Deputy Vice Chancellor Māori Professor Meihana Durie says it is an important appointment for the university.

"Veronica's appointment to the role of Pūkenga Tiriti acknowledges her outstanding level of scholarship and leadership in Te Tiriti education over many years.  She has worked tirelessly not only within the university, but across many communities and networks throughout Aotearoa where she has advanced Te Tiriti education in ways that have had a significant and enduring positive impact.  As Pūkenga Tiriti, she will help to lead work that contributes to fulfilment of the University's commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and we are tremendously excited to welcome her into this new role."

With 20 years of experience advancing Te Tiriti o Waitangi in tertiary, government and community spaces, Associate Professor Tawhai has held national roles in Te Mana Ākonga (National Māori Tertiary Student’s Association), the Ministry of Education’s Māori tertiary team, the Tertiary Education Commission’s External Māori Reference Group, UNESCO’s Education sub-Commission, and the Iwi Leaders Forum’s Matike Mai AotearoaRangatahi project, an initiative engaging youth and tertiary students on Te Tiriti and constitutional issues.  As recipient of the 2012 Fulbright-Nga Pae O Te Maramatanga Senior Scholar award, Associate Professor Tawhai conducted research on teaching and learning about Indigeneity and the implications for citizenship education in the US, Canada and Aotearoa.  She has also held research fellowships at the Centre for World Indigenous Studies based out of The Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA) and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian National University (Canberra, AU). 

In 2004 Dr Tawhai co-founded the tertiary-based political education collective Te Ata Kura (Society for Conscientisation) and since 2009 has delivered Tiriti o Waitangi workshops nationwide as a Te Ata Kura Educator. She has published widely and contributed as a keynote speaker, expert facilitator and media commentator on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Māori development, constitutional and citizenship issues.  Her current work encompasses a Marsden project that addresses pedagogies for the teaching of Aotearoa NZ histories in schools and a second edition of her 2011 co-edited book ‘Always Speaking: The Treaty of Waitangi and public policy’.

Her appointment represents an important part of the next phase of the university’s Te Tiriti planning, where, alongside other contributors, she will help lead work for development of a Te Tiriti education programme for staff and continuation of work towards a Te Tiriti Centre.

School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition Professor Andrew Martin was invited to contribute two chapters. The first, in collaboration with Dr Jenny Fleming (Head of Academic Partnerships at Auckland University of Technology, and President of Work-Integrated Learning NZ) entitled ‘Enhancing professional competencies through work-integrated learning (WIL): Professional practice and partnership’.

Dr Martin, who chairs Massey’s Work-integrated learning (WIL) committee, has coordinated a WIL programme focused on Sport Management Education for more than 25 years. In 2021, he received a prestigious principal fellow award from the Higher Education Academy in the United Kingdom in recognition of his teaching, scholarship and leadership in the field of WIL.

His second chapter, ‘Community event management in New Zealand: Participation, partnership, and practice’, was written in conjunction with Associate Professor Geoff Watson (School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication) and Dr Andrew Grainger (School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition). This documented insights and research related to a successful series of community triathlon events that he has managed in the Manawatū region in the last 20 years. 

Dr Martin says these chapters provide real-world examples of how students have enhanced their learning through a range of work and experiential opportunities.

“Such professional practice-based partnerships initiatives enable students to develop a range of desirable graduate attributes that support and strengthen future employability.”

Dr Grainger contributed to another chapter in the book, entitled ‘Developing, Designing, and Delivering a High-Impact Short-Term, Faculty-Led Study Abroad for Sport Management Students: Going Global’, that draws on his experiences teaching courses in the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand.

“While study-abroad opportunities are likely to be limited in the short term due to COVID-19 restrictions, it is one thing to learn about sports in other countries, it is entirely different to experience them directly, in-person and in-context.”

Hardback and e-version copies of the book are available here.

Dr Gregory Chawynski was presented with the LOTY prize at the awards ceremony, which has been held annually since 2005 on the Auckland campus to recognise teaching excellence and support academic quality. He also won the top award for his college.

Dr Chawynski says winning the 2021 LOTY Award was an amazing experience.

“To be acknowledged at this level has confirmed that all the extra work in preparing on-line classes and providing on-going support during COVID-19 has been greatly appreciated by our students. Thank you to all my students and colleagues and of course the award would not be possible without the hard work of Penny and the whole Albany Students’ Association team who do such a great job in organising this annual event and for their tireless support of students in the past 12 months.”

There were 136 lecturers nominated for the award this year. This shows how much students have appreciated the efforts of teaching staff who have gone above and beyond in 2021, especially during long periods without face to face teaching. Each nominee will be sent a certificate showing the positive comments that students included with their nominations and will also be the recipient of a branded LOTY 2021 face mask.

You can watch the online celebration here

Collette Bromhead, David Hayman

The Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa killed thousands of citizens including doctors, nurses and midwives and now Massey is helping to design and facilitate online training for staff in Liberia so they can better understand emerging infectious diseases.

The World Health Organisation for Animals the OIE contracted Massey’s School of Veterinary Science in 2019 to design and facilitate training for laboratory staff in Liberia.

Group Leader in the School of Veterinary Science Professor David Hayman planned trips to and from Liberia, bringing groups to New Zealand for in-person training. In Early 2020, COVID-19 hit the world and travel and in-person training could no longer be provided.

Professor Hayman says the training involved emerging infectious diseases, a subject that is a contemporary issue in Liberia.

“Emerging infectious diseases pose, as COVID-19 has demonstrated, a huge threat to health and society. In West Africa, an Ebola virus disease outbreak that started in 2013 and continued until 2016 caused many deaths, along with social disruption. Liberia lost 8 per cent of its doctors, nurses, and midwives to Ebola virus disease. West African countries are some of the poorest and least well equipped to study and detect infectious diseases. Ebola virus disease is a zoonosis, meaning it originates in animals.

“The main hosts are thought to be bats, but other species have tested positive, and reliable data is lacking. It seems that increased forest fragmentation is increasing the risk of outbreaks. There are problems with capacity to study and detect these viruses in the countries at risk, which is true in the human health sector, but also and particularly in the animal and environmental sectors,” he says.

This EU-funded project, EBO-SURSY, paired different West and Central African laboratories with laboratories from wealthier countries to help develop capacity to study and detect Ebola virus disease and other viral haemorrhagic fever viruses in their animal hosts.

The COVID-19 pandemic then changed the teaching plan entirely and Professor Hayman sought help from the Activate team to deliver online learning.

“We were unable to travel because of flight and border restrictions and disease risk, so they only way to start delivering this material was remotely. However, the project was designed to include lots of in-person laboratory training. I had been thinking about what we could deliver through videos and online teaching, and approached the Activate team for help, and it went from there.”

The Activate team assembled a project team with curriculum developers, a learning technologist, and a multimedia developer to support the teaching staff including

Research Technician Matt Knox and Senior Lecturer Collette Bromhead, to identify the objectives of the training, review the original training design, and work through the options for offering an equivalent asynchronous learning experience tailored to the skilled, mature professionals that made up this cohort.

Activate Senior Curriculum Developer Catherine Stevens says the biggest challenge was identifying how to provide a relevant, engaging, and practical experience to laboratory staff.

“They had very limited computer access and different facilities to those available at Massey University. We were not after passive knowledge 'transfer'.  Rather, we set out to design a package that would support the Liberian team to engage with the content, apply their learning in their own laboratory, record and reflect on their results (including any challenges and limitations they encountered), and seek feedback from the teaching team back in New Zealand.  They were then supported to apply the feedback and reflections to their next phase of learning,“ she says.

David Hayman adds that the project team played a crucial role in achieving their deliverables and there has been interest in using the training material more widely.  

"The knowledge, technical expertise and support from the team allowed us to develop a really high-quality, professional product that will be useful for years to come. It would have been impossible for us to have met our deliverables without this. Our funders were impressed and are looking at how they can use our material to help improve training globally for those working on human, animal and environmental health.”

The milestone was celebrated this month before New Zealand went into lockdown. Ambassadors from Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Mexico attended a 25th Anniversary Commemoration lunch at Wharerata with Vice Chancellor Professor Jan Thomas, Pro Vice-Chancellor College of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor Cynthia White, and guests from the Spanish Language and International Relations teams. These four embassies have provided key support for the Spanish Language Programme, collaborating with Massey to promote Spanish language and culture across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Topics of discussion included Massey’s continued provision of online learning for students during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance and high percentage of Spanish language used in the world today. Spanish is the second-most widely spoken language in the world (after Chinese and before English). Native speakers of Spanish can be found across five continents and more than twenty countries.

As part of the visit, Deputy Head, School of Agriculture and Environment, and Professor of Dairy Production Systems Danny Donaghy took the Ambassadors on a tour of Massey’s Agricultural and Horticultural facilities where they had the opportunity to compare agriculture and horticulture from their own countries.

To cap the day off, an evening fiesta of fun, food and entertainment was held to celebrate the achievements of the Spanish Language Programme. Former and current Massey students and staff shared stories about courses, trips and the experience of teaching and learning the Spanish language. 

He Kaupapa Tūmanako/Project Hope asks, “What does hope look like in a Covid world?” to harness the voices and aspirations of young people in ways that develop their leadership skills and a hopeful vision of their future. 

Dr Alice Beban is one of the course teachers, and says it is a particularly important project, “as young New Zealanders are feeling increasingly hopeless about the prospects of growing up in a world transformed by climate change, Covid, and inequality.”

The course was launched in 2020 and has been developed and taught by Dr Beban, Dr Warwick Tie, Nicolette Trueman and Dr Matt Wynyard from the Sociology programme in the School of People, Environment and Planning.

Around 100 secondary school students from schools in Auckland, Manawatū and Iceland participated in the first two courses. The third iteration of the course (which is online) is launching in August 2021 and will involve students from Long Bay College in Auckland, Palmerston North Girls’ High School and Suzhou High School in China.

About He Kaupapa Tūmanako/Project Hope

Staff across the College of Humanities and Social Sciences contributed to the course, including Associate Professor Krushil Watene, Ngāti Manu, Te Hikutu, Ngāti Whātua o Orākei, Tonga (Māori philosopher), Dr Carolyn Morris (social anthropologist), Dr April Bennett , Tūwharetoa, Waikato, Tūhoe, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, (Māori planner), Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley (playwright), Thomas Nash (peace campaigner), and Dr Shine Choi (politics scholar).

“We also worked with Dr Bennett to design a course with a Mātauranga Māori approach to hope, centred on the connections between individuals, their communities and their wider environment,” Dr Beban says.

The course has three modules - thought/whakaaro, relationships/whiti, action/ātetenga.

“These engage students in individual and group exercises, enabling them to build connections with individuals, communities and the environment. In each module, students watch the guest presentations then practice hope themselves through reflective individual exercises that lead to collaborative group work,” Dr Beban says.

“Play is often seen as a less superior way of learning when we get into the more formal side of school life. It’s misunderstood as a teaching practice,” she says.

“The more I studied it, the more I came to appreciate the complexity of it and then what support teachers needed to be able to teach well through play.”

The basis for her research was the increasing popularity of play as a teaching tool in primary school classrooms. “However, there is a tension between what teachers know and believe, and how they use play successfully as a tool to support learning.”

What is ‘play’ in the classroom context? 

“It really comes down to enabling children to follow their own passions and their own interests,” Dr Aiono explains.

She discovered through her research there is a need to clearly define for teachers what “play” means in the classroom setting and then to assist them through the use of practice-based coaching, along with support and feedback.

A firm advocate for the role of play in formal education, she says play is increasingly touted as the way 21st century students are going to develop the skills they need. “It’s about more than just knowledge but also adaptability, creativity and innovation.

“There’s lots of talk on how important innovation and creativity is. But this is not shown in what teachers are required to report on. What teachers are asked to assess and report on is what they teach to.”

Dr Aiono was a teacher first, having graduated from Massey with a Bachelor of Teaching. She taught intermediate level pupils in Auckland then Hawke’s Bay, where she moved into Special Education. 

“I like working with kids who don’t comply, who don’t fit the box and who think differently,” says Dr Aiono, who spent most of her teaching career working with children with severe and violent behaviour and who’d been kicked out of the school system. 

“That was where I started to question what we are doing in our classrooms to make learning engaging and fun.”

Dr Aiono, who is currently CEO of Longworth Education – a consultancy based on supporting schools who want to implement learning through play into the primary education environment – says she was tentative about the shift from teacher to researcher. “I didn’t want to lose my roots. I’m proud to be a teacher.”

But she came to appreciate being able to view teaching practice through a different lens and to be able to ask questions.

She says she now understands the importance of research informing practice, particularly in a digital age “when there is so much in front of teachers. They need to know they are getting quality information that’s going to affect their practice.”

Dr Aiono’s thesis is titled: An investigation of two models of professional development to support effective teaching through play practices in the primary classroom, and her supervisors were Dr Tara McLaughlin and Professor Tracy Riley.

The undergraduate course reflects an emerging trend of writers embracing concerns about climate change, environmental degradation and a deadly pandemic in increasingly inventive and innovative ways, say course convenors Associate Professor Ingrid Horrocks and Dr Laura Jean McKay.

Think talking animals, and trees with a narrative.

Both published creative writers themselves, they describe the course they’ve designed and will teach collaboratively as; “a study of the relationships between creative writing and ecological concerns, covering a range of contemporary forms from eco-fictions, non-fictions, or poetry, to nature writing, to animal stories. 

“The course considers questions of craft and genre, as well as the political, cultural and ethical stakes of the ways in which narratives are constructed. It engages students in the workshopped production of original creative work.”

Literature has traditionally tapped into the human experience as the standard, says Dr McKay, whose novel, The Animals in the That Country (Scribe 2020), won Australia’s richest literary award earlier this year. “This course starts from a place that’s saying ‘the world has changed and is changing dramatically. Let’s write from there’,” she says. 

Dr Horrocks, whose just-published memoir, Where We Swim (Victoria University Press, 2021) has been highly praised, says the course offers a fresh approach by being “environmentally-centric rather than human-centric. There’s a shift in perception in the way we inhabit the world.”

And the ‘eco’ – for ‘ecology’ – in the undergraduate course suggests a broader scope than just the natural environment, she adds. “It allows you to think about city environments and city ecologies. One of the key things is not ‘nature as separate’ but ‘nature as everything’.”

The course aims to prompt writers to consider; “what it means to write about this time – not necessarily directly about climate change, but what does it mean to be human now?” says Dr McKay, who wrote a speculative novel about a pandemic in Australia that was published just before the real pandemic hit. 

Dr Horrocks and Dr McKay say the course could appeal to writers from a range of backgrounds, including scientists, policy makers and environmental activists.

And they hope it will be of value to younger writers who may feel overwhelmed by doom-filled scenarios on climate change impacts and predictions.

