Category: Tertiary Education

Secondary school Spanish language teachers from across New Zealand are about to add a Colombian accent to their teaching techniques.

The group of eight teachers will fly to Colombia next week as part of a programme encouraging cultural connections between the two countries and will be accompanied by Spanish language lecturer Dr José Díaz Rodríguez, who is based at Massey University’s Auckland campus.

The month-long trip is funded by a Prime Minister’s Scholarship to Latin America awarded to Massey’s Spanish Language programme.

The Teaching Teachers: NZ Spanish teachers in Colombia programme, offers New Zealand Spanish teachers the opportunity to advance their prowess by immersing themselves in a Spanish-speaking context and join in classes and workshops with Colombian specialists in second language teaching.

The teachers – from schools in Waiuku, Napier, Hawke’s Bay, Havelock North, Lower Hutt, Christchurch and Dunedin – will be based until early May at the Universidad Nacional in the Colombian capital Bogota, which offers advanced Spanish language classes in the morning and cultural activities in the afternoons.

Senior lecturer in Spanish language at Massey’s School of Humanities, Dr Celina Bortolotto, says both Massey University and Universidad Nacional recognise the potential for training collaborations, exchange of expertise, cultural ties and strategic partnerships that will create economic and trade opportunities for both countries. She and Dr Rodríguez co-wrote the bid for the scholarship, which covers the cost of airfares, accommodation, travel insurance and a three-day trip to the Universidad Nacional campus in Leticia, on the Amazon River.

“Participant teachers will also be able to showcase their work and education among their Colombian peers and in the process highlight the potential for study in New Zealand and highlight the strengths of the New Zealand education system,” she says.

The programme is part of a goal to help Education New Zealand market New Zealand as a global education destination – estimated to have a potential market size of $5 billion by 2025.

“As part of this immersion training, New Zealand teachers will also act as cultural ambassadors and share the variety of their practices, the diversity of their challenges and the richness of their culture in Aotearoa with Colombian teachers and students,” says Dr Bortolotto, who is from Argentina. 

Each participating teacher has organised or been involved with activities promoting the teaching of Spanish in New Zealand over the past few years, many of them spearheaded by Massey’s Spanish Programme.

While in Colombia, the teachers will also be hosted on two educational field trips where they will meet different Colombian communities.

Dr Bortolotto says when they return, the teachers will be able to share their knowledge and experiences of Latin American culture, in particular Colombia, to a larger New Zealand audience. She hopes the programme will encourage further teaching and research collaborations between Massey and Universidad Nacional.

Dr Ralph Bathurst.

Practice and preparation lead to the best performances

I am a musician – a violist – by trade and as a young person I spent many hours practising. I followed the same routine every practice session, beginning with warm-up exercises and then moving onto scales. The scale system devised by Carl Flesch is the one that string players prefer because it contains scales in all 24 keys, and I would spend one week in each key, following the Flesch system of major, melodic minor, harmonic minor, diminished, chromatic, double-stopped scales; single octaves, three octaves; quickly, and very slowly. After working through the key for that week, I would then play one of the 42 Kreutzer studies. Only when I had finished this routine would I then start practising the specific pieces I was studying.

I describe this in detail because here’s the thing: when performing on stage, a musician knows that there will be some difficult passages that they have to navigate. The hours of playing exercises, scales and studies means that all the potentially treacherous spots in a piece have been encountered over and over within the practice routine. Because they have spent all those hours, the most skilled musicians are able to get beyond their nerves and treat difficult passages with ease. Psychologists call this being in a state of flow. It is a mental state where people become less and less self-conscious, and more present to what is happening in the moment. This is the ideal state for leaders to work in.

Mistakes are more likely when you are under stress

It is vital for leaders to operate within their comfort zone because that’s when they are most at ease and can be in flow. Mistakes are more likely to be made when we are out of our comfort zone and full of anxiety and fear. Musicians know that nerves will make the muscles tense, and leadership is no different. 

The challenge for leaders is to continually stretch their comfort zone outwards, and that’s where development programmes can be very helpful. Courses can help leaders experiment with different ways of leading within the safety of a classroom and, in the process, acquire a larger repertoire of leadership skills.

