title: Adoption of innovative e-learning support for teaching: A multiple case study at the University of Waikato

authors: Johnson, E. Marcia

subjects: University of Waikato

abstract: In response to recent social, economic, and pedagogical challenges to tertiary-level teaching and learning, universities are increasingly investigating and adopting elearning as a way to engage and motivate students. This paper reports on the first year of a two-year (2009-2010) qualitative multiple case study research project in New Zealand. Using perspectives from activity theory and the scholarship of teaching, the research has the overall goal of documenting, developing, and disseminating effective and innovative practice in which e-learning plays an important role in tertiary teaching. A “snapshot” of each of the four 2009 cases and focused findings within and across cases are provided. This is followed by an overall discussion of the context, “within” and “across” case themes, and implications of the research.

text: Adoption of innovative e-learning support for teaching: A multiple case study at the University of Waikato In response to recent social, economic, and pedagogical challenges to tertiary-level teaching and learning, universities are increasingly investigating and adopting elearning as a way to engage and motivate students. This paper reports on the first year of a two-year (2009-2010) qualitative multiple case study research project in New Zealand. Using perspectives from activity theory and the scholarship of teaching, the research has the overall goal of documenting, developing, and disseminating effective and innovative practice in which e-learning plays an important role in tertiary teaching. A “snapshot” of each of the four 2009 cases and focused findings within and across cases are provided. This is followed by an overall discussion of the context, “within” and “across” case themes, and implications of the research.

year: 2011

title: Redesigning clinical laboratory services: Securing efficient diagnoses for New Zealanders

authors: France, Necia

subjects: accounting

abstract: This monograph develops an evidence-based redesign plan for a key support service in the country’s health system. It is based on a doctoral thesis that evaluated the impact of market-style health resource control of New Zealand’s clinical laboratory services. The monograph summarises material detailed in the thesis, and extrapolates from it to make the following recommendations for improved cost-efficiency: 1) Competitive contracting as a means of price control for diagnostic laboratory services should be abandoned. 2) Laboratory remuneration should be cost-based and independent of specimen origin. 3) Costing methodology already developed and tested in Australia should be introduced here in order to define remuneration formulae. 4) A Laboratory Service Advisory Committee, representatives of clinical laboratories in both sectors, should provide service-related advice to the Ministry of Health. 5) Regionally representative laboratory committees should be charged with planning and co-ordinating district laboratory services, in the interests of cost-efficiency. 6) Interactive electronic expert systems should be developed in major regional laboratories as a counter to clinical laboratory misuse. 7) Technology retraining programmes aimed at achieving suitable medical laboratory technologist redeployment within the health system should be instated in main centres. Long-term, providers of workforce training should aim at developing greater flexibility in the health technology workforce.

text: Redesigning clinical laboratory services: Securing efficient diagnoses for New Zealanders This monograph develops an evidence-based redesign plan for a key support service in the country’s health system. It is based on a doctoral thesis that evaluated the impact of market-style health resource control of New Zealand’s clinical laboratory services. The monograph summarises material detailed in the thesis, and extrapolates from it to make the following recommendations for improved cost-efficiency: 1) Competitive contracting as a means of price control for diagnostic laboratory services should be abandoned. 2) Laboratory remuneration should be cost-based and independent of specimen origin. 3) Costing methodology already developed and tested in Australia should be introduced here in order to define remuneration formulae. 4) A Laboratory Service Advisory Committee, representatives of clinical laboratories in both sectors, should provide service-related advice to the Ministry of Health. 5) Regionally representative laboratory committees should be charged with planning and co-ordinating district laboratory services, in the interests of cost-efficiency. 6) Interactive electronic expert systems should be developed in major regional laboratories as a counter to clinical laboratory misuse. 7) Technology retraining programmes aimed at achieving suitable medical laboratory technologist redeployment within the health system should be instated in main centres. Long-term, providers of workforce training should aim at developing greater flexibility in the health technology workforce.

year: 2003-01

title: Stop playing up! A critical ethnography of health, physical education and (sub)urban schooling

authors: Fitzpatrick, Katie

subjects: Health

abstract: This thesis explores the place of health and physical education in the lives of Otara youth in New Zealand. Situated in the southern suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city, Otara, South Auckland is known for its cultural diversity, as well as for poverty and crime. It is home to large numbers of indigenous Maori and migrant Pasifika (Pacific Island) youth. Based on a year-long critical ethnography of a multiethnic high school, this thesis explores how these young people engage with and respond to the school subjects of health and physical education. It also discusses broader issues in their lives, including the social geographies within which they reside, and how they understand their bodies, sexuality, health, gender and physicalities. The subjects of health and physical education are compulsory in most schools internationally – in New Zealand they are directly linked in curriculum policy documents and in school practice – but share a somewhat uneasy relationship and differing historical positions. Considered low status in schools, these subjects are also conflated with narrow body and health norms, possibly problematic for young women, and/or are wedded to the social and cultural world of sport. Curriculum policy documents established in the last ten years offer the possibility of critical and social approaches to these subjects, but examples of critical practice remain rare. Health and physical education are thus compulsory, contentious, contradictory and complex subjects within contemporary schooling. Critical ethnographies of schooling are relatively scarce compared with conventional ethnographic accounts, but critical ethnographies of health and physical education (PE) are almost unheard of. The use of such a methodology in this study enabled an indepth account of Otara youth in the subjects of health and PE at school. It also provided a platform for storied accounts of how one teacher, Dan, enacted a critical and culturally connected pedagogy of health and PE with the young people in his classes. This thesis explores the complex potential for health and PE as key sites of learning for Pasifika and Maori youth. It examines health and PE as subjects that are both politically fraught and spaces of hope.

text: Stop playing up! A critical ethnography of health, physical education and (sub)urban schooling This thesis explores the place of health and physical education in the lives of Otara youth in New Zealand. Situated in the southern suburbs of New Zealand’s largest city, Otara, South Auckland is known for its cultural diversity, as well as for poverty and crime. It is home to large numbers of indigenous Maori and migrant Pasifika (Pacific Island) youth. Based on a year-long critical ethnography of a multiethnic high school, this thesis explores how these young people engage with and respond to the school subjects of health and physical education. It also discusses broader issues in their lives, including the social geographies within which they reside, and how they understand their bodies, sexuality, health, gender and physicalities. The subjects of health and physical education are compulsory in most schools internationally – in New Zealand they are directly linked in curriculum policy documents and in school practice – but share a somewhat uneasy relationship and differing historical positions. Considered low status in schools, these subjects are also conflated with narrow body and health norms, possibly problematic for young women, and/or are wedded to the social and cultural world of sport. Curriculum policy documents established in the last ten years offer the possibility of critical and social approaches to these subjects, but examples of critical practice remain rare. Health and physical education are thus compulsory, contentious, contradictory and complex subjects within contemporary schooling. Critical ethnographies of schooling are relatively scarce compared with conventional ethnographic accounts, but critical ethnographies of health and physical education (PE) are almost unheard of. The use of such a methodology in this study enabled an indepth account of Otara youth in the subjects of health and PE at school. It also provided a platform for storied accounts of how one teacher, Dan, enacted a critical and culturally connected pedagogy of health and PE with the young people in his classes. This thesis explores the complex potential for health and PE as key sites of learning for Pasifika and Maori youth. It examines health and PE as subjects that are both politically fraught and spaces of hope.

year: 2010