Advance - Summer 2006

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Advance

THE UNITEC MAGAZINE OF INNOVATION AND RESEARCH SUMMER 06

Animal feelings Animal pain under the microscope – p6

Redesigning Auckland Sustainable urban development – p8

Educating for a change Pacific principals go back to school – p10

In the limelight Narrative therapist David Epston – p11

GUEST EDITORIAL

secondary schools. Programmes such as the Pacific Institute for Educational Leadership provide research-based opportunities for leadership development. Currently, there is no government policy that requires leaders in schools or early childhood centres to be trained for this critical role, and Unitec is filling an important gap both for New Zealand principals as well as those in the wider Pacific.

editor Jade Reidy sub-editor Claudia Mischke cover image Claire Boston (background image courtesy of Metromedia) design Claire Boston printing Norcross Group of Companies Advance is published by Unitec New Zealand ISSN 1176-7391 phone +64 9 815 2945 freephone 0800 10 95 10 web www.unitec.ac.nz address Carrington Rd, Mt Albert, Private Bag 92025, Auckland, New Zealand Disclaimer Unitec New Zealand has used reasonable care to ensure that the information in this publication is accurate at the time of publication.

However, to the extent permitted by law, Unitec is not liable for, and makes no warranties or representations as to such accuracy and may change or correct any such information without prior notice.

TALI SENDROVE COMMUNICATION GRADUATE

This issue of Advance appears at a crucial point for all sectors in education.

There are impending changes to the tertiary sector and the Ministry of Education has released a new draft curriculum for schools that calls for more focus on innovation and a greater emphasis on international communities.

While we might welcome these changes as part of the “knowledge economy”, there are significant challenges to be faced and disparities to be addressed.

As director of the Doctor of Philosophy (Education), I am perplexed, for example, by the Government’s decision to offer domestic fees to international PhD students studying at universities, but not those preferring programmes offered by dual sector institutions.

Advance highlights the critical role Unitec plays in deepening scholarship and professional practice. In this issue, one focus is the innovative work being conducted with school leaders across the Pacific rim and in local

The new draft curriculum for the compulsory education sector that has recently been widely distributed for debate and feedback places emphasis on flexibility and innovation in teaching and learning. While there is little disagreement about the need to support change through teacher professional development, the Government is not always providing the necessary resources. Schools must therefore find innovative ways to meet these demands and sustain real and purposeful change.

The Waitakere Enterprising Schools programme engages teachers in cross-curriculum professional development for the delivery of enterprise education. This programme offers teachers opportunities to look beyond curriculum boundaries and connect student learning with the needs of the wider community.

These programmes, highlighted in this issue of Advance, speak to the real difference Unitec is making in the national and international arena through innovative research that delivers real world solutions to complex challenges.

CONTACT Associate Professor Tanya Fitzgerald School of Education email tfitzgerald@unitec.ac.nz

RESEARCH IN BRIEF

Drawing on art, science and local avian history Since the birth of empirical scientific endeavour, artistic interpretations of the natural world have explained the link between science and nature.

Challenging myths about male nurses Although men have a long and rich tradition in nursing, they have been excluded, or at best marginalised, as footnotes in nursing’s history. That’s the view of Dr Thomas Harding of Unitec’s School of Health Science.

For his doctoral thesis, Harding interviewed 18 men in the nursing profession in New Zealand and analysed more than 600 written works. Women, he says, have made significant advances in challenging stereotypes, but the same cannot be said for men in nursing.

Unitec lecturer and artist Hamish Foote brush-stroked the dimension of our colonial history into this interrelationship, producing an exhibition of seven avian watercolour portraits called “The Feathered Drawer”, which showed at Artis Gallery in Parnell earlier this year.

The result of two years’ work, “The Feathered Drawer” referenced both historical and contemporary ornithological research, condensed into the catalogue and extended essay Foote co-wrote with art historian Jemma Field. The catalogue was funded by a Unitec Research and Extended Practice grant.

Foote was given access to the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s collection of over 17,000 native and exotic bird specimens – including the extinct huia.

“Pycroft’s Supper” (pictured below) illustrates the story of natural history enthusiast A.T. Pycroft who, when sent a huia for mounting, became renowned for instructing his housekeeper to cook the bird’s flesh for his supper.

The exhibition explored both the notion of art serving science and science serving art. Two works from the exhibition are now on display at Pataka Gallery in Porirua as part of the show “Birds: The Art of New Zealand Birdlife”.