“We want to try to help people clarify and put complex ideas into words. To step away from confusion by asking ‘what do trees mean to me’? Or animals? Things we could be turning to in order to find solace,” says Dr Horrocks.

The course will structured around specific themes (tree, water, land). “We want to go directly to things that matter,” she says.

In her recent Spinoff commentary piece titled ‘The climate crisis is seeping into books and making them really, really weird’, Dr Horrocks wrote; “There has to be more to reading and writing about the climate crisis than constant, to-the-moment, present-tense accounts of ice melts and species loss, fires and floods. At my most hopeful, I think that if we are to play the long game, it will help if we can pause and try to imagine this world we share anew. It feels as though we may be beginning to enter that place with Covid, too. Perhaps it is no longer that everything has to be directly about Covid, but that the Covid world is now part of everything we do.”

Eco-fictions and Non-fictions is open for enrolments now and is available from Semester 2, 2021, internally on Massey University’s Wellington and Manawatū campuses, as well as by distance. 

For more information, click here.

To simultaneously mark the 20th anniversary of the programme’s foundational course, and the 10-year anniversary of the Master’s in Creative Writing, current and former staff and students will be celebrating on 21 May at the Palmerston North City Library.

“It’s been an incredible journey to this point,” said Professor Bryan Walpert, who joined Massey in 2004 and currently coordinates the undergraduate Creative Writing programme within the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication. 

“It’s been a real privilege to see so many students explore their interest in writing and go on to publish quite successfully,” he adds.

According to Professor Walpert the programme can be traced back in part to the decision in the 1980s and 1990s to add the teaching of professional and expository writing to the English curriculum. One example was a course taught by Robert Neale, MNZM, which included a creative component in addition to expository assignments. Other initiatives that laid the groundwork for the creative writing programme included a Media Script Writing course first offered in 1997 by Craig Harrison. Theatre specialist and playwright Professor Angie Farrow’s efforts, starting in the late 1990s, added creative practice elements to what was a largely literary study programme. 

Professor Farrow had included creative writing components in Drama in Performance, first offered in 1997, then Experimental Theatre (later called Making Plays for Theatre) and Creative Processes – both offered initially in 2000. 

“The development of these practice-led courses or components helped to set the groundwork for the School’s first course focused purely and broadly on Creative Writing, which in turn led to the development of the full creative writing programme that we have today,” Professor Walpert said.

A key proponent was Dr John Muirhead (now retired), who proposed the Creative Writing course and who later, as Head of the School of English and Media Studies (whose programmes are now part of the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication), led the development of the Masters of Creative Writing (MCW). 

The School offered the first course that billed itself fully as Creative Writing in 2001, which was developed and run by Professor Lisa Emerson (now Director of Teaching and Learning in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences). 

This course proved extremely popular with hundreds of enrolments from the first year it was offered, and in 2004 the school began hiring dedicated creative writing lecturers. 

As well as Professor Walpert, current lecturers in the programme include Dr Thom Conroy, Associate Professor Ingrid Horrocks, Dr Laura Jean McKay, Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, and Dr Jack Ross, who coordinates the Master’s in Creative Writing.

Array of NZ's top writers teaching at Massey

There has also been a “virtual roll call” of who’s who in Aotearoa New Zealand writing teaching on the programme, including acclaimed writers such as Tina Makereti, Pip Adam, Anne Kennedy, Sarah Jane Barnett, Lynn Davidson, Joan Fleming, Stephanie Johnson and Tim Upperton. 

Creative Writing staff regularly publish books of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction – with publishers in New Zealand and overseas – or write plays that have been performed here and abroad. Staff have published books that have appeared on the best-seller lists and have been recognised by writing awards in Aotearoa and overseas.

Today, after 20 successful years, the first course to bill itself as creative writing still exists – it is now called Creative Writing 1 – and is supplemented by a wide selection of undergraduate and postgraduate courses offered internally on all three Massey campuses (Manawatū, Wellington and Auckland), as well as online.

These include undergraduate courses in writing poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, as well as scriptwriting, playwriting, writing for children, eco-fiction and non-fiction, and travel writing. 

“Thousands of students have taken our courses over the years, and the numbers continue to grow, with total enrolments jumping by 67 per cent between 2016 and 2019,” Professor Walpert said.

Masters of Creative Writing added 

In 2011, with strong undergraduate enrolments, the Masters of Creative Writing (MCW) was added to the programme. Massey’s MCW is unique in being offered by distance and allows students the flexibility of fulltime or part-time study. There are also more than 20 PhD creative writing students who are in progress or have completed their doctorates.

In 2016 a new creative writing major and minor were established (these courses were previously part of the English major).

The celebration event on 21 May will include a panel discussion on “Creative Writing as Activism” and readings from a number of staff and students.

Student successes

Massey’s creative writing students have had great success, regularly publishing individual pieces in journals, publishing books, winning awards. Some examples are:

• In 2015, MCW graduate Janet Newman won 1st place in the 2015 NZ Poetry Society International Poetry Competition for a poem written for her thesis. She won the 2017 International Writers’ Workshop (IWW) Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems. She was one of three poets highly commended in the 2018 Caselberg Trust Poetry Award. She has published her poems widely in journals and has a book forthcoming in August with Otago University Press. 
• In 2016, MCW graduate (and current doctoral student) Margaret Moores won 2nd place in the 2017 NZ Poetry Society International Poetry Competition. 
• MCW graduate Sue Wootton published the creative portion of her MCW as the novel Strip (2016 Mākaro Press), which went on to be shortlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Sue recently completed a PhD at the University of Otago. In 2021 she was named the publisher at Otago University Press. 
• In 2017, graduate Bonnie Etherington published The Earth Cries Out (Penguin Random House), the creative portion of her MCW. The novel went on to longlisted for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and shortlisted for the 2018 Saroyan Prize. Bonnie went on to get her PhD candidate in literature at Northwestern University in Chicago, United States. 
• MCW graduate Gail Ingram won 1st place in the 2016 New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition. She was named a Poetry Editor of the New Zealand literary journal Takahē in 2018, and published a book of poems based on the creative portion of her thesis, Contents Under Pressure (Pukeko Publications). She has been recognised by a number of awards, including the 2019 Caselberg International Poetry Competition Among other places her work has appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Atlanta Review, and multiple New Zealand Society of Authors anthologies.
• Annabel Wilson’s Aspiring Daybook: The Diary of Elsie Winslow (Mākaro Press), a poetry collection based on her MCW thesis at Massey, was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Annabel has also been awarded the RAK Mason Fellowship at New Zealand Pacific Studio (2016), the inaugural Australasian Association of Writers’ Programmes Emerging Writers’ Prize (2016) and a residency at the Robert Lord Writers’ Cottage (2017). 
• 2018 MCW graduate Kim Fulton won 2nd place in the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition with a poem from her MCW thesis and has published a book of poems, I kind of thought the alpacas were a metaphor until we got there
• Dr Johanna Emeney published a version of her the creative portion of her doctoral thesis as a collection of poetry: Family History (Wellington: Mākaro Press, 2017). She developed the critical/scholarly portion into a book, The Rise of Autobiographical Medical Poetry and the Medical Humanities (ibidem, 2018). She has just published a new collection, Felt, with Massey University Press. Dr Emeney was awarded third place in the 2011 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine.
• Tim Upperton published a version of the creative portion of his doctoral thesis as a collection of poetry, The Night We Ate the Baby (HauNui Press), which was a finalist for the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.
• MCW student Tara Black published a version of her thesis as This is Not a Pipe (Victoria University Press, 2020)
• Sarah Jane Barnett, a former doctoral student, has gone on to publish two collections of poetry—one of these, When a Man Runs Into a Woman (Hue & Cry Press), was short-listed for the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Award in poetry (now the Ockham New Zealand Book Award).
• In 2019, Lynn Davidson published the creative portion of her PhD, Islander, with Shearsman Books in the UK, and Victoria University Press. She is currently the Randell Cottage Writer in Residence.  
• MCW graduate Nataliya Oryshchuk won the Playwright’s Association of New Zealand 2018 One-Act Play Competition

Staff successes

Staff have recently forged strong trans-Tasman connections, with Dr Laura Jean McKay, Professor Bryan Walpert, Associate Professor Ingrid Horrocks and senior tutor Dr Gigi Fenster all having books published in Australia in 2020-21. 

Dr McKay’s The Animals in That Country (Scribe, Melbourne) won the Victorian Prize for Literature 2021 and the ABIA Small Press Adult Book of the Year 2021; Professor Walpert’s Late Sonata (Brio Books, Sydney) won the 2020 Viva La Novella Prize; Dr Horrocks’ highly-praised nonfiction book Where We Swim, which was published by Victoria University Press in Wellington is also coming out with the University of Queensland Press; and Gigi Fenster’s novel A Late Winter is forthcoming with Text (Melbourne) later this year after winning the 2020 Michael Gifkins Prize for an unpublished novel.

Other notable publications by staff include Dr Thom Conroy’s The Naturalist (Random House), which spent six months on the New Zealand bestseller list, Dr Jack Ross’s most recent collection of poems The Oceanic Feeling (Salt & Greyboy Press) and senior tutor Dr Johanna Emeney’s most recent poetry collection, Felt (Massey University Press). Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, meanwhile, won the 2018 Playwrights’ Association of New Zealand Outstanding Achievement Award, recognising the many plays she has written that have been performed here and overseas.

Other highlights - New Zealand 

• A visiting creative writing residency is held each year in Palmerston North – the writer has time to work on their own material but also contributes to the community and the University.
• Professor Walpert and Dr Conroy started a literary readings series, a partnership between Massey and the Palmerston North City Library, in 2006. That series, now called Off the Page – and now coordinated by Dr Conroy and Dr McKay – has drawn more than 60 writers from New Zealand and beyond for readings and conversations.
• The creative writing journal Headland is produced in partnership with our programme, with Dr Conroy as its editor-in-chief. 
• Poetry New Zealand was housed in and published from our School from 2014-2020 and five Yearbook issues edited by Dr Ross, one by Dr Emeney (the last four of these were published by Massey University Press).

International connections

• Associate Professor Horrocks is leading the hosting of NonfictioNOW, which will be held at the National Library of New Zealand in 2021. NonfictioNOW is the world’s leading gathering in the field of nonfiction creative writing, ranging across prose forms and extending into video, radio and visual arts. In normal years, about 400 international writer/scholars attend the biennial conference, established in 2005 by the prestigious creative writing programme at the University of Iowa. This event has been re-imagined as a hybrid in-person, digital event for our post-COVID world. http://www.nonfictionow.org/. 
• Dr Conroy organised an Australian Association of Writing Programmes (AAWP) conference in Wellington in 2014. 

• Dr Conroy also led the development of a network of creative writing programmes in New Zealand and two associated conferences (Wellington and Auckland) that drew creative writing teachers from across New Zealand.

About the Selection Committees

The Teaching Excellence Awards is managed by the Dean Academic and the criteria align with those used to assess the National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards.

The Research Medals Selection Committee is a subcommittee of the University Research Committee with each of the five college research directors involved. It is chaired by Provost Professor Giselle Byrnes.

Dr Jason Mika recieved the 2020 Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award presented by Vice-Chancellor Professor Jan Thomas.

Te Utangakiwhangaparaoa Tautuhi

Ana-Marie Kawana

 

 

Massey University says this is the largest first year intake to its Kura Kaupapa teaching programmes since they began in 2012. Massey runs the country’s only postgraduate Te Aho Matua initial teacher education programme, Te Aho Paerewa, and the country’s first undergraduate degree, Te Aho Tātairangi.   

Lecturer Nadell Karatea says there has been a 133% increase in students since last year. “It’s thrilling because we know this cohort will make such a huge contribution not only to Kura Kaupapa Māori but also in our local communities, our marae, hapū and iwi.”

At a pōwhiri at Te Pūtahi-a-Toi, Massey’s School of Māori Knowledge yesterday, 41 of the 74 first years were welcomed to the programme.  There to greet them, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Māori Professor Meihana Durie says the fruits of the Kohanga and Kura Kaupapa movements can be seen in this bumper intake. “The record numbers of new students in our Te Aho programme this year reflects the increasing prominence of Kura Kaupapa Māori across Aotearoa. We’re also seeing a new wave of students, many of whom are Raukura, or graduates of Kura Kaupapa themselves, who bring with them immense potential and rich talent as educators of the future.”

Professor Durie says students are rising to the challenge of a sector crying out for graduate teachers. “Our students will enter a sector where there is high demand for graduate teachers. As such, we’re incredibly fortunate to have an outstanding team of teaching staff here in our Te Aho programme.  Our staff give their all to nurture and nourish the mauri and mana of our students and to prepare them not only as teachers going into Kura Kaupapa, but as future leaders of their communities.” 

Both degrees are open to fluent speakers of te reo Māori and are taught completely in te reo Māori.  The course was designed in partnership with Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori of Aotearoa, who provide ongoing support and guidance for the kaupapa, and are the only tertiary programmes in the country to be modelled on Te Aho Matua, the founding philosophy and driving force for Kura Kaupapa Māori.

Postgraduate student, Te Utangakiwhangaparaoa Tautuhi from Ngāti Ranginui and Ngāti Tukorehe, has previously studied a Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts and a Bachelor of Māori Performing Arts.

Since graduating he has been working at Te Wānanga a Aotearoa and says he would now like to fill his kete with teaching tools but to do so he has to go back and learn.  

“This was the best option as it is only one year, and you come away with a qualification of being able to teach our children.” The father of four says he has given teaching adults a go and enjoyed it but now wants to shift his focus to children.

The programmes are also unique in that students study online from their communities while associated with a kura hapai where they get practical experience and encouragement.

Students travel to Massey’s Manawatū campus for regular block courses and this week’s pōwhiri and gathering will be the first of many to come for the students.

One of those students is Rangitāne and Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi student, Ana-Marie Kawana who is just beginning her three years of undergraduate study. She says her six children and her beliefs inspired her to begin the degree.  “I really believe in raising all kids especially Māori tamariki under the umbrella of learning their tikanga, their culture, their traditions, just so they know who they are and where they come from and also to be well educated at the same time and ready for the world.”

Professors Aj Ali, Faruk Balli and Jackie Benschop

Professor Aj Ali - School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition  

Professor Ali’s research spans several platforms that broadly fit within the categories of physical activity/sport and aspects of health, wellness and sporting performance within adults and children. He has built up a significant track record in paediatric exercise science and helped develop physical activity guidelines for under-fives for Ministry of Health, significantly impacted on the activities of the largest provider of early childhood services in New Zealand (BestStart), and won an international award with the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education.

He designed the overall evaluation of Sport New Zealand’s flagship five-year Healthy Active Learning initiative, part of the Government Wellbeing Budget, by bringing together a multidisciplinary group of experts and liaising with three different government agencies and their regional bodies.  He has been invited to develop a similar initiative in China.

