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This paper explores the leadership styles of fourteen elected female politicians in executive government positions, as communicated through the official Instagram accounts that were in use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seven of them are, or were, heads of government, six are or were mayors, and one is the president of an autonomous region in Spain. These women are Angela Merkel (Germany), Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Sanna Marin (Finland), Mette Frederiksen (Denmark), Erna Solberg (Norway), Katrin Jakobsdottir (Iceland), Tsai Ing-Wen (Taiwan), Anne Hidalgo (Paris), Virginia Raggi (Rome), Ada Colau (Barcelona), Claudia López (Bogotá), Claudia Sheinbaum (Mexico City), London Breed (San Francisco) and Isabel Díaz Ayuso (Madrid Region). A comparative content analysis of 2,330 units was conducted over a 6-month period. The study analyses the hard or soft leadership style conveyed by the women politicians selected in relation to four variables: political ideology, generational affiliation, level of government and techniques used in communication. The results show that the values of the variables affect leadership styles; therefore, the assumption that all female politicians have a single leadership style is erroneous and related to gender stereotyping.

The field of gifted and talented studies has its origins in the intelligence quotient research of the late 19th and early 20th century. These psychological foundations remain a strong influence even though the field has since expanded to include other paradigms and greater diversity in conceptions of giftedness and talent. Some researchers argue that the field could benefit from greater interdisciplinary engagement, especially in studies of gifted and talented girls, which tend to include a focus on how gifted girls' external environments influence their emotional worlds. This article proposes that concepts developed by critical sociologist Pierre Bourdieu are useful for expanding and deepening understandings of the internal and external worlds of gifted and talented girls. It offers evidence from a recent qualitative study with academically gifted and talented teenaged girls in New Zealand. The results highlighted the marginalised position of the gifted and talented identity and the privileging of identities that were based on dispositions versus innate ability. The study also identified a hierarchy of valued forms of capital within the teenage girl social landscape and a resulting theorisation of an empowered gifted and talented girl habitus. This article demonstrates how Bourdieu's work is a constructive addition to the field.

The importance and need for education for sustainability (EfS) are recognised in the New Zealand Curriculum. Teachers face challenges, however, due to lack of support and professional learning about how to integrate EfS in school curricula. Social media can be used for teacher professional learning (TPL), and communication and resources can be combined to create flexible collaborative learning opportunities. However, there is little evidence to date of social media being used for TPL in EfS. Based on findings from a wider study exploring teachers' perceptions of professional learning through social media in EfS, this paper focuses on how social media facilitates flexible TPL in EfS. The study adopted a mixed-methods approach using questionnaires, interviews, and a combination of document analysis and interviews in three phases. Findings from Phases 1 and 2 suggest that participants see TPL through social media as offering flexibility, and being useful for collaborative learning and support for teachers. In Phase 3, these findings are used to design and establish TPL for EfS teachers using Google+ to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous interactions between teachers, EfS experts, and resources. Although participants understood the flexibility of social media for enabling collaboration and providing support opportunities in EfS, the use of social media for professional learning is particularly attractive for teachers who work in rural and remote areas.

Knowledge and abilities with social media technologies are perceived as critical premises for human development. Familiarity with different types of social media technologies has become pivotal for collaborative learning and successfully solving problems. This study examined the impact of social media technologies, compartmentalized into social media usage and students' attitudes towards social media usage, on their collaborative problem-solving (CPS) achievement by adopting the sample from the PISA 2015 dataset across 37 countries/regions. A three-level hierarchical linear model (HLM) was adopted to identify the significant factors related to CPS achievement. Results indicated that social media usage had a significant impact on CPS achievement and they are varied in terms of different learning contexts, different social media types (e.g., e-mails, social networking sites), and different purposes of social media use (leisure or academic use). Furthermore, students who had a more positive attitude toward social media were more likely to achieve higher CPS performance.

Citizen science is a research collaboration between scientists and volunteers who provide data for education, conservation, and environmental protection. Volunteers, often the locals in the area, provide data on species occurrence while researchers perform distribution mapping or other data analysis. Social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr can be used as platforms for the public to share their photos of species and for scientists to aid in identification. In this article, we show how social media groups can be used to generate data on species distribution of myxomycetes.