CONTACT Hamish Foote Lecturer School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture email hfoote@unitec.ac.nz

The reasons are complex and deeply embedded in societal attitudes. Men are not socialised to see nursing as a career; male nurses have to justify and defend their career choices because they are constructed not just as inferior nurses, but also as inferior men. Some patients even refuse to be cared for by men or are reluctant to allow their children to be treated by one, as they fear inappropriate physical boundaries.

The pervasive myth that men are less emotionally involved with patients is an assumption that Harding’s study also challenges. Because men have to work much harder to build a rapport and gain the trust of patients they more than fulfil the caring role.

With ongoing nursing shortages, the issue of gender stereotypes is not merely an academic one and Harding identifies steps the profession can take to address the problem. The steps are similar to ones taken in recent years to increase the numbers of Maori and Pacific people in nursing.

Coaching for peak performance Professional sport has become a multi-million dollar business. Along with the technical, tactical, psychological and physiological preparation of athletes, coaches frequently find themselves immersed in complex human interactions and the micropolitics of managing competing interests.

Dr Paul Potrac, from Unitec’s School of Sport, is tackling sports education from left field, drawing on sociological and educational theories to explore the intricacies of the coaching process.

CONTACT Dr Thomas Harding Programme Director Bachelor of Nursing School of Health Science email tharding@unitec.ac.nz

More research is needed to describe what coaching actually involves.

Potrac came to Unitec from Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK, in August, where his research work resulted in the publication of “The coach as a more capable other” in The sports coach as educator: Reconceptualising sports coaching. To gain a deeper understanding of the skills required, he is now beginning a case study of a top level soccer coach.

CONTACT Coaching, he says, is far from being linear, unproblematic and sequential.

Graduates can suffer a reality shock on entering the profession when that complexity is not addressed.

Dr Paul Potrac Senior Lecturer School of Sport email ppotrac@unitec.ac.nz

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RESEARCH IN BRIEF

Bringing Aotearoa back into global entrepreneurial line in Germany, presented his research at the 23rd Annual Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference in Indiana, USA, in June. The measures they proposed for New Zealand are counter-intuitive to current entrepreneurial thought: raising taxes selectively, reducing the dominance of agriculture and increasing government participation in policy initiatives.

It is a widely spoken mantra that a higher rate of entrepreneurship leads to a higher rate of economic development.

Not always so. New Zealand, despite having the highest entrepreneurship rate in the developed world, has a lower GDP per capita, making us what’s known as an “outlier”.

Unitec professor Howard Frederick sought an explanation for the underlying causes of this outlier phenomenon, and the measures required to bring New Zealand back into line. Frederick’s research showed that, while Kiwis love to start businesses, we do so for lifestyle choices rather than being driven by wealth creation. And schools do not make subjects that lead to self-employment, such as business studies or computing, available to students at bursary level.

Frederick, together with Dr Erik Monsen of the Max Planck Institute

In June, an extension of that paper to Thailand’s situation, “From Kiwis to Pad Thai: Why Similar National Framework Conditions May Lead to Different Entrepreneurial Outcomes”, won the Best Research Paper Award at the Burapha University 2006 Global Business Conference in Bangkok and has been accepted by the Journal of Global Business Review in Bangkok.

Unitec’s Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) also received a Special Mention for the World’s Largest Research Study on Indigenous Entrepreneurship at the Babson conference.

CONTACT Howard Frederick Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship School of Management and Entrepreneurship email hfrederick@unitec.ac.nz

LANding up in a technical hot spot WarDriving is a popular term that describes the activity of locating and logging the position of wireless access points. As more wireless laptops come onto the market, the potential for people to take a “free ride” on providers’ LAN networks increases.

Some hot spots, such as those in airports, are intended for public use but many are not. The ease of establishing hot spots makes wireless devices vulnerable to unauthorised access by hackers, who can view private information such as credit card numbers and passwords.

Hira Sathu, a senior lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Technology, won a highly commended award for his concise paper on WarDriving dilemmas at the 19th National Advisory Committee Conference on Computing Qualifications, held in Wellington in July.

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His research highlighted the difficulty of proving the difference between accidental and dishonest access of wireless resources, and hence the challenges to establishing laws governing the wireless environment.

Further research is needed, he says, to identify specific changes required to the Crimes Act 1961.

At the same conference, Unitec Master of Project Management student Blessing Bere won Best Full Paper for his thesis on how project managers can best avoid the high failure rates associated with the development of computer software.

