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At present, there is limited research on the intersection of sex work, takatāpui/ LGBTIQ+ communities, and experiences of homelessness in Aotearoa New Zealand. This paper helps to bridge this gap, exploring how takatāpui/LGBTIQ+ people who had been failed by the welfare state engaged in sex work during periods of homelessness, and expressed agency in difficult circumstances. Specifically, we look at sex and sex work as a means to secure basic needs, and in the context of exploitative relationships; the emotional effects of sex work; and safety and policing. A stronger welfare state is needed to provide sufficient support for people to realise an adequate standard of living and treat them with dignity and respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on one phase of a project on student engagement in Aotearoa New Zealand. It reports the results of a survey of students enrolled for the first time in a post-compulsory education programme. The students were enrolled in one of nine institutions: two universities, one wananga, four institutes of technology, a private training establishment and a community organisation. This paper reports on one aspect of the questionnaire. It uses Self-Determination Theory to investigate motivators for student engagement and assesses how extensively they are acted on by students. Findings show that institutions are both different and similar; that students are motivated more by competence than agency or relationships; and that they act on agency needs more than on competency or relationship ones. Drawing on the similarities, the paper outlines some ways in which teachers and institutions might use the findings to improve student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internet is a knowledge technology and market place, ingrained in everyday social life, which provides an avenue to examine social and gendered relationships. This paper examines a particular gendered arrangement, how breast augmentation is offered to women on internet websites. Breast augmentation is rapidly becoming the most popular cosmetic surgery for Western women. We identified and analysed the content of 20 New Zealand websites offering breast augmentation surgery. Analysis documented two major issues that dominated website presentations. The first positioned breast augmentation as a solution to a deficient breast. Reworking the breast allows possibilities for women to construct revised subjectivities, within socially constrained and gendered norms, dominated by idealized female forms. The second positioned breast augmentation as an elective choice of neoliberal consumerism, constrained by gendered expertise, and a lack of information about the risks and complications of this surgery. We reveal how cosmetic surgery websites selling breast augmentation are complex medicalized sites, raising important issues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which public sector research scientists make sense of and seek to develop their careers within their current organizational, policy, social and cultural contexts. It argues that to access such understandings, both structure and agency and the relationship between them need to be considered. Using empirical evidence from research in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, this paper further develops Barley's (1989) structuration model of career. It highlights the diverse (and frequently intersecting) institutional contexts in which research scientists seek to develop their careers, and their characteristic modes of engagement with such contexts, and utilizes the concept of career scripts to illustrate the dynamic interaction between these dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, the major models of acculturation underpinning the settlement process for new immigrants have been developed within cultural psychology. Yet, implicit in immigration is a change of physical, political, cultural, societal and economic context, which impacts immigrants' daily occupations; occupations being the everyday activities in which people engage. Utilising an occupational perspective, this paper resituates understandings and models of acculturation as a measure of successful settlement, in the New Zealand context. The study, based in the discipline of occupational science, explored the process by which 25 Indian immigrant women engaged in occupations when settling in New Zealand. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and participant observations and analysed using grounded theory methods to uncover how and when the women engaged in occupations to facilitate their settlement. In this paper, three vignettes are presented which reveal acculturation as a transactional process embedded within time and across social and environmental contexts. The findings further uncover complexities of acculturation and the lack of agency afforded to immigrants in their choice of acculturative strategy, when situated within the bicultural context of New Zealand society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gender order and heteronormativity as salient ideological structures affecting identity construction and agency in a study abroad context. Drawing on a multi-layered case study of Hugo (a French university exchange student in New Zealand), I examine interactional and ethnographic data to shine light on processes involved in negotiating sexuality and gender identities in both the host and home contexts. Specifically, the analysis allows insights into the development of agency within changing structural environments during and after study abroad, and makes the case for a recognition of the force of ideological constraints. At the same time, I show that 'seeds of agency', sparked by a destabilisation of habitus, are planted in the study abroad context and argue that crossing borders can be the impetus for a liberating ontological excavation of what might be possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the findings of the qualitative phase of a New Zealand longitudinal study on vulnerable young people’s transitions to adulthood. The young people were aged between 12 and 