Advance - Spring 2011

Unitec Research Magazine Spring 2011

Saving the kea Page 14 Researching our threatened birds

Page 6

Page 8

Game on

Earthquake proof

Diabetes help for kids

Walls that self-right

editorial editor Simon Peel writer Karen Burge art direction Nadja Rausch design Aaron Bold cover image Corey Mosen photography Grant Southam printing Norcross Group of Companies published by Unitec Institute of Technology ISSN 1176-7391 phone 0800 10 95 10 web www.unitec.ac.nz postal address Private Bag 92025, Victoria Street West, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

Photo supplied by Corey Mosen

» Editorial

» Advance Spring 2011

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Making a difference In the previous edition of Advance magazine my editorial was headlined as ‘Collaboration is key’. This current issue contains one of my favourite examples of collaborative research. The use of computer games to engage children in the management of their diabetes is a collaborative project between Unitec researchers and staff at Starship Hospital. While the project is still in the developmental phase of designing and testing the game, the evaluative research phase that follows offers the exciting prospect of findings that will aid our understanding of how we can use innovative and fun techniques to engage people in aspects of healthcare.

Another issue that we have tried to tackle in Advance is that of the meaning of ‘research’ in the context of creative disciplines such as performing and screen arts, design and architecture. Unitec has long standing strengths in these areas. In this issue the new Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business, Associate Professor Marcus Williams explains research in straightforward terms as being about testing new ideas and demonstrating advancement in technique, material or interpretation.

As an example we profile researchers in music Dr Glenda Keam, Samuel Holloway and Robin Toan. Glenda explains what research means in her academic context.

Not all forms of research yield great photographic imagery, but thanks to the stunning native New Zealand Kea our colleagues from the Department of Natural Sciences, Dr Lorne Roberts and Dr Nigel Adams have the inside running. Their research into the Kea population and various factors associated with the decline in numbers is fascinating and worrying at the same time.

Also in this issue you will find stories on research into important contemporary issues such as taxation policy and how it affects whether home owners are better or worse off renting out their house and renting another to live in, how new methods of attaching timber walls can make houses more resilient in the event of an earthquake, how upper extremity lymphedema and associated symptoms might be alleviated, and research into causes of back pain.

I hope that you enjoy the stories in this issue of Advance. I welcome any comment or feedback you may have.

Contact: Dr Simon Peel Associate Professor Dean, Research Email: speel@unitec.ac.nz

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» Editorial

» Advance Spring 2011

Cool new Asia A symposium on Asian pop culture being held at Unitec will examine what motivates us to adopt and adapt the culture and creativity of other countries.

Interested in popular culture and how it leaps international boundaries? Want to talk film, fashion, food, architecture, comics, art, graffiti and globalisation? Then two Unitec lecturers have the symposium for you. Cool New Asia: Asian Popular Culture in a Local Context is being hosted at Unitec in November, with funding from the Unitec Research Committee and the Asia New Zealand Foundation. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from across the spectrum of popular culture, it aims to get people talking about how pop culture from one location finds its way into foreign contexts and is then used and changed by a new set of consumers.

Dr Scott Wilson, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Performing and Screen Arts and Dr Elena Kolesova, Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies and Language Studies, have many areas of common interest and decided to collaborate on a conference that

took in both their specialist areas – Scott in film and media studies and European popular culture and Elena in East Asian popular culture. The symposium, being held on 25-26 November, has attracted Japanese pop culture expert Koichi Iwabuchi, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the School of International Liberal Studies of Waseda University in Tokyo.

In his keynote address, Koichi Iwabuchi will provide a sense of the way in which local and Western popular culture objects would be used in an East Asian context. Elena says that he argues that the centre of globalisation has shifted from the West into Asia, and that the spread of East Asian popular culture has a big impact on re-centreing globalisation. The other keynote speaker, Matthew Allen, is Professor and Head of the School of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong in Australia, and writes on Japanese culture, popular culture, history and identity.

» Communication/Performing and Screen Arts

Beg, borrow and steal

Scott says there are examples everywhere of individuals and industries borrowing from the popular cultures of other countries and eras. The American cartoon industry regularly westernises Japanese anime (animation), while on the street people easily accept fashions and images from other cultures. “There are some audiences for whom the location of the objects they consume matters a great deal. You’ve got all of these theorists arguing about what constitutes authenticity but for most audiences it doesn’t matter at all – they go ahead and consume what they like regardless of high-end theorising. And then inside fan-dom you see hierarchies of fans, with the top end being those people who collect only authentic objects, whatever they might be, and then you run all the way down to those who buy knock-offs at a market because they like the image.

“What we want to find out is what happens when you take an object out of its context? Do people make the same meaning of it?

What use do they put it to? And what we’re finding is that there’s a lot of literature about the production and consumption of popular culture inside a context, but nothing about what happens when it moves beyond that context. What does it mean for someone who has never seen the Power Puff Girls, to have a Power Puff Girls t-shirt or someone who doesn’t know the history of Japanese anime and manga (comics), to have a Sailor Moon t-shirt?”

Elena says that the symposium will also look at popular culture beyond the surface of cartoon characters and ask the hard questions about the use and abuse of popular culture products.

“We do not try to deny the element of enjoyment that popular culture brings us, but we also want to look at bigger issues, such as whether the use of East Asian popular culture products in local contexts reflects the existence of a multicultural society? Or, is it a reflection of a new orientalism? Or, is it both?”

» Advance Spring 2011

And while the natural assumption is that pop culture is youthcentred, he says individuals of different ages and demographics identify with their own sense of ‘cool’, through what they wear, the technology they use, the music they listen to, the way they decorate their homes, the food they eat, and the television shows they watch.

But the area where youth have it over older generations, is the ease and acceptance with which they move across the cultural divides, he says. “Young people have an increased fluency with different cultural forms because they see objects from around the world placed next to each other, without distinction being made between them.

On C4 for example, you can watch a Japanese game show, MTV teen mum programme, Pimp My Ride, and then a chart show. And there’s no sense of any one of these things being better or worse, it’s just a series of pop culture texts intended to be consumed equally and you make your pleasure from them where you can.”

And the digital era is making the culture of the wider world more easily accessible to us all. “What were previously very culturally-specific objects and texts are becoming widely available. Previously, if you wanted a Japanese cartoon from the 1960s it was impossible but now you can just go online and order it, download it, stream it – it’s easy.”

Scott says that while the symposium will focus on East Asian popular culture, there are plenty of cross-overs of thinking and content to interest anyone with a passion for pop culture. “What we’re hoping to see is the development of ways of understanding how these things occur, as a theoretical template. So regardless of where you are, these objects become available to you through globalisation. And what we find is that different people in different contexts actually make the same kinds of uses of these things.”

Elena and Scott hope the symposium will act as the first step towards a book on Cool New Asia and they have already had interest from international publishers.

Youth don’t own cool

Scott says the notion of ‘coolness’ is very important and very elusive. “Everyone knows what cool is to them but no one can define it. And a person’s understanding of cool doesn’t need to extend to understanding what they are consuming because they just create a different association with it – they might like it for what it looks like or what it says about them, rather than its original intention.”

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Contact: Dr Scott Wilson Senior Lecturer Faculty of Creative Industries and Business Department of Performing and Screen Arts Email: swilson2@unitec.ac.nz

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» Editorial

» Advance Spring 2011

Department of Computing staff Dr Aaron Chen, Dr Nilufar Baghaei and Chris Manford watch as a group of children put the diabetes game through its paces

The game of life New and innovative ways to help children manage Type 1 diabetes is the subject of new research by staff from Unitec’s departments of Computing and Performing and Screen Arts.

A fun and interactive computer game that helps children manage Type 1 diabetes is being developed by a team at Unitec. The project, a multi-disciplinary collaboration with staff at Starship Hospital, is creating computer and mobile phone-based games that incorporate diabetes education and functions that help children monitor and manage their diabetes. Project leader Dr Aaron Chen says the games will educate children in a fun way about how their blood sugar fluctuates and is affected by factors such as exercise and food.