CONTACT Hira Sathu Senior Lecturer School of Computing and Information Technology email hsathu@unitec.ac.nz

Guidelines tackle greenhouse waste New guidelines for the horticulture industry, based on research by a Unitec team, are introducing environmental standards for greenhouses. Lecturer Reg Lewthwaite worked on the guidelines for dealing with excess nutrient solution, and the resulting code of practice was adopted by the industry at a recent conference.

Greenhouse flowers and vegetables are grown hydroponically in a nitrogen solution, but when too much leftover solution is released following rain, the run-off from waterlogged soil can pollute nearby streams or find its way into the groundwater. With greenhouses now covering hectares rather than square metres, the industry decided it was time to introduce some rules. The project was contracted to Unitec, with grants from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s Sustainable Farming Fund and industry sector groups.

The research team developed a calculator and three-stage guidelines that growers can use to manage release. Stage one involves designing efficient greenhouses to reduce solution release requirements; stage two covers collecting and storing the waste until application sites are in a suitable condition; stage three gives advice on releasing the solution so it spreads evenly and enhances plant growth without overloading the soil.

The guidelines also include a formula for growers to calculate the amount of nitrogen solution to be applied per hectare.

Follow-up research is planned to incorporate new developments in technology as they occur.

CONTACT Reg Lewthwaite Lecturer School of Natural Sciences email rlewthwaite@unitec.ac.nz

PUBLIC BROADCASTING

Broadcasting funding: From ratings to programme quality Everyone has an opinion about taxpayer-funded TV shows, but public broadcasting policymakers need more than individual taste to go on. A Unitec lecturer takes a closer look at broadcasting funding.

Peter Thompson from Unitec’s School of Communication has been looking at public broadcasting for two separate research contracts.

Thompson’s first study was conducted for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage last year and examined the mechanisms through which public broadcasting is funded in the OECD. The second study is currently being conducted for New Zealand on Air and involves analysing different approaches to assessing broadcasting quality.

Thompson argues that the importance of broadcasting in modern life means research is essential to ensure policy decisions are based on reliable evidence and information.

“Although the research is intended to have a practical use to policymakers, it requires a high level of theoretical analysis and conceptual clarity in order to facilitate that. Broadcasting is an influential and indispensable aspect of modern life, so it’s vital that policymakers are well informed.”

INCREASED PRESSURE Thompson has authored numerous articles on broadcasting policy in New Zealand. He says that deregulation and the worldwide growth of the commercial media sector have led to increased pressure on governments to justify any subsidy of public service broadcasting.

“Here in New Zealand, the commercialisation of the broadcasting sector, stemming from the deregulation of the 1980s and 1990s, was more extensive than in the European Union.

Since 1999, Labour-led governments have been trying to encourage a return to public service principles through initiatives such as the TVNZ Charter,” he says.

“However, as anyone who has followed these developments will know, public broadcasting funding can

Peter Thompson and his research team examined the different mechanisms used to fund public broadcasting.

be a controversial issue. That’s one reason why the Government needed to know about policy developments overseas before finalising its future plans here.”

The Ministry contract looked at funding mechanisms for public broadcasting in no less than 30 OECD countries.

Thompson says that with the broad scope of the research, he couldn’t have managed the project without the support of a team of researchers from Unitec’s School of Communication, colleagues from the International Association of Media and Communication Researchers, and several overseas government and broadcasting officials.

The report submitted to the Ministry is currently being used to inform the Broadcasting Programme of Action, the next stage in the Government’s reform of the sector.

RATINGS NOT ENOUGH Developing the best way to fund public broadcasting, however, is only one piece of the puzzle. TV ratings are an indicator of a show’s commercial success, but Thompson says that ratings alone are not a guide to whether programmes are fulfilling cultural or democratic functions.

“Political pressure to justify public funding for broadcasting generates demands for evidence that it is being used judiciously. This in turn raises questions of how to assess public broadcaster performance and programme quality. Non-quantitative performance criteria are notoriously difficult to define in measurable terms.”

Thompson’s latest research for New Zealand On Air, which is expected to be completed later this year, entails examining quality measurement systems in several other countries to see what’s been tried and tested elsewhere.

The research is also important from a teaching point of view, Thompson says, as several graduates from the School of Communication have gone on to careers in the media and broadcasting sectors.

“What we learn from the research about political and media institutions, both in New Zealand and overseas, helps inform what we teach in the classroom.”

CONTACT Peter Thompson Senior Lecturer School of Communication email pthompson@unitec.ac.nz

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ANIMAL WELFARE

Animal pain not just a tall tail Animal health and welfare researchers have a major disadvantage compared to scientists working on human issues – they can’t ask their research subjects how they feel. But Unitec Professor Natalie Waran is applying objective measures to determine what is essentially a subjective experience.