Public intellectuals today must be understood in relation to the concept of 'viral modernity', characterised by viral and open media and technologies of post-truth that reveal the dramatic transformations of the 'public', its forms and its future possibilities. The history, status and role of the public intellectual are constituted by both the network of law in liberal society and above all the primacy of the concept of freedom of expression. The task of public intellectuals was to define, analyse and protect these rights by speaking truth to power. Both Wittgenstein and Foucault as exemplary intellectuals distinguished themselves by problematising truth and showing that truth-telling is an aspect of self-transformation and the intellectual form of life.

E-learning emphasizes collaborative learning through the use of Web 2.0. The tools of Web 2.0 advocate open collaboration, interactive technology, and personalized learning that promotes expanding the scope of teacher/student/course interaction, as well as advancing the social construction of knowledge, an important component of socio-cultural theory. Using writing as inquiry, we investigated the usefulness of using Tumblr (a microblog) as a teaching tool for three cohorts of students across two countries. The multimedia format of Tumblr enhanced student interaction with the material and with each other, while increasing the digital competencies of our students and ourselves. Tumblr also allowed for a personalization of the self-guided learning, and fostered a dynamic online learning community.

This paper draws on a study that examined the experiences of four high-achieving Pasifika physiotherapy degree level students to identify factors contributing to their success. As peer students, they identified five approaches that assisted them to become high achievers within the tertiary environment. This paper refers specifically to these approaches as peer-based Pasifika pedagogies (PbPP) and broadly as culturally responsive practices. The aim of this paper is to examine how Pasifika pedagogies, such as PbPP provide culturally responsive practices that can address the 'culture of silence' while promoting the va relationality, the cultural nuances and norms of their worldview as well as aligning it with modern pedagogies or tools to enhance success among Pasifika students in the New Zealand tertiary education context.

In a teacher education context, this study considers the use of social media for building a professional online presence and learning network. This article provides an overview of uses of social media in teacher education, presents a case study of key processes in relation to professional online presence and learning networks, and highlights issues and challenges for wider consideration. Specific practical illustrations are provided, relating experiences when starting out with social media, integrating coursework challenges for student teachers, and considering feedback and future planning. Social media is used in teacher education for sharing content, discussing, and collaborating. There are challenges and risks with social media in an academic context. Students require differentiated scaffolding depending on their expertise and confidence. In terms of social implications, professionals are warned to safeguard online reputation, while making proactive use of social media to enhance learning networks.

This paper reports on a 2016-2019 study of 123 students in the most academic Year 9 class in a large, high-achieving New Zealand state boys' secondary school. The study asked the question: "What aspects of society, schools and teachers, home environment and your own intrapersonal qualities helped or hindered your achievement in at least one academic subject?" Data were gathered through the completion of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, either in focus groups, or individually. Arguably, the most important findings related to participant perceptions of the greatest influence supporting achievement and the single most common factor identified as hindering achievement. The greatest help was identified to be students' own intrapersonal characteristics, and the greatest hindrance was identified to be schools and teachers. This paper reports on the main findings of the research with particular emphasis on those with relevance to educators. It also considers what the major implications are for educational practice in New Zealand schools.

Intermediate and high school students spend a large amount of time using mobile devices (Lauricella, Cingel, Blackwell, Wartella, & Conway, 2014), and such devices are increasingly being integrated into our school system. We conducted a series of student-led focus groups, with this early adolescent cohort, in order to better understand their experiences of the recent technological shift. Four main ideas emerged from a thematic analysis of three focus group discussions: restrictions, student-led technology use, bypassing the restrictions, and connectivity as a need. Direct quotes from students and our analysis of these themes suggest that young people should be included, to a much greater extent, in discussions about the evolution of teaching practices in today's digital age. Clear benefits and risks linked to greater use of mobile technologies were evident in our discussions, the implications of which are discussed along with limitations of the current study and proposed future research.

This opinion piece aims to grow awareness of a range of technological initiatives that are supporting Maori language regeneration. These initiatives have been chosen because they have communities of users. This piece could be useful to educators who want to learn about the options that are available in this area, or students of Maori language for similar reasons.