Reacher dealt to the skinheads because he was comfortable with himself and had already practised the actions leading to his success. Leaders operating within their comfort zone make for healthy organisations. 

Learn about the Master of Advanced Leadership Practice

Westpac Massey Fin-Ed Centre director Dr Pushpa Wood.

Good financial advice is crucial

Westpac NZ’s general manager of consumer banking and wealth, Simon Power, says a good financial education is crucial to building a secure financial future.

“Getting a good financial start in life is really important. The research shows parents have a critical role to play in their child’s financial knowledge well into adulthood. We’d encourage parents to talk to their children about money from an early age and to also keep increasing their own knowledge,” Mr Power says.

“However, it’s encouraging that more than half of participants believe they will learn about managing money from financial planners, advisers and taking classes over the next five years.”

Gender differences in the study

The study found a gender gap in how participants performed in a financial literacy test and how they assessed their own financial literacy levels. The average score for the financial literacy test was 70 per cent for men, compared with 54 per cent for females, while 41 per cent of men assessed their financial literacy levels as “very good” or “excellent”, compared to only 21 per cent of females.

“It’s doubly important that parents talk to their daughters about money as we know women face more barriers than men in their careers and in saving for retirement. It’s equally important for women to take control of their own financial knowledge,” Mr Power says.

Overall, the report found the cohort had many positive financial behaviours, including a participation rate of 89 per cent in KiwiSaver. It also found that more than two-thirds of young people remain wary of credit card debt, with many saying they use their credit card primarily for rewards, and pay the balance in full every month to avoid paying interest. But there are still some areas of concern, including 60 per cent of participants wishing they were better at saving. 

“Ninety per cent of participants told us they knew what they were spending their money on and blamed impulse spending as the key problem for not saving. By setting up an automatic payment into a savings account that they can’t touch, individuals will soon not miss the money and can see their savings grow,” Mr Power says.

A summary report of the findings can be downloaded here: 

Professor Hodgson was awarded the title, along with three new distinguished fellows and 17 new fellows, in Wellington earlier this month at the professional body’s annual fellowship dinner.

Professor Hodgson served as the Head of Institute Information Sciences and Technology at Massey University from 1998-2005, and as director of the Massey School of Engineering and Technology from 2005-07.

He is a recognised expert in image processing, information, human factors and systems engineering. He was a founding member of the New Zealand Council of Engineering Deans.

Professor Hodgson was involved in a start-up science and engineering company that has won worldwide recognition for using Artificial intelligence to extract information from microscopic images, called the Classifynder, which won the supreme award at the New Zealand Engineering Excellence Awards in 2013.

His contribution to the professional body has been immense, having served on numerous boards and committees and six International Washington Accord Panels.

As the New Zealand representative, and then President, of the Association of Engineering Educators in South East Asia and the Pacific, Bob revitalised that organisation. He has also worked with the University of the South Pacific, in an unpaid Adjunct Professor role, to support its work towards engineering accreditation.

Higher levels of methamphetamine and cannabis dependency, and need for help for substance abuse, were found in northern, central and eastern regions in the North Island.

The latest research bulletin from Massey University’s SHORE and Whāriki Research Centre outlines preliminary findings from the first online New Zealand Drug Trends Survey. The bulletin, the second in the series, focuses on different levels of drug dependency and need for help for substance use problems found around the country. More detailed analysis will be presented to the Ministry of Health and other government agencies later this week.

Lead researcher Associate Professor Chris Wilkins says the need for help for substance use problems was highest in the Bay of Plenty, Manawatu/Whanganui and Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay regions.

“Respondents from the upper and central North Island and east coast of the North Island reported higher levels of methamphetamine and cannabis dependency, and a higher need for help to reduce their alcohol and other drug use,” Dr Wilkins says.

Higher levels of methamphetamine dependency were found in the Waikato (43 per cent of those who used in the previous six months), Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay (42 per cent), Auckland (35 per cent), Manawatu/Wanganui (34 per cent) and Bay of Plenty (30 per cent) regions.

