Victoria University of Wellington

In TBLT research, there is a noticeable lack of attention to the use of tasks with whole classes. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating the discourse of whole-class task-based teacher-student interaction compared to other types of teacher-student interaction in EFL classrooms in a primary school in China. A total of 223 pedagogic sequences from 16 EFL lessons taught by Chinese teachers to Grade 1 to 5 primary school student were recorded, transcribed, and coded as tasks or non-tasks using the four defining features of tasks proposed by Ellis and Shintani (2014. Exploring language pedagogy through second language acquisition research. London: Routledge ). The analysis revealed that 95 sequences were task-based, 44 were non-task-based (i.e. they contained none of the four task features) and a further 84 sequences were also non-task-based but contained some but not all the four task features. In terms of the discourse features of task versus non-tasks sequences, task sequences had a higher ratio of teacher talk to student talk, a higher frequency of IRF exchanges, a lower frequency of teacher-class interaction, a lower frequency of teacher-initiated exchanges, a higher frequency of FoM exchanges and a lower frequency of FoFs exchanges, and a higher frequency of both display and referential questions. Overall, the findings provide process-oriented evidence for the distinctiveness of task-based teacher-student interaction.

This article describes the motivation, aims, and consequent processes involved in designing an engaging and informative animated educational video that explains the historical exploitation of the Mount Dagushan iron ore mine in China. The mine is recognised as the deepest in China. It has been the source of raw material for the Anshan Steel Factory, which is now formally acknowledged as a significant example of heritage architecture. The effectiveness of an animated video created by the authors, regarding knowledge and appreciation of industrial heritage, has been investigated through user testing of early primary school students (grades one to six). The research presented here reports on the success of instructional design using digital storytelling as an animated video in conveying knowledge of industrial heritage, and its associated cultural and societal influences. This has included gathering primary education students' feedