title: Between the borders

authors: Apiata, Hāwea

abstract: Ekphrasis in response to the artwork 'Taniko Border 6' by Ngāti Raukawa artist, John Bevan Ford.

text: Between the borders Ekphrasis in response to the artwork 'Taniko Border 6' by Ngāti Raukawa artist, John Bevan Ford.

year: 2023-11-30

title: The Environmental Justice Implications of the Planning Policy and Practice of Flood Risk Management in New Zealand

authors: Martynoga, Charlotte

subjects: environmental justce

abstract: Following an international trend, the flood defence approach historically applied in New Zealand has been superseded by a shift to flood risk management, an approach that aligns with the notion of ‘living with risk’ and devolves responsibility to risk-takers at the local level. Citizens are required to assume responsibility for assessing and minimising their own exposure, increasing their resilience and adapting to periodic flooding events. Inevitably, specific communities respond differently to flooding as their capabilities to understand, identify and manage flood risk varies. Environmental justice is the framework of inquiry within which issues of power, representation and participation in planning for flood risk management are examined to consider the injustices that are experienced by communities ‘living with risk’. 

Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to investigate the extent planning is complicit in delivering flood risk management processes that can create environmentally unjust outcomes. Flood hazard maps overlaid with contextual demographic data identify who is living in at risk spaces in three case-study communities. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with local government representatives and iwi, and a questionnaire to local residents was followed by interviews. 

The analysis demonstrates how the environmental justice components of distributive justice, procedural justice, justice as recognition and a capabilities approach to justice are tied together in the political and social processes of managing floods. Procedural justice is based on participatory parity so ensuring all members of the affected community are treated fairly in the deliberative and discursive decision-making is essential. Evidence revealed a community’s limited access to extensive flood risk information, unequal power sharing in decision-making and community participation, and restricted ability for disadvantaged groups to access legal processes. Distributive justice demands the use of multi-criteria analysis, rather than cost-benefit analysis, in prioritising and directing flood risk management to vulnerable communities. Using direct benefit rating to fund flood mitigation works heightens existing inequalities within communities and demands consideration of social difference in flood risk vulnerabilities. To ensure justice as recognition, local and indigenous knowledge needs to be valued and included in decision-making processes. Whilst working party arrangements are not inclusive they empower communities to be actively involved, promote trust and ownership of their local place and flood risk project. Recognition of identities and cultural practices is crucial for self-determination and minimises the marginalisation of voices. Planners need to examine social aspects of how people perceive, adapt and cope with flood risk, alongside place-based vulnerability. Policy, in embracing a capabilities approach to justice, would focus on the functionings people actually achieve rather than the opportunities. This calls for removing aggregations to look at the capabilities of individuals and communities to manage and respond to their flood risk. Judgements on planning initiatives need to be based on whether distributional outcomes enhance the capabilities of the relatively disadvantaged, thereby improving the resilience capacity of a community to manage flood risk. 

This study bridges a research gap in drawing together flood risk management, planning and environmental justice; advancing understanding of the environmental injustices within flood risk management in New Zealand.

text: The Environmental Justice Implications of the Planning Policy and Practice of Flood Risk Management in New Zealand Following an international trend, the flood defence approach historically applied in New Zealand has been superseded by a shift to flood risk management, an approach that aligns with the notion of ‘living with risk’ and devolves responsibility to risk-takers at the local level. Citizens are required to assume responsibility for assessing and minimising their own exposure, increasing their resilience and adapting to periodic flooding events. Inevitably, specific communities respond differently to flooding as their capabilities to understand, identify and manage flood risk varies. Environmental justice is the framework of inquiry within which issues of power, representation and participation in planning for flood risk management are examined to consider the injustices that are experienced by communities ‘living with risk’. 

Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to investigate the extent planning is complicit in delivering flood risk management processes that can create environmentally unjust outcomes. Flood hazard maps overlaid with contextual demographic data identify who is living in at risk spaces in three case-study communities. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with local government representatives and iwi, and a questionnaire to local residents was followed by interviews. 

The analysis demonstrates how the environmental justice components of distributive justice, procedural justice, justice as recognition and a capabilities approach to justice are tied together in the political and social processes of managing floods. Procedural justice is based on participatory parity so ensuring all members of the affected community are treated fairly in the deliberative and discursive decision-making is essential. Evidence revealed a community’s limited access to extensive flood risk information, unequal power sharing in decision-making and community participation, and restricted ability for disadvantaged groups to access legal processes. Distributive justice demands the use of multi-criteria analysis, rather than cost-benefit analysis, in prioritising and directing flood risk management to vulnerable communities. Using direct benefit rating to fund flood mitigation works heightens existing inequalities within communities and demands consideration of social difference in flood risk vulnerabilities. To ensure justice as recognition, local and indigenous knowledge needs to be valued and included in decision-making processes. Whilst working party arrangements are not inclusive they empower communities to be actively involved, promote trust and ownership of their local place and flood risk project. Recognition of identities and cultural practices is crucial for self-determination and minimises the marginalisation of voices. Planners need to examine social aspects of how people perceive, adapt and cope with flood risk, alongside place-based vulnerability. Policy, in embracing a capabilities approach to justice, would focus on the functionings people actually achieve rather than the opportunities. This calls for removing aggregations to look at the capabilities of individuals and communities to manage and respond to their flood risk. Judgements on planning initiatives need to be based on whether distributional outcomes enhance the capabilities of the relatively disadvantaged, thereby improving the resilience capacity of a community to manage flood risk. 

This study bridges a research gap in drawing together flood risk management, planning and environmental justice; advancing understanding of the environmental injustices within flood risk management in New Zealand.

year: 2018

title: Stories of happiness, emotional goals and identity in 21ˢᵗ century teachers

authors: Hooker, Tom

subjects: Happiness

abstract: Happiness may be the key to keeping teachers in the profession. Rarely, however, does teaching tend to be associated with moments of happiness in educational research or in the popular imagination.
In fact, quite the opposite view is presented in the significant body of literature that describes the emotional travails, stress and burnout of teachers. Consequently, there are recruitment and retention crises in schools throughout the Western World. Teacher identity is also in crisis, undermined since the late-1980s by economistic reforms which view teachers as producers and achievement as currency in an educational marketplace. Running counter to the more holistic, altruistic educational philosophies held by many in the profession, the reforms have attached a vulnerability to the identities of many teachers. Teaching culture has been described as one of unhappiness.
This study aims to shine a light on the happy moments which exist in teaching life. In doing so, it wonders if others were to do the same, whether an embattled but noble profession could find new life and allow the people within it greater agency in their identities. With little in the way of preceding research, the thesis is exploratory. Sitting in the interpretive paradigm, it utilises a narrative methodology to capture stories of happiness from teaching life. Interviews were employed to elicit the stories from eight participants, with the aim of providing thick, socially-situated description of happy episodes in the classroom. Supporting, scene-setting data comes from two focus groups while participants also completed a diary to document their daily emotion.
The study shows that teachers mainly experience eudemonic happiness, a type of positive emotion associated with self-actualisation after meeting long-held, personally important goals. It finds that a necessary precursor to these experiences is for participants to emphasise these long-held, altruistic goals in the narrative construction of their personal-professional identities, their teacherly selves. Furthermore, positive aspects of the teacherly self emerge from happy experiences in teaching because of self-actualisation occurring in the experience of eudemonia. Additionally, many of the teacher participants found particular happiness in the positive narrative arc of an underdog. Positive professional identity is important in teaching because it is associated with quality teaching practice.
Therefore, there are implications for teachers who want to improve their happiness and also their practice. There are also implications for educational leaders and teacher educators to make space for happiness and the positive identity formation of teachers. This is because students are likely to benefit from teachers’ happy episodes if such episodes improve practice, although, further research into the connection between teacher happiness and student outcomes is suggested. That teachers may be particularly enlivened by an underdog story is good for students who require the greatest support. It is recommended that researchers address the connection between eudemonia and positive identity formation. In particular, it is important to determine if similar phenomena can be located across a range of settings and cultures.

text: Stories of happiness, emotional goals and identity in 21ˢᵗ century teachers Happiness may be the key to keeping teachers in the profession. Rarely, however, does teaching tend to be associated with moments of happiness in educational research or in the popular imagination.
In fact, quite the opposite view is presented in the significant body of literature that describes the emotional travails, stress and burnout of teachers. Consequently, there are recruitment and retention crises in schools throughout the Western World. Teacher identity is also in crisis, undermined since the late-1980s by economistic reforms which view teachers as producers and achievement as currency in an educational marketplace. Running counter to the more holistic, altruistic educational philosophies held by many in the profession, the reforms have attached a vulnerability to the identities of many teachers. Teaching culture has been described as one of unhappiness.
This study aims to shine a light on the happy moments which exist in teaching life. In doing so, it wonders if others were to do the same, whether an embattled but noble profession could find new life and allow the people within it greater agency in their identities. With little in the way of preceding research, the thesis is exploratory. Sitting in the interpretive paradigm, it utilises a narrative methodology to capture stories of happiness from teaching life. Interviews were employed to elicit the stories from eight participants, with the aim of providing thick, socially-situated description of happy episodes in the classroom. Supporting, scene-setting data comes from two focus groups while participants also completed a diary to document their daily emotion.
The study shows that teachers mainly experience eudemonic happiness, a type of positive emotion associated with self-actualisation after meeting long-held, personally important goals. It finds that a necessary precursor to these experiences is for participants to emphasise these long-held, altruistic goals in the narrative construction of their personal-professional identities, their teacherly selves. Furthermore, positive aspects of the teacherly self emerge from happy experiences in teaching because of self-actualisation occurring in the experience of eudemonia. Additionally, many of the teacher participants found particular happiness in the positive narrative arc of an underdog. Positive professional identity is important in teaching because it is associated with quality teaching practice.
Therefore, there are implications for teachers who want to improve their happiness and also their practice. There are also implications for educational leaders and teacher educators to make space for happiness and the positive identity formation of teachers. This is because students are likely to benefit from teachers’ happy episodes if such episodes improve practice, although, further research into the connection between teacher happiness and student outcomes is suggested. That teachers may be particularly enlivened by an underdog story is good for students who require the greatest support. It is recommended that researchers address the connection between eudemonia and positive identity formation. In particular, it is important to determine if similar phenomena can be located across a range of settings and cultures.

year: 2020