“We are currently building a prototype of the game to tell the kids about blood sugar fluctuation. This is for children who have been diagnosed mainly with Type 1 diabetes.”

When children are first diagnosed with diabetes they go through an introductory education programme but after that the day-to-day maintenance is handled by the child and his or her caregivers. “We think that the computer game can be used to enhance and prolong the initial advice given by the medical team to the kids and their families. We hope the game will help kids develop the habits they need to control their own condition throughout their lives.”

Reducing the stress

Dr Gudrun Court, a clinical psychologist specialising in diabetes at Starship, says she is excited by the potential of the project – which has funding from the Unitec Research Committee. “I was trying to find new ways to help children with recently-diagnosed diabetes learn about their condition, using a medium that did not feel alien to them, such as a computer game. I also thought that this would reduce the feeling of being ‘different’ and help normalise their hospital experience. I am hoping that the computer project will have a real impact on how children who are newly diagnosed with diabetes feel about their condition and how it might help them take control of its management, which is key to positive and long-term emotional adaptation to such a difficult illness.”

As well as the computing team, Department of Performing and Screen Arts head Athina Tsoulis and Senior Lecturer Steve Marshall are actively involved in the game project. Aaron says their input has been crucial in looking at the design and characteristics of the game, such as 2D and 3D and whether it’s an action or strategic game.

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» Computing

» Advance Spring 2011

“They have also helped us to design the story line, which will be used later to develop a more sophisticated game to guide children through different levels of diabetic management, from fundamental skills such as the type of food to eat, to emotional skills such as how to cope with sensitive issues related to diabetes in a social environment.”

opportunity for self-generated learning about diabetes management but also psychosocial support and tips to manage psychological symptoms in a non-threatening way.”

Working alongside the group developing the PC-based game, is a team of Unitec Bachelor of Computing Systems students who plan to create a mobile application that children with diabetes can use during the day to remind them to check their blood sugar, to eat and to exercise – using a virtual pet to display similar needs and symptoms as the child. “If the kids know how to take care of a small virtual pet that has similar symptoms to themselves, then they should know how to take care of themselves. The idea is for the symptoms and conditions of the pet to be similar to what the child is experiencing – for example the blood sugar testing level of the child will become the blood sugar level of the pet,” says Aaron.

He says that longer term they see the mobile device collecting blood sugar results wirelessly and sending them to a server, which can be accessed by doctors and nurses to better monitor patients in between scheduled appointments and can also feed into the PC game to make it more relevant. “The information collected during the day can also be transferred to the PC game, so the kids could play it and reflect on what has happened during the day. We think this is a good idea. We are currently working on the PC as the platform but we think the mobile application is a very interesting idea.”

Child’s play

Working with a research assistant, the team is adapting an existing 2D game, Super Mario, and using that prototype to test if diabetes knowledge can be built into the gaming environment. At the same time, Dr Nilufar Baghaei, a co-investigator of the game project, is working closely with external professional game developers to develop a 3D version of the game. “The ultimate goal for us is to have a 3D game, because it is more entertaining with more interactive features, but we started with the 2D version to reduce the amount of time to build a prototype and verify the basic ideas,” says Aaron. “Now that the demo is ready we will test it with selected children and through that we can see what the real use of this application could be. We can also compare the 2D and the 3D games and work out which one is more effective for kids.”

Gudrun Court says at present children and their families receive in-depth education and support at the time of diagnosis and on an ongoing basis during their time in the health system. But this is mostly by way of discussion and booklets and she thinks a computerbased model will make the information more relevant and accessible for children. “At diagnosis, children may have been physically ill for some time and losing significant weight. Then the diagnosis is extremely frightening, particularly as it is a life-long condition and involves intrusive treatments, daily injections and a relatively restrictive diet. Diabetes, if poorly managed can be life threatening.

Both children and their families can exhibit Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms which can have a long-term negative impact on quality of life. The computer programme could not only provide the

Future work

Gudrun says she was unsure about how to translate her idea for computer-based education into reality but says a chance phone call to Unitec has developed into a rewarding relationship. “The team has been very encouraging and open to the project and I am very grateful for their consideration and hard work.”

Aaron says that staff and students in the Department of Computing have become very interested in the project and are already planning phases two and three. “Future work would be more technical and we would try to study the algorithms that we can build into the game, so that it can adapt to the children’s responses while they are playing it.” (Algorithms provide the basic technique when writing computer programs and are used for calculation, data processing and other fields.) “We want it to be flexible and adaptive and maybe incorporate different strategies so the kids can do more and so the game can change according to how the kids play it.”

Another function they hope to incorporate is an avatar-type facility to speak to children in natural language and be able to connect to a website to answer their questions. “That is something that we hope to build into the game as we continue development.”

Contact: Dr Aaron Chen Lecturer Faculty of Creative Industries and Business Department of Computing Email: achen2@unitec.ac.nz

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» Editorial

» Advance Spring 2011

Building on shaky ground Unitec civil engineering lecturer Wei Loo is researching a new way of connecting timber walls to foundations that would allow them to move during earthquakes and then self-right having sustained minimal damage.

A friction device fabricated from steel plates which allows timber walls to lift and tilt in a controlled manner during an earthquake and then self-right is currently being developed by Unitec civil engineering lecturer Wei Loo. The research, which Wei undertook for his masters thesis at the University of Auckland and is now continuing with as part of his PhD study, was started well before the devastating earthquakes that hit Christchurch in the past year, but the technology involved could provide a useful tool for future building in quake-prone areas.

Wei says his system allows some play at the point where the wall connects to the concrete foundations, allowing steel plates to slide relative to each other. This would allow the shear walls – those parts of a building engineered to withstand horizontal wind and earthquake forces – to rock and tilt rather than bend and snap.

Wei says that recent earthquakes in Christchurch and around the world, have shown timber buildings to perform very well under large earthquake accelerations. But a timber building, while avoiding total

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» Civil Engineering

» Advance Spring 2011

collapse and preventing death and injury to occupants, may still be demolished after the earthquake due to irreparable damage to the steel connections such as nails and bolts that hold the timber members together.

that would allow the walls to rock without major damage to other parts of the structure. So far Wei has had very promising results through finite element modelling, which is computer modelling of the shear wall. The next step is to design the actual connector and then attach it to shear walls on a shake table to see how the system behaves under earthquake conditions. Following that, if the results are favourable, work will be done on a design procedure and how it may be used in actual construction. “Once the research is done and the results are shown to have good potential, it’s provided to industry and industry implements it.”

“In an earthquake, shear walls – which are there to resist the horizontal forces – go backwards and forwards because the nail connections have a bit of give in them. When an earthquake hits a building, it is putting a lot of energy into it. And what the building has to do is to dissipate the energy – it’s got to give off the energy.

And one way to do that is to allow it to move around a little bit in a controlled way. And we do that by allowing the nail connections holding the wall together to deform a little without breaking.

This has an energy-absorbing effect and also limits the maximum force on the wall, thus protecting the wood from breaking.

“So this means that the wall can flex backwards and forwards in the earthquake and hopefully prevent a catastrophic collapse that’s going to kill people. But the problem is that after the earthquake there is going to be damage to the connecting nails and bolts.

So, on one hand it’s a good outcome because the building has avoided a catastrophic collapse which could claim lives, but the building is basically a write-off afterwards.”

Friction plates

With the system Wei is working on, instead of being bolted to the concrete floor, the shear wall would be attached to the concrete pad with a series of sliding plates. One part of the system would be concreted into the concrete foundation, while the second part attaches to the bottom corner of the timber wall framing.

“So under a strong earthquake event, the plates are going to slide.

This will allow some uplift of the wall at its base. Normally with a wall that is strapped down rigidly, if a large earthquake force comes and the wall moves significantly, the damage will generally be permanent.

But a wall can’t get structurally damaged if it can give, so with use of a friction connector the entire wall would simply lift up.” Wei says that the amount the wall lifts up relates to how much the wall tilts horizontally, which under normal circumstances they would want to limit to within one to two per cent of the building height.

“The other great thing is that when the plates move backwards and forwards they will give off heat and dissipate the energy through the plates rather than through the wall, which will also help avoid excess damage to the wall. And apart from a bit of scratching, the plates won’t be damaged much either because they’ll just rub past one another. That’s the aim of the research.”

Looking forward

How those shear walls then connect to other walls and to the roof structure is the subject of ongoing research. Wei says the issue is complicated but there may be another type of connector or channel

Wei says the idea of sliding or rocking timber walls is not a new one but he hopes his connector will provide a cost-effective, easily-used and robust system. “It’s another way of doing the same thing. And hopefully it’s going to be economically viable and help promote more and better use of timber.” He estimates the connector would cost around one to two per cent of the current construction cost of a typical five-storey residential building.

This cost, however, could be off-set by the walls not needing to be as strong as is currently the case, as the connectors would reduce the maximum earthquake forces for which these types of shear walls are currently designed.

Turning to timber

Wei says he sees the benefits of a move towards greater use of timber-framed buildings and says researchers are looking at structures up to ten storeys. He says the reasons timber gets the nod include the fact that it is a sustainable material and the CO2 emissions involved in its processing are low and it’s more economical than other building materials. And in terms of earthquake resistance, it performs well. “The reason for that is because it behaves in what we call a ductile fashion. As an example, think of the wing mirrors on your car. I might whack it into the side of the gate when I drive down the driveway. But because of how it is designed, it flicks back unbroken. Imagine if the engineer designed it so it was completely rigid – it would snap off even though it is very strong.

“The aim is to design buildings which not only move around and give, but come back to their original position and sustain negligible damage in the process. I think that would be a desirable outcome and the promising thing we have found so far is that a friction device concept could do exactly that.”

Contact: Wei Loo Lecturer Faculty of Technology and Built Environment Department of Civil Engineering Email: wloo@unitec.ac.nz

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» Osteopathy

» Advance Winter 2011

Callum Farquharson

Funding success for osteopathy students Two Unitec osteopathy students have been awarded prestigious scholarships from the Todd Foundation to assist with their masters research into new practice techniques in osteopathy.

Research to back up a long-held passion

Unitec osteopathy student Callum Farquharson has been awarded a funding grant through the Todd Foundation to research the degree to which stiffness in the sacroiliac joints in the pelvis relates to lower back pain. Callum, a masters student, says the research process has him hooked and he’s looking forward to using the funding to advance research in his chosen area. “There are two sacroiliac joints in the bony pelvis. They act as a crossroads of force transfer between the lower limbs and the upper body via the spine, and are thought to be a common cause of lower back pain.”

Callum’s project is twofold, with the first stage focused on developing a more reliable tool to test the stiffness of the sacroiliac joint. “I am discussing with a couple of engineers as to how I can build a motorised oscillator that will vibrate in the same way an iPhone does to reliably produce a stable 200 hertz vibration.

We can then use this to objectively measure the vibrations felt in the sacroiliac joint to assess how stiff or loose it is.” Once the testing tool is ready, his research will focus on how the joint can be made stiffer or looser and how osteopathic interventions can affect the stiffness of the sacroiliac joint.

“We just want to know more about how the sacroiliac joint works, the causes of pain and how the joint can be made stiffer or looser.

At this stage, we don’t know which is better, it’s more about not having the extremes. I hope that my research will show that force closure (achieved by muscle contraction by asking a patient to extend their leg) does make a difference and the joint will be stiffer while force closure is increased.”

The motivation for Callum’s research is to provide the osteopathic world with objective evidence. “We have numerous subjective tests, where a practitioner can work out what is wrong through a hands-on examination, and these tests work and people get better. However, we don’t have a way to prove the tests are accurate. We are looking for evidence; a way of measuring something objectively so that we can back up what we claim.”

Callum has planned to be an osteopath since he was 11 after being impressed by the treatment that he received from an osteopath for growing pains. He says the combination on working handson with clients and conducting research is a model he plans to continue once he is a practising osteopath. “I find the research process inspiring. I’ve always enjoyed finding things out. I will definitely continue to do research while I’m working, as it is really beneficial to our profession to have all this evidence.”

» Osteopathy

» Advance Winter 2011

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Erin Eydt

Hands-on research

Unitec osteopathy student Erin Eydt is putting the benefits of osteopathy to the test with research supported by a funding grant from the Todd Foundation. Erin will spend the next 18 months researching the effects of osteopathic manual therapy (OMT) on upper extremity lymphedema and associated symptoms caused by breast cancer, as part of her masters research.

Her research will look at the viability of osteopathy as a management option for lymphedema of the arm. This condition occurs when the lymph vessels are unable to flush excess fluid and harmful toxins out of the body’s tissues, resulting in swelling and a range of other symptoms and pain. In the Western world, the main cause of lymphedema of the arm is breast cancer treatments such as surgery and radiation, which can severely damage the lymph vessels and lymph nodes. One in nine women in New Zealand will have breast cancer once in their lives, and while the statistics are greatly debated, Erin says up to 56 per cent of these women will develop lymphedema. “It is a progressive condition that has no cure, so management becomes extremely important.”

Current methods for managing lymphedema include physiotherapy techniques such as gentle massage and compression bandaging or garments, or at-home exercises to help the fluid move up the arm and into the chest. Erin hopes that her research will show that osteopathic interventions such as thoracic pumping (intermittent

compression of the thoracic cage to promote lymph flow and drainage) or fascial release (deep tissue work) can generate further reductions in swelling and symptoms and offer a unique option for women to help manage their condition. “My research methodology is based around three women suffering from lymphedema. By working with an osteopath to assess and deliver a select range of treatments, we will see if we can bring additional improvements – on top of using compression garments.”

Before her research takes off, Erin has her hands full with creating a device that can measure the volume of an arm. “We will need to measure if there have been changes to the arm’s fluid retention following the treatments. The idea is to build a cylinder to fit a patient’s arm, that when filled with water, the overflow can be measured to determine the volume of the arm. I saw an article that made one from plumbing material, which was sturdy, cheap, easy to transport and will do the job perfectly.”

Erin says she originally thought her career path would be medicine but after receiving beneficial osteopathic treatment, she changed her focus to osteopathy. “The osteopath was so passionate about the power of osteopathic treatment that it suddenly dawned on me where I needed to focus my attention.

And the best thing about osteopathy is that you don’t need equipment – just your hands.”

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» Editorial

» Advance Spring 2011

Tax trap for renters A new paper from accounting and finance lecturer Keith Rankin argues that individuals who rent out their only home while paying rent to live in another are treated unfairly by the New Zealand tax system.

Economist Keith Rankin is calling for a change in tax policy in his latest research paper, which shows that a proportion of New Zealand property owners are paying significantly more tax than owner-occupiers.

Currently, anyone who rents out a property is liable to pay tax on the rental income, regardless of whether that person owns just the one house or multiple investment properties. But as Keith argues, that does not take into account a number of scenarios in which people may own one house but pay rent to live in another.

Keith says that he was alerted to the situation through his own experiences. He and his family rent a house and were considering whether to buy a family home or a house that retired family members could rent, to provide them with an affordable, safe and secure home long-term. If they bought a home and lived in it themselves they would not pay tax, but should they rent it to family members they would pay tax on that rental income as well as paying to live in their rented home. Yet the rental income from the smaller home they own and rent out would not cover the rental cost of the home they live in.

Keith says that owner-occupiers effectively pay their ‘rent’ to themselves, exempting them from any taxation and giving them an ‘owner-occupier subsidy’, which is not offered to those who don’t live in the house they own.

“A change in tax legislation to remove anomalous discrimination against such people – legislation that currently favours owneroccupation over other single-home-ownership options – can do no harm and could benefit a significant minority of ordinary New Zealand families. Such discrimination has never been argued for. Rather it came about by historical accident, through the assumption that people who could afford to purchase a house should do so, and would invariably make that house their home.”

When it makes sense to rent

Keith’s paper Taxing Rental Houses, which was published in the June edition of the New Zealand Journal of Taxation Law and Policy, offers a number of scenarios in which it would make good economic sense for the owners of a single property to tenant the house they own while paying rent to live in another.

A family with children may struggle to afford a house big enough to live in comfortably or in the area where their children are settled in school, but may be able to afford a smaller property (perhaps for future retirement) which they can rent out.

“This mum and dad are almost certainly paying more rent than they are receiving. Would the country really be better off, if, to gain the owner-occupier subsidy, mum and dad swapped dwellings with

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» Editorial

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their tenants? Should they have to pay tax on their gross rental income, given that their net rental income (rent received minus rent paid) is negative?”

will not own a house but need somewhere to live. Keith argues that if discriminating subsidies are to be applied to housing, then it should be the first house owned that attracts that subsidy, whether or not the owner is living in it.

Another case would involve someone who bought a home in the provincial town where they lived but later took an employment transfer to a large city. Because he can’t afford to buy a house in the city, he chooses to tenant his own house and rent in the city, but is now in a position of having to pay tax on this rental income.

“Once again it would seem unreasonable that this person, whose house may be his only significant asset and who has high rent to pay, has to pay tax on rental income that only goes part of the way to funding the rent on his city house.”

Keith says that he agrees with the view that widespread house ownership brings definite social benefits but that does not have to be specifically owner-occupation. “The distinction is important.

In our portfolio of assets, it makes sense to include a house or apartment near the top of the list. A residential property – ‘real property’ – represents an element of security and financial independence. A society with widespread house ownership is more egalitarian and self-sustaining.”

He says there are also important social benefits of some people owning more than one house, given there will be many people who

“My central argument is that the subset of residential properties liable for taxation should be any such property other than a person’s first house. The implicit subsidy on rental income on a person’s first house would be equivalent to the tax that would otherwise be paid.”

He accepts that there may be situations where a person stands to gain financially by renting out a first home and then living rent free with a partner or with parents, but says that could easily be taken care of. “The general rule would always be that taxable rent should be the rent earned minus rent paid, or zero if rent paid is greater.

In an owner occupier situation, rent earned minus rent paid always equals zero, so is not taxable.”

Contact: Keith Rankin Lecturer Faculty of Creative Industries and Business Department of Accounting and Finance Email: krankin@unitec.ac.nz

Photo supplied by Corey Mosen

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Âť Editorial

Âť Advance Spring 2011

» Natural Sciences

» Advance Spring 2011

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Kea under threat Kea are known for being cheeky and curious but what is not widely known is that the endemic alpine parrot – thought to be one of the most intelligent birds in the world – is under threat with population numbers in decline.

New Zealand kea are thought to one of the most intelligent animals in the world but new research involving Unitec staff shows that they are under serious threat. The research, in association with the Kea Conservation Trust, shows that the population of kea in the Nelson Lakes survey area has dropped a startling 80 per cent in the past ten years.

Unitec Department of Natural Sciences staff, Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer Dr Lorne Roberts and Senior Lecturer Dr Nigel Adams, started the Kea Conservation Trust (KCT) in 2006 with former Unitec students Tamsin Orr-Walker, the Trust’s Chairperson, and Peter Fraser, Conservation Officer at Auckland Zoo. Lorne and Nigel now act as scientific advisors to the Trust and are involved in research projects related to kea population surveys, bird repellents and sheep strike, while Lorne also takes a leading role in advocacy work and a new project to set up a community education programme. “We work collaboratively with the Department of Conservation because we have an agenda that is very closely aligned to theirs, and they in turn provide extensive in-kind support and also further funding for smaller projects.”

Lorne says the Trust grew out of a realisation that there was very little recent research on the current status of kea. In the five years since its formation, the Trust has also received project funding from numerous individuals and organisations, including the Lottery Grants Board, which has funded the last three summer surveys at a cost of more than $170,000.

Population plummets

While a six-year-long survey on kea in the Nelson Lakes area in the 1990s showed the population was stable, and thought to be fairly typical of kea across the South Island, there had been no population surveys since. “We didn’t start out to save all kea; we started out asking ‘what is happening to the kea population?”

The Trust decided to follow up in the Nelson Lakes area, with the first survey in 2009. “That first year we were alerted that something might be going wrong in Nelson Lakes compared to the 1990s – this was of concern to us. We were sitting in prime kea habitat and we hardly saw or heard any birds, so at first we wondered if it was a non-breeding year, which happens, or if we had the fledging times wrong.”

Summer surveys take place when the kea bring their fledglings out of the nests in the beech forests and up into the alpine meadows and mountain tops to give them confidence in flying, feeding and fending for themselves. The survey teams sit on the mountain spurs

and can easily see kea either on the spurs or flying across the valleys.

“All we really need to do is sit up there and make lots of noise, and the parents and the young come out to see what’s going on. We can spot them and we can hear them, even if we can’t catch them.”

The KCT then funded Department of Conservation (DOC) workers to check on known kea nests and attach transmitters to females in order to find new nests. They found that nests thought to be in use were no longer used and where breeding was occurring, the time of egg laying and hatching were the same as the 1990s, which supported the timing of summer surveys.

“After three years of collecting data, we can categorically state that the population at Nelson Lakes has crashed; we know that now.” The 1990s population surveys showed around ten fledglings a year from a potential 11 breeding pairs, while in the recent KCTled surveys only two fledglings were sighted from a potential three breeding pairs. And this is despite the latest survey area being almost twice as large as the one used in the 1990s. Lorne says that while this doesn’t mean the additional area supported similar numbers of kea as the original area, it has the same type of terrain and environment and the survey team expected to find a similar abundance of kea there.

“Ten years isn’t a long time to have such a dramatic change in numbers, so there has been a steep decline at some stage.

This was prime kea habitat and was utilised previously as the base to extrapolate from for the rest of the country. This is significant.

It’s bad news for that area and is possibly very bad news for kea.

So now we are asking “is it just Nelson Lakes? Or is this happening in other areas?” The team have a further summer of surveying to do in Arthurs Pass and Fiordland and a fourth survey site is being considered in Kahurangi National Park.”

As a result of the findings, the KCT, in collaboration with DOC, has developed the Rotoiti (Nelson Lakes) Kea Protection Plan. Three nests are now under observation and additional predator traps have been placed around those nests to try and save them.

Deadly predators

And while the nest cameras installed in Nelson Lakes and other kea habitat are not showing the breeding activity hoped for, what they are showing is possum visitation of both occupied and empty nests.

“We don’t really know what has happened to this population and what part possums and stoats play in this – we are guessing – but recent DOC footage shows that stoats will go into a kea nest and kill chicks whilst adults are present. It’s difficult to watch because it takes a

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» Editorial

number of hours for the chicks to die but stoats are voracious and the adult kea don’t seem to protect the chicks. They just don’t seem to know how to defend against such attacks. So the adult females, who stay in the nest with the chicks, stand back and squawk and watch their chicks die.”

And if predators are a major reason for the decline in kea, the methods used to control those pests, especially 1080 drops, pose their own challenges. Lorne says KCT driven research into a repellent formula that can be mixed into 1080 pellets and pre-feed drops to stop the birds eating it, has shown considerable success in trials with captive kea and in-situ.

In a normal scenario, there are two stages to a 1080 drop. The first involves a pre-feed pellet, that looks similar (except for the colour) but has no poison, and is designed to convince target pests such as rats and possums that the food is good to eat. Once that trust is gained the second drop contains the actual 1080 poison.

Kea are neophilic, which means that unlike most animals, they adapt happily to new situations by quickly investigating any new items in their environment, whether that be 1080 pellets, ski lifts and equipment or tourists’ cars.

Curiosity killer

The Trust started looking at repellents to deter kea from eating 1080 and initially utilised previous AgResearch repellent work with robins. They used two repellents, d-pulegone and anthraquinone mixed together; the first causing the pellets to taste and smell bad, the second causing nausea if ingested. Lorne says both repellents were necessary because animals learn to eat something that tastes and smells bad if it gives them vital nutrition, but would not eat food that also made them feel sick. Field trials by AgResearch suggested that rats are not repelled by this combination of repellents.

“We didn’t know if the same repellent mix would work for kea but we were able to go to a number of facilities with captive birds and run trials.” While the birds were initially attracted to the highenergy untainted pellets, their interest dropped off rapidly once

» Advance Spring 2011

the repellents were added. Those that ate the pellets puffed their feathers, stuck out their tongues and were clearly uncomfortable.

