title: Sexual assaults on gay and bisexual men: Barriers to reporting to the police

authors: Patlakas, Peter

subjects: sexual assault

abstract: Sexual assault is a matter of public concern that affects many individuals globally, regardless of their gender and sexual orientation.  With many survivors of sexual assaults choosing not to report their victimisation to police, it appears that prevalence rates based on reports made to the police represent only a fraction of the actual occurrence of assaults.  This is especially the case where assaults on gay and bisexual men are concerned.  This study examined the barriers gay and bisexual male survivors of sexual assaults face in reporting their victimisation to the police.
This study aimed to address a lack in New Zealand based research on the topic and develop an overall representation of the various barriers these survivors may encounter, as well as solutions for their reduction.  This was achieved by conducting semi-structured interviews with six service providers functioning as key informants and four gay/bisexual male survivors of sexual assault.  Interviews were recorded and transcribed for thematic analysis.  The qualitative software NVivo was used to allow for the development and organisation of themes and subthemes from the interview data collected.  Four themes were identified pertaining to barriers: personal, social, institutional, and abuse-specific.  Personal and social barriers were more readily recognised than those within the institutional and abuse-specific themes.  A fifth theme, the reduction theme, emerged in relation to suggestions for decreasing barriers.
The following eight barrier areas were identified within the personal barrier theme: defence mechanisms, cognitive mindset, revisiting, knowledge, emotions, privacy/confidentiality, past experience, and mental health.  The social theme consisted of nine barrier areas: family, queer community, support, culture and religion, homosexuality and gender, myths, judgement, homophobia and prejudice, and location and environment.  Seven barrier areas were identified within the institutional theme: poor responses, services and counselling, cons to reporting, the law, court dynamics, limitations, and police.  The abuse-specific barrier theme consisted of nine barrier areas: time, need for proof, victim-perpetrator relationship, age, drugs and alcohol, disclosure of details, consent issues, report scrutiny, and labelling and defining.
Finally, six areas were identified pertaining to the reduction of barriers: services, youth, police, information, reporting process, and societal attitudes.  Many of the suggestions for reduction methods, such as increasing police training and services offered within the queer community, were seen to be beneficial, yet they may still be subject to various difficulties in their implementation, such as funding concerns.
Queer-specific barrier aspects were deemed important to account for in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of the topic.  Various linkages between barriers also emerged, effectively making a decision to report to the police even harder for survivors.  A case study based on one of the survivors interviewed helped to illustrate this complex weaving of barriers.
Further research is needed to examine these barriers on deeper levels, particularly in terms of addressing any differences between youth and adult survivors.  The results of this study serve as the first step in developing the foundation to bring information on this topic to the forefront of New Zealand research in the area.

text: Sexual assaults on gay and bisexual men: Barriers to reporting to the police Sexual assault is a matter of public concern that affects many individuals globally, regardless of their gender and sexual orientation.  With many survivors of sexual assaults choosing not to report their victimisation to police, it appears that prevalence rates based on reports made to the police represent only a fraction of the actual occurrence of assaults.  This is especially the case where assaults on gay and bisexual men are concerned.  This study examined the barriers gay and bisexual male survivors of sexual assaults face in reporting their victimisation to the police.
This study aimed to address a lack in New Zealand based research on the topic and develop an overall representation of the various barriers these survivors may encounter, as well as solutions for their reduction.  This was achieved by conducting semi-structured interviews with six service providers functioning as key informants and four gay/bisexual male survivors of sexual assault.  Interviews were recorded and transcribed for thematic analysis.  The qualitative software NVivo was used to allow for the development and organisation of themes and subthemes from the interview data collected.  Four themes were identified pertaining to barriers: personal, social, institutional, and abuse-specific.  Personal and social barriers were more readily recognised than those within the institutional and abuse-specific themes.  A fifth theme, the reduction theme, emerged in relation to suggestions for decreasing barriers.
The following eight barrier areas were identified within the personal barrier theme: defence mechanisms, cognitive mindset, revisiting, knowledge, emotions, privacy/confidentiality, past experience, and mental health.  The social theme consisted of nine barrier areas: family, queer community, support, culture and religion, homosexuality and gender, myths, judgement, homophobia and prejudice, and location and environment.  Seven barrier areas were identified within the institutional theme: poor responses, services and counselling, cons to reporting, the law, court dynamics, limitations, and police.  The abuse-specific barrier theme consisted of nine barrier areas: time, need for proof, victim-perpetrator relationship, age, drugs and alcohol, disclosure of details, consent issues, report scrutiny, and labelling and defining.
Finally, six areas were identified pertaining to the reduction of barriers: services, youth, police, information, reporting process, and societal attitudes.  Many of the suggestions for reduction methods, such as increasing police training and services offered within the queer community, were seen to be beneficial, yet they may still be subject to various difficulties in their implementation, such as funding concerns.
Queer-specific barrier aspects were deemed important to account for in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of the topic.  Various linkages between barriers also emerged, effectively making a decision to report to the police even harder for survivors.  A case study based on one of the survivors interviewed helped to illustrate this complex weaving of barriers.
Further research is needed to examine these barriers on deeper levels, particularly in terms of addressing any differences between youth and adult survivors.  The results of this study serve as the first step in developing the foundation to bring information on this topic to the forefront of New Zealand research in the area.

