title: Work and Family Interface: Wellbeing and the Role of Resilience and Work-Life Balance

authors: Riley, Derek

subjects: Resilience

abstract: Wellbeing research has recently gathered impetus largely due to the emergence of positive psychology.  Researchers and practitioners are now exploring the science of positive subjective experiences, positive traits, positive states, aspects of human strengths and quality of life.  Despite work and family deemed to be two of the most important domains of life, work and family wellbeing has received little attention in the positive psychology literature.  Therefore, this thesis expands the landscape of the wellbeing literature by focusing on the work-family interface, the roles of resilience and work-life balance in achieving job and family satisfaction and psychological health.  

Specifically, my research sought to examine cross-sectional and longitudinally, the mediation effects of resilience and work-life balance between work-family conflict (time, strain and behaviour), work-family enrichment (development, affect and capital/efficiency) and a broad range of wellbeing outcomes (job satisfaction, family satisfaction, anxiety/depression, and social dysfunction) with health professionals.

Health professionals in New Zealand are consistently exposed to psycho-social risk factors such as heavy workloads, irregular work schedules, and long hours of work.  In addition, global demand for health professionals is at an all time high, with New Zealand-trained staff looking overseas for employment.  The work-family literature is plentiful in studies exploring work-family conflict with a multitude of outcomes (e. g. job satisfaction, psychological and physical health, organisational commitment, turnover and turnover intentions).  However, there are several gaps in the literature.  Firstly, the work-family interface where little attention has been given to exploring a) the family to work directionality and the three forms of conflict (time-based, strain-based, and behaviour-based) is limited.  In addition, a few studies have provided a holistic perspective in analysing the positive of the work-family interface in the form of (b) work-family enrichment (development, affect and capital/efficiency) and the impact on their experiences of life with health professionals in New Zealand.

  Furthermore, most studies that have utilized resilience have done so with adolescents in family settings with little emphasis placed on (c) exploring employee resilience in the workplace and its role towards wellbeing. Finally, the literature often fails to categorize and (d) test work-life balance as a subjective measure.  Consequently, the present thesis examines all these issues. 

This research involved a two-wave panel design with a 10-12 month time-lag.  Self reports on the eighteen latent variables were obtained from 1,598 health professionals at Time 1 and 296 at Time 2, employed by two District Health Boards (Waikato District Health Board and Lakes District Health Board) and one health provider (Toi Te Ora-Public Health) in New Zealand.  SPSS was used to undertake the correlation analyses and structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess the mediation hypotheses.  The Time 1 cross-sectional results provided evidence for a mediating effect of resilience with work→family conflict (time and strain), family→work conflict (strain and behaviour), work→family enrichment (capital), family→work enrichment (development and efficiency) with all four wellbeing variables (job and family satisfaction, anxiety/depression and social dysfunction) and work-life balance.  However, at Time 2 the results were less frequent, with mediation support for resilience between work→family conflict (time, and behaviour), and three of the wellbeing variables (family satisfaction, anxiety/depression and social dysfunction) and work-life balance.  

In addition at Time 1, work-life balance mediated the relationships between work→family conflict (time and strain), family→work conflict (time) and work→family enrichment (affect) with the wellbeing variables (job satisfaction, family satisfaction, and anxiety/depression).  At Time 2, work-life balance mediated the relationship between work→family conflict (time and strain) with family satisfaction, and social dysfunction. The longitudinal analyses confirmed that work-life balance mediated the relationship between work→family conflict (time) with job satisfaction, family satisfaction, anxiety/depression and social dysfunction, whereas, no longitudinal support was found for mediation effects of resilience.

This research makes several contributions, including that in order to improve levels of wellbeing, health professionals need to continue to alleviate work-family conflict. This research showed the strength of conflict on employee wellbeing and that resilience and work-life balance may provide mechanisms that may improve such wellbeing outcomes.  The work-life balance longitudinal mediation results have implications for developing time based strategies are needed between work and family that aim in reducing ‘conflict’ to increase the health professionals’ wellbeing.  Although there was considerable support for resilience as a mediator at Time 1 (35 significant paths out of a potential 60 mediation routes tested) limited findings were evident at Time 2 (8 mediation paths were significant out of a possible 60 routes tested) and no longitudinal effects were found.  This may indicate that resilience as mediator is not stable over time and therefore may be more state-like rather than a stable trait.  

Further research is needed to investigate resilience and work-life balance and their role within a wellbeing model to advance theory and practice. Overall, the thesis shows the value of testing fuller models of conflict and enrichment (with all dimensions) towards wellbeing outcomes, and the importance of accounting for resilience and work-life balance in these models.

text: Work and Family Interface: Wellbeing and the Role of Resilience and Work-Life Balance Wellbeing research has recently gathered impetus largely due to the emergence of positive psychology.  Researchers and practitioners are now exploring the science of positive subjective experiences, positive traits, positive states, aspects of human strengths and quality of life.  Despite work and family deemed to be two of the most important domains of life, work and family wellbeing has received little attention in the positive psychology literature.  Therefore, this thesis expands the landscape of the wellbeing literature by focusing on the work-family interface, the roles of resilience and work-life balance in achieving job and family satisfaction and psychological health.  

Specifically, my research sought to examine cross-sectional and longitudinally, the mediation effects of resilience and work-life balance between work-family conflict (time, strain and behaviour), work-family enrichment (development, affect and capital/efficiency) and a broad range of wellbeing outcomes (job satisfaction, family satisfaction, anxiety/depression, and social dysfunction) with health professionals.

Health professionals in New Zealand are consistently exposed to psycho-social risk factors such as heavy workloads, irregular work schedules, and long hours of work.  In addition, global demand for health professionals is at an all time high, with New Zealand-trained staff looking overseas for employment.  The work-family literature is plentiful in studies exploring work-family conflict with a multitude of outcomes (e. g. job satisfaction, psychological and physical health, organisational commitment, turnover and turnover intentions).  However, there are several gaps in the literature.  Firstly, the work-family interface where little attention has been given to exploring a) the family to work directionality and the three forms of conflict (time-based, strain-based, and behaviour-based) is limited.  In addition, a few studies have provided a holistic perspective in analysing the positive of the work-family interface in the form of (b) work-family enrichment (development, affect and capital/efficiency) and the impact on their experiences of life with health professionals in New Zealand.

  Furthermore, most studies that have utilized resilience have done so with adolescents in family settings with little emphasis placed on (c) exploring employee resilience in the workplace and its role towards wellbeing. Finally, the literature often fails to categorize and (d) test work-life balance as a subjective measure.  Consequently, the present thesis examines all these issues. 

This research involved a two-wave panel design with a 10-12 month time-lag.  Self reports on the eighteen latent variables were obtained from 1,598 health professionals at Time 1 and 296 at Time 2, employed by two District Health Boards (Waikato District Health Board and Lakes District Health Board) and one health provider (Toi Te Ora-Public Health) in New Zealand.  SPSS was used to undertake the correlation analyses and structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess the mediation hypotheses.  The Time 1 cross-sectional results provided evidence for a mediating effect of resilience with work→family conflict (time and strain), family→work conflict (strain and behaviour), work→family enrichment (capital), family→work enrichment (development and efficiency) with all four wellbeing variables (job and family satisfaction, anxiety/depression and social dysfunction) and work-life balance.  However, at Time 2 the results were less frequent, with mediation support for resilience between work→family conflict (time, and behaviour), and three of the wellbeing variables (family satisfaction, anxiety/depression and social dysfunction) and work-life balance.  

In addition at Time 1, work-life balance mediated the relationships between work→family conflict (time and strain), family→work conflict (time) and work→family enrichment (affect) with the wellbeing variables (job satisfaction, family satisfaction, and anxiety/depression).  At Time 2, work-life balance mediated the relationship between work→family conflict (time and strain) with family satisfaction, and social dysfunction. The longitudinal analyses confirmed that work-life balance mediated the relationship between work→family conflict (time) with job satisfaction, family satisfaction, anxiety/depression and social dysfunction, whereas, no longitudinal support was found for mediation effects of resilience.

This research makes several contributions, including that in order to improve levels of wellbeing, health professionals need to continue to alleviate work-family conflict. This research showed the strength of conflict on employee wellbeing and that resilience and work-life balance may provide mechanisms that may improve such wellbeing outcomes.  The work-life balance longitudinal mediation results have implications for developing time based strategies are needed between work and family that aim in reducing ‘conflict’ to increase the health professionals’ wellbeing.  Although there was considerable support for resilience as a mediator at Time 1 (35 significant paths out of a potential 60 mediation routes tested) limited findings were evident at Time 2 (8 mediation paths were significant out of a possible 60 routes tested) and no longitudinal effects were found.  This may indicate that resilience as mediator is not stable over time and therefore may be more state-like rather than a stable trait.  

Further research is needed to investigate resilience and work-life balance and their role within a wellbeing model to advance theory and practice. Overall, the thesis shows the value of testing fuller models of conflict and enrichment (with all dimensions) towards wellbeing outcomes, and the importance of accounting for resilience and work-life balance in these models.

year: 2012

title: Impact of digital games on early reading skills in a developing country context

authors: Ahmad, Farzana

subjects: Digital game-based learning

abstract: Reading is the basic component of learning that constitutes one of the first steps towards educational attainment. Amongst others, some of the pressing issues the developing countries face are lower literacy rates, education quality and access. Pakistan comes under the list of countries with appalling literacy rates, where 22.6 million children are out of school and have no access to education at all. Recent research indicates the use of digital technologies as a vehicle for change across developing countries in the world. The use of low-cost digital technologies offers opportunities for equitable access to quality educational experiences and the development of lifelong learning skills for marginalised factions of society. 
The present study explored the role of digital games using low-cost tablets in improving reading skills in multilingual societies within Pakistan- a developing country context, where Urdu is the lingua franca, and English is the second or sometimes third language, while the medium of instruction in schools, specifically at the textbook level, is English. This study considered English as the second language (L2) and Urdu as the first language (L1) in Pakistan. The study also intended to explore the factors essential to developing an effective digital game-based learning environment conducive to developing reading skills for students belonging to low socioeconomic status. Through the lens of constructionist epistemology and theoretical frameworks of pragmatism and transformative emancipation, this research utilised a multi-phase-mixed methods-embedded research design to investigate the effectiveness of digital game-based learning (DGBL) in developing reading skills in a multilingual developing country context. Data were gathered through multiple methods in different phases of the research, incorporating pre-post and delayed-post tests, surveys, classroom observations, student group interviews, and individual teacher interviews. A sample of 288 students was drawn from a population of out-of-school children of ages 7 to 16 years, enrolled from Grade 1 to Grade 5 on different campuses of a charity school in an urban setting of Pakistan. The results indicate that learning to read using a pedagogically balanced digital game significantly improved reading skills in English (L2) and Urdu (L1) with a large effect size. The results also indicated the cross-linguistic transfer of reading skills from English (L2) to Urdu (L1) using the digital game and long-term retention of reading skills after the digital games were removed. This study has furthered the understanding of the design and nature of an effective digital game-based learning environment (DGBL) in regards to the use of digital games, the arrangement of learners, and creating  opportunities to transfer skills to the wider real-life context. The design of the DGBL environment influenced the social interactions, classroom discourse, identities, and social practices in the co-construction of knowledge and introduced transformation in teachers' roles at various stages of learning within a DGBL environment. The study indicated that social interactions in learning environments and the role of the teacher in designing an effective learning environment are crucial to fostering transferable skills in students that lead to emancipation and prepare students for the real world outside schools. These findings have important implications for policymakers, teachers and teacher educators, students and parents. Key implications associated with the use of digital games for reading development included the need to develop: a centralised  DGBL unit in collaboration with the game industry, pedagogical experts, teachers, and researchers to develop pedagogically balanced digital games to suit the educational needs of the target populations; a mechanism to provide schools, students and their parents subsidised access to the digital games to improve reading skills; and teacher education and professional development programmes to train teachers in understanding their role transformations and implementing roles effectively in DGBL environments.