Even once they felt better the birds avoided the pellets, and only began eating them again once the repellents were removed.

Lorne says behavioural research was particularly important in the repellent research. “What we observed was that the kea, being so intelligent, opened up all the pellets to see if there was something more palatable inside. We had anticipated this but it reinforced the fact that repellents need to be combined with the pellet ingredients at manufacture stage, rather than coated.

“Once we showed the results to DOC they immediately went to field trials to ensure that the repellents don’t repel rats and possums in situ, and they didn’t. The repellent work is ground-breaking research for kea. If we can develop something that will put kea off interacting with items in their environment, then imagine the implications.”

Now they are extending that repellent work to one of the major kea human conflicts – that with sheep farmers and business operators in kea country. “We started to think, can you take those repellents and make a spray that you can use on wiper blades and ski lifts and even sheep?”

Kea have long been blamed for sheep losses in the high country, as when food is scarce they are known to attack sheep stuck or slowed by snow. Because of the sheep’s dense wool they are able to grip on to their back and peck the sheep around the kidneys to access fat stored under the skin. Lorne says that while sheep may not die from the trauma of the attack, they do die from the resulting septicaemia.

Both DOC and the KCT recommend farmers move their sheep down to less than 600m during winter prior to snow fall and keep sheep correctly vaccinated to avoid infection if attacked. Lorne says neighbouring farms have very different outcomes from kea strike depending on those two factors.

The first trials using repellents on sheep are currently under way, with the repellent being applied as a lanolin-based spray on the sheep’s back. Further trials are planned.

» Editorial

Lead poisoning

Another issue for kea is their interest in lead products like flashings and roof nail heads. “Kea like to eat lead because it is malleable and sweet but it either kills them or makes them very sick. The work of other researchers shows that kea die from lead poisoning and in some areas die in worrying numbers.”

Lorne says that it is thought that lead poisoning also affects the kea’s cognitive ability, which may make foraging for food harder and therefore impact survival abilities. Thus, kea may either starve or get killed on roads as they try to find easy food closer to humans. Last year Unitec hosted a Royal Society teaching fellow, Jules Robson, who Lorne supervised in a project mapping out kea damage to lead on alpine roofs (DOC huts, ski fields and domestic dwellings) in eight key areas known to be frequented by kea.

“Wherever he found kea and lead in the same place, there was extensive damage. You can clearly see beak and stab marks in the lead flashings, and where whole lengths have been stripped away, as well as damage to the lead nail heads.”

Jules talked to many DOC hut wardens, asset managers and maintenance staff about lead and the fact that it may be adversely affecting kea. Some didn’t realise their huts still contained lead and others who had lead-free huts had not taken into account the associated old buildings like toilets and wood sheds. Lorne says DOC is now taking the initiative in actively removing lead from huts and buildings.

Genetic predictions

Lorne says that blood and feathers obtained from kea during the population surveys are supporting genetics research being carried out at the University of Otago. This work will help determine what the original population of kea was, before the arrival of humans and thus an estimate of current population trends; as well as establish any distinct sub-populations. “We think there are between 1000 and 5000 kea left but the general public still think they are very common.

“This is a critical area of work because it is not simply about the actual numbers but about the trends. If, for example, we have up to 5000

» Advance Spring 2011

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kea and the original population was 15,000 then although worrying, it may not be considered critical; but if New Zealand once supported 200,000 birds then it is a disaster.”

Kea are a protected species but are still found shot and poisoned, such as the five found dead on a picnic table in Arthurs Pass recently. Up until 1971 there was a bounty on kea and an estimated 150,000 were shot. “It is thought to be the greatest single government-driven eradication of an endemic bird species anywhere in the world and it’s sad to think that New Zealand has done this to such a unique and iconic bird”, says Lorne. He says there is further extensive anecdotal evidence that kea are on the decline. “Anywhere we go within their wild environment, we hear that they are not seen in the numbers they once were 20 or 30 years ago. Added to this, all of our work leads us to suppose that something is happening to the kea population although we don’t know exactly what because until the last three years’ data, there hasn’t been the research.”

With the repellent and population work now being implemented, Lorne and Nigel are now analysing further data and writing up the material for submission to peer review journals and for international conference presentations. However, Lorne says the most important thing to him is that the research has a practical use. “It’s important to me that the research I am involved in is utilised to make a positive contribution to conservation. I see collaboration with organisations such as the KCT and DOC in order to develop mitigation strategies and constructive advocacy and education outcomes as essential, and it is this that drives me to continue such research.”

Contact: Dr Lorne Roberts Senior Lecturer Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Natural Sciences Email: lroberts2@unitec.ac.nz

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» Management and Marketing

» Advance Winter 2011

Play, click, buy Researching the marketing secrets of the virtual frontier has won a Unitec business student an inaugural scholarship set up to support innovation.

Exploring the new frontier of brand marketing in virtual gaming has won Master of Business student Neil Gautum the inaugural Fisher and Paykel Healthcare Master of Business Thesis Scholarship. Neil’s thesis, due to be completed this year, looks at branding in the gaming industry, which generates tens of billions of dollars every year worldwide and is predicted to grow bigger still. Yet despite those predictions, Neil says that in a marketing sense the sector remains largely unexplored.

so what I’m looking at is the engagement factor. Companies at the moment are marketing within games, but they are a little bit uncertain as to the science of advertising their brands in that space. Traditionally, consumption of advertising is measured through response and recall.

What I am finding in my research is that what goes on in the minds of players is a lot more invested than that. Their involvement in games requires action, play, engagement and immersion, which means the consumers are interacting in a unique way.”

“My research is about marketing within virtual environments, specifically gaming,” says Gautam, formerly a business strategist and freelance developer and designer. “It’s about how people interact and engage as players and consumers in that space.

It’s fascinating because it’s a very new area of research.”

There are numerous ways in which players might respond to brands in the gaming space, from buying the things they see in an online game, to accessing a game-only offer. Neil says a three-month advertising campaign for Subway on well-known online multi-player game Call of Duty netted 19,000 customers who purchased Subway using a game-specific coupon code. But Neil says he is also interested in when gamers are more likely to reject advertising. “What players seem to hate is the idea of intrusive advertising. If it doesn’t make sense for a product to be there, it detracts from their enjoyment of the game.”

Marketing in the virtual world

He says there are multiple ways in which marketing and video games intersect. While an obvious example might be promotional advertising inside the virtual space, such as tyre brands within car racing games, another common practice is for game producers to market their other products such as games and merchandise.

Neil has interviewed gamers to find out how they perceive the different attempts to sell them things. “My research is on brand marketing

Players and characters

Neil says with the emergence of elaborate virtual worlds in the multiplaying realm, another key area of research has been the psychology

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of role-playing and the marketing implications of that. His findings so far show that people tend to make decisions in character that are consistent with decisions they would make in real life. “What this means for advertisers and producers is that they need to be smart in the way they align their products. A car security firm may not, for example, choose to advertise on Grand Theft Auto.” Neil also looks at the social side of gaming – a major selling point for large numbers of young people playing online – and how ability and competitiveness affects consumer choices.

Robert says the Fisher and Paykel Healthcare Master of Business Thesis Scholarship shows the company’s support for research and new thinking. “I think it’s vital for businesses to have a stake in innovation and help shape it, rather than stay on the sidelines, and I applaud Fisher and Paykel Healthcare on their willingness to do this.”

Neil’s research sits comfortably within his department, which is already dedicated to tracking developments in marketing in the digital space. Associate Professor Robert Davis, Management and Marketing head of department and Neil’s thesis supervisor, says computer gaming research is at the forefront of contemporary marketing research and extremely relevant to the modern business world. His own research on gaming and marketing has been ongoing since 2003 in collaboration with Auckland University colleagues, and with predictions that the gaming and entertainment sector will continue to grow, the focus seems clear. “Sales in the computer gaming area – hardware, software and accessories – are now greater than sales at the US box office, which gives you an idea of the significance of the industry.”

