title: Convergence in floodplain pond communities indicates different pathways to community assembly

authors: Chanut, P. C. M.

subjects: Disturbance

abstract: Disturbance can strongly influence ecosystems, yet much remains unknown about the relative importance of key processes (selection, drift, and dispersal) in the recovery of ecological communities following disturbance. We combined field surveys with a field experiment to elucidate mechanisms governing the recovery of aquatic macroinvertebrates in habitats of an alluvial floodplain following flood disturbance. We monitored macroinvertebrates in 24 natural parafluvial habitats over 60 days after a major flood, as well as the colonization of 24 newly-built ponds by macroinvertebrates over 45 days in the same floodplain. We examined the sources of environmental variation and their relative effects on aquatic assemblages using a combination of null models and Mantel tests. We also used a joint species distribution model to investigate the importance of primary metacommunity structuring processes during recovery: selection, dispersal, and drift. Contrary to expectations, we found that beta diversity actually decreased among natural habitats over time after the flood or the creation of the ponds, instead of increasing. This result was despite environmental predictors showing contrasting patterns for explaining community variation over time in the natural habitats compared with the experimental ponds. Flood heterogeneity across the floodplain and spatial scale differences between the experimental ponds and the natural habitats seemingly constrained the balance between deterministic and stochastic processes driving the ecological convergence of assemblages over time. While environmental selection was the dominant structuring process in both groups, biotic interactions also had a prominent influence on community assembly. These findings have profound implications towards understanding metacommunity structuring in riverscapes that includes common linkages between disturbance heterogeneity, spatial scale properties, and community composition.

text: Convergence in floodplain pond communities indicates different pathways to community assembly Disturbance can strongly influence ecosystems, yet much remains unknown about the relative importance of key processes (selection, drift, and dispersal) in the recovery of ecological communities following disturbance. We combined field surveys with a field experiment to elucidate mechanisms governing the recovery of aquatic macroinvertebrates in habitats of an alluvial floodplain following flood disturbance. We monitored macroinvertebrates in 24 natural parafluvial habitats over 60 days after a major flood, as well as the colonization of 24 newly-built ponds by macroinvertebrates over 45 days in the same floodplain. We examined the sources of environmental variation and their relative effects on aquatic assemblages using a combination of null models and Mantel tests. We also used a joint species distribution model to investigate the importance of primary metacommunity structuring processes during recovery: selection, dispersal, and drift. Contrary to expectations, we found that beta diversity actually decreased among natural habitats over time after the flood or the creation of the ponds, instead of increasing. This result was despite environmental predictors showing contrasting patterns for explaining community variation over time in the natural habitats compared with the experimental ponds. Flood heterogeneity across the floodplain and spatial scale differences between the experimental ponds and the natural habitats seemingly constrained the balance between deterministic and stochastic processes driving the ecological convergence of assemblages over time. While environmental selection was the dominant structuring process in both groups, biotic interactions also had a prominent influence on community assembly. These findings have profound implications towards understanding metacommunity structuring in riverscapes that includes common linkages between disturbance heterogeneity, spatial scale properties, and community composition.

year: 2023

title: Multiple senses of community among older Chinese migrants to New Zealand

authors: Li, Wendy Wen

subjects: ageing in place

abstract: Existing literature suggests that successful ageing is linked to a sense of community (SOC) that is developed through shared daily practices. For migrant groups, SOC can extend across home and receiving countries. In order to understand the issue of successful ageing in place and multiple SOCs among older Chinese migrants, this paper investigated 32 older Chinese migrants' narratives of developing a SOC in their local and home communities. Findings suggest that a SOC can be viewed as constructed through practices such as neighbouring and supportive interactions within local contexts as well as engagement with the home country via new media. The findings provide insights into everyday practices central to the cultivation of a SOC among the participants whose engagements span the cultural spaces of China and New Zealand. For example, the use of media contributes to the participants' SOCs both in China and New Zealand. As a result, they live in a transnational community that can be understood as an ‘imagined’ community where the participants engage with significant, although absent, Chinese others. Living between China and New Zealand, between homes and between languages, the participants create identity ‘inbetweenness’ that is constructed at the intersection of interdependent, compatible and mutually reinforcing communities and spaces. The findings therefore extend conventional understandings of ageing migrant experiences that assume successful ageing and community participation occur in one locale to an understanding of multiple SOCs within the context of transnationalism.