Professor Ali is a world-renowned expert in soccer skill, intermittent exercise and supplementation research and has developed the most widely used skills tests in the literature (for men, women and children). He sits on the editorial board of three international journals and is an expert reviewer for over 40 journals. He was awarded a Fellowship of the European Congress of Sport Science, one of the most prestigious research organisations in his field. He holds two invited Honorary positions at high-ranked universities in Hong Kong and the UK.  

Professor Faruk Balli - School of Economics and Finance   

Professor Balli is an applied economist whose research interests include international finance, macroeconomic aspects of international finance, Islamic economics/finance and tourism economics. He was invited by the East Asia Office of The World Bank - one of the most prominent research institutions in the world- to be an economist consultant in 2020. He has acted as a referee in more than 45 different journals and currently serves on the editorial boards of Tourism Economics, Tourism Analysis, Journal of Economics and Finance and Int. Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Finance and Management.

Some of his selected works have been presented at the European Finance Association, Financial Markets Authority Annual Meetings, and American Economic Association Meetings. In 2015 he was appointed by AMANAH Ethical Investment Company (the first KiwiSaver company with Islamic/ethical practices in NZ) into both directory and advisory boards; he is also a member of financial services company, EFCO’s advisory board.  He has received several awards, including the prestigious Emerald/European Foundation for Management Development: MENA Management Research Fund Award, Massey Business School Early Career Research award, and Massey Business School Individual Research Award.

Professor Jackie Benschop - School of Veterinary Science

Professor Benschop is a School of Veterinary Science research group leader, co-directing the Molecular Epidemiology and Public Health Laboratory. She is a global expert in the field of zoonotic disease with focus on those that have occupational or food-borne transmission pathways. Her research focuses on health at the human-animal-environment interface. She works on Leptospira and Salmonella, globally important pathogens, with cross-cutting themes of climate change and antimicrobial resistance. As leader of Massey’s leptospirosis research group, she is regularly consulted by veterinary and medical practitioners, farmers and rural groups. She advises on outbreaks of human leptospirosis in regions, in abattoirs and on farms, including assisting WorkSafe NZ and Public Health Units in their disease investigations.

Professor Benschop is a Steering Committee member of the World Health Organisation’s Global Leptospirosis Environmental Action Network, Management Group member of One Health Aotearoa and on the Infectious Diseases Academy of the New Zealand Ministry of Health. In 2015 she co-founded the African Leptospirosis Network to advance activities around leptospirosis in the African continent. This network supports the African science community through access to peer-reviewed publications, mentoring, thesis examining, a PhD offer of place at Massey University for a Tanzanian student and rapid identification of expertise to support outbreak response in Mozambique.

Professors Karen Stockin, Pamela von Hurst and Andrew Worth

Professor Karen Stockin - School of Natural and Computational Sciences

Professor Stockin is the Research Leader of the Cetacean Ecology Research Group, whose research interfaces marine biology, behavioural ecology, vet pathology and animal welfare science.  Her focus is the application of animal welfare science to human-wildlife interactions. As a current Rutherford Discovery Fellow, Professor Stockin is assessing how AI and animal welfare science can increase the effectiveness of human intervention efforts during mass stranding events.

She obtained her Bachelor of Science (Honours) from the University of Plymouth, and her Master of Science as a European Union Scholar from the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. She completed her PhD as a Commonwealth Scholar from Massey University in 2008. Since this time, she has served as the Research Director of the Coastal-Marine Research Group at Massey University.

Professor Stockin was the inaugural Strandings Coordinator (2018-2020) for the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and is the current serving specialist on the IWC Strandings Initiative Expert Panel. Her international engagement on matters of strandings investigation and emergency response is globally recognised. She has been twice nominated (2008 and 2010) for the UNESCO-L’OREAL Fellowship for Young Woman in Sciences, and she is the inaugural recipient of the Bob Kerridge Animal Welfare Fellowship.

Professor Pamela von Hurst - School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition

Professor von Hurst is Co-Director of the Massey Vitamin D Research Centre which she helped establish in 2010. Her research interests include vitamin D in health and disease, child health and nutrition, bone, metabolic syndrome and physical activity. She is currently co-principal investigator on a study funded by High Value Nutrition, and Auckland principal investigator on a multi-site project funded by the Ministry of Primary Industries.

Professor von Hurst is President of the Nutrition Society of New Zealand. In 2017 she was selected by The Royal Society to represent New Zealand on the International Union of Nutrition Sciences (IUNS), voting on behalf of her profession at the IUNS General Assembly.  She is also co-leader of a NZ/Australian working group to develop a Federation of Oceanic Nutrition Societies, supported by IUNS. She regularly contributes to Government policy through participation in expert panels on vitamin D and food fortification, reviewing Ministry of Health recommendations on vitamin D and sun exposure. She also sat on a Ministry of Health Technical Advisory Group on the Eating and Physical Activity Guidelines.

​​​​​​​Professor Andrew Worth - School of Veterinary Science   

Professor Worth is a New Zealand registered specialist in small animal veterinary surgery and internationally recognised as a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists by examination. His current research interests include working dog orthopaedic disease, lumbosacral degeneration and biomaterials for surgery. His clinical interests include minimally invasive surgery and advanced surgical technologies and his clinical skills are sought after on a national and international level.

Professor Worth is Head of the Small Animal Surgery Service and has introduced surgical procedures new to Massey (including arthroscopy and laparoscopy). In addition, he has pioneered two world-first procedures (computer assisted surgical correction of angular limb deformities and patient-specific stabilisation of the lumbosacral junction using 3D printed titanium implants). He is the convenor for the New Zealand Veterinary Association Hip and Elbow Dysplasia Panels and co-Director of the Centre for Working and Service Dog Health. Professor Worth promotes and facilitates research into disease and welfare conditions of working and service dogs, and his expertise provides support for the NZ Police and NZ Defence Working Dog programs.

Associate Professors

Te Hā o te Reo – The Essence of the Māori Language is an introductory course developed at Massey’s Te Pūtahi-a-Toi, School of Māori Knowledge by senior lecturer and Pūkenga Reo Māori, Hone Morris to assist Massey staff. Now Massey has offered the DHB this programme for its senior executive team. 

The weekly activities and lessons are designed to encourage the acquisition and use of spoken te reo Māori at a basic level along with particular aspects of protocol which assist in establishing an authentic rapport with whānau, hapū and iwi.

Hone Morris says it’s heartening to see the enthusiasm people have for learning te reo, but they often walk away with so much more than a range of new words. “Even this introductory level opens a new world for many people because you cannot learn the language without opening your heart to tikanga and culture. It really is a doorway to greater understanding of te ao Māori (the Māori world) which is vital especially for health professionals.”

MidCentral DHB General Manager Māori Tracee Te Huia says the programme for DHB and THINK Hauora executives is a positive move in the right direction. "It’s fantastic that the executive team of the DHB approached me to set up a te reo programme so that they could partner local iwi and Māori in a more respectful and meaningful way.  I am proud that the team are taking this seriously while having a bit of fun.” 

Deputy Vice Chancellor Māori, Professor Meihana Durie says the DHB initiative is indicative of the increasing demand for Te Reo Māori in the workplace.   

