http://hdl.handle.net/10292/4 Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:09:38 GMT 2010-07-20T05:09:38Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/837 Title: Risk and resilience: the role of risk and protective factors in the lives of young people over time Authors: Stanley, Peter Gordon Abstract: In 1998, 12 students, aged 11-12 years, were identified by primary schools in a socially disadvantaged area of New Zealand as being at risk of negative life outcomes, as a consequence of known adversities in their lives. The students were interviewed, as were their parents and teachers, and they also completed learning assessments and measures of personal and social concerns. The purpose of these evaluations was to identify risk and protective factors in the young people’s lives, and to make estimations of personal resilience. In 2008, nine of the original study participants, who were now aged 21-22 years and in emerging adulthood, were located and were interviewed again. The assessments addressed the participant’s current circumstances, and what had happened for them over the last ten years. The interviews also asked the participants to reflect about 12 resilience dimensions that have been identified in the literature (Masten & Coatsworth, 1998) and whether they considered that they were personally resilient. The recent interview data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (Smith & Osborn, 2008). The individual analyses show a rich diversity of life paths and, as well, three sets of themes were identified across the case studies; and they are personal relationships, contexts of development (schooling and education, culture, religion, and jobs and careers), and personhood and identity. A resilience model was derived from the integration of the data from the first and second assessments with contemporary resilience studies and theorising. The central idea of the model is that resilient functioning is determined by the nature and quality of relationships within, and across, developmental settings. As a corollary, it is hypothesised that interpersonal relationships influence individual executive functioning, and emotional regulation in particular; and that these cognitive and affective capacities can translate into goal seeking and other constructive actions. The explanation of the resilience model leads onto recommendations for further research on relationships that enhance personal functioning. There are also suggestions for social policy that follow from the exposition, and some guidelines for professional practice with children and families. Mon, 29 Mar 2010 01:12:29 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/837 2010-03-29T01:12:29Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/939 Title: Influences on teaching: Perceptions and experiences of university teachers Authors: Jiao, Xiaomin Abstract: This study attempts to deal with the complexity of academic life and what influences teachers and teaching in university. The case for the research rests on the premise that the complexities of the nature of influences and how they are perceived, experienced and responded to were underestimated and under-represented in the majority of previous studies in this area. The primary goal of this research is to offer a more holistic understanding of the phenomena by investigating perceptions, experiences and responses of a sample of 22 university teachers in New Zealand in relation to influences on their teaching thoughts and practices. The inquiry began with the researcher’s reflection on his personal experiences of teaching and learning in higher education, including key influences on his thoughts about teaching and teaching practices. This prompted an interrogation of the literature, which revealed that while a range of influences had been identified in relation to university teaching at macro, meso, micro and personal levels, there were limitations in findings concerning teachers’ inner experience of and response to these influences, which provided a sound rationale for the conduct of this study. The researcher remained open to various theoretical positions as evident in literature. The study design presents a raison d’être for a phased theoretical assumption to an alternative perspective of understanding and theorising the phenomena. Two different theoretical lenses are adopted. Firstly, epistemological constructivism and theoretical interpretivism are advanced as a suitable philosophical framework for the prosecution of the study that offers a methodological rationale for a qualitative investigation; grounded theory and a case study approach are applied in interpretative analysis. Second, ontological realism and epistemological relativism are imported in gaining insights from the perspectives of personal and social identities, human agency and structure as embedded in the data. The data gathering involved semi-structured interview, stimulated recall, and document analysis. Some data were collected from the participants’ publications, conference presentations, and masters or doctoral theses. The data highlight a complex array of influences perceived and experienced by teachers in relation to their teaching ideas and practices. It identifies the significance of personal life experiences, both historical and ongoing, that influence teachers. It also reveals the range of contextual or structural influences that interact with these personal influences to affect teachers’ thoughts about education, conceptions of teaching, and approaches to teaching and classroom practice. For each participant, these influential factors obviously play out in both complex and idiosyncratic ways with one another to exercise various degrees of influence on teaching thoughts and action at different points in teachers’ lives. Data demonstrate the significance of teachers’ perceptions of personal agency and structural power as an important mediator of their internal conversations about influences and their actual responses to them. Although the focus of the study concerned the various sources of influences on individual teachers at different levels, how they interacted with each other and how teachers inwardly experienced and made responses, what emerged has wider implications for teaching and learning in higher education, teacher development initiatives, academic leaders and managers and for other university teachers. The study provides a more holistic way of looking at influences on university teaching and opens up new research possibilities. The inclusion perspective of social critical theory is seen as a potent means to add fresh insights into the dialectical nature of teachers’ agential power and contextual influences, echoing an emerging trend in the research on influence in higher education. Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/939 2010-07-04T12:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/941 Title: Airway smooth muscle dynamics Authors: IJpma, Gijs Abstract: The current study aims to investigate the relative contributions of each of the processes that govern airway smooth muscle mechanical behaviour. Studies have shown that breathing dynamics have a substantial effect on airway constriction in healthy and diseased subjects, yet little is known about the dynamic response of the main instigator of airway constriction, Airway Smooth Muscle (ASM). In this work several models are developed to further the understanding of ASM dynamics, particularly the roles and interactions of the three dominant processes in the muscle: contractile dynamics, length adaptation and passive dynamics. Three individual models have been developed, each describing a distinct process or structure within the muscle. The first is a contractile model which describes the contractile process and the influence of external excitation on contractile behaviour. The second model incorporates the contractile model to describe length adaptation, which includes the reorganisation and polymerisation of contractile elements in response to length changes. The third model describes the passive behaviour of the muscle, which entails the mechanical behaviour of all non-contractile components and processes. As little data on the passive dynamics of the muscle was available in the literature, a number of experiments were conducted to investigate relaxed ASM dynamics. The experimental data and mathematical modelling showed that passive dynamics plays not only a dominant role in relaxed ASM, but contributes considerably to the dynamics of contracted muscle as well. A novel theory of sequential multiplication in passive ASM is proposed and implemented in a mathematical model. Experiments and literature validated the model simulations. Further integration of the models and improved force control modelling of length adaptation is proposed for future study. It is likely that the coupling of the models presented here with models describing other airway wall components will provide a more complete picture of airway dynamics, which will be invaluable for understanding respiratory disease. Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/941 2010-07-04T12:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/963 Title: Heterogeneous probabilistic models for optimisation and modelling of evolving spiking neural networks Authors: Schliebs, Stefan Abstract: This thesis proposes a novel feature selection and classification method employing evolving spiking neural networks (eSNN) and evolutionary algorithms (EA). The method is named the Quantum-inspired Spiking Neural Network (QiSNN) framework. QiSNN represents an integrated wrapper approach. An evolutionary process evolves appropriate feature subsets for a given classification task and simultaneously optimises the neural and learning-related parameters of the network. Unlike other methods, the connection weights of this network are determined by a fast one-pass learning algorithm which dramatically reduces the training time. In its core, QiSNN employs the Thorpe neural model that allows the efficient simulation of even large networks. In QiSNN, the presence or absence of features is represented by a string of concatenated bits, while the parameters of the neural network are continuous. For the exploration of these two entirely different search spaces, a novel Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (EDA) is developed. The method maintains a population of probabilistic models specialised for the optimisation of either binary, continuous or heterogeneous search spaces while utilising a small and intuitive set of parameters. The EDA extends the Quantum-inspired Evolutionary Algorithm (QEA) proposed by Han and Kim (2002) and was named the Heterogeneous Hierarchical Model EDA (hHM-EDA). The algorithm is compared to numerous contemporary optimisation methods and studied in terms of convergence speed, solution quality and robustness in noisy search spaces. The thesis investigates the functioning and the characteristics of QiSNN using both synthetic feature selection benchmarks and a real-world case study on ecological modelling. By evolving suitable feature subsets, QiSNN significantly enhances the classification accuracy of eSNN. Compared to numerous other feature selection techniques, like the wrapper-based Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and the Naive Bayesian Classifier (NBC), QiSNN demonstrates a competitive classification and feature selection performance while requiring comparatively low computational costs. Sun, 11 Jul 2010 12:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/963 2010-07-11T12:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/720 Title: The shaping of decision-making in governance in the New Zealand Public Healthcare Services Authors: Mathias, Wanda Lee Abstract: The study explores what shapes decision-making in governance in the New Zealand public healthcare services. It contributes to the understanding of the impact of the beliefs, perceptions and roles of the decision-makers and the tensions in public healthcare services in New Zealand. The focus was on ascertaining the characteristics of the people as individuals and as members of groups, their skills, preparation and the experience required to make governance decisions in healthcare services in New Zealand. The research analysed data from interviews with individuals in senior positions in public healthcare services in New Zealand, focus groups made up from those individuals and observations of formal District Health Board (DHB) meetings. The context for the study is the New Zealand public healthcare services within the DHB model. This study focuses on