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Access to tertiary education is a challenge for many people from refugee-backgrounds. In Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), resettled refugees are entitled to access education alongside other New Zealanders, and NZ's resettlement policy material recognises education as a key pillar of resettlement. However, refugee-background students are not recognised as 'priority learners' in education policy, so educational institutions are not required to report on refugee-background students' educational access or outcomes. At all levels of the education system, teaching and support practices for refugee-background students vary widely. Many barriers hamper refugee-background students' access to and success in tertiary education. However, refugee-background students are also necessarily-skilful border navigators. In this paper, we share data from an in-progress participatory action research project based in southern NZ that involves collaborating with refugee-background students at the secondary-tertiary education border. After describing the project, its rationale, and our theoretical framework, we draw on insights from seven of the students to illustrate how students represented educational navigation in NZ: as a resistance project, a subterranean project, and a relational project. We conclude by suggesting some implications from our study for research, policy and practice in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International research suggests that government policy, institutional culture and learner characteristics influence the attrition rate of first-year tertiary education students. These variables were investigated in relation to a cohort of 21 New Zealand students who failed a core literacy paper. The research utilised questionnaires, interviews with staff and students and observations around a series of workshops designed to review the literacy course. Results align with international findings, but also differ because of site-specific institutional, and student socio-cultural factors. The workshops improved students’ course content knowledge, but did not address deep-seated, literacy and culturally-based impediments that contribute to attrition. Principles of social justice and social contract theory described by Rawls (1958) and Sen (2009) are used to critique policy and pedagogical and learner characteristics. Based on this critique, the research concluded that some aspects of policy and institutional, cultural and student behaviour were unjust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the impact of changing higher education policies and funding on university adult and continuing education in England and Aotearoa New Zealand. It discusses some of the contextual factors contributing to sustaining continuing education in New Zealand, against the tide of developments elsewhere, and in spite of its subjection to the influence of neoliberal policies since the 1980s: an ethos of public knowledge dissemination, acknowledgement of the universities' role as 'critic and conscience' of society, a broad commitment to educational equality and a strategic as well as pragmatic approach. The paper describes developments in one New Zealand continuing education department as it experiences institutional and political change. The author concludes that, in spite of demonstrating considerable resilience, the structures and activities of continuing education departments in New Zealand are as fragile as they have been in England. 'Radical hope' is advocated as the university-based adult educator's response in difficult times. It involves challenging the assumptions of neoliberalism, and reaffirming the political nature of adult education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores recent changes in tertiary education policy in New Zealand, which are designed to address legitimation deficits. By offering an analysis of the making, and the subsequent unmaking, of quasi-markets in tertiary education, this paper attempts to describe how the state dealt with legitimation deficits resulting from providers' of tertiary education use of the adult and community education funding category to increase their revenues. In providing this description, the paper helps to provide a way of understanding how the state in New Zealand has responded to legitimation deficits by introducing a new regime of governance. The paper concludes by arguing that, in terms of its treatment of category 5.1 funding, this regime is supportive of neo-conservative goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines discourses and developments of the knowledge economy and learning society in Australia and New Zealand. It outlines the international context of the rise of the knowledge‐based economy and sets the New Zealand and Australian debates against this backdrop. A current heightened emphasis on education and learning in both countries is closely aligned with the key imperatives of economic development and competitiveness. Older models of the learning society based more on cultural and humanistic aspirations remain evident and competitive with economic models. Prospects for further innovative development in education and learning across the life course, and across a broader population in democratic societies are considered. The paper concludes that notwithstanding the current influence of singularly economic discourses shaping conceptions of the learning economy and society there is no definitive or triumphant model of the learning society prevailing in Australia and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the transition from school to further and higher education in New Zealand following the recent implementation of the National Qualifications Framework. While a genuinely ‘seamless’ interface is emerging between upper secondary schooling and further education in the context of vocational programmes, the transition from school to university has been made more complicated owing to the complexity of the redefined university entrance requirements, and comparability issues arising from the existence of the two different kinds of curricular delivery and assessment modules that are in use (unit standards and achievement standards). The paper highlights the continuing anomaly of the possibility of entry to university degree programmes from the penultimate year of secondary schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process by which all post-compulsory education in New Zealand has become integrated under one administrative structure, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), with the intention of developing a single coordinated system of tertiary education. In particular, adult and community education (ACE), the least formal and organised sector, is required to develop programmes that align with an externally conceived set of priorities, which themselves arise from the Tertiary Education Strategies. Using Popper's concepts of 'holistic' versus 'piecemeal' change, it is argued that such large-scale change is potentially dangerous as there are likely to be unintended, damaging consequences of such policies; consequences which are difficult to fix in modern, complex societies. In particular, ACE which is built on an insider, community-focus ethos, able itself to identify and respond to community-learning opportunities, is likely to be changed fundamentally so that the very characteristics that have made ACE effective in the past will be lost in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial literature already exists in international students' study experience, but since relatively less exploration has occurred into their involvement in work-integrated learning it was considered desirable to further develop what is known about this area. Still less is known about how organisational hosts of international interns regard the purpose or outcomes of their placements. In the present study involving 16 US students interning in a diverse collection of New Zealand organisations, hosts had high expectations of what their international intern would provide by way of new ideas and specialist capability and they also concurred that interns did make a valuable contribution in these respects. In nearly all cases good competence in English was sought. Hosts also agreed that interns received actual professional workplace experience and had the opportunity to make independent decisions. The context within which an individual learns is often thought to be very influential in what is likely to be learned. Nevertheless, personnel from very dissimilar host organisations showed close agreement on what their interns learned and contributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In global terms, the position of women in New Zealand society is relatively strong and at one stage in the early 2000s many senior roles were occupied by women. Equality of opportunity for women in leadership in science and the community has been a focus of attention in New Zealand in government, education, and the sciences for at least two generations. A number of successful women are identified and attention is drawn to some current issues, including their important influence as national role models. I reflect on some of the key influences including family expectation and the underlying culture which remain a challenge for women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Changes in tertiary education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand in the last decade have impacted on adult and community education (ACE). Marginalized and understood as non-formal education at the turn of the century, ACE is now part of the ‘tertiary landscape’. It is explicitly steered by education policy, its role severely narrowed, its emphasis shifted from empowerment, equity, active citizenship to preparation for employment and skills for work. This article explores the policy developments which have led to the changes and analyses possible links between the policies and three neoliberal suppositions: free market economics, the role of the state and homo economicus. It concludes that policies have been influenced by a neoliberal hegemony under both Centre-left Labour-led and Centre-right National-led governments, and that neoliberalism is likely to remain dominant into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies of older adults entering higher education say little about redundancy as a trigger factor or of the outcomes of education in such circumstances. Ideas on the importance of previous workplace and educational experience, motivational factors and the influence of gender are explored using information from a study of 21 adults aged 40-59 at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. This focuses on the circumstances of redundancy, its immediate effects and how it led to university study. Longer-term outcomes relate to study, work and personal issues. Looking back, most of the interviewees saw that their experience of redundancy had been an opportunity for change and their study experiences had been beneficial, but not always in terms of workforce advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the restructuring of a major adult education provider in a New Zealand university and its impact across the selected domains of the role of adult and continuing education in the institution, curriculum development, teaching and learning in adult education, and relationships of adult educators with communities. The author provides a broader context for understanding the changes (societal imperatives, university developments in New Zealand, perspectives of adult and continuing education in universities) and traces the rationale and events related to two reviews of this provider in the last 7 years. It is argued that the consequences of the largely imposed changes were foreseeable and primarily negative for the wider field of adult education in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The road of New Right ideology has been travelled too far and the effects are virtually irreversible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the experiences of education, training and learning, and the influences upon forms of participation by adults from working class background in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Results of national sample survey showing increased adult participation in learning from 1978 to 1994-95; Dangers of formal and accredited learning; Interrelationships of class, gender, race and generation.

Provides a `reflection-in-action' account of the author's study of adult students in a New Zealand secondary school. Requirements for enrolling; Similarity of expectations and actions with school-aged pupils; Reasons of adults for returning to school.