The motivation to adopt innovative communication and e-learning practices in education settings can be stimulated by events such as natural disasters. Education institutions in the Pacific Rim cannot avoid the likelihood of natural disasters that could close one or more buildings on a campus and affect their ability to continue current educational practices. For the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the impetus to innovate was a series of seismic events in 2010 and 2011. This paper presents findings from studies that identified resilient practices in this organisation, which was a "late adopter" of e-learning. The findings indicate that the combined use of social media and e-learning to support teaching, learning, communication, and related organisational practices fosters resilience for students, staff, and organisations in times of crises. The recommendations presented are relevant for all educational organisations that could be affected by similar events.

This article describes an innovative approach to professional development designed to challenge teachers' pedagogic practice and assumptions about educational technologies such as social media. Developing effective technology-related professional development for teachers can be a challenge for institutions and facilitators who provide this support. To contend with this challenge, we drew on Bain's (2004) "baker's dozen" questions to guide the design of an online postgraduate course for teachers. This article discusses the design of the online course and what teachers came to understand about the relationship between social media and teaching as a result of completing the course activities. This small-scale case study utilised qualitative data from three cohorts of participating teachers and found that teachers do change their pedagogical practice and assumptions about social media for their own teaching contexts when they engage in course activities that challenge their existing mental models and encourage critical reasoning and reflection on learning.

Video ethics in educational research involving children is a recent topic that has arisen since the increase in the use of visual mediums in research (such as photovoice and video) especially with the development of new and ubiquitous internet technologies and social media. This paper emerged as an expressed concerned by a group of scholars associated with the new Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy (Brill) that was established in 2016. The paper is the result of a collective writing process over a period of a few months that discusses visual studies in education and visual ethics in relation to qualitative research in education, and as it applies to children. The article also uses the newly established convention of open review, publishing the results with the paper.

This research presents a virtual exchange project between two tertiary institutions in New Zealand and Finland with 26 participants who were intermediate German language students. During the project, the students used a closed Facebook group to post about given topics; the posts combined video, audio, and text that adhered to multimodal meaning-making theory. The theoretical framework was task-based language teaching underpinned by the notion of engagement, social media in language learning, and telecollaboration. Language learning was viewed through a socio-cultural lens. A mixed-methods approach was used to collect data including questionnaires, interviews, and FB-logs. The qualitative data was analysed by content analysis method. The results indicate that the students perceived FB as an applicable tool for community building and they enjoyed the variation it brought to the course. Collaboration, use of communication tools, authenticity, and teachers' support fostered student engagement.

Taking a social practice view of literacy, this study examines and describes the everyday literacy practices of a recently arrived Syrian refugee to Aotearoa New Zealand. It highlights the individual, home and community literacy competencies that are often overlooked in adult literacy education. Data was collected from interviews with the participant at home including observations of literacy and multi-lingual practices. Analysis reveals key theoretical perspectives, captures how the participant's literacy practices have changed as a result of changing demands and the particular cultural and contextual aspects of their literacies. The study supports the complexity of literacy and language skills that refugees need for successful resettlement. It calls for a greater awareness of alternative understandings of literacy, challenges the often deficit views of refugees as helpless victims and advocates an inclusive approach to address problems and possibilities for learners surviving trauma.

In Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally, current adult literacy and numeracy assessment is skills oriented; at the same time, there is a growing interest in more balanced understanding by also looking at the broad wellbeing-related outcomes of literacy education. In the research project reported below adult literacy learners in three community literacy programmes were invited to join a class Facebook group to describe the everyday outcomes of their literacy learning. The article focuses on the use of Facebook within the broader study. It discusses a range of privacy and technology challenges as well as learner engagement with Facebook in the classroom context, raising some significant questions about its value. The article explores recent theories of context and their pedagogical relevance. It concludes with implications for social media in adult literacy teaching and learning, aiming to involve marginalised adults in critical inquiry that builds their identity as informed participants in civic life.