“Scientists have only recently accepted that animals may have feelings – the old ‘if you can’t prove it, it doesn’t exist’ held sway for a long time,” says Professor Waran. “We ought to give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, animal welfare is concern for how an animal feels in a given situation.”

Professor Waran is an international expert in the field of animal welfare.

She came to Unitec in 2005 from Edinburgh University where her research focused on various welfare issues, including identifying measures for assessing pain levels in horses.

That project has extended into research with Unitec colleagues and students to assess pain in SPCA cats and stress levels in orang-utans kept in zoos.

PAIN, WHAT PAIN? Vets, Waran discovered when surveying their attitudes, did not have a universal system for deciding if a horse was in pain.

“It was clear that some vets prescribed post-operative painkillers following castration and some did not,” says Waran. “There was a marked variation, which meant that the use of painkillers is based on opinion.”

The findings of this three-stage study caution against assuming that lack of an obvious behavioural response equals lack of feeling.

Charlie, an adult male orang-utan, has been trained to open his mouth for non-invasive saliva samples.

“Not showing pain could be a survival mechanism for a prey animal like a horse,” says Waran. “Animals may be wary of revealing vulnerability to predators. Then again, natural selection may favour stoicism, a high tolerance to pain levels. As yet we just don’t know.”

FELINE FEELINGS Waran is expanding this study at Unitec.

At Auckland’s SPCA, stray female cats are routinely spayed before being rehomed. Under supervision, Unitec Bachelor of Applied Animal Technology students observed these cats and gathered behavioural data in order to assess the levels of painkillers needed to ensure the animals’ welfare. Their preliminary findings were presented at the prestigious Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons Conference on Quality of Animal Life in September at the Royal Society in London.

Auckland Zoo has a number of Bornean orang-utans housed in groups. In the wild they are solitary primates apart from short courtship periods. With the co-operation of the team of zoo trainers who trained the orang-utans to come forward and offer their saliva, using cotton wool swabs, Waran and a group of Unitec staff and students were able to monitor individual levels of a stress hormone called Cortisol.

“The young male housed with an older male showed high cortisol levels,” says Waran, “even though he was making all the right moves in trying to socialise with the older male in his group. And the females were more stressed than the males being housed in a group.”

These findings, which were presented in May at the International Zookeepers Conference, have implications for decisions zoos make when constructing habitats for such wild primates.

ORANG-UTANS IN ZOOS

Professor Natalie Waran is one of only a handful of professors of animal welfare worldwide.

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When Waran arrived at Unitec she also quickly discovered that, compared with the UK, behavioural research relating to welfare assessment being conducted in zoos in New Zealand was minimal.

CONTACT Natalie Waran Professor of Animal Welfare School of Natural Sciences email nwaran@unitec.ac.nz

ENTERPRISING SCHOOLS

Mentoring an enterprising education Turning job seekers into job creators is a principal goal of what’s known as “enterprise education”. The Ministry of Education has drafted enterprise education for the new school curriculum, and Unitec is engaged in a pilot programme that is already proving the value of giving secondary students the opportunity to engage with local business communities.

David Kemeys of Suburban Newspapers, giving Green Bay High School students tips on starting their own school newspaper.

West Auckland schools have jumped at the chance to be involved in a Unitec project offering professional development to teachers who will deliver enterprise education.

Dean Prebble, Director of Unitec’s New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is working with 19 teachers from Green Bay High School, Kelston Girls’ College and Waitakere College, with funding from the Falkenstein Charitable Trust.

“Teachers love the new learning,” Prebble says. “They can relate it to their own disciplines through practical projects such as building a vertical composting unit.”

FROM SCHOOL TO COMMUNITY Enterprise education, he says, should not be seen as a discrete subject, but rather as an embedded cultural shift in schools. An enterprising approach is taken to all disciplines and the curriculum becomes more relevant to the social and business community in which the school is located.

“There’s always a group of students who’ll thrive on taking the ball and running with a project, but the challenge,” he says “is to transfer the thinking across the whole school.

Not everyone will be naturally adept at thinking this way but they need to experience the benefits.”

An entire community benefited from three enterprising Northland

students who decided they could project manage the design, construction and auction of a house in Kerikeri. The young women made a substantial profit, of which 20 percent went to charity and 80 percent to funding themselves through tertiary study.

underestimate students’ abilities and you can really accelerate their learning with these tools.”

TOOLS ADD VALUE

“Prebble is opening up Unitec to these teachers as a professional development resource,” says Hanley.