Higher levels of cannabis dependency were found in the Bay of Plenty (37 per cent of those who used in the previous six months), Northland (35 per cent), Waikato (34 per cent), Wellington (33 per cent) and Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay (33 per cent) regions.

“While cannabis is a less addictive substance than methamphetamine, drug dependency is also closely related to the frequency of use. In the sample, 47 per cent of the cannabis users compared to 17 per cent of the methamphetamine users reported they were using daily or near daily, and this may explain the similar levels of drug dependency between the cannabis and methamphetamine users,” Dr Wilkins says.

The proportion of respondents who reported needing either “a lot” or “some” help was highest in the Bay of Plenty (16 per cent), Manawatu-Wanganui (16 per cent) and Gisborne/ Hawke’s Bay (15 per cent) regions.

Dr Wilkins says the survey is not intended to be a representative sample of the drug using population. Rather, it engages with an otherwise hidden population who are difficult to access with traditional household surreys to provide a “snapshot” of recent trends.

“At the very least, there is likely to be some bias toward more functional drug users who have higher utilisation of the internet. It is likely our findings underestimate the level of drug dependency and need for help for substance use problems in general, and among people who have limited access to the internet in particular, for example rough sleepers. However, in this survey we successfully engaged with a large number of otherwise difficult to access people from a wide geographical area,” he says.

Survey demographics

The anonymous online survey, promoted via a targeted Facebook campaign, was conducted from November 2017 to February 2018. A total of 6,100 people completed the survey. Forty-five per cent of the sample was female. The average age was 29 years old (range 16–87 years). Twenty-one percent were Māori and 72 per cent Pakeha. Eighteen per cent were students, 11 per cent unemployed or on a sickness benefit and 65 per cent were employed.

Participants who reported using a drug type in the past six months were asked if they had ever felt dependent on the drug during that time. All participants who had used alcohol and other drugs in the past six months were asked about the extent to which they felt they needed help to reduce their use, using a four point scale – either “no help”, “a little help”, “some help” or “a lot of help”.

The research was carried out by Dr Wilkins, with Jitesh Prasad, Dr Marta Rychert, Dr Jose Romeo and Thomas Graydon-Guy.

The SHORE and Whāriki Research Centre would like to acknowledge the support of the Community Action on Youth and Drugs (CAYAD), with special thanks to Te Runanga O Ngai Te Rangi Iwi Trust.

Have you ever watched a person leaping from buildings or vaulting over railings and wondered, “How did they do that?”

Massey University researchers are looking at the movements used in parkour, a French-developed discipline using movement developed from military obstacle course training, and how it affects the forces placed on the body, particularly when landing.

The research, which is being led by Master of Sport and Exercise Science student Marcel Austmann under the supervision of Dr Sarah Shultz from the School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition, may help in the design of conditioning programmes and injury prevention strategies for the activity that is often considered an extreme sport with high risks.

Due to the relative infancy of parkour there is less information about how parkour athletes distribute forces during landings, which has potential links to injury, Mr Austmann says.

Ground reaction force measures the magnitude of stress placed on the body when it connects with the ground, while rate of force development looks at the time it takes for the body to absorb those forces. Both factors can greatly increase risk associated with injury, but it has been shown that experienced parkour athletes may be able to lessen these forces significantly through landing techniques,” he says.

“This study is unique in that it investigates the forces as well as muscular activity associated with parkour landings during a variety of obstacles found in a natural training environment. We anticipate that the valuable findings would add to the current knowledge base of landing biomechanics in parkour.”

Specifically, this study will look to support previous research that suggested parkour precision landing was a safe landing strategy. “By moving beyond the lab and into the more common gym setting, we can better understand how parkour athletes naturally land and how much influence experience level plays in injury risk,” Mr Austmann says.

The study is looking for 12-24 healthy and injury free adults between the age of 18-35 who participate in parkour. Experience levels can vary as comparisons will be made between beginner and experienced athletes. Participants need to be Auckland-based, as the study is being carried out at Flow Academy of Motion, in Albany.

Watch a YouTube video of the obstacle course set up for the research here.

If you would like to take part in the research, please contact Marcel Austmann: static_motion@hotmail.com