17 years at the time of the first interview. The paper focuses on one key finding, how youth enact agency through their relationships with significant others: families, social workers, teachers and care workers. These youth had experienced sustained exposure to harm including abuse, violence, addictions, disengagement from school and mental health issues. The qualitative interviews focused on young people’s experiences with services (child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and education support services) their key transitions, and the strategies they used to locate support and resources. The thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that a search for agency was a central motif in young people’s experiences. This was reflected in three thematic clusters: making sense of the world, having a voice and acting on the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the possibilities for adult educators to exercise professional agency in contexts which have become dominated by neoliberalism. It draws on research undertaken in England and New Zealand which investigated the impact of global discourses and policies on experienced adult educators whose philosophy of practice was orientated towards personal or social transformation. The narratives of four adult educators illustrate the impact of policies in both counties. They also demonstrate how globalising policies create dilemmas for practice which adult educators accommodate or resist. The paper discusses how different responses were linked to adult educators' biographies, their philosophical perspectives and theoretical underpinnings, their assessment of the possibilities for manoeuvre in their current context and their view of future. It suggests some of the challenges posed by different forms of resistance and argues for the importance of a philosophical and theoretical understanding in sustaining professional agency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract In this paper we reflect on discussions with people of advanced age in Āotearoa New Zealand, and draw on theoretical frameworks of resilience and place in old age, to explore insights about the ways older people maintain quality of life and health. Twenty community-dwelling people of advanced age (85+) were recruited in 2015–16 from a large multidisciplinary longitudinal study of advanced age. These twenty participated in interviews about health in advanced age, impact of illnesses, interactions with clinicians, access to information, support for managing health, and perceptions of primary care, medications, and other forms of assistance. We use a positioning theory framework drawing on thematic and narrative analysis to understand the dynamic ways people in advanced age position themselves and the ways they age well through speech acts and storylines. People in advanced age saw themselves as challenged, rather than threatened, by adversities, and positioned themselves as able to draw on a lifetime of experience and resourcefulness and collaborations with supporters to deal with challenges. Key strategies include downplaying illness and resisting biomedical discourses of complexity, positioning embodied selves as having agency, and creative adaptation in the face of loss. People in advanced age exhibit resilience, maintaining wellbeing, autonomy and good physical and mental quality of life even while living with challenges such as functional decline and multi-morbidities. These findings have significance for supporters of older people, emphasising the need to move away from a narrow focus on problems to working together WITH people in advanced age to offer a more holistic approach that encourages and enhances adaptation and flexibility, rather than rigid and counterproductive coping patterns. Highlights • Older people position themselves as active co-managers in their support arrangements. • Framing problems as challenges not threats facilitates older people's resourcefulness. • People in old age adapt resiliently to health conditions as part of living and ageing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese students have comprised a large part of higher degree research students in several English speaking countries. Their supervision experiences, however, have not been fully examined. Using semi-structured interviews with 24 student participants, this study explores the supervision experiences of Chinese overseas doctoral students studying in New Zealand, particularly focusing on how they handle challenges and difficulties and how they develop themselves in the supervision process. The themes of agency and autonomy emerged, challenging the stereotype of Chinese international students with learning and social deficits. The students were not a homogeneous group. We argue it is not necessary to overemphasise the impact of cultural differences on the supervisory relationship and that sometimes personal characteristics are more significant than cultural factors in shaping supervision experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For queer ethnic young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, the intersections of family, culture, religion, race, and migration status make disclosing queerness a complex and fraught journey. Qualitative face to face, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 43 gender and sexually diverse ethnic participants between 18 and 35 years of age living in Aotearoa who shared their experiences, considerations, and decisions on how, to whom, and whether they disclosed their queerness. The findings showed that queer ethnic young people are agentic in searching for secure spaces to be queer, and being housed and safe were among the primary considerations when deciding to come out. Disclosing queerness was not seen as compulsory or obligatory and was understood in the context of a person's circumstances. Protecting the status of family and maintaining relationships and cultural traditions took precedence over the desire to declare one's sexual orientation or gender identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial teacher education (ITE) is critical to shaping New Zealand's education and social