“He’s been absolutely critical to the project’s success.”

The Waitakere Enterprising Schools pilot is building on such success stories. Driven by Enterprise Waitakere, the project is called WES+, and project manager Christine Hanley says the plus is the sustained professional development that Unitec provides.

“Schools are being inundated with a lot of new initiatives to be considered,” she says, “and they become cynical when whoever initiates the project walks away.

The sustainability is not built in.”

Sustained professional development, Hanley says, strengthens the schools’ capability to foster enterprising skills within the existing national curriculum.

Prebble has introduced teachers to tools that Unitec has developed across a number of disciplines, including business, technology and design. They include generating and assessing ideas, assessing entrepreneurs, developing opportunities and coaching plans.

“The tools are regularly used in Unitec classrooms,” says Prebble, “and can cross over seamlessly from tertiary to secondary education. It never pays to

Prebble is also training teachers in a methodology for taking ideas through to the implementation stage.

PROJECTS IN ACTION The schools are already incubating commercially focused projects, with inspiration from seminars given by business leaders.

Green Bay High School has started a school newspaper and radio station with input from the likes of David Kemeys, Editor-in-Chief of Suburban Newspapers, and Thane Kirby of George FM fame. Waitakere College Year 13 students are developing a school holiday enrichment programme, and a group of Year 12 and 13 students at Kelston Girls’ College is developing and implementing a marketing plan for the school art sale of local artists’ work.

CONTACT Dean Prebble Director New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship email dprebble@unitec.ac.nz

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URBAN DEVELOPMENT

A Sydney solar ferry, envisioned on the Waitemata waterfront, along with iconic wind power turbines.

Designing a sustainable Auckland Aucklanders, when asked what the biggest challenges facing the city are, repeatedly cite transport and a burgeoning population. Yet, says a Unitec professor, the city shouldn’t be relying on either of these challenges as drivers of long-term planning.

Green urbanism is the way of the future as Associate Professor Dushko Bogunovich sees it. Bogunovich lectures in urban design at Unitec’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. He was appointed in June this year to Auckland City’s new mayor’s task force on sustainable development and is an outspoken proponent of this emergent theory of urban planning and design.

GREEN URBANISM Bogunovich, whose career began in Sarajevo, has spent 30 years researching design theory in the context of urban ecology and sustainable development. He continues to study how cities such as Vancouver, Seattle and those of Scandinavian countries are implementing the principles of green urbanism with varying degrees of success.

As a practical template for sustainable urban design, green urbanism, he says, approaches development from both an aesthetic perspective on landscapes and an ecological perspective on ecosystems.

“In fact, the two are one and the same thing,” says Bogunovich.

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“Designers and artists call the city a landscape, while scientists and engineers call it an ecosystem.

Cities are founded on ecosystems and development should be driven by ecosystems and climate, so we’re working with nature, not against it.”

Green urbanism, however, has more of a scientific base in applied sustainability than landscape urbanism, which takes an artistic approach to urban planning and design.

CHALLENGING OUTMODED THEORY Bogunovich is not anti-growth.

“Growth is inevitable and not bad if it’s properly designed,” he says. “Whether we like it or not, we will see a wider and taller Auckland.”

The region’s urban growth strategy is, however, problematic in being too wedded to an outdated philosophy of new urbanism, which focuses on density, mixed-use development and public transport.

“New urbanism is actually quite old. It fails to address the overall complexity of urban metabolism and has difficulty integrating new technologies and new styles of living,” he says.

ECO-TECHNOLOGY WATERFRONT Integrating environmental technology businesses into plans for key waterfront areas such as the Tank Farm is an opportunity Bogunovich believes the city should seize to market itself globally.

“In the 21st century, the biggest business in the world will be fixing the environmental mess we created in the 20th century. Environmental technology is the fastest growing sector of the global economy, conservatively estimated at one trillion US dollars,” Bogunovich says.

“Areas such as the Tank Farm don’t need iconic buildings, which are hallmarks of the industrial era.

The waterfronts of Auckland are an opportunity to create permanent laboratories and standing exhibitions of cutting-edge, clean design, technology, engineering and architecture.”

The Tank Farm design (pictured right) by Bogunovich and fifth-year Bachelor of Architecture students shows an eco-tech park, which combines traditional planting and water features of an urban park with technologies for stormwater retention and treatment, and sun and wind power generation.

Green urbanism, he says, extends well beyond the traditional cluster of focus on energy, water and waste.

“As an industry, it spans legislation, policy, technical know-how, the construction industry and an array of manufacturers who export smart products to potential customers numbering in their millions.”

THE INVISIBLE CITY While Bogunovich envisions Auckland’s sustainability on the macro level, the work of two masters students at Unitec is continuing to challenge new urbanism, seeking to locate the city’s growth both within localised communities and a global context.

Claire O’Shaughnessy’s “Place of Becoming”, supervised by Associate Professor Rod Barnett, is an active design approach to Auckland’s landscape. As a working architect, O’Shaughnessy saw global movements in urban design at times being inappropriately imposed upon the local environment. Her Master of Landscape Architecture seeks to understand how a location might develop, and how people actually live in the city.

By selecting a specific urban and green site, the ways in which each has changed over time can be illuminated. Change, she says, may originate from socio-economic factors, the site’s history, the relationships between the buildings and the natural environment, and how the sites are currently being used.

O’Shaughnessy’s research draws heavily on place theorists, in particular French philosopher Alain Badiou and his recent work Infinite Thought, to ask how a site can be transformed into a place of becoming rather being perceived as a static environment.

“Instead of viewing landscapes as just physical sites outlined by boundaries, I’ll be taking account of non-physical data such as anecdotal material and the history of the sites”, she says, “so that people can engage with these sites at a deeper level.”

RETHINKING NEW URBANISM Can Auckland’s streets be used other than solely for cars? What sort of alternatives might exist? Can intensive housing be accommodated in certain areas? These questions are central to Sally Peake’s “what if” approach to three distinct suburbs – Morningside, New Lynn and Northcote.

The latter two are being redeveloped, in line with the regional growth strategy to implement higher density housing around transport nodes without sacrificing rural land. Peake’s research will analyse the existing street networks that have developed around different transport interchanges and evaluate if, in fact, they are appropriate to local needs.

“I want to discover if the existing spatial patterns support intensive housing,” she says. “I also want to investigate the kinds of street networks and designs needed to provide socially supportive streets.”

LATERAL THINKING Rather than relying solely on experience, Peake is investigating new theories and approaches, including those of spatial integration.

“Connectivity of an area is a key requirement of good urban design,” she says. “One of my primary objectives was to check the space syntax. Northcote was the worst – there were lots of dead ends, curvilinear roads, resulting in people needing to drive to get around the area,” Peake says.

Morningside, by comparison, had more intersections and networks of small roads in a grid pattern, which offered choices of routes and greater options for walking.

Her research will also look at ways individuals might gain from housing intensification, rather than having it imposed upon them by councils.

“New routes could be provided,” she says, “by property owners obtaining permission for infill housing on their land in exchange for providing threeand-a-half metres public right of way across their property. This would enable sites and streets to be linked up.”

Another option, Peake says, is to use streets for recreation and to incorporate more open space. “This may involve reducing the width of carriageways. It’s possible to change roads, while keeping them within legal boundaries.”

THEORY INTO PRACTICE Peake is challenging her own practice and thinking as an architect by completing a Master of Architecture at Unitec. With over 30 years’ experience behind her – mainly in the local government sector – it was time, she says, for professional rejuvenation.

“The masters programme is reinvigorating me professionally.

The project has changed as I’ve progressed through it. It’s giving me more of an interest in research now that I can apply theories to real situations.”

CONTACT Associate Professor Dushko Bogunovich School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture email dushko@unitec.ac.nz

Auckland’s Tank Farm, envisioned as an eco-tech park.

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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Educating for a principaled change School principals from around the Pacific went back to school for nine days in Fiji in late June, taking part in Unitec’s first Pacific Institute for Educational Leadership programme.

From left: Sashi Bhupendra Singh (Fiji), Pam Fleck (Riverton), Fa’atalatala Peleti (Samoa), Eileen Piggot-Irvine (Unitec), John Niroa (Vanuatu), Jay Narayan (Fiji), Pauline Mundie (Auckland) and Enosa Auva’a (Auckland).

There was no time to put their feet up on the desks, send text messages or even get a sun tan as the 19 experienced principals engaged in an interactive, research-based programme designed to stretch their thinking.

Led by Associate Professor Eileen Piggot-Irvine, Director of Unitec’s New Zealand Action Research and Review Centre, and Professor Carol Cardno, Head of Unitec’s School of Education, the programme centred on a case study model, backed by a set of theories designed to throw light on educational leadership.

“This was deep, sustained development work, not the usual quick fix training,” says Piggot-Irvine, who developed the action research model on which both the Action Research and Review Centre and part of the Fiji programme were based.

“By presenting an international literature base and topics central to the realities of principals’ complex role, we challenged their habitual responses to leadership issues.”

RESOURCING PACIFIC PRINCIPALS The principals came from Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Samoa and New Zealand. The Pacific principals were funded by NZAID,

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an indication of the severe resourcing difficulties many schools on small island atolls face.

Teachers in Samoa, says Tuputala Lene of Lotofaga College, tend also to “climb up to the top rung of the ladders to become principals without deep learning of how one must shape up as a principal theoretically”.

She is already putting her learning into practice at Riverton Primary, working with the school’s board to write a new set of policies, procedures and strategic plans.

Completion of an action research project can be credited to a masters programme at Unitec.

CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH Skills Lene took back with her to further develop included strategic management, networking and dilemma management, appraisal and collaborative management.

TESTING THE THEORY By the end of the nine days some principals also had an action research project to implement in their school.

Pam Fleck, Principal of Riverton Primary School, began looking at the structural development of her school through a new framework. The framework addresses all problems within one of four aspects – structural, political, human resource or symbolic – to arrive at effective solutions.

“I’ve been a principal for 12 years,” Fleck says, “and I’ve never learnt these skills before. It was hugely beneficial, a life-changing experience.”

The next Pacific Institute for Educational Leadership programme will be held in Samoa in 2008. In line with the New Zealand Action Research and Review Centre’s model of examining a situation closely before initiating change, PiggotIrvine will be conducting research on principalship on the ground in Samoa next year in preparation.

The centre, launched in August last year, is the first of its kind in New Zealand and also undertakes research consultancy contracts.

CONTACT Associate Professor Eileen Piggot-Irvine Director Unitec New Zealand Action Research and Review Centre email epiggotirvine@unitec.ac.nz

IN THE LIMELIGHT

Co-research brings equality to therapy The publication of Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends by David Epston in 1990 marked the arrival of a therapeutic practice whose central tenet of a narrative metaphor spread like wildfire through the counselling world. Now, Epston has created another paradigm shift.

While most of the literature on narrative therapy and anorexia is the result of academic collaboration, Unitec’s adjunct professor and now lecturer on the postgraduate programmes in social practice and the Graduate Diploma in Counselling, has taken co-authorship a step further.

Epston has coined a new term to refer to research carried out jointly with those who experience the problem first hand. “Co-research”, he says, is a distinctive therapeutic practice that articulates and gives equal authority to insider knowledges and outsider professional knowledges.

ORIGINS OF CO-RESEARCH Co-research grew out of ethical and moral concerns with hierarchical professional practices that pre-dated narrative therapy. ”I experienced a discomfort with practices that gazed down at those who

sought their care or services and tended to redefine their patients as lower types, from a lower social order,” Epston says. “Narrative therapy was concerned with meeting others in solidarity and with respect. It also seeks to contextualise people’s problems in the sociology and politics of their everyday lives.”

THE HAND THAT STARVES Epston’s Biting the Hand That Starves You: Inspiring Resistance to Anorexia/ Bulimia offered new ways of thinking about, and responding to, the epidemic of anorexia/bulimia. The book was considered to be a paradigm shift by the counselling community, giving psychiatrists and clinicians a theoretical framework as well as practice options.

In line with his philosophy of co-research, Epston is now researching a new book on the subject with a family who contributed their experiences to Biting the Hand.

”This extends their contribution considerably,” says Epston of the 23-year-old woman and her parents.

“I don’t know any other book in which a mother and father write about the day-to-day ways they assisted their then 16-year-old daughter, whose life was in peril, to first resist and then repudiate the ‘culture’ of anorexia. The daughter will also be recollecting her parents engaging with her in ‘anti-anorexia conversations’.”

Epston hopes this manuscript will bring counsellors, parents and young people into an alliance with one another.

EXTENDING THE METAPHOR Narrative therapy has recently extended into approaches to mediation, responses to aboriginal communities dealing with youth suicide and to the trauma experienced by AIDS orphans in South Africa.

Epston is beginning research on how far such narrative approaches can be translated into the concerns of community and organisation developments. The first step will be inclusion of narrative enquiry in the forthcoming The Sage Handbook of the New and Emerging Trends in Management and Organizations. He has also begun collaborative work on manuscripts relating to a study of the Hospitallier Order of St. John of God social services in Australia and New Zealand, and an application to strategic planning in non-governmental organisations.

In partnership with the Cuban Association of Psychiatrists and Leading Edge Seminars in Toronto, Epston is organising the Spirit of Community in Narrative Therapy and Cuban Social Programmes Conference in Cuba for January 2007. More details are at www.narrativecuba.com. David Epston is also co-director of the Family Therapy Centre in Auckland.