text: Impact of digital games on early reading skills in a developing country context Reading is the basic component of learning that constitutes one of the first steps towards educational attainment. Amongst others, some of the pressing issues the developing countries face are lower literacy rates, education quality and access. Pakistan comes under the list of countries with appalling literacy rates, where 22.6 million children are out of school and have no access to education at all. Recent research indicates the use of digital technologies as a vehicle for change across developing countries in the world. The use of low-cost digital technologies offers opportunities for equitable access to quality educational experiences and the development of lifelong learning skills for marginalised factions of society. 
The present study explored the role of digital games using low-cost tablets in improving reading skills in multilingual societies within Pakistan- a developing country context, where Urdu is the lingua franca, and English is the second or sometimes third language, while the medium of instruction in schools, specifically at the textbook level, is English. This study considered English as the second language (L2) and Urdu as the first language (L1) in Pakistan. The study also intended to explore the factors essential to developing an effective digital game-based learning environment conducive to developing reading skills for students belonging to low socioeconomic status. Through the lens of constructionist epistemology and theoretical frameworks of pragmatism and transformative emancipation, this research utilised a multi-phase-mixed methods-embedded research design to investigate the effectiveness of digital game-based learning (DGBL) in developing reading skills in a multilingual developing country context. Data were gathered through multiple methods in different phases of the research, incorporating pre-post and delayed-post tests, surveys, classroom observations, student group interviews, and individual teacher interviews. A sample of 288 students was drawn from a population of out-of-school children of ages 7 to 16 years, enrolled from Grade 1 to Grade 5 on different campuses of a charity school in an urban setting of Pakistan. The results indicate that learning to read using a pedagogically balanced digital game significantly improved reading skills in English (L2) and Urdu (L1) with a large effect size. The results also indicated the cross-linguistic transfer of reading skills from English (L2) to Urdu (L1) using the digital game and long-term retention of reading skills after the digital games were removed. This study has furthered the understanding of the design and nature of an effective digital game-based learning environment (DGBL) in regards to the use of digital games, the arrangement of learners, and creating  opportunities to transfer skills to the wider real-life context. The design of the DGBL environment influenced the social interactions, classroom discourse, identities, and social practices in the co-construction of knowledge and introduced transformation in teachers' roles at various stages of learning within a DGBL environment. The study indicated that social interactions in learning environments and the role of the teacher in designing an effective learning environment are crucial to fostering transferable skills in students that lead to emancipation and prepare students for the real world outside schools. These findings have important implications for policymakers, teachers and teacher educators, students and parents. Key implications associated with the use of digital games for reading development included the need to develop: a centralised  DGBL unit in collaboration with the game industry, pedagogical experts, teachers, and researchers to develop pedagogically balanced digital games to suit the educational needs of the target populations; a mechanism to provide schools, students and their parents subsidised access to the digital games to improve reading skills; and teacher education and professional development programmes to train teachers in understanding their role transformations and implementing roles effectively in DGBL environments.

year: 2023

title: ‘Doctoring’ our own: Confessions of a Māori doctoral supervisor

authors: Hohepa, Margie Kahukura

subjects: Māori doctoral student

abstract: There is very little literature, empirically based or otherwise, on the supervision of Māori doctoral students (Fitzgerald, 2005; Pope, 2008; Kidman, 2007; Smith, 2007). There is even less relating to Māori supervisors working with Māori doctoral students (Kidinan, 2007), let alone Māori supervisors working with non- Māori students. While the relatively large corpus of literature on doctoral supervision may be of some assistance to Māori supervisors, there is also a dearth of studies that focus on the pedagogical aspects. Research undertaken by Elizabeth McKinley and her co-researchers (McKinley, Grant, Middleton, Irwin & Williams, 2009) will now help to fill the literature gap on the teaching and learning process of supervision as it pertains to Māori.

text: ‘Doctoring’ our own: Confessions of a Māori doctoral supervisor There is very little literature, empirically based or otherwise, on the supervision of Māori doctoral students (Fitzgerald, 2005; Pope, 2008; Kidman, 2007; Smith, 2007). There is even less relating to Māori supervisors working with Māori doctoral students (Kidinan, 2007), let alone Māori supervisors working with non- Māori students. While the relatively large corpus of literature on doctoral supervision may be of some assistance to Māori supervisors, there is also a dearth of studies that focus on the pedagogical aspects. Research undertaken by Elizabeth McKinley and her co-researchers (McKinley, Grant, Middleton, Irwin & Williams, 2009) will now help to fill the literature gap on the teaching and learning process of supervision as it pertains to Māori.

year: 2010