year: 2013

title: Against epistocracy

authors: Munn, Nicholas

abstract: There has been a recent resurgence in epistocratic arguments against our democratic institutions. Jason Brennan (2009, 2011, 2016) is a popular representative of the approach. Here, I criticise Brennan’s account and offer an alternative analysis of modern democratic societies. I argue that Brennan has not shown that the currently enfranchised are relevantly incompetent such that they ought to be excluded from the franchise. Further, even had he shown this, his proposed solution suffers from the same injustices he diagnoses in democracies. I consider an alternative means of embracing a restrictive franchise.

text: Against epistocracy There has been a recent resurgence in epistocratic arguments against our democratic institutions. Jason Brennan (2009, 2011, 2016) is a popular representative of the approach. Here, I criticise Brennan’s account and offer an alternative analysis of modern democratic societies. I argue that Brennan has not shown that the currently enfranchised are relevantly incompetent such that they ought to be excluded from the franchise. Further, even had he shown this, his proposed solution suffers from the same injustices he diagnoses in democracies. I consider an alternative means of embracing a restrictive franchise.

year: 2018

title: Aro mai aro atu: Raising Māori-medium students' academic oral language proficiency

authors: Shandley, Rosina Mary

subjects: Māori-medium

abstract: From the early 1860s, colonial governments worked systematically to eradicate the language and culture of the indigenous people of Aotearoa / New Zealand, and, by the late 1960s, the death of the Māori language was being predicted by leading linguists. Māori leaders responded in the 1980s with language regeneration initiatives that included the birth of Māori-medium education. Today, this uniquely indigenous education system is a significant site of language learning for new generations of Māori children. In Māori-medium education, children are nurtured, educated, and loved as Māori, and they are more likely to attain educational qualifications than their Māori peers who attend English-medium schools. 

The success of Māori-medium education is achieved in the face of a raft of ongoing challenges that teachers and students confront on a daily basis. Years of language marginalisation, including the disruption to intergenerational transfer, mean Māori-medium students are required to learn the curriculum through their second and less-developed language. They have limited opportunities to hear or use the Māori language outside of the school, and this places huge pressure on teachers who are often their most significant language models. The challenge is compounded by the limited education that has been made available to teachers in relation to second-language pedagogies specifically designed for Māori-medium classrooms. The resulting situation is that Māori-medium teachers are often left struggling to find ways that they can develop students’ Māori language proficiency at the same time as their curriculum achievement so that one is not sacrificed for the other. 

This study designed and trialled pedagogies to support Māori-medium students to develop their academic oral language proficiency at the same time as their curriculum achievement. It was a mixed methods study grounded in a kaupapa Māori approach, and involved three teachers and 24 students across three separate Māori-medium schools. An Anga Putanga Ako (Curriculum Outcomes Matrix) was developed to support the students to understand what they needed to learn to progress through the writing curriculum. Teachers then learnt to share explicit learning outcomes from the Anga Putanga Ako with students before lessons and to allow them time to discuss their achievement of those outcomes in pairs at the conclusion of those lessons. Linguistic scaffolds were developed to support students’ learning conversations, including the self and peer assessment of the learning outcomes, and decisions about their curriculum achievement levels and next learning steps.

