature review of technical reports, published articles, statutory instruments, evidence, and consents, along with interactive stakeholder workshops and surveys to identify key considerations, are combined with complex numerical modelling and machine learning methods to develop tools for effective surf break management.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, a surf break is described in policy as having various geophysical components in the vicinity of locations where surfing takes place and the areas offshore. Given the wide range of benefits associated with surfing, and the complexities of managing a natural resource, albeit in some cases anthropologically modified, the term ‘surfing resource’ was established and defined as a major outcome of this work and as a step in the process of developing a set of Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources (the Guidelines). The Guidelines, which are a world first, consider what aspects of the environment are the most important to surfing resources management, provide direction, as implementable steps, to authorities and proponents of activities in the coastal environment that can impact surfing resources, and include identification and monitoring strategies as well as a novel risk assessment framework which is underpinned by a surf break’s sensitivity as a function of geomorphological composition.
The Guidelines are supported by research streams that required field data collection and monitoring system development, numerical modelling, and machine learning to improve our understanding of surf break functionality and/or better our management strategies. This work emphasises the role of bathymetric features outside the surf zone that contribute to surfing wave quality, and the value of establishing swell corridors for management purposes. An automated system has been developed to monitor the key surfing wave quality indicator of peel angle through both space and time.
Effective surfing resource management requires a holistic, inclusive, case-by-case approach, that may require cultural, social and geophysical assessment, which is best implemented proactively with the identification of surfing resources and the establishment of environmental baselines.

text: The development of tools and guidelines for surfing resource management Surfing is a mainstream pastime and competitive sport in many countries and provides a full range of economic, social, physical, and mental health benefits. Maintaining the integrity of surf breaks has proven to be a challenge, with a litany of degraded or destroyed surfing locations worldwide. This is attributed to a deficiency in expertise and experience in implementing surf science and management within governing authorities, associated consultants, or stakeholder groups; combined with a lack of value recognition and identification. This work considers how surf breaks as coastal resources could be better managed. 
A literature review of technical reports, published articles, statutory instruments, evidence, and consents, along with interactive stakeholder workshops and surveys to identify key considerations, are combined with complex numerical modelling and machine learning methods to develop tools for effective surf break management.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, a surf break is described in policy as having various geophysical components in the vicinity of locations where surfing takes place and the areas offshore. Given the wide range of benefits associated with surfing, and the complexities of managing a natural resource, albeit in some cases anthropologically modified, the term ‘surfing resource’ was established and defined as a major outcome of this work and as a step in the process of developing a set of Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources (the Guidelines). The Guidelines, which are a world first, consider what aspects of the environment are the most important to surfing resources management, provide direction, as implementable steps, to authorities and proponents of activities in the coastal environment that can impact surfing resources, and include identification and monitoring strategies as well as a novel risk assessment framework which is underpinned by a surf break’s sensitivity as a function of geomorphological composition.
The Guidelines are supported by research streams that required field data collection and monitoring system development, numerical modelling, and machine learning to improve our understanding of surf break functionality and/or better our management strategies. This work emphasises the role of bathymetric features outside the surf zone that contribute to surfing wave quality, and the value of establishing swell corridors for management purposes. An automated system has been developed to monitor the key surfing wave quality indicator of peel angle through both space and time.
Effective surfing resource management requires a holistic, inclusive, case-by-case approach, that may require cultural, social and geophysical assessment, which is best implemented proactively with the identification of surfing resources and the establishment of environmental baselines.

year: 2023

title: A case for adapting and applying continuance theory to education: Understanding the role of student feedback in motivating teachers to persist with including digital technologies in learning

authors: Wright, Noeline

subjects: initial teacher education

abstract: In New Zealand schools, the adoption and persistent use of digital tools to aid learning is a growing but uneven, trend, often linked to the practices of early adopters and/or robust wifi infrastructure. The Technology Adoption Model is used internationally to gauge levels of uptake of technological tools, particularly in commerce and also in education. However, this model is inadequate when it is used to attribute reasons for teachers adopting technologies for learning. This article offers an alternative view to understanding why teachers continue using digital technologies for learning. It focuses on the role of student voice and teachers’ pedagogical purposes as motivators, even when teachers have technological hurdles to overcome. The article engages with continuance theory as a lens for understanding these motivations via a qualitative thematic analysis of Moodle postings made by a 2012 cohort of initial teacher education students. The intention is to signpost ideas that might better explain teachers’ continued use of digital technologies in classrooms even if conditions for use are not optimal.

text: A case for adapting and applying continuance theory to education: Understanding the role of student feedback in motivating teachers to persist with including digital technologies in learning In New Zealand schools, the adoption and persistent use of digital tools to aid learning is a growing but uneven, trend, often linked to the practices of early adopters and/or robust wifi infrastructure. The Technology Adoption Model is used internationally to gauge levels of uptake of technological tools, particularly in commerce and also in education. However, this model is inadequate when it is used to attribute reasons for teachers adopting technologies for learning. This article offers an alternative view to understanding why teachers continue using digital technologies for learning. It focuses on the role of student voice and teachers’ pedagogical purposes as motivators, even when teachers have technological hurdles to overcome. The article engages with continuance theory as a lens for understanding these motivations via a qualitative thematic analysis of Moodle postings made by a 2012 cohort of initial teacher education students. The intention is to signpost ideas that might better explain teachers’ continued use of digital technologies in classrooms even if conditions for use are not optimal.