And for those who don’t ‘get’ gaming, Neil says to look at the explosion of the internet to see the significance. “People were quite nervous about the potential of the Internet when that first came out, and what we’ve seen is that it just blossomed,” says Neil. “Forecasters are now saying that games are the entertainment media that will take us from TV and other forms of entertainment into the future.

By looking at the marketing within that environment, we could be seeing the glimpses of a new direction in modern media practices.”

Contact: Dr Robert Davis Head of Department Faculty of Creative Industries and Business Department of Management and Marketing Email: rdavis@unitec.ac.nz

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New Associate Research Deans for Unitec Unitec’s two new Associate Deans of Research tell us about their new roles and the vision they have for research at Unitec.

Recently appointed to her new role as Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Social and Health Sciences, Gillian Whalley sees it as a great opportunity to foster a stronger, more focused research culture within Unitec. Working with Marcus Williams, the new Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business, Gillian says her focus will be on celebrating research excellence in the faculty, nurturing new research talent, and encouraging collaboration and discipline-specific research. “Having a senior faculty research appointment sends a very strong message to the whole faculty that research is important and valued by Unitec. “ She says there are already pockets of “extraordinary research excellence” within the faculty and some emerging research clusters, such as those in biodiversity and animal welfare in the Department of Natural Sciences. She says the faculty’s relationships with external partners, such as the Waitamata District Health Board, offer great research opportunities, evidenced in the current Stroke Family Whanau project being run by the Department of Nursing in collaboration with colleagues at Waitakere Hospital. “Our relationship with the WDHB will really enhance our multi-discipline health research capabilities.”

Supporting research goals

Marcus Williams says that his and Gillian’s new roles add further weight and support to the research goals Unitec has set itself.

“These include aligning research with curriculum, an emphasis on research that is centred on applied knowledge, growing a relationship between knowledge and industry, and serving the community in which Unitec exists, as well as sustainability, Māori development and collaboration and interdisciplinary research.”

For Marcus, the diversity of departments within the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business (FCIB), offers a range of exciting

opportunities. “Research in the FCIB revolves around innovation in the things people do, say and make and how they organise themselves. Identifying a point of difference for research and education in the FCIB will be based on these things and their relationship with the community we serve.”

More similarities than differences

Gillian and Marcus both agree that the fundamentals of research remain the same across disciplines and they both think a collaborative approach will bring new ideas and cohesion across the institution. “I think there is very little difference in the drivers of research, just in the actual tools and measuring sticks,” says Gillian. “All researchers strive to advance knowledge in their particular area, to seek new ways of doing things and to push existing boundaries of knowledge – ultimately with the aim of improving lives and the world. This really doesn’t differ whether you are in arts, science or healthcare. The methods and measurable effects may be different, but the impact is the same – professional practice is improved. If we work together and learn from each other, we can only benefit.”

Marcus says both he and Gillian favour a collaborative approach in their new roles. “We have a tremendous amount in common in addition to our job descriptions but we also have quite different approaches, which is important as we can learn new ways of working from each other.”

Gillian agrees. “We really do not know what might arise from our work together, but initial conversations suggest we both have open and creative minds. And since the first step in any research collaboration is hearing and respecting others’ ideas, we have begun working together already.”

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Gillian Whalley

Marcus Williams

She says her confidence has also grown as she learned to trust her instincts and identify her strengths, which include being an ‘ideas person’ within her collaborative research teams. “I went from working on others’ projects to completing two postgraduate degrees, and leading my own project. I have always worked in collaborative multi-disciplinary teams including doctors, nurses, technologists, scientists and biostatisticians and this has been immensely rewarding.” And while being a creative person is a research strength, Gillian says it also means she has to be very disciplined about finishing one project before her next exciting one takes over. Recently she set up a project that saw her collaborate with 32 eminent scientist-doctors around the world, who sent her their patient databases for collaborative analysis. It turned out to be the highlight of her research career. “The study was successful beyond belief and we have contributed some ground-breaking definitive work regarding using ultrasound to predict which patients are most likely to survive after a heart attack. This is just one example of how my own research career has been greatly enhanced by active cross-department, cross-faculty, national and international collaboration.”

Marcus’ work encompasses artist’s books, videos, photographs and web-based projects, often in combination as ‘total installations’.

He has an enduring interest in collaboration and has worked with a wide range of artists in New Zealand and Europe. He has exhibited throughout New Zealand and in Australia, the UK, the US, France, Italy, Austria, Estonia and Russia. With Susan, Marcus formed the collective F4 in 2006 to explore how life and art merge within the dynamics of contemporary family life. After collaborating for many years, F4 is Marcus and Susan’s response to the introduction of their two children into their work and life partnership. In this way, collaboration itself, as well as questions related to learning and child development, become integrated into the usual agendas of form and aesthetics that are the domain of the visual arts and design.

Gillian Whalley’s love of research started after she trained in medical imaging and then took a break from clinical practice to take up a short-term research role. While she was initially sceptical, Gillian’s research has grown into an increasingly significant part of her career over the last 20 years and to her new role as Associate Dean of Research at Unitec. Gillian says research also allows her to maintain and strengthen her clinical links, as her projects are clinically-focused and always include medical imaging.

Marcus Williams is many things – an artist, curator and Associate Professor at Unitec, and he now adds the new role of Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business. With a cross-disciplinary art practice working in a wide range of media with a strong emphasis in photography, Marcus spent six months researching and creating new work in New York last year, after winning the Wallace Award Paramount prize with his wife and long-term collaborator Susan Jowsey, also at Unitec.

“It is exciting to be involved in creative-practice-based research within academia at this time and Unitec has already demonstrated innovation in its approach to this. Practice is becoming more and more accepted as a potential form of legitimate research and this has benefited a great deal of professionals, such as myself, working within the creative industries.”

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» Advance Spring 2011

Working in harmony Staff on Unitec’s music programmes are not only teachers but active musicians and researchers.

They talk to us about the range of research in music and how creating new work is at the centre of it all. creations such as film, dance and theatre music. Added to that are reviews of other people’s music in written or radio formats, giving pre-concert talks, producing other musicians’ work for live realisation and recording projects, running ensembles and developing new repertoire, and music publishing enterprises.

For Glenda, who is also President of the Composers Association of New Zealand, recent research projects have included co-editing a new book on New Zealand music and co-organising a festival of New Zealand music that will be held in Los Angeles next year.

Other Unitec music staff have also had new work performed and presented at international workshops and festivals. “The essential ingredient of contemporary music research is high-quality work that has added to new knowledge. And it needs to be work with a high level of esteem, not just work that got played.”

When your industry is changing faster than almost any other in the world, the scope for new and different work is almost limitless.

This is the case in the world of music, where the past 20 years have brought huge changes to the way music is performed, listened to, acquired, owned, marketed and managed.

Dr Glenda Keam, a senior lecturer in Te Pae Whanake, the Department of Community Development, which runs the two-year Diploma in Contemporary Music and the semester-long Certificate in Music, says staff and students alike are creating music in a very different environment to the one that existed 20 years ago. “The music industry has changed so fast and so completely with the digital revolution and musicians have had to become more versatile, adaptable and flexible to keep up. This is the same for students, who need to have a good understanding of all aspects of what it means to be a musician in these changing times.”

Defining music research

Like many other creative industries, what constitutes research in contemporary music is a slightly harder question to answer than it may be in other areas, says Glenda. Traditionally-recognised research areas such as writing articles, presenting conference papers and editing books are just part of the mix. There are also the more specialised areas of composing music for other performers, writing songs and performing with other musicians, improvisatory performance, composing with computers and collaborative

She says that while there are quality assurance challenges in all fields, the live performance areas of music, theatre and dance have particular issues, especially when it comes to new work. The ways of asserting quality assurance with a brand new piece would involve considerations such as whether it was commissioned, funded by Creative New Zealand, published, placed in a competition, and who played it and where. “If it has had lots of subsequent performances then this is not a new output but it is evidence of quality and peer esteem. So one piece of work can result in many different scenarios.”