text: Multiple senses of community among older Chinese migrants to New Zealand Existing literature suggests that successful ageing is linked to a sense of community (SOC) that is developed through shared daily practices. For migrant groups, SOC can extend across home and receiving countries. In order to understand the issue of successful ageing in place and multiple SOCs among older Chinese migrants, this paper investigated 32 older Chinese migrants' narratives of developing a SOC in their local and home communities. Findings suggest that a SOC can be viewed as constructed through practices such as neighbouring and supportive interactions within local contexts as well as engagement with the home country via new media. The findings provide insights into everyday practices central to the cultivation of a SOC among the participants whose engagements span the cultural spaces of China and New Zealand. For example, the use of media contributes to the participants' SOCs both in China and New Zealand. As a result, they live in a transnational community that can be understood as an ‘imagined’ community where the participants engage with significant, although absent, Chinese others. Living between China and New Zealand, between homes and between languages, the participants create identity ‘inbetweenness’ that is constructed at the intersection of interdependent, compatible and mutually reinforcing communities and spaces. The findings therefore extend conventional understandings of ageing migrant experiences that assume successful ageing and community participation occur in one locale to an understanding of multiple SOCs within the context of transnationalism.

year: 2014

title: Colouring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools

authors: Milne, Beverley Ann

subjects: Maori education

abstract: If we look at a child’s colouring book, before it has any colour added to it, we think of the page as blank.  It’s actually not blank, it’s white.  That white background is just “there” and we don’t think much about it.  Not only is the background uniformly white, the lines are already in place and they dictate where the colour is allowed to go.  When children are young, they don’t care where they put the colours, but as they get older they colour in more and more cautiously. They learn about the place of colour and the importance of staying within the pre-determined boundaries and expectations. 

This thesis argues that this is the setting for our mainstream, or what I have called, whitestream New Zealand schools — that white background is the norm.   When we talk about multiculturalism and diversity what we are really referring to is the colour of the children, or their difference from that white norm, and how they don’t fit perfectly inside our lines.  If the colour of the space doesn’t change schools are still in the business of assimilation, relegating non-white children to the margins, no matter how many school reform initiatives, new curricula, strategic plans, or mandated standards we implement.  What the schools in this study have tried to do is change the colour of the space – so that the space fits the children and they don’t have to constantly adjust to fit in.  

New Zealand’s education system has been largely silent on the topic of whiteness and the Eurocentric nature of our schooling policy and practice. However, when I talk to senior Māori and Pasifika ‘warrior-scholars” in Te Whānau o Tupuranga and Clover Park Middle School about “white spaces” they have encountered in their schooling experience they can identify them all too easily.  “White spaces,” they explain, are anything you accept as “normal” for Māori – when it’s really not,  any situation that prevents, or works against you “being Māori” or who you are, and that requires you to “be” someone else and leave your beliefs behind. White spaces are spaces that allow you to require less of yourself and that reinforce stereotypes and negative ideas about Māori.  Most telling of all was the comment from a Māori student that goes straight to the root of the problem, “White spaces are everywhere,” she said, “even in your head.”

