title: The perfect stroke: Moving beyond the performance narrative within rowing

authors: Green, Toni-Elizabeth

subjects: narrative

abstract: This Thesis presents a narrative inquiry into the experiences rowers have within their sport, through exploring the stories they tell. Following Carless and Douglas (2012) my thesis identifies that success is a multi-dimensional concept. In doing so, I challenge the dominant performance narrative within sport that conceptualises success solely as winning.
The performance narrative is often unsustainable and therefore can be damaging to an athlete’s well-being, due to such circumstances as injury, de-selection, drop out, aging, and losing. This can lead to narrative wreckage; where the individual no longer knows how to make sense of their life as the dominant story they told no longer aligns with their experiences. Highlighting, exploring and sharing stories that resist or move past the performance narrative can give individuals the ability to view themselves as a multi-faceted identity, allowing them to holistically enjoy sporting participation.
Rowers interviewed in this thesis told stories of winning, but also of friendship, loyalty, and the freedom of movement. Of particular interest were the stories told that shared a sense of embodied convergence; the sensation of merging with the medium (Anderson, 2012). As yet, the convergence narrative is largely underdeveloped in the broader sporting literature; thus the paper drew heavily on the literature surrounding surfing in which the notion of convergence has been developed.
By sharing and spreading of a range of different stories, individuals develop their narrative repertoire. This gives them the resources to be able to move past the performance narrative, and restory themselves if, and when, it no longer aligns with their experiences.
My thesis looks to add to the existing literature resisting the performance narrative, by sharing evocative tales showing the complexities and intricacies of resisting or conforming to the performance narrative, and essentially, the joy that can be found within the sport of rowing.

text: The perfect stroke: Moving beyond the performance narrative within rowing This Thesis presents a narrative inquiry into the experiences rowers have within their sport, through exploring the stories they tell. Following Carless and Douglas (2012) my thesis identifies that success is a multi-dimensional concept. In doing so, I challenge the dominant performance narrative within sport that conceptualises success solely as winning.
The performance narrative is often unsustainable and therefore can be damaging to an athlete’s well-being, due to such circumstances as injury, de-selection, drop out, aging, and losing. This can lead to narrative wreckage; where the individual no longer knows how to make sense of their life as the dominant story they told no longer aligns with their experiences. Highlighting, exploring and sharing stories that resist or move past the performance narrative can give individuals the ability to view themselves as a multi-faceted identity, allowing them to holistically enjoy sporting participation.
Rowers interviewed in this thesis told stories of winning, but also of friendship, loyalty, and the freedom of movement. Of particular interest were the stories told that shared a sense of embodied convergence; the sensation of merging with the medium (Anderson, 2012). As yet, the convergence narrative is largely underdeveloped in the broader sporting literature; thus the paper drew heavily on the literature surrounding surfing in which the notion of convergence has been developed.
By sharing and spreading of a range of different stories, individuals develop their narrative repertoire. This gives them the resources to be able to move past the performance narrative, and restory themselves if, and when, it no longer aligns with their experiences.
My thesis looks to add to the existing literature resisting the performance narrative, by sharing evocative tales showing the complexities and intricacies of resisting or conforming to the performance narrative, and essentially, the joy that can be found within the sport of rowing.

year: 2014

title: Counselling and Religious and Spiritual Values: A Malaysian Study

authors: Md. Yusoff, Yusmini Binti

subjects: Counselling

abstract: The developing interest which led to this research project started when I was employed as a counsellor and a counsellor educator in an Islamic faith-based academic institution in Malaysia. Within these positions, I noticed that my encounters with religious and spiritual values in counselling and teaching practice did not match with what I experienced in the counsellor education programme. This is perhaps due to the Malaysian counselling practices that had its history from Euro-American counselling models which emphasise the practice of objective and value-neutral stance. Within these models, counsellors’ conceptual and theoretical understandings of counselling were strongly shaped and developed. Therefore, the study draws on this history and questions the effects of this stance in Malaysian counselling practices. In particular, this study explores how Malaysian Muslim counsellors are positioned when religious and spiritual values intersect with their counselling knowledge. This study employed poststructuralist and social constructionist frameworks as its theoretical and methodological base. Positioning theory, deconstruction, power/knowledge, language, and the making of meaning are some of the approaches used in this study. As a mixed methods project, the study used a survey and interview conversations to generate research data. The survey was to gain general views about participants’ perceptions of the topic researched, and the interviews were to investigate the ways taken by counsellors in working with religious and spiritual values. Both quantitative and qualitative findings show that there are similar understandings among participants about the lack of training on how to address religious and spiritual values in counselling, and the gap that exists between counselling models, and religious practices. In qualitative findings, these participants reported that they have to find their own ways to weave both counselling and religious knowledges together in order to help clients. Hence, through this study, a religiously sensitive counselling approach that uses a value-investigating practice is suggested.

text: Counselling and Religious and Spiritual Values: A Malaysian Study The developing interest which led to this research project started when I was employed as a counsellor and a counsellor educator in an Islamic faith-based academic institution in Malaysia. Within these positions, I noticed that my encounters with religious and spiritual values in counselling and teaching practice did not match with what I experienced in the counsellor education programme. This is perhaps due to the Malaysian counselling practices that had its history from Euro-American counselling models which emphasise the practice of objective and value-neutral stance. Within these models, counsellors’ conceptual and theoretical understandings of counselling were strongly shaped and developed. Therefore, the study draws on this history and questions the effects of this stance in Malaysian counselling practices. In particular, this study explores how Malaysian Muslim counsellors are positioned when religious and spiritual values intersect with their counselling knowledge. This study employed poststructuralist and social constructionist frameworks as its theoretical and methodological base. Positioning theory, deconstruction, power/knowledge, language, and the making of meaning are some of the approaches used in this study. As a mixed methods project, the study used a survey and interview conversations to generate research data. The survey was to gain general views about participants’ perceptions of the topic researched, and the interviews were to investigate the ways taken by counsellors in working with religious and spiritual values. Both quantitative and qualitative findings show that there are similar understandings among participants about the lack of training on how to address religious and spiritual values in counselling, and the gap that exists between counselling models, and religious practices. In qualitative findings, these participants reported that they have to find their own ways to weave both counselling and religious knowledges together in order to help clients. Hence, through this study, a religiously sensitive counselling approach that uses a value-investigating practice is suggested.

year: 2011

title: Place-making: Wānanga based photographic approaches

authors: Hill, Rodrigo

subjects: photography

abstract: The words above are from the poem Māori King Tawhiao wrote expressing his love for his homelands of the Waikato and the region known today as the King Country. The words translate to: “I look down on the valley of Waikato, As though to hold it in the hollow of my hand.” Now imagine a large-scale photograph depicting a close-up frame of cupped hands trying to hold something carefully.

text: Place-making: Wānanga based photographic approaches The words above are from the poem Māori King Tawhiao wrote expressing his love for his homelands of the Waikato and the region known today as the King Country. The words translate to: “I look down on the valley of Waikato, As though to hold it in the hollow of my hand.” Now imagine a large-scale photograph depicting a close-up frame of cupped hands trying to hold something carefully.

year: 2022-12-31