year: 2015

title: Te Awa Atua, Te Awa Tapu, Te Awa Wahine: An examination of stories, ceremonies and practices regarding menstruation in the pre-colonial Māori world.

authors: Murphy, Ngahuia Aroha Grace

subjects: mana wahine

abstract: This thesis examines Māori cosmological stories, ceremonies, and traditional practices regarding menstruation in pre-colonial Māori society. I use kaupapa Māori and mana wahine as a theoretical and methodological framework, contextualising these stories within Māori cultural paradigms.This is important because menstruation has been framed within deeply misogynist, colonial ideologies in some ethnographic accounts, distorting menstrual rites and practices beyond recognition. These interpretations have been used to inform colonialist narratives of female inferiority in traditional Māori society, attempting to change Native constructs of womanhood. Such narratives have been perpetuated in contemporary literature, reinforcing powerful discourses of menstrual pollution and female inferiority. This thesis is a challenge to such representations. By examining menstrual stories located in Māori cosmologies, and investigating tribal histories, oral literatures, ceremonies and rites, I argue that menstruation was seen as a medium of whakapapa (genealogy) that connected Māori women to our pantheon of atua (supernatural beings). A study of ancient menstrual rites, recorded in tribal songs and chants, reveal that menstrual blood was used for psychic and spiritual protection. These examples unveil striking Indigenous constructs of womanhood that transform colonialist interpretations and radically challenge notions of female inferiority and menstrual pollution. I maintain in this thesis that presenting menstruation and menstrual blood as putrid is a politically motivated act of colonial violence that specifically targets the source of our continuity as Indigenous People, the whare tangata (house of humanity – womb of women). I pose the question ‘if menstrual blood symbolises whakapapa, what does it mean to present it as ‘unclean’ and how do such representations cut across the politics of tino rangatiratanga (autonomy)?’ Through in-depth semi-structured interviews, kōrero (dialogue), and wānanga (series of conversations) with Māori women, including cultural experts, scholars, artists, and mana wahine exponents, I gather a collection of ceremonies, stories, and wisdoms that reclaim Māori spiritualities which celebrate menstruation as divine. Within the context of a colonial history of marginalisation, this work is an activist site of political resistance which takes a step towards re-threading the feminine strands in the spiritual fabric of our world, torn asunder by the ideological imposition of a colonial, Christian male god. I argue, that menstruation is a potent site of decolonisation, cultural reclamation, and resistance toward the perpetuation of colonial hegemony.

text: Te Awa Atua, Te Awa Tapu, Te Awa Wahine: An examination of stories, ceremonies and practices regarding menstruation in the pre-colonial Māori world. This thesis examines Māori cosmological stories, ceremonies, and traditional practices regarding menstruation in pre-colonial Māori society. I use kaupapa Māori and mana wahine as a theoretical and methodological framework, contextualising these stories within Māori cultural paradigms.This is important because menstruation has been framed within deeply misogynist, colonial ideologies in some ethnographic accounts, distorting menstrual rites and practices beyond recognition. These interpretations have been used to inform colonialist narratives of female inferiority in traditional Māori society, attempting to change Native constructs of womanhood. Such narratives have been perpetuated in contemporary literature, reinforcing powerful discourses of menstrual pollution and female inferiority. This thesis is a challenge to such representations. By examining menstrual stories located in Māori cosmologies, and investigating tribal histories, oral literatures, ceremonies and rites, I argue that menstruation was seen as a medium of whakapapa (genealogy) that connected Māori women to our pantheon of atua (supernatural beings). A study of ancient menstrual rites, recorded in tribal songs and chants, reveal that menstrual blood was used for psychic and spiritual protection. These examples unveil striking Indigenous constructs of womanhood that transform colonialist interpretations and radically challenge notions of female inferiority and menstrual pollution. I maintain in this thesis that presenting menstruation and menstrual blood as putrid is a politically motivated act of colonial violence that specifically targets the source of our continuity as Indigenous People, the whare tangata (house of humanity – womb of women). I pose the question ‘if menstrual blood symbolises whakapapa, what does it mean to present it as ‘unclean’ and how do such representations cut across the politics of tino rangatiratanga (autonomy)?’ Through in-depth semi-structured interviews, kōrero (dialogue), and wānanga (series of conversations) with Māori women, including cultural experts, scholars, artists, and mana wahine exponents, I gather a collection of ceremonies, stories, and wisdoms that reclaim Māori spiritualities which celebrate menstruation as divine. Within the context of a colonial history of marginalisation, this work is an activist site of political resistance which takes a step towards re-threading the feminine strands in the spiritual fabric of our world, torn asunder by the ideological imposition of a colonial, Christian male god. I argue, that menstruation is a potent site of decolonisation, cultural reclamation, and resistance toward the perpetuation of colonial hegemony.

year: 2011