This thesis describes the 25 year journey of two schools and their community’s determination to resist and reject alienating school environments in favour of a relevant culturally-located, bilingual learning model based in a secure cultural identity, stable positive relationships, and aroha (authentic caring and love).  While the research design is a case study, in terms of western, “white space” academic tradition, it is also a story in terms of kaupapa Māori and critical race methodology. More importantly, it is a counter-story that chronicles the efforts of these two schools to step outside education’s “white spaces” to create new space.  This counter-story is juxtaposed against pervasive, deficit-driven whitestream explanations of “achievement gaps” and the “long tail” of Māori and Pasifika “under-achievement” in New Zealand schools.  In the process of this research the focus shifted from how could Māori and Pasifika learners develop secure cultural identities in mainstream schools, to examining what barriers exist in schools that prevent this from happening already?  As these issues became clear the language of the thesis shifted accordingly; “developing” a cultural identity was reframed as a reclamation of educational sovereignty — the absolute right to “be Māori” or “be Pasifika” in school — and “mainstream” schooling became better understood as the “whitestream.” 

The study hopes to contribute to the journey other schools might take to identify and name their own white spaces, and to make learning equitable for indigenous and minoritised learners.

text: Colouring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools If we look at a child’s colouring book, before it has any colour added to it, we think of the page as blank.  It’s actually not blank, it’s white.  That white background is just “there” and we don’t think much about it.  Not only is the background uniformly white, the lines are already in place and they dictate where the colour is allowed to go.  When children are young, they don’t care where they put the colours, but as they get older they colour in more and more cautiously. They learn about the place of colour and the importance of staying within the pre-determined boundaries and expectations. 

This thesis argues that this is the setting for our mainstream, or what I have called, whitestream New Zealand schools — that white background is the norm.   When we talk about multiculturalism and diversity what we are really referring to is the colour of the children, or their difference from that white norm, and how they don’t fit perfectly inside our lines.  If the colour of the space doesn’t change schools are still in the business of assimilation, relegating non-white children to the margins, no matter how many school reform initiatives, new curricula, strategic plans, or mandated standards we implement.  What the schools in this study have tried to do is change the colour of the space – so that the space fits the children and they don’t have to constantly adjust to fit in.  

New Zealand’s education system has been largely silent on the topic of whiteness and the Eurocentric nature of our schooling policy and practice. However, when I talk to senior Māori and Pasifika ‘warrior-scholars” in Te Whānau o Tupuranga and Clover Park Middle School about “white spaces” they have encountered in their schooling experience they can identify them all too easily.  “White spaces,” they explain, are anything you accept as “normal” for Māori – when it’s really not,  any situation that prevents, or works against you “being Māori” or who you are, and that requires you to “be” someone else and leave your beliefs behind. White spaces are spaces that allow you to require less of yourself and that reinforce stereotypes and negative ideas about Māori.  Most telling of all was the comment from a Māori student that goes straight to the root of the problem, “White spaces are everywhere,” she said, “even in your head.”

This thesis describes the 25 year journey of two schools and their community’s determination to resist and reject alienating school environments in favour of a relevant culturally-located, bilingual learning model based in a secure cultural identity, stable positive relationships, and aroha (authentic caring and love).  While the research design is a case study, in terms of western, “white space” academic tradition, it is also a story in terms of kaupapa Māori and critical race methodology. More importantly, it is a counter-story that chronicles the efforts of these two schools to step outside education’s “white spaces” to create new space.  This counter-story is juxtaposed against pervasive, deficit-driven whitestream explanations of “achievement gaps” and the “long tail” of Māori and Pasifika “under-achievement” in New Zealand schools.  In the process of this research the focus shifted from how could Māori and Pasifika learners develop secure cultural identities in mainstream schools, to examining what barriers exist in schools that prevent this from happening already?  As these issues became clear the language of the thesis shifted accordingly; “developing” a cultural identity was reframed as a reclamation of educational sovereignty — the absolute right to “be Māori” or “be Pasifika” in school — and “mainstream” schooling became better understood as the “whitestream.” 

The study hopes to contribute to the journey other schools might take to identify and name their own white spaces, and to make learning equitable for indigenous and minoritised learners.

year: 2013