This article is premised on research that suggests there is a gap between technology use for teaching and learning and the technology used in assessment. Digital technology such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, and news feeds are increasingly used in teaching and learning. On the other hand, assessment is often only in traditional essay form and frequently via pen and paper. This article examines the complex nature of multimodal design and argues for assessment that has constructive alignment, which sets out the interdependence of learning outcomes, teaching, and assessment where all three are aligned as equal partners. The aim of the research described was to investigate whether teacher-learners believed there was alignment between learning outcomes, activities, and assessment that utilized digital media technology. This article presents findings from a small-scale case study that drew on qualitative data from Student Evaluations of the Paper and from online surveys from four cohorts of participating teachers in a postgraduate adult literacy, language, and numeracy professional development program. There were three important findings from the data that indicated the importance of firstly having alignment of digital technology and course design outcomes, activities, and assessments and that this was clearly visible to the participants. The second finding indicated the content was relevant to the teacher-learners and involved them in constructing their own learning through authentic and practical activities and assessment. The third finding indicated that course outcomes, activities, and assessment tasks were aligned with multi-literacy skills. It is argued that academics design courses that are constructively aligned connecting learners with outcomes, activities, and assessment, which include an explicit focus on teaching the multi-literacy skills required in a world that is becoming increasingly digital.

New perspectives on how digital networks can be understood as an environment for career enactment are explored in this article, in particular, through using critical perspectives on technology, especially in the context of prevailing instrumental perspectives in the majority of the career development literature. Thus, the narratives of people using digital networks for their careers were explored using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The results are captured in three main themes or critical discourses: the speed and scale of digital environments, game-like features of social media interactions and a divide between offline and online worlds. These are presented as sites for critical investigation and are aligned with technological and socio-cultural critical theories.

Children's transition from an early childhood education setting to school needs to involve children and their families to best support the family in this time of change. This article focuses on a case study from doctoral research exploring the potential of Facebook™ to create a virtual community of practice to support children and their families' transition to school. Analysis of data supported other research about online communities in relation to the stages of participation that families progressed through as they developed a sense of belonging, both in the online community and within the physical and social spaces of the new entrant classroom. The findings also indicate the significance of teachers being responsive to families' needs and interests and that a social media platform can be a very successful tool for supporting families and children's transition into a new environment. Drawing on the concepts of Gilly Salmon's (2001) five-stage model (for e-learning); the article argues that social media can provide opportunities for families to co-construct and support their sense of belonging in a new environment.

Recycling is often included in lists of things that can be done to mitigate climate change. Recycling is not a "bad" thing, but recycling alone is an insufficient response to the complex problems posed by climate change. This article takes the reader through the journey of an experienced teacher who began with a hopeful vision to include climate change in her school's programme, meandered through a myriad distracting recycling schemes, until she reached a deeper understanding of the barriers to climate change education and the role of emotions in these programmes. The article concludes with her three key lessons for future climate change curriculum projects.

This paper investigates the use of "Facebook" for out-of-class, informal language learning. 190 New Zealand university language students (Chinese, German, French, Japanese and Spanish) completed an anonymous online questionnaire on (1) their perceptions of "Facebook" as a multilingual environment, (2) their online writing practices and (3) their views on the educational value of their experiences. Findings indicate that language students are using a range of "Facebook" features to expose themselves to the languages they study (L2) and to communicate in their L2 with native speaker "Facebook" friends. The use of the social networking site varied according to proficiency-levels of the participants (beginner, intermediate and advanced levels), strength of social ties with native speaker "Facebook" friends and personal attitudes towards the site. Learning experiences on "Facebook" were not perceived as useful for the formal language learning context which suggests the need for bridging strategies between informal and formal learning environments.

This article discusses CLICK, a collaborative theatre project between the Mess Up The Mess Theatre Company in Wales, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, the Australian Theatre for Young People, and Inspired Productions in New Zealand. This case study demonstrates the value of using arts education to bring together young people from multiple countries across the world through the use of social media and theatre for development work, and to explore issues of diversity and identity through Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC). This article will explore the use of social media within arts education and global youth work practice to promote critical social dialogue around sensitive issues as a catalyst for positive social change.

The objectives of this paper are to identify the financial skills small business owners believe necessary to be successful in business, and to establish whether there is a role for secondary school accounting in contributing to the learning of these skills. A combination of a social network website and snowball sampling technique was used to invite small business owners to participate in the study. The social network website was used to promote the study, with research participants being directed to it for further information. Semi-structured interviews with 18 owners of 17 small businesses situated in the North Island of New Zealand were undertaken. English and maths were identified as being the most important subjects studied at secondary school that contributed to interviewees' understanding the financial side of their business. The small number of business owners interviewed means that the findings of this study may not be representative of the whole population of New Zealand small businesses owners.