futures, and has the potential to do more. In particular there is a need for reflection on ways in which ITE might be restructured and reconceptualised to make a bigger contribution to participation, achievement and outcomes at higher levels by Māori and Pasifika learners. While a discourse of equity provides the theoretical underpinning for pursuing education outcomes that are more just and fair, the economics of 'parity' may provide the greater opportunity to accelerate the pace of change. Government funding for tertiary education now operates on the expectation that tertiary organisations (including ITE) will ensure that Māori and Pasifika students participate and achieve at all levels at least on a par with other learners (Tertiary Education Commission, 2012). Given the current context, what is the role of ITE? Is ITE part of the problem or the solution for equity? This paper offers ideas towards a contemporary model of equity through initial teacher education based on the interplay between structural and conceptual changes. From a critical theory base, a model for equity through ITE is explored, with four interdependent action areas: plan for impact, resource for parity, build equity concepts, and engage with high-quality research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost two decades student voice has been used and enacted in educational settings for a range of purposes. Student voice theorists have framed it in sociocultural, social constructionist and poststructural terms. It has been located in a range of schooling discourses and there have been powerful critiques of instrumentalist uses of student voice. It has been reified for its potential to leverage schooling reform, associated with accountability, governmentality and technologies of control, and also heralded as a process to activate radical collegiality in educational settings. This article investigates how school leaders from Aotearoa/New Zealand discursively locate the complex and contested construct of student voice in their schooling settings. Drawing data from principal interviews, discourses inherent in school leader comments are analysed to consider the contribution of student voice. A consideration is provided of how young people are ascribed positions as agents in contemporary Aotearoa schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first experimental test of the potential of natural disasters to produce identity fusion, we asked residents of Christchurch, New Zealand, to recall their experience of the city’s devastating 2011 earthquake. Compared to a control condition, recall increased participants’ fusion with their community as a function of the fear they felt and, independently, of the personal harm they suffered; fusion, in turn, mediated their intentions to donate time and money to the community. An exploratory analysis also revealed stronger fusion effects among participants who attributed the event to supernatural agency. The results show that fusion is not dependent on evidence of intergroup conflict, but also raise new questions about the importance of agentic attributions and search for meaning in the fusion process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Most studies of growing up with a long-term condition focus on older children and adolescents and are condition-specific. Relatively few studies address the experiences of children in middle childhood or consider their experience across a range of conditions, countries, and health settings. This study aimed to explore children's perceptions and understandings of how their lives are shaped (or not) by a long-term condition and its associated management. Design and methods A qualitative, participatory methodology using autodriven photoelicitation interviews (PEIs) with 45 purposively recruited children (6-12 years) with long-term conditions (e.g., hemophilia, arthritis, Crohn's disease), from England, New Zealand, and Australia was utilized. PEI facilitated the construction of inductively derived understandings of the children's experiences as the children had control over creating and then selecting which photographs to discuss with the researcher. Results Interpretive thematic analysis of the interviews and content analysis of the photographs resulted in an overarching theme, 'It's not who I am ...' but it is part of me, and three subthemes: getting on with my life; the special value of family, friendship, support, and comfort; and things that get in the way of getting on. Across all ages and the three countries, the children actively projected their self-concept as 'well' children and they strove, through their photographs and their accompanying explanations of their lives, to emphasize that they were 'normal' children. They were active social agents who demonstrated their capacity to shape parts of their lives interdependently with their parents and the requirements of their condition. Practice implications Pediatric nurses should be aware of the importance that children with long-term conditions place on projecting and protecting their sense of being normal and ensure that when they engage with children that they take account of the children's understandings and efforts to live a life constrained but not limited by the condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of energy literacy (knowledge, attitudes, and intended behaviour) and agency of New Zealand children (age 9–10) were investigated through thematic and exploratory statistical analyses of interviews (October 2011–April 2012) with 26 children, their parents and teachers, focus groups and photo elicitation. The children knew that electricity costs money and saw it as a finite resource. Half could name an energy source but few knew of any associated environmental issues. Most of the children had a positive attitude towards saving electricity, but did not intend to save energy to a further extent (low intended behaviour) and were not influencing their families to conserve energy (low agency). The children were learning about energy informally from a variety of sources, and acquired their attitudes mostly from talking to their parents. The results highlight the need for energy education for citizenship at school and conversations about energy both there and at home. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective: To examine whether being an organizer in a community organizing program improves personal agency and self-reported mental health outcomes among low-income Pacific Island youth in Auckland, New Zealand.Method: Counties Manukau Health initiated a community organizing campaign led and run by Pacific Island youth. We used interviews, focus groups and pre- and post-campaign surveys to examine changes among 30 youths as a result of the campaign.Results: Ten youths completed both pre- and post-campaign surveys. Eleven youths participated in focus groups, and four in interviews. Overall, youths reported an increased sense of agency and improvements to their mental health.Conclusions: Community organizing has potential as a preventive approach to improving mental health and developing agency over health among disempowered populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of apologising to patients harmed by adverse events has been a subject of interest and debate within medicine, politics, and the law since the early 1980s. Although apology serves several important social roles, including recognising the victims of harm, providing an opportunity for redress, and repairing relationships, compelled apologies ring hollow and ultimately undermine these goals. Apologies that stem from external authorities' edicts rather than an offender's own self-criticism and moral reflection are inauthentic and contribute to a 'moral flabbiness' that stunts the moral development of both individual providers and the medical profession. Following a discussion of a recent case from New Zealand in which a midwife was required to apologise not only to the parents but also to the baby, it is argued that rather than requiring health care providers to apologise, authorities should instead train, foster, and support the capacity of providers to apologise voluntarily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schooling was integral to the process of missionization in many of the places where it occurred throughout the world, yet it has scarcely been explored through the archaeological record. Excavations at Hohi, New Zealand, located a school founded by CMS missionaries in 1816, providing a material record that, in conjunction with documentary sources, enables reconstruction of schooling during the earliest stages of cultural engagement in this part of the Pacific. The motivations of both missionaries and indigenous Maori in the establishment and erratic progress of this school are examined, highlighting the role of indigenous agency in the cultural engagements that played out there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, there has been considerable discussion around the changing nature of tertiary education. Much of this work has described how tertiary institutions and academic staff are forced to compete, account for and justify their work within a narrowing neoliberal discourse characterised by competition and entrepreneurialism, the privileging of certain forms of knowledge above others and the monetisation of academic labour. Following from the postgraduate workshop at the New Zealand Geographical Society 2012 conference, we, as postgraduate students, provide a contribution to this discussion that explores how postgraduate students might 'perform powerfully' through collective action to enact a different university in an increasingly uncertain and entrepreneurial academic climate. We outline various forms of collective action to maximise postgraduate students' sense of agency and seek to highlight possibilities in an increasingly uncertain and entrepreneurial academic climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study identifies three perspectives of accountability in charitable organizations: agency, stewardship, and stakeholder in relation to the availability of financial information. To examine current accountability practices, 75 interviews and informal conversations were undertaken with participants in charities in New Zealand. Many of the interviewees operated under some form of stewardship milieu. They regarded the need to discharge accountability by providing financial information as a low priority. Education may provide a way to resolve this issue by advancing stakeholders’ perspectives of accountability. This could result in reduced support for charities that do not uphold a certain standard of financial information. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Struggles over indigeneity in Aotearoa/New Zealand have their roots in events that occurred before the creation of the nation. Ten years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of relations between Māori and colonial Britain, there was a massacre at the site of Takapuneke. The event helped to give birth to the nation and immediately started the struggle of Māori indigeneity against the increasingly politically dominant colonials. There are parallel struggles in contemporary New Zealand, as the country debates and attempts to rectify the concept of a bi-cultural society. These on-going struggles can help us understand how Māori are able to exercise agency and engage in practices that allow them to promote their indigeneity. The contemporary events around the site of the massacre at Takapuneke will illustrate such a struggle between the local Māori at Onuku and three bureaucratic and civic organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the discursive production of counsellor identity and practice through the operations of colonising and postcolonial discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand. It argues that constructs of cultural safety, tino rangatiratanga and Māori sovereignty, which arose as part of the postcolonial politics of life in Aotearoa, have achieved discursive status and both enable and restrain counsellor practice. This argument is informed by research that explored the discursive production of Pākehā counsellors' practice with non-Pākehā clients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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