the organisational and operational aspects of governance from the socio-anthropological viewpoint of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu’s methodology was chosen as it highlights the interaction of power and the management of tension between individuals and groups in different, but abutting, fields of practice. Using Bourdieu’s methodology the researcher has placed healthcare services in an economy of political power where the capital individuals and groups bring to an environment is demonstrated through their power and influence within a particular field of practice. In this study the field of practice is governance in New Zealand public healthcare services. The method involved purposive sampling of participants from three DHBs. The participants included appointed and elected members, chairmen, chief executives and senior clinicians from medical and nursing cohorts. The participants identified 22 abstracts which determined the shape of their decision-making. Through analysis and reflection these 22 determinants were organised into groups reflecting the generic principles of governance identified in the literature. The study concludes that decision-making in governance is shaped by the concepts of professional maturity, quality and safety, power and tension and fiduciary duty within the context of structure and time. The scope of governance is connected across healthcare organisations by the tension of power manifested through the capital individuals and groups bring to the interaction or field of practice. The study also found that there are two aspects to decision-making in governance which allow transferability of the concepts of governance across healthcare service organisations. Firstly, governance is decision-making in good faith with independence of mind and with the appropriate skills, diligence and care on behalf of others. Secondly, the structures of governance operationalised in audit, laws, guidelines, codes and principles support the decision-making on behalf of others. Consequently, the rules of decision-making in governance in healthcare services are the same whether the decision is being made in a clinical or corporate environment. They are enacted differently because of the different contexts. The study brings together the determinants in their concept groups into a framework in the context of structure and time. Use of the framework will enable those with governance responsibilities to shape their governance decision-making from an informed and common base which recognises the tensions in the field of healthcare services governance. Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:35:46 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/720 2009-08-19T20:35:46Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/466 Title: The making of a journalist: the New Zealand way Authors: Thomas, Ruth Abstract: This study is a first of its kind for New Zealand journalism education, following 20 students at two different schools throughout a year-long training programme. It used two methods to gain a deeper understanding: a discourse analysis of their news stories written at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the year, and retrospective protocol analysis, to provide insight into their thinking processes, through their taped reflections. The research found that journalism education controlled by the New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation still resembles that of 20 years ago, despite increasing numbers of students learning journalism as part of degree programmes. Students are trained for the media industry through learning by doing. They receive basic instruction and then are expected to perfect their skills by practising their writing and to learn the conventions and routines of the media industry through socialisation and work experience. In the first half of the year, the students developed some skills in writing the traditional inverted-pyramid news stories. However, by the end of the year, their news writing showed technical signs of regression. Firstly, they were not writing in a succinct, clear fashion, emphasising news values. Secondly, they had been inadequately trained to write outside of the inverted-pyramid news story or to use popular “soft” lead sentences, so that their writing tended towards being promotional. Thirdly, journalism institutions strongly favour subediting by tutors and this detracted from the students gaining understanding of their own writing and being able to self-monitor and evaluate it. Lastly, they failed to show the critical thinking skills and independence necessary for a professional journalist so that they could research thoroughly, reflect deeply and write entertaining, informative and important news stories with flair. Their reflections confirmed these findings, suggesting some stress and disillusionment. The students could “declare” what they knew about writing a news story but could not put it into practice. They blamed their failure to write high quality news stories on the pressures of the course, the deadlines and high volumes of stories. The gaps in their journalism education were also revealed through what was not mentioned in their taped reflections: in particular, they failed to mention the importance of news values in making their stories more appealing. The major influence at first was the students’ tutors, followed by work experience and the “real world” of the media industry. The concentration on job skills and gaining a job coupled with a lack of knowledge and discussion provided the students with an incomplete understanding of the pressures of the media industry they were entering. The study recommends more debate about journalism education and more research, as well as a change away from “learning by doing” to a more critical, reflective approach. Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:37:27 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/466 2009-01-23T00:37:27Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/888 Title: Keep Sunday free: social engineering through shop trading hours in New Zealand Authors: Kennedy, Ann-Marie Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to explore Social Engineering and how marketing communications may be able to affect it. This research takes a step back from other research in the area and considers the decision makers behind Social Engineering, instead of Social Engineering interventions. One way for stakeholders to influence Social Engineering is through influencing the initial decision of which Social Engineering intervention to use. The influence of marketing communications is considered using diffusion theory, which uncovers how marketing communications diffuse through and influence a decision making group. First, the research uncovers the Social Engineering Decision Making Process. This is the decision making process of Governments for Social Engineering Decisions. The Social Engineering Decision Making Process is the combination of Podgórecki’s Sociotechnical Paradigm (1990) and Roger’s Innovation Diffusion Process (2003). The research then explores this framework through its illustration in a retailing context. The Social Engineering intervention chosen for this research is the shop trading hour legislation in New Zealand. The Social Engineering decision studied is the decision to introduce Sunday trading through the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act (1990). An historical analysis explores the Social Engineering of shop trading hours, in line with an Historical methodology and Constructivist and Hermeneutic viewpoint. This narrative is created through document analysis and semi-structured in-depth interviews with five different stakeholder groups from the decision to introduce Sunday trading. The historical narrative also illustrates the Social Engineering Decision Making Process. Lastly, to uncover the influence of marketing communications and the media on the Social Engineering Decision Making Process, a content analysis of marketing communications and media over the time of the decision to introduce Sunday trading occurs. Government discussions and reports regarding the decision are also analysed. If the communications influence the Government discussions, then their themes would be present in Government documents directly following the communications. The results lend support to the Social Engineering Decision Making Process. Results outline the aspects of the legislative process that reflect each stage of the Social Engineering Decision Making Process. Findings also find support for the influence of Marketing communications and media on the Government’s decision making. The three most effective times for stakeholders to try to influence the process, through either mass or interpersonal communications are also identified. Thu, 13 May 2010 21:49:46 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/888 2010-05-13T21:49:46Z http://hdl.handle.net/10292/894 Title: The potential for a novel alcoholic drink prepared from the New Zealand native plant Cordyline australis (ti kōuka) Authors: Patel, Minaxi Abstract: Some New Zealand indigenous plants may offer unique qualities that can be used to secure an exclusive niche in the alcoholic drinks market in the same way that Scotch whisky and tequila are strongly identified with the country of origin, Scotland and Mexico. Tequila is a spirit distilled from a fermented agave, dry adapted lily. Agave is in the family Agavaceae, a notable New Zealand member of which is the common cabbage tree or ti kōuka (Cordyline australis). Similarly, to the agave having a fermentable core, ti kōuka has carbohydrate (inulin) content in its young stems and roots that can be hydrolysed in acidic suspensions or by enzyme hydrolysis to yield fructose. The main objective of this thesis was to systematically research the feasibility of the production of a tequila-like spirit from ti kōuka stem, profiling the chemical properties of the spirit with a view of future commercial production of an iconic New Zealand spirit. The initial stage of the thesis focused on extracting inulin from the ti kōuka stem and hydrolysing (by both acid and enzyme) it to yield reducing sugar. The sugar concentration yielded was too low (~ 10 to 15%) to be fermented and distilled economically. Rather, the ti kōuka extract was evaporated to produce flavoured products by the Maillard reaction, a reaction between amino acids and sugars. The flavoured compounds were then infused with potable ethanol. In outline, the dried stem was hydrolysed with an inulinase at 60°C for 1 hour. The pH was adjusted to 10 with sodium hydroxide and evaporated at 60°C for 65 hours. The dried extract was reconstituted with water, centrifuged and the supernatant infused with portable ethanol to yield final different concentrations of 80, 67, 57 and 50%. The ethanol treatments simultaneously extracted flavour and colour to varying degrees. Next, sugars and amino acids were analysed in the ti kōuka stems by liquid chromatography. The most abundant sugar present in the ti kōuka after inulinase hydrolysis was fructose and the dominant amino acids were arginine, leucine, lysine, and aspartic acid/aspargine and glutamic acid/glutamine. Amino acids and reducing sugar were also analysed at different stages of the spirit production. The reducing sugar content decreased during each step of the process. The relative concentrations of arginine, leucine and lysine decreased while that of aspartic and glutamic acids increased during the whole process of making the spirit. Model systems were then used to simulate the reactions taking place between the amino acids and reducing sugar present in the ti kōuka extract. The colour of the models became darker as a function of time, accumulating more brown pigment containing the flavoured compounds. Increasing the pH and concentration of the amino acids in the reaction mixture also increased the browning pigment formation. Dichloromethane and n-pentane and diethyl ether solvent extraction of the spirits and analysis of volatiles by gas chromatography- mass spectrometry revealed that the chemical profiles of the spirits were different from those of the commercial spirits, gin, tequila and whisky. Sensory evaluation was performed on four variations of the spirit, and demonstrated that the creations were consumer-acceptable. The costs and other issues involved in producing and marketing such a spirit were identified, the major selling point being geographical exclusivity. Tue, 25 May 2010 23:00:28 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10292/894 2010-05-25T23:00:28Z