Parents and prospective parents who speak a language other than English in New Zealand are in something of an information desert when it comes to how and why they might go about raising their children bilingually. While the official languages, Te Reo Maori and New Zealand Sign Language, have special status among the languages of New Zealand, other languages are viewed very much as the responsibility of ethnolinguistic communities. To support the intergenerational transmission of minority languages in New Zealand, research-informed material has been created for dissemination in a website, an associated Facebook page and a series of lecture-workshops for parents and professionals which have been made available in digital form in this website. Workshops continue to be offered to professionals such as speech-language therapists, early childhood educators, midwives, doctors, and nurses who work with families with young children. Questions asked during these workshops help to select the myths about multilingualism we need to address in this outreach to irrigate and green the information desert. Already, a bilingual French class and a Swedish playgroup have been set up as direct results of the parents' workshop events. Individual parents have reported feeling empowered to persevere in their efforts to raise their children as speakers of their language. Invitations to contribute to education programs for the professionals who work close to young children are beginning to arrive.

Aim/Purpose: The aim of the study was to investigate how the facilitation of a vocational lecturer (teacher) influenced the engagement of fifteen carpentry students during their learning. This facilitation occurred while the students used smartphones and mobile applications to create visual assessment ePortfolios. Background: To encourage independence and peer collaboration, when creating their visual ePortfolios, the lecturer decided to get his students to use BYOD mobile devices, and social media applications to record their learning of technical skills. His intention was to make use of the devices they brought to class, and to enable greater autonomy and flexibility in the learning process by eliminating the need for digital cameras and proprietary software they had previously been using. The lecturer also saw this as an opportunity to provide more frequent and immediate formative feedback, and to encourage students to share their work. Methodology: A Participatory Action Research design was used with fifteen certificate level students. They were guided in the use of three social media applications (apps) -- Facebook, Evernote and Google Plus (G+) that they could use on their Smartphones to develop ePortfolios for assessment. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected during four Action Cycles, and the outcomes are portrayed as a case study. Several sampling methods were used: a student presurvey, and post-survey, observations and reflections by the lecturer, focus group interviews with students and an individual interview with the lecturer. For this article, a framework based on established factors of student engagement was used to examine the findings to establish the impact of the teacher. Contribution: This paper extends the body of research about student engagement with a focus on the importance of the teacher in supporting 21st Century vocational learning and ePortfolio assessment using mobile technologies. Findings: The majority of students were comfortable with the learning approach using the three applications and their mobile phones, and felt confident with the technologies. Overall, they found the learning approach was more convenient and made the experience easier, as well as enjoyable and fun. Students believed that mobile learning helped their learning and assisted them to connect with others. All three apps were considered easy to access. Facebook was the most preferred app with Google Plus (G+) the least liked. Evernote was favoured for its image editing and annotation features. Students responded well to the lecturer's teaching methods and the learning environment he created. He was found to be pivotal to the learning process. As a result of the lecturer's learning and assessment design, students enhanced their achievement rates. He scaffolded their use of mobile technologies through: demonstrating and modelling each app at the start of the cycle of use, use of technologies during their learning, and by providing prompt, frequent and timely feedback on their ePortfolio work. Since he enabled them to use devices familiar to them, that is, smartphones, he helped them to develop autonomy and confidence. The lecturer was supportive and enthusiastic and encouraged students through structured and well-designed collaborative activities to engage in active learning that challenged them, and encouraged collaboration. He guided them in their learning through regularly interacting with them to provide feedback, and he also added an aspect of competitiveness to the activities to motivate them. Recommendations for Practitioners: Teaching staff are advised to seek guidance when designing learning activities using mobile technologies, and to access technical support. Cochrane's (2014) six critical success factors for designing learning using mobile devices would assist. Also, it would be useful to carry out a needs analysis with students and other stakeholders beforehand. Recommendations for Researchers: Participatory Action Research is a robust methodology for trialling innovative learning strategies because when using this approach, researchers can be immediately responsive to the needs of the participants. Impact on Society: An understanding of the factors associated with student engagement and high self-efficacy for using mobile technologies is essential for teachers tasked with designing contemporary learning activities in today's higher education learning environments. Encouraging the use of mobile devices that students own, and have familiarity using, helps to make learning and teaching more sustainable. Future Research: Further research is needed to measure the impact of factors associated with student engagement, on the design of student-centred learning using contemporary technologies. It would also be helpful to examine the implications of student engagement measures as predictors of excellence in teaching, and in the development of learner capability (e.g., critical thinking, social justice awareness, reasoning, etc.).