“This is another exciting development for Te Pūtahi-a-Toi as it continues to help meet the increasing demand for Te Reo in the workplace," he says. "This kaupapa represents the start of an important relationship with MidCentral District Health Board.  Their strong commitment to te reo Māori and Tikanga Māori we know, will also lead to positive outcomes in terms of engagement with whānau across multiple health settings.  Hone brings a tremendous depth of knowledge and expertise to his teaching in ways that emphasise each dimension of Te Whare Tapa Whā, and this approach will resonate with our participants and the nature of their work. ”

A research article by Dr Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire and Dr María Celina Bortolotto, from the School of Humanities, and senior lecturer Hone Morris, from Te Pūtahi-a-Toi, titled Motivation as ethical self-formation in learning te reo Māori as a second language, was published recently in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.

Their study focussed on non-Māori staff who undertook a voluntary, 10-week te reo course offered through Massey University. The researchers embarked on the study because they say; “little is known about what drives non-heritage learners of indigenous languages.”

“Such an interest in te reo from non-indigenous New Zealanders is in many ways remarkable and prompts the question as why non-Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand might want to pursue the language,” they write.

The context for the study is the growing interest in learning te reo across the population, Māori and non-Māori – a trend reinforced by strong support and engagement for campaigns such as the recent Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. It aims to celebrate, promote and encourage greater use of te reo across numerous contexts – home, school, work, hospitality, health, public transport and in the media. Te Reo Māori was made an official language of New Zealand in 1987 and New Zealand Sign Language in 2006.

The researchers explored the topic within the framework of ‘ethical self-formation’ through which learners shape aspects of their selves to “develop, design and live a life they consider meaningful based on their ethical and aesthetic convictions.”

Hone Morris teaching te reo Māori to staff at MidCentral DHB in a new partnership with Massey.

Te reo enhances Pākehā connections to Māori world

Participants told the researchers that learning te reo was partially linked to their professional lives – for instance, some felt they would be better placed to support and encourage Māori students to succeed at university by developing their te reo skills and knowledge. Others said it was important in terms of aligning with the university’s Te Tiriti-led goal and principles.

A mental health academic and clinician who took part in the study said she was alerted to the necessity of being familiar with te reo and the related tikanga (customs and traditional values) to be able to help Māori clients, and to fulfil the ethical dimension of her professional role by creating a ‘culturally-safe’ practice.

However, for most participants their interest extended beyond the professional sphere to encompass social, cultural and emotional aspects of their lives – often to fulfil a long-standing desire to embrace te reo. Another participant linked her desire to learn te reo to growing up in a predominantly Pākehā farming community imbued with cultural values which she traced back to the local Māori population.

“Growing up in that sort of collective farming community I actually feel like I have a spiritual connection to my mountain and to my river and to my land, so I feel like a white Māori. A lot of those beliefs and values are just the same and I feel like I’m missing a big part of it because I don’t understand the language,” she told researchers.

Another acknowledged the current nation-wide shift towards a ‘more Māori New Zealand’, while new migrants viewed a knowledge of te reo as; “inextricably linked to one’s legal status as a New Zealand citizen.”

One participant explained his motivation as; “the result of his many years of service in the New Zealand Army, where his interest in the language grew while in close contact with Māori soldiers, a process facilitated by the fact that ‘Māori culture is an integral part of the New Zealand Army’.”

While the authors acknowledge the sample size of 10 is small, they say it offers unique insights on an under-researched area – insights that may prove valuable well beyond the shores of Aotearoa for nations also seeking to revitalise indigenous languages. They say the te reo Māori language revitalisation experience in Aotearoa/New Zealand is ground-breaking and an inspiration to others on a similar journey, including in Brazil and North America.

Mr Morris is currently leading a Massey University initiative to teach te reo Māori to staff at Te Pae Hauora o Ruahine o Tararua (MidCentral DHB).

Dr Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Her research focuses on L2 (second language) learning motivation and heritage/minority language maintenance and education. Her most recent publications explore the language maintenance efforts of New Zealand migrant families from a family language policy perspective.

Dr María Celina Bortolotto is Senior Lecturer in Spanish. Her research explores

the relationship between cultural values and personal emotions, such as shame and humour. She also studies emotions and motivation in learning a second language.  

Senior lecturer Hone Morris has been a teacher of te reo Māori for over 25 years. He has published four te reo Māori teaching manuals with learning activities. 

But for thousands of people, studying by distance has been a behind-the-scenes game changer well before COVID-19 struck. Originally known as extramural – ‘outside the walls’ – distance study (now called ‘online’) has been available and evolving for the past six decades at Massey University. 

From actors and film makers to social entrepreneurs doing humanitarian work in developing nations, Olympic athletes and rugby players, politicians and business leaders, farmers and stay-at-home parents – Massey’s distance learning offerings have been transforming lives for almost 60 years.

In essence, distance learning has enabled people of all ages, locations and backgrounds to embrace life-changing study, often in the wee small hours after the dishes are done and the kids are in bed. Or, perhaps in a prison, on a plane, or hotel in a far-off country. It’s meant you don’t have to live in a university city to get a tertiary-level education – you could be in the Far North or the Southern Alps. 

Nelson-born independent film-maker David Cranstoun Welch studied social anthropology for a Bachelor of Arts by distance while making films in New York and Los Angeles that screen in international festivals. Course readings led to his latest project – a documentary called How Forests Think. He’s been filming an Indigenous tribe in Ecuador about their quest to preserve their natural environment. 

Hayley Morrison launched the Motorbike Book Club – a charitable trust delivering books to children in some of Vietnam’s poorest villages – while studying by distance for a Master’s in International Development.

For National Party leader Judith Collins, who graduated this year with a Graduate Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety, flexible online learning at Massey enabled her to gain a deeper understanding of health and safety issues that inform law and policy decision-making in Parliament.

Being able to study flexibly around family, work, travel, training or community obligations is all very well. But the key to success goes deeper than a technological transfer of knowledge from lecture theatre to computer screens. It relies on academics understanding that their students juggle numerous pressures, says Massey’s Dr Ella Kahu, a passionate champion of what’s now referred to as online learning.

Wellington-based Dr Kahu began her academic career doing one undergraduate psychology paper by distance in her early 30s when her children were aged two and four. She knows the territory well. She started before the digital era and took eight years to complete her BA. By then she was hooked and went on to do a PhD on the experiences of first-year distance students. Her research has led to many journal articles as well as the Kahu Framework of Student Engagement, and an Apple podcast.

Technology, teaching and the attached semantics have evolved together – students might be geographically dispersed, but they don’t need to feel ‘distant’ thanks to the array of online platforms, apps and learning support, as well as online contact with lecturers, tutors and mentors, she says.

Then and now

In the beginning, extramural students in the 1960s received hefty packages of photocopied course material and textbooks via snail mail. They posted back their hand-written assignments and attended regular contact courses on campus. 

David McNab, president of the independent association for distance students M@D (Massey@Distance) relays stories of distance students in the pre-digital era “breaking the speed limit to get to the physical post box on the Palmerston North campus before 9am when the postbox was cleared. It was an official essay drop box – there was a lot of burned rubber up and down the highway!”

Then came the fax machine – and the inevitably jammed-up fax lines. “There’d be the 17-page essay and halfway through page 16 it would choke, and you’d have to start the whole thing again.”

Stream (Massey’s learning management system) brought distance learning into the digital era. Public platforms such as Facebook have revolutionised the ability of students to connect with and support each other, says Mr McNab, who has a Bachelor of Business Studies and is doing postgraduate study.