At home and away

Glenda says research, performance and the opportunities to travel overseas to international music festivals and conferences all help expand musical thinking, feed creativity, and put the New Zealand scene into context. Earlier this year she went to Zagreb as the New Zealand delegate to the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival. “I heard five days of music from all around the world and spent every morning in general assembly meetings with delegates from 50 countries talking about the music scenes in their countries.”

Representing New Zealand on the world stage is a natural fit for Glenda, who has wide knowledge on the industry and the music.

She recently released the book Home, Land and Sea: Situating Music in Aotearoa New Zealand, co-edited with writer Tony Mitchell.

The book features chapters by a wide range of music experts including Glenda and Tama Waipara (also a member of the Unitec music teaching team). Glenda says as the first significant textbook on New Zealand music, it aims to comprehensively cover a wide range of musical styles and traditions. She says chapters on Māori and Pacific sounds are the first to pull all the information together in one publication and will be core resources for coursework.

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“That’s just another way that we as researchers and as teaching team members have worked together. Our research hasn’t been going down a path just so we can follow our interests, but has resulted in a textbook that is being picked up by universities and polytechnics around New Zealand. We built a business case based on what we needed for our own teaching and our knowledge about what courses were taught around New Zealand and what the demand and needs might be.”

And the students have strong role models from the teaching staff, where collaboration is a common theme. The team has three permanent staff members, Glenda and lecturers Robin Toan and Samuel Holloway, supported by a team of talented contract staff including James Gardner, Rachael Morgan, Tama Waipara, Sara Jane Elika, Age Pryor and Chris O’Connor. “We are all very active as practitioners and researchers and that informs our teaching and makes for a very lively work environment at times. We all have a range of interests that overlap quite often as well so it’s pretty rich.”

Creating opportunities

Photo by Derek Henderson

Glenda, a musicologist, pianist and composer, joined Unitec in 2006 after 12 years lecturing in music at the University of Auckland.

She believes the Unitec programmes offer students the chance to become well-rounded musicians before they take a more focused path. “Our students get presented with a pretty special and unique cross-genre approach to contemporary music. We strongly encourage students to jump from instrument to instrument. They take some big risks and learn from each other and that’s how we make the strong, well-rounded, holistic contemporary musician.”

Samuel Holloway

Music Lecturer Samuel Holloway is a composer, writer and commentator, who is on the board of the Composers Association and edits the Association’s yearbook Canzona. As well as this, Samuel is the artistic director of the contemporary music ensemble 175 East and is currently editing a Creative New Zealand-funded publication entitled Landscape Preludes, a collection of piano pieces by 12 leading New Zealand composers.

Robin Toan

Music Lecturer Robin Toan says that being active and knowledgeable within the international music scene is vital for connections, commissions and collaborations and helps students to see their teachers as working musicians. “I think it helps students immensely to see through us that it is possible to write music and have that played and to make a ‘musician’s life’ through writing, performing and teaching.”

Contact: Dr Glenda Keam Senior Lecturer Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Te Pae Whanake - Department of Community Development Email: gkeam@unitec.ac.nz

“My research takes a number of forms, but it all feeds into my teaching and my creative practice. It’s important that students recognise the importance of taking a broad-minded approach to their musical activity. My goal isn’t just to prepare students for musical careers or for further study,” says Samuel, “it’s to help develop their individual creative voices.”

Earlier this year Samuel travelled to the Netherlands to work with the Orkest de Ereprijs, and he is currently working on compositional projects with musicians from Austria and Australia. Samuel is one of three finalists in the 2011 SOUNZ Contemporary Award, New Zealand’s premier composition award, with the winner being announced at the Silver Scroll Awards event.

Robin is an acclaimed composer, who recently had a work commissioned and performed by the Manukau Symphony Orchestra.

After the premiere in Manukau, it was performed the following night in the Auckland Town Hall, with The New Zealand Herald music critic describing it as “cleverly written” and showing Robin’s “expertise with an orchestral canvas”. “I used an uncommon combination of four soloists, flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon with orchestra in a one movement concertino. It grew on the players,” laughs Robin. “With new music they see their notes on the page and don’t know how it all fits together until everyone has their part perfect and then it clicks.”

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The therapy that empowers Methods for training counsellors to practise a positive counselling therapy that started in New Zealand and Australia, and has since spread around the world, is the subject of a new research paper by Unitec social practice staff.

How students gain new knowledge, ideas and competence when training as narrative therapy counsellors is the subject of a new research paper by Unitec Department of Social Practice staff Associate Professor Dr Helen Gremillion and lecturers Aileen Cheshire and Dorothea Lewis.

Narrative Therapy came out of New Zealand and Australia in the early 1990s and is growing in popularity around the world, with New Zealand and Australia seen as leaders in the field. Its appeal

to counsellors and clients alike is the respectful, empowering and energising nature of the therapy. Unitec is one of two places in New Zealand where students can train to be Narrative Therapists and one of the two founders of narrative therapy, David Epston, is a lecturer on the Unitec courses. “Narrative Therapy is an approach to therapy that does not look for what is wrong with a person – rather it looks at the nature of the problem,” says Helen. “A common phrase used to describe it is that it externalises the problem.”

» Social Practice

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The narrative journey

Shifting reality

The paper is being published in the American academic counselling journal Family Process, which has a readership of practising therapists and teachers, who work in different counselling models. It details some of the journey from the beginning of Unitec’s Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling programme, where Narrative theory ideas are being introduced, to the end of the programme, where students are using narrative techniques to re-examine all aspects of their work.

“Our students come to narrative counselling often after learning another modality and often have to rethink a lot of things that they learned in a previous training programme,” says Helen.

“It’s not a case of having to reject those other models – it’s how you view those models and how you think about them. You put on your ‘Narrative Therapy glasses’ and look at counselling practice through those, using all the skills and tools you already have in a different way. We give an example of that in the paper, with a student who developed her sand tray work in a narrative direction.”

Sand tray work involves a tray of sand with lots of toys and animals that children (and occasionally adults) can use to tell a story about an experience or their situation. “It isn’t normally associated with Narrative Therapy, so that’s a really good example of a skill being re-tooled through the course we teach.”

But Helen says it’s not as simple as just explaining a new way of working and expecting it to happen. She says the programme is structured in such a way that the competence grows through specific kinds of learning and exercises, and it is the ‘scaffolding’ of that competence that is the focus of the paper.

“What we are showing in this paper is how we, as teachers, structure the learning over time, so that by the end students are competent and able, and they can draw from each other and learn from each other more so than when we started.”

The paper presents snapshots of the beginning and end sessions of the programme and includes the exercises that are done along the way, to show readers the process students go through on their journey to Narrative Therapy competence.

Helen says that ideas of ‘agency’ and ‘positioning’ are key to how the therapy works and is taught. “Narrative Therapy is very attuned to power relationships as well, so you are constantly aware of the fact that the therapist holds power, that the teacher holds power, and you don’t deny that power but you try to work in a way that you acknowledge your power and then put it to the side in order to empower the client, or in our case, the student, to step into positions that they want to step into in their lives. So it’s ground-up rather than top down. We are trying to teach in a way that enables the voices of the students.”

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Helen says that Unitec has chosen Narrative Therapy as the leading counselling model that is taught in Unitec’s counselling programmes. “We believe in this really very positive and energised approach to helping people who struggle with difficulties in their lives. As social practitioners we are social constructionists, who believe that reality and the way we understand it is something that we make up together in our relationships and in cultural/historical contexts. So if you have that view of how reality is created then it is more possible to shift things than if you believe this is how I was born or I got mucked up when I was eight and now I have to try and reverse it. So it’s a different approach.

“A problem is discussed in such a way that it is not located inside the person or inside the person’s dynamics with other people, instead it is talked about in this therapy in terms of people having a relationship with the problem, so it is about the problem and its effects. And the value of that approach is that it allows space for people to experience a radically new sense of identity.

Often immediately, from day one of therapy, it allows people space to think about who they would prefer to be. So it is very focused on creating space that is different to, or in exception to, the problem.

“You may delve into history and you look at patterns and relationships – those things are there but the unique feature of Narrative Therapy is the understanding of cause. So rather than thinking the problem is inside the person and inside relationships and it radiates out, it sits there in the social world and it has effects on you, and it can get tangled in specific relationships and in how you see yourself.”