This article describes one aspect of a research project that sought to describe and interpret the perspectives of university colleagues who are community-engaged, about their community-engagement, within one research-intensive university in New Zealand. We explored the communication devices and processes used during community engagement, with a focus on social media, and in the context of identifying the professional development needs of colleagues within our institution. Our research involved an inductive analysis of 25 interviews with community-engaged university people, supported by context-generating discussions and workshops. Our data reveals reoccurring themes involving varying degrees of successful targeted use of social media, disappointment in the performance of social media, and confidence in traditional communication approaches. Overall we identified rational decision-making to find workable approaches, in an academic environment supported by skill transfer from private life to work life. We discuss the implications of our research to the roles and practices of academic development.

This article explores the various ways that teachers and learners can navigate different learning worlds with the support of digital tools. Increasingly, teaching and learning takes place in spaces beyond the classroom, whether physical or virtual. Place, navigation and movement have all been recognised as important concepts in approaches to understanding how we learn in and across places. With our postgraduate cohort of in-service teachers from across New Zealand, we have been exploring forms of learning that engage in the exploration of other spaces, using a range of digital tools. Google Tour Builder has allowed creative global navigation in a virtual space, Google Expeditions has given teachers an opportunity to integrate virtual reality into their classrooms, and Actionbound has exposed them to the use and design of situated outdoor learning activities with geolocated augmented content. Our article is based around participant interactions on social media that express their responses and creativity using mobility in physical spaces and the navigation of virtual spaces. Based on these interactions, we reflect on the nature of pedagogy in technology-redefined activities that involve senses of both place and navigation, structuring our analysis along two continua of physical accessibility and the extent of world knowledge.

Mobile and social media over the last decade has created significant shifts in society: how we communicate and collaborate, and in learning and teaching. This paper discusses a study that investigated how mobile social media tools and affordances could be harnessed to facilitate a student-determined learning experience (heutagogy). A design-based research (DBR) approach was utilised to analyse and investigate a set of draft design principles that was established in collaboration with a group of teachers and literature. The draft design principles guided the design of a first year course that was iteratively implemented and evaluated over 2 years with two different cohorts of students. As a key outcome of the DBR, a set of refined design principles is presented. These principles are capable of guiding other practitioners in designing and facilitating student-determined learning in authentic contexts using mobile devices, and social media affordances.

Journalism schools are under pressure to look beyond traditional teaching methods to prepare students for the post-Internet, rapidly evolving news landscape. Heutagogy is a net-centric teaching method in which learners are highly autonomous and self-determined. In this article, Participatory Action Research theory was applied within a heutagogical framework to the redevelopment of a social media course for journalism students at AUT University, New Zealand. The findings form the basis of recommendations across the wider journalism curriculum, and there are also implications for other areas of communication studies, public relations, and online or broadcast media.

In this article, we present the development of a framework for supporting and facilitating collaborative networks of reflective practice using mobile social media. Developed throughout a two-year collaborative mobile learning project #NPF14LMD, the framework has subsequently been used to support two wider international networks of mobile learning researchers and practitioners. The #NPF14LMD project was a national project comprised of three universities and three polytechnics across New Zealand. One of the goals of the #NPF14LMD project was to create a collaborative network of practice across the six institutions participating in the project. The network provided a support and communication structure linking the six institutional communities of practice, enabling sharing of their experiences and a sense of belonging to a wider national and international community. This article outlines the use of mobile social media to facilitate the #NPF14LMD network, and the subsequent application of this framework to support two international networks.