Postgraduate training options in narrative and collaborative therapies are being offered by Unitec in 2007.

CONTACT

David Epston’s novel approach of co-research bites back at anorexia.

Dr Geoff Bridgman Associate Head of School School of Community Development email gbridgman@unitec.ac.nz

Advance Summer 06

11

NEWS IN BRIEF

Fresh look at distant taonga

Lecturer on honours list Horticultural researcher and lecturer Dr Jane Harman became a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to food science and technology.

Harman was named in the Queen’s Birthday honours list and was decorated at an investiture ceremony at Government House recently.

As a researcher, Harman was instrumental in introducing standards that helped protect New Zealand’s kiwifruit export market.

She is currently a senior lecturer in the School of Natural Sciences, and is the chairperson of the New Zealand Horticultural Science Advancement Trust and co-chair of Sustainable Aotearoa New Zealand.

Chinese visitors learn Kiwi-style

An invitation to Cambridge University in the UK has given artist Lisa Reihana the opportunity to interact with Maori taonga that haven’t been on New Zealand soil for more than a hundred years.

Reihana is the Tohunga a Toi in the School of Design, advising on Maori design issues and giving support to the school’s Maori students. She travelled to the UK to take part in an exhibition at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and says it was a unique opportunity to create art installations using the museum’s Maori collection.

“They have the most phenomenal taonga in their collection and, as an artist, it’s interesting collaborating with another artist who is no longer alive – the challenge is to maintain the integrity of their work.”

Reihana’s contribution includes an installation incorporating He tautoko, a Nga Puhi tekoteko (carving) taken to the UK from New Zealand during colonial times. Her concept was to play audio recordings to the tekoteko and give visitors the sense that they could listen in.

The Pasifika Styles exhibition is at Cambridge University until 2008.

A group of English language teachers from China learned how to teach, kiwi-style, during a visit to Auckland.

Zhou says that the trip was an opportunity for the teachers to improve their English and find out about some different teaching ideas and methods.

“It is very different from China. There is much more interaction with the students and learning by activities.

Some of the methods are very useful.”

Zhang says that spending time in an English-speaking country is a valuable experience.

The teachers received a Language Plus Teaching Skills Certificate on the completion of the Unitec programme.

A Unitec student’s innovative design for a crutch that could make life easier for millions of people has won a top prize at the Best Design Awards.

Bachelor of Product Design student Christopher Metcalfe won the 2006 Best Design Awards student category for product design with the World Crutch, a simple plastic-moulded handle that locks onto any wooden or bamboo pole, instantly transforming it into a crutch.

The product was also a finalist in the Dyson Product Design Awards earlier this year.

Christopher says it started with a group project that he did with two other product design students, Greg Holdsworth and Darin Eades-Smith.

“Our brief was to design a product for lower leg injuries and we took a humanitarian spin on it. The hard part was coming up with an idea that no one has thought of yet.”

Standard aluminium crutches can cost up to $100, an unrealistic amount for many in the developing world, but Christopher says that the World Crutch would cost only $1.70 to manufacture in New Zealand – even less if the product is made overseas.

The 49 teachers from Suzhou, China, spent three weeks at Unitec, learning about language teaching from School of Language Studies lecturers and observing classes at primary and intermediate schools around Auckland.

The trip was organised by the Suzhou Education Bureau, and teachers Peggy Zhang and Thomas Zhou say that English language is an important school subject in China.

Design award for marketable crutch

With 600 million people living with disabilities worldwide – 80 percent of whom are in the developing world – the crutch has huge potential, he says.

Facilities make plumbing clear New facilities at Unitec’s Applied Technology Institute are allowing students to watch their work go down the gurgler.

The new plumbing and gasfitting teaching spaces at Unitec’s Mt Albert campus are the only facilities of their kind in New Zealand.

The classrooms include working examples of wastewater plumbing made from glass piping. Garry Cruickshank, head of plumbing and gasfitting at

Unitec, says that for the first time the students can see what is happening inside the pipes.

“In the past, lecturers could only describe what happens to water inside the plumbing, but now students can see practical examples of what’s going on and we can demonstrate in a practical sense what happens if you don’t follow the rules.”

The facilities were built by the Unitec technicians over an 18-month period, with much of the equipment donated by industry sponsors and the glass piping given to the plumbing programme by the University of Auckland.

For more information about any of these news items, please contact Unitec’s Media Manager on +64 9 815 4321 ext 7601 or email slambert@unitec.ac.nz

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