Helen says the paper will be of real interest to people interested in how narrative ideas translate into teaching. “Our main hope is anyone who teaches narrative would gain some insight or new ideas or have some inspiration for their own teaching. And we’d hope that the readers of our paper would contribute to an ongoing dialogue, because at the end of the paper we say that it is a constantly evolving way of working for us as well.”

Contact: Dr Helen Gremillion Associate Professor Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Social Practice Email: hgremillion@unitec.ac.nz

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» Advance Spring 2011

Jill in Nepal, during a development project

A world of words Unitec language studies lecturer Jill Hadfield didn’t set out to make a career in English language teaching and writing but a turn of fate saw her fall into the field in which she is a Senior Lecturer at Unitec and a leading writer of resources and books.

Chances are you haven’t read any of her books, but Unitec languages lecturer Jill Hadfield has dozens of them to her name.

They cover the spectrum of English language teaching, often suggesting inventive ways to teach in situations with very few resources, while her latest range of books will marry language teaching with the very latest in language research – a connection that Jill says is largely missed. “What happens with a lot of the research in the field of English language teaching, is that it doesn’t really make it off the pages of academic journals. So this is an attempt to bring it directly into the classroom in a form that classroom teachers can use.”

Jill says she never intended to be a writer or teacher of English language but her ‘accidental career’ has taken her around the world and provided valuable learning materials to dozens of countries.

“I’m not sure English language teaching is a job anybody goes into right from the start, meaning to go into it, you usually kind of fall into it through circumstances.” While Jill’s focus was on an academic path teaching English literature, her plans changed when her husband Charlie took a job at Bordeaux University. “I ended up teaching more English language at Bordeaux than I did English literature and then we decided that it would be a good way to travel and see the world.”

Bitter housewife turns writer

Charlie now works at the University of Auckland and they co-author many leading resources in the field of English teaching, but for Jill, the writing started back in the UK when she couldn’t secure a permanent teaching job. She was commissioned to write a book of language games and her career as a highly-regarded developer and writer was born. “It is proof to me that ostensibly difficult times can be unexpectedly fruitful. Out of that boredom and frustration – I call

it my bitter housewife phase – I started writing the communication games series.” Even at that early stage of her writing career Jill had a very firm idea of how the book should look and be used – it had to be A4 and spiral bound so it could lie flat on a photocopier, and it had to have a photocopy permit to allow reproduction – so that it could be of real use in areas where there were few other resources.

To China and beyond

Around the same time, Jill and Charlie’s desire to travel and teach was realised with a World Bank-funded aid project in China, setting up a centre for postgraduate scientists who wanted to go overseas to do PhDs in English-speaking countries. “It was a very interesting time – it was in the 80’s and China was emerging from the Cultural Revolution and things were freeing up a bit. We brought films with us because we wanted to run an English language club in the evenings, so the Chinese officials had to watch all the films first.

And at that stage cassette tapes were hard to get hold of so we’d brought up boxes of empty tapes and the customs officials came and listened their way through boxes of blank tapes, just to make sure there was nothing on them.”

At the end of the three-year project, Jill and Charlie travelled through Asia on the way back to the UK, spending six weeks in Tibet, which had recently re-opened to foreigners. This proved fortuitous when, after being back in the UK for six months, they saw an advert in the Guardian for “a hardy married teaching couple” to teach at the University of Tibet. Jill and Charlie were tasked with developing and teaching on a new English degree programme at the University of Tibet, as well as providing professional development to academic staff.

“The reason we had to be a hardy married teaching couple was because there was no heating in our flat. A Tibetan winter is

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» In the Limelight

» Advance Spring 2011

20 below and it was minus 8 inside the flat – I washed my hair once and it froze. I wore so many clothes I could hardly lift my hand to write on the board,” she laughs.

Afghanistan and Ethiopia. “We’d left Madagascar in a revolution.

There was a general strike and there were no planes in or out for nearly a month. So we were stuck there with half a million people marching in the streets every day and wondering what was going to happen. It was kind of scary and boring at the same time,” she says.

Her favourite pastime to cheer herself up when it was really cold was to read the briefing notes they’d been given by the British Council.

Because no one had been to Tibet before they had been given the briefing notes for diplomats heading to Beijing. “My favourite sentence was, ‘a reasonable white wine suitable for poolside parties is available from the Friendship Store in Beijing. But champagne, when required, should be ordered by the crate from Hong Kong’.

We wanted so badly to order a crate from Hong Kong and bill the British Council, saying ‘we required this’,’” she laughs. “Tibet turned out to be the best contract I ever did, it was wonderful. It was the spirit of the people and how lovely they were, it was the fascinating culture and the beautiful landscape… it was everything really.”

From Tibet Jill and Charlie went on to another grassroots project in Madagascar, this time setting up resource centres for teachers in remote areas. “There was very little technology and I didn’t see a single school with any books at all. They might have had a cracked square of blackboard and the kids would have exercise books or slates. The classes were very large with up to 80 children sitting in rows of desks nailed to the floor. It was very traditional teaching and the teachers were just desperate for materials. Basically our job was to drive a Landrover full of books to these resource centres and set up resource libraries and teach local teacher-trainers how to utilise them.”

It was while in Madagascar that the pair had an idea for a new magazine series called Ideas, packed with creative solutions for teachers with few resources.

“The ideas we had there ended up getting published as a series of books from Oxford University Press called Oxford Basics, which is designed for teachers in situations where there are no resources.” The series is still published and has been translated into 14 languages.

Ideas also features in Jill’s career-highlight moment. While in Madagascar they met a French aid worker working as a school’s inspector. He’d just walked three days over unpassable roads to reach a remote school and when he got there the English teacher had run out to greet him. “He said ‘do you know Jill and Charlie?’ And when he said ‘no’ the guy said ‘well if you ever meet them, tell them I’ve got Ideas 1, 3, and 5, but I need 2 and 4.’ That meant a lot to me and brought home that somebody that isolated, with no resources at all, was dependent on something we’d created and that it was making a real difference. Of course the first thing we did when we got home was send him the extra copies.”

A new adventure

Jill says that while development work was very rewarding, ‘because you feel that you are making such a big difference’ once her daughter was born she was less keen to go to places that posed certain risks, despite receiving offers to work on projects in

While Charlie continued consultancy work internationally, Jill relished a bit of time in England and continued to write and publish. But while their daughter was still young they decided to take the opportunity to travel and came to New Zealand, initially intending it to be a two-year stint. Seven years on they are both still enjoying the work here, even though it poses different challenges to driving truckloads of books across impassable roads.

“It was quite a shock to me coming here, because I’ve never been in such a well-resourced situation, even in the UK. My focus for a long time had been ‘what do you do with nothing?’ and here it’s a requirement to use leading technology, so it was from one extreme to another.”

Making research accessible

Alongside her teaching of students and teachers – including courses with Unitec’s partner universities in China – Jill is still very active in publishing. Her latest series of books is called Research and Resources in Language Teaching and Jill is working on the first book in the series with Zoltan Dornyei, a professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Nottingham, based on his research into a new theory of motivation and how that can feed into practice. Following books will be on digital literacy and creativity. Jill says the researchpractice link is vital and feeds her own teaching and writing work.

As well as writing text books and presenting at conferences, Jill is a regular writer of columns and articles for industry journals and websites. She also edits a series in the Oxford journal English Language Teaching Journal and is halfway through her PhD at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Her PhD involves submitting an artefact, which will be her portion of the book on motivation and how that relates to English language acquisition from the student’s perspective, and the exegesis, which is an account of the process of creativity. Jill says very little is known about the process of writing materials and her research will look to bridge the knowledge gap.

“People write materials intuitively, which is why this book series is a new departure, because it is actually getting people to look at research and trace the process. So what I’m hoping to do is look at the steps by which I derive practice from theory. I’m trying to generalise it and make it useful to other people.”

Contact: Jill Hadfield Senior Lecturer Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Languages Email: jhadfield@unitec.ac.nz

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