This legacy means Massey’s name is synonymous with distance aka online education as its heartland and core business. So, it’s no surprise that in 2020, more than half its students are enrolled to study fully or partly online, the highest proportion in the humanities and social sciences. ‘Blended learning’ is now the buzzword for a new era as the boundaries between internal and online teaching dissolve and courses are offered across a ’continuum’ from fully online to fully on-campus with aspects of online support.

However, the idea that you could gain a formal academic education outside the walls of the Ivory Tower­ – whether you live in a lighthouse, a loft, rural heartland or suburbia – took a while to gain credence.

History professor Michael Belgrave, whose research on extramural learning is referenced in his landmark  history of Massey, From Empire’s Servant to Global Citizen, says; “what was called ‘extramural education’ gave people who could not aspire to go university for all sorts of reasons, the opportunity to get educated in ways that they wouldn't have otherwise, particularly women at home.”

Massey’s experience means; “we know what we're doing – because we’ve been doing this since the ‘60s,” says Professor Belgrave. “We adapted with changing technology. But the most important thing is that we have this long tradition of supporting students at a distance, of knowing what their needs are, and working with them to meet their goals. And that requires a lot more flexibility on the part of the lecturers who are providing the teaching.”

Technology and teaching 

What does distance study look like in the 21st century? After all, many higher education institutions now offer short, free online courses or MOOCs (massive open online courses) and online micro-credentials.

Duncan O’Hara, Director – Learning and Teaching, has over 20 years’ experience in the field, from first-hand experience of being a distance student to the present where he oversees the university’s learning and teaching activities and academic support for students.

“Massey’s had over 50 years in the game, and as the only New Zealand university with a comprehensive distance offer it means that people can rely on us for providing a broad educational offer, a quality educational experience that is deeply rooted in the needs of distance students.”

Among changes and trends since the early days of extramural offerings, he notes online learners are getting younger, with most aged between 29 and 40. However, many are well into retirement age – such as Jo Rimmer, who graduated with a BA last year aged 86. 

Massey’s distance programme has students studying from almost every corner of New Zealand and from across the world. Mr O’Hara says many of Massey’s Māori and Pasifika students enrol to study by distance. “For many of these students they have family, community and work responsibilities, and , distance education is seen as the access point to allow them to maintain these commitments yet still engage with university study. “ 

M@D, which grew out of the longstanding Massey University Extramural Students’ Society, EXMSS, is developing strategies and tools to improve distance student engagement, including dedicated support for people studying while managing anxiety or depression, with disabilities or neuro-diverse conditions such as autism and dyslexia.  And Massey University Students’ Association (MUSA), based on the Manawatū campus, provides advocacy for distance students. Izzy Mickleson is a registered social worker who supports students with “anything that disrupts their study, from academic grievances to mental and physical health issues, hardship grants and everything in between.” The service also provides support through regional events, Facebook groups and volunteers, as well as a mental health initiative delivered to students weekly through Facebook.

Innovation - abstract ideas and madcap movies 

Innovative lecturers are experimenting with technology to better connect with online learners. Take philosophers Professor Bill Fish and Steve Duffin, who produced a series of comedy videos for Tū Arohae: Critical Thinking, introduced in 2014 as a new Bachelor of Arts core course.

“When it came to delivering this paper for distance, we totally re-imagined this course from the ground up,” says Professor Fish.

Rather than full length hour long videos of a lecturer walking around and frequently off camera, learning material is presented in bite-sized chunks on video via Stream, with opportunities for students to actively engage with topics and ideas. They also have access to an online library of files for revision and reference. “The level of engagement is light years ahead of anything we’ve had in the past,” he says.

“Comments from the students are in the thousands,” says Mr Duffin, whose natural comedic talent in introducing serious philosophical questions with crazy skits and quirky props has earned him star status. 

He also weaves in motivational or empathetic comments in his online teaching to acknowledge the pressures and realities of the distance students’ lives, many of whom are working, parenting or care-giving. One student said on the comments space she was moved to tears of appreciation. “They feel we understand, that we’re working with them,” says Mr Duffin.

Dr Kahu is adamant that while many of the younger, school leaver-age students seek the vitality and social life of being on campus, online study is the first choice for a more mature demographic.

“It requires a level of motivation less necessary for internal students. I think a distance degree is more valuable because it demonstrates an ability to self-regulate, to self-manage, to time-manage and to juggle. If an employer doesn’t want that, they are an idiot!”

She urges prospective students, many who may have not been in an educational setting for a long time, start with one paper per semester. Not all students will succeed. Some will drop out, often because they’ve taken on too much. “You need to test the water, try it out and ease yourself into this new world.”

Choose a paper or subject you are interested in, she urges. Re-entering education after a long time away means acquiring new learning skills, not just getting your head around the course material.  “It’s important that people see it as developmental, personal learning – not just ‘getting a degree’,” she adds.

Online students, Mr McNab says, represent “a culture of redemption – it’s okay to re-invent yourself. For example, a distance student in her late 40s retrained completely from being in administration to a fully qualified chartered accountant. She’s gone from $40K-ish a year to $150K a year, and now is a sole practitioner taking on staff and buying other businesses.”

“We defy the norms that how you play out your early 20s defines you,” he says.

Dr Kahu says all teaching – not just distance teaching - is about good relationship building. “It’s about being responsive to students and their needs, and being friendly, warm and communicative and excited and enthusiastic about the material. That’s the thing that makes the difference.”

For juicy insights on distance learning, read writer and actor the late Peter Hawes’ entertaining book, The EXMSS Files: A People’s History of the Massey University Extramural Students’ Society (Dunmore Publishing Limited, 2010). “Set in a parallel universe and populated with historic heroes and spiteful villains, it provides an insightful vision of the political manoeuvrings and societal trends that made Massey’s extramural programme the premier distance education provider it is today.”

Connecting students with businesses for learning experiences is a core part of Massey University’s programmes and in 2020 the Sport and Exercise Practicum has focused on connecting more students and graduates studying physical education to “work-integrated learning” opportunities.

Recent sport practicum graduates Tyrone Kemp and Isabel Buckhurst secured roles as game development manager with Wanganui Rugby and events and communication officer with Netball Waikato/Bay of Plenty, respectively.

Mr Kemp’s practicum involved assisting with managing community programmes and national events for Basketball Manawatu. “The overall practicum experience and learnings I gained exceeded my original expectations… I can wholeheartedly say that without studying I wouldn’t have had a chance at getting this role,” he says.

Ms Buckhurst worked with Netball Manawatu leading their FutureFerns initiative. “I had so many amazing experiences that taught me so much, including applying for a full-time role, experiencing the full job interview process, and opportunities to build a name for myself in the community.”

Course Coordinator of the Sport and Exercise Practicum and Chair of the university’s Work-Integrated Learning Committee Professor Andy Martin says Massey is committed to providing students with real-world learning opportunities and has long standing relationships with industry partners in the areas of sport management, coaching and exercise prescription.

Professor Martin’s research has highlighted this approach to learning produces world-ready graduates, which not only benefits students but also the business community.

“Integrating working and learning helps the business community and industries grow as students provide fresh ways of thinking and working. Placing students in work places also provides supervisors with management and mentoring opportunities.”

Professor Martin says by placing students in work places, their skills, ideas and fresh thinking are helping to meet the challenges and needs of Aotearoa New Zealand’s society, economy and environment. The past six months have also provided opportunities for some students to work online, which have enhanced their adaptability and capability, and added value to their placement organisations and sport, exercise and school communities through these online initiatives.