The quantitative and qualitative results of the study revealed that the confluence of the self and peer assessment practices, supported by the Anga Putanga Ako and linguistic scaffolds, improved the students’ academic oral language and accelerated their reading and writing achievement significantly beyond what is usually expected in a Māori-medium classroom in 14 weeks. The study also found that, through implementing the self and peer assessment pedagogies, teachers were able to identify ways they could develop their students’ academic language and curriculum achievement simultaneously and how these approaches could be applied across the curriculum.

It was clear from the research results that pedagogies that support second-language development and curriculum learning, such as the self and peer assessment pedagogies demonstrated in this study, need to be explicitly taught with consistency across initial and in-service teacher education programmes. This development is necessary to help ensure Māori-medium students are supported with the thinking and linguistic skills needed to contribute to the creation of new knowledge, to support or challenge the current social order as they see fit, and to continue to transfer the Māori language to new generations of mokopuna.

text: Aro mai aro atu: Raising Māori-medium students' academic oral language proficiency From the early 1860s, colonial governments worked systematically to eradicate the language and culture of the indigenous people of Aotearoa / New Zealand, and, by the late 1960s, the death of the Māori language was being predicted by leading linguists. Māori leaders responded in the 1980s with language regeneration initiatives that included the birth of Māori-medium education. Today, this uniquely indigenous education system is a significant site of language learning for new generations of Māori children. In Māori-medium education, children are nurtured, educated, and loved as Māori, and they are more likely to attain educational qualifications than their Māori peers who attend English-medium schools. 

The success of Māori-medium education is achieved in the face of a raft of ongoing challenges that teachers and students confront on a daily basis. Years of language marginalisation, including the disruption to intergenerational transfer, mean Māori-medium students are required to learn the curriculum through their second and less-developed language. They have limited opportunities to hear or use the Māori language outside of the school, and this places huge pressure on teachers who are often their most significant language models. The challenge is compounded by the limited education that has been made available to teachers in relation to second-language pedagogies specifically designed for Māori-medium classrooms. The resulting situation is that Māori-medium teachers are often left struggling to find ways that they can develop students’ Māori language proficiency at the same time as their curriculum achievement so that one is not sacrificed for the other. 

This study designed and trialled pedagogies to support Māori-medium students to develop their academic oral language proficiency at the same time as their curriculum achievement. It was a mixed methods study grounded in a kaupapa Māori approach, and involved three teachers and 24 students across three separate Māori-medium schools. An Anga Putanga Ako (Curriculum Outcomes Matrix) was developed to support the students to understand what they needed to learn to progress through the writing curriculum. Teachers then learnt to share explicit learning outcomes from the Anga Putanga Ako with students before lessons and to allow them time to discuss their achievement of those outcomes in pairs at the conclusion of those lessons. Linguistic scaffolds were developed to support students’ learning conversations, including the self and peer assessment of the learning outcomes, and decisions about their curriculum achievement levels and next learning steps.

The quantitative and qualitative results of the study revealed that the confluence of the self and peer assessment practices, supported by the Anga Putanga Ako and linguistic scaffolds, improved the students’ academic oral language and accelerated their reading and writing achievement significantly beyond what is usually expected in a Māori-medium classroom in 14 weeks. The study also found that, through implementing the self and peer assessment pedagogies, teachers were able to identify ways they could develop their students’ academic language and curriculum achievement simultaneously and how these approaches could be applied across the curriculum.

It was clear from the research results that pedagogies that support second-language development and curriculum learning, such as the self and peer assessment pedagogies demonstrated in this study, need to be explicitly taught with consistency across initial and in-service teacher education programmes. This development is necessary to help ensure Māori-medium students are supported with the thinking and linguistic skills needed to contribute to the creation of new knowledge, to support or challenge the current social order as they see fit, and to continue to transfer the Māori language to new generations of mokopuna.

year: 2022