A growing body of research illustrating the detrimental consequences of bullying has led to many antibullying interventions being developed. Despite good intentions, evidence suggests that such programs vary considerably in their efficacy. The current study examines the social discourse around bullying in the New Zealand environment in order to see whether underlying beliefs may undermine or influence approaches to mitigate bullying. The study employed an exploratory, qualitative approach of social discourses in the media. Using 31 online media articles, and 501 related online comments, methods of applied thematic analysis revealed three main themes which captured the beliefs that (a) victims of bullying are weak, (b) perpetrators of bullying are evil, and (c) bullying is a normal and, in some ways, acceptable behavior. Such findings illustrate the role that societal beliefs play in shaping the environment in which bullying occurs, and have important implications for future bullying research and interventions.

We argue that Garrett and Segall's concepts of "doing school" and "pushing back" are valuable tools for analysing pre-service teachers' political views of neoliberal education reforms such as the introduction of charter schools. We extend Garrett and Segall's conceptualization by hybridizing "doing school" and "pushing back" in order to move beyond a simplistic celebration of student resistance, which often overlooks forms of resistance that are compliant with the status quo, in this case the neoliberal status quo. We analyse participants' political views as they emerged in a debate about charter schools in New Zealand. Garrett and Segall's concepts, in conjunction with poststructuralist theories of subjectivity, are deployed as analytical tools for understanding the complexity of students' political subjectivities in a debate conducted on a Facebook page set up for that purpose.

This paper proposes a design based research (DBR) framework for designing mobile virtual reality learning environments. The application of the framework is illustrated by two design-based research projects that aim to develop more authentic educational experiences and learner-centred pedagogies in higher education. The projects highlight the first two phases of the DBR framework, involving the exploration of mobile virtual reality (VR) to enhance the learning environment, and the design of prototype solutions for the different contexts. The design of the projects is guided by a set of design principles identified from the literature.

Although educational online technologies (EOTs) present an extraordinary range of higher education opportunities, significant gaps in knowledge about their purpose and functionality may impede levels of adoption. As the demand for online learning grows, it is critical that tertiary education institutes (TEIs) address gaps in knowledge by developing their understandings of EOT applications. This paper aimed to identify, and describe the application of a range of EOTs popularly used in blended tertiary environments (BTEs). Through qualitatively designed semi-structured interviews with 13 blended learning experts from New Zealand, Australia and Canada, and a 5-step analyses of data, it verified the use of 35 different EOTs in BTEs, including Adobe Connect, Blackboard, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Their key characteristics were summarised using a multi-dimensional taxonomy, called the Pentexonomy, which synergised a range of perspectives into a robust, contextualised, and multi-dimensional framework for categorising EOTs. An outline of recommendations for the effective use of some of these EOTs was also provided. As EOTs advance and usage accelerates, the outcomes of this research will assist TEIs in their efforts to keep abreast of EOT developments, make informed choices about EOT use, and contribute to the delivery of relevant, meaningful EOT support.

This research made a phenomenological interpretation of key stakeholders' experiences with educational online technologies (EOT), to determine their present EOT needs and challenges and provide a basis from which to propose methods for effective EOT support. It analysed the EOT experiences of 10 students and 10 teachers from New Zealand and Australia and interpreted the meanings of the phenomena through an abstraction of local and global themes. This paper is the fifth in a series of six publications that presents the local themes. It documents the interpretations of teachers' experiences with other teachers, in reference to their use of two different types of EOTs: learning management systems (Blackboard), and online networking tools (Twitter and Facebook). These interpretations, which include descriptions of teachers' EOT challenges, helped to inform a set of recommendations for effective EOT use, to assist institutes in their efforts to address EOT challenges and meet stakeholders' needs.

There is an ongoing tension for scientists when deciding to engage with the public about their research as many scientists view direct participation as peripheral to their role. Pressures of time, lack of support by management and a lack of communicative skills are identified by scientists as reasons for not committing to communicative initiatives. We aimed to explore and explain the organizational culture of a research community that activity communicates with the public and has an international research culture. The Centre for Brain Research (CBR) was identified as a model and was analyzed using the concept of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). Twelve participants (scientists (8), clinicians (1), community liaison people (2)) and an identified director of the organization were interviewed. Direct quotes from interview were used to provide examples of the characteristics of CAS for example a variety of agents interacting, adapting the learning within the organization, non-linear dynamic behavior that is a result of aggregates of groups with actions emerging from self-organizing behavior and the development of an emergent culture. This analysis showed that complexity theory was a suitable framework for analyzing the sustainable communicative organization within CBR.

The emerging adolescents of today are required to navigate challenges and risks quite different from those faced by their parents and teachers. The usual trials of adolescence have been magnified and transformed, in large part due to the development of information and communication technology, and the rapid rise of online social networking. The rate of change can leave its most ardent followers struggling to keep up, and this can be even harder for those not immersed in its effects. This calls into question how effective parents and teachers can be in taking a supportive role in developing self-efficacy among their children and students when it comes to online challenges. Adult/parent mediation is an important factor in mitigating the level of risk and harm a child experience online. This research gives voice to 9-12-year-old children's experience of being online, and the role important adults in their lives play in this experience.

This paper is part of a phenomenological study that examined teachers' and students' experiences using Educational Online Technologies (EOTs) in Blended Tertiary Environments (BTEs). Its aim was to understand how EOT engagement was experienced, to inform insights on EOT interactions, challenges, functionality and benefits. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 teachers and 10 students from New Zealand and Australia, and their EOT experiences explored, under a range of different interactions. A series of six papers, each based on a specific interaction type, detailed their experiences. This paper reports on teachers' EOT interactions with their students, in reference to three types of EOTs: Learning management systems, online video platforms, and online networking tools. Key aspects of the research approach adopted were detailed in the first of these six papers, and included the research questions, research significance, and research methodology. The strategies and rationales for participant selection, participant numbers, inclusion and exclusion criteria, data collection, and data analysis were also explained (Tuapawa, n.d.-a).

Unstructured data in social media is as part of the "big data" spectrum. Unstructured data in Social media can provide useful insights into social phenomena and citizen opinions, both of which are critical to government policy and businesses decisions. Teachers of business intelligence and analytics commonly use quantitative data from sales, marketing, finance and manufacturing to demonstrate various analytics concepts in a business context. However, researchers have seldom used social media data to analyze social behavior and communication. In this study we aim to demonstrate an assessment structure for teaching social media analytics concepts with the goal of analyzing and interpreting social media content. We base this assessment on forum postings regarding two recent events: the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand, and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The aim of the assessment is to discover social insights. We base the assessment structure on Cooper's Analytics Framework to cover such concepts as term frequency (TF), term frequency-inverse document frequency (TFIDF), data visualization, sentiments and opinions analysis, the Nearest Neighbor K-NN classification algorithm, and Information Diffusion theory. We review how the students performed on the assignment that used this assessment, and we make recommendations for future studies.

The advent of web 2.0 has enabled new forms of collaboration centred upon user-generated content, however, mobile social media is enabling a new wave of social collaboration. Mobile devices have disrupted and reinvented traditional media markets and distribution: iTunes, Google Play and Amazon now dominate music industry distribution channels, Twitter has reinvented journalism practice, ebooks and ibooks are disrupting book publishing, while television and movie industry are disrupted by iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, and Vimeo. In this context the authors critique the changes brought about in a case study of film and television higher education from initial explorations of student-generated mobile movie production to subsequent facilitation of international student mobile media co-production teams supported by the development of an international Community of Practice, illustrating new forms of post-web 2.0 pedagogy.

COVID‐19 brought public health challenges to the public transport system throughout the world. As a result, a range of response measures were implemented to ensure the safety of passengers while maintaining a functioning system. This paper explores the responses of public transport agencies in New Zealand's metropolitan cities (Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington) to the COVID‐19 pandemic by examining their physical and communication measures. We analysed public transport agencies' websites to understand the response measures implemented, including the accessibility of COVID‐19‐related information, and the communication of information via websites and social media platforms. The results show that 13 service responses were implemented across the three public transport agencies, with Auckland implementing the most measures. Seven infrastructural responses were implemented, with Christchurch implementing all seven. Wellington was found to be the public transport agency that used social media the most during the pandemic. The website accessibility findings suggest that the more accessible a public transport agency's website was, the less information was present. The research concludes that all three public transport agencies in New Zealand performed reasonably well and were able to maintain a safe and responsive public transport system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]