The double semester practicum course is part of the Bachelor of Sport and Exercise and Bachelor of Sport Management, allowing students to focus on individual areas of interest and gain experience in the multi-disciplinary applied fields of sport management and development, physical education and activity, or exercise prescription and training. Students can choose to undertake a practicum in areas including sport event management, sport coaching, sport coordination, sport performance, exercise prescription, athlete conditioning, and more.

Dr Lynette Hodges coordinates the Exercise Prescription Clinic in Palmerston North and says the practicum enhances students’ employability.

Recent exercise practicum graduates Grayson Nicholls and Cassidy Slade initially secured roles with Xalt and Zenith Fitness, respectively. Mr Nicholls is now undertaking sport and exercise postgraduate study at Massey and Ms Slade is a well-respected exercise consultant at City Fitness.

Mr Nicholls’ practicum involved working with clients performing postural analysis and appropriate fitness tests along with supervising fitness sessions. He says he gained confidence throughout the experience. “I gained a deeper understanding of different injuries and illnesses, as well as treatments and there processes. I am confident at performing client consultations, exercise testing and developing exercise plans as a result of this experience.”

Ms Slade worked at Zenith fitness during her practicum creating personalised programmes, fitness testing and designing and instructing a number of different group fitness classes. “I gained a vast amount of confidence working with clients and have been able to apply my skills learnt at university,” she says.

The postgraduate diploma (PGDip) Specialist Teaching qualification is being redesigned in 2020 and will be offered from 2021, building on the past 10 years’ delivery through the University’s Institute of Education. The re-design is a collaboration between the Univeristy’s specialist teaching experts and the Ministry of Education with stakeholders in specialist sectors and mana whenua in the regions.

These new partnerships are at the core of the re-designed qualification, following the successful bid by the University for the ongoing provision of the national programme. The goal is to grow a specialist kaiako workforce with a skillset to support tamariki with diverse learning needs and be responsive to learners’ identities, languages and cultures.

The programme is designed for interprofessional learning and practice across specialist education areas including early intervention, blind and low vision, deaf and hard of hearing, complex educational needs, learning and behaviour and gifted. Another key new direction is to include autism and neurodiversity as a core element across the programme.

Co-directors of the programme Associate Professors Mandia Mentis and Alison Kearney say the qualification will be built on the principles of inclusion, equity and human rights and will contribute to an inclusive education system in which the participation, achievement, wellbeing and progress of all learners are supported. Students will also play an important role in the re-design through collaborative engagement with regional communities.

Programme coordinator Dr Wendy Holley-Boen, from Massey's Institute of Education, says a goal of the programme is to increase uptake of the qualification by Māori and Pacific education professionals and those with a lived experience of disability, promoting a more diverse specialist teaching workforce.

Programme coordinator Dr Wendy Holley-Boen with programme co-directors Associate Professor Alison Kearney and Associate Professor Mandia Mentis, all from Massey's Institute of Education.

Teaching in a digital age

The redesigned programme – the result of extensive consultation across the sector – aims to support specialist teachers to be flexible and responsive practitioners skilled and capable in the area of teaching and learning in a digital age.

“Now more than ever, during and post-Covid 19, the ability to be agile and teach and learn in a digital world is critical. This programme is delivered in a blended way (online and face-to-face) incorporating the skills of self-directed and life-long learning. It supports the development of practitioners who can rapidly respond to our current changing educational landscapes to ensure equitable learning outcomes for all,” say Dr Mentis and and Dr Kearney.

Dr Kearney, who takes over the role on May 4 when current head Professor John O’Neill steps down, is not daunted. “In terms of the challenges taking over the leadership of the Institute of Education amidst this state of emergency, I think it will be more important to focus on the opportunities that will arise from being forced to think about learning and the role of educators in different ways,” she says.

“There is no doubt that there are dreadful consequences of this worldwide pandemic – social, health, and economic. However, it has forced us, as educators, to think about a new ‘normal’ and realise that we will be changed forever, and our centres of education will be changed forever – we won’t be able to go back to how things were before.”

Dr Kearney, who began her career as a primary teacher before being seconded to Massey’s Initial Teacher Education programme, gaining her PhD in 2009, says; “we’ve known for a while now that the role of the educator in the 21st century is not as the person who holds then imparts the knowledge, and I think that the Covid-19 situation has brought this into stark reality – people can access knowledge and learn in so many ways, usually by a few clicks on a device. 

“They can also connect with just about anyone, anywhere and anytime, to learn and access knowledge – this will be the new normal, and we need to ensure we take these opportunities and re-imagine our education systems.”

Dr Kearney, a co-founder of the Equity Through Education Centre, established within Massey’s Institute of Education (part of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences) in 2016, says whatever unfolds through the COVID-19 crisis, she will continue to champion the need for equity in education. She cares deeply that all New Zealanders have equal access to quality education and is concerned that some – including Māori, Pasifika, people with disabilities or from backgrounds of poverty – are missing out.

Social changes present some of the biggest challenges facing education, in her view. “Our system is not doing very well by some groups in New Zealand. While we have a highly ranked system, there are some groups people and students missing out. This is a problem because we know our life chances are strongly influenced by our education opportunities. The better our educational outcomes, the more money we earn, the better our health, the more engaged in society and the happier we are.”

Equity through access to education

With her colleagues in the institute and the centre, she is addressing issues of discrimination and exclusion by fostering relationships with iwi and schools, aiming to break down barriers to learning. They work with communities to develop initiatives, and run symposia on topical issues as well as contributing to policy development, such as the recent review of Tomorrow’s Schools.

Dr Kearney’s ideals and values might be shaped by and expressed through academic activity now, but her passion for educational justice was kindled through early personal experiences. She grew up in Gisborne with a brother who had an intellectual disability. An absence of support, or schools that accepted people with disabilities, meant he had to go to a residential home in another town from age 13. In her 20s Dr Kearney learned about the terrible things that happened to him there, including going blind from a head injury. “People didn’t own their own clothes. They didn’t have their own rooms-  they lived like in a hospital ward with no schooling. There was a lot of abuse in such places. 

“I think this [her brother’s experiences] has been the thing that’s driven me in terms of thinking ‘why is it that we treat some members of our society as if they are second-class citizens, particularly as that relates to education. Why is it that he couldn’t go to school?’”

For her PhD research she sought to uncover some of the factors that lead to the exclusion of disabled pupils and found that in some cases, they were simply being denied access to enrolment either blatantly, or in more subtle ways. 

She believes schools are better at dealing with wider societal issues now. “We are definitely going in the right direction. Twenty or 30 years ago we talked about fixing the person, now we talk about fixing the system. That’s a great shift. It’s the same for tertiary study too – we need to ask ‘how are we meeting the needs of our Māori and Pasific students, and students from backgrounds of poverty?’”

Future of learning

Following 15 years as a primary school teacher (in Tauranga, Tokoroa, Christchurch and Palmerston North) to teaching into Massey’s Initial Teacher Education (ITE), masters and doctoral programmes, and most recently as National Coordinator of the Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) qualifications, Dr Kearney is keenly aware of how fast things are changing, of the sheer volume of knowledge at our fingertips – and the impact this will have on education. 

Developing open minds and critical thinking to navigate the abundance and complexity of information will be a vital skill in preparing students, she says. 

“It used to be enough to impart knowledge and to teach what things, but it’s so much more complex now – we also need to know why and how, and when, we need to think critically and problem-solve, to communicate and collaborate, and to be information literate. This changing world requires a changing education system, one that nurtures life-long learning as people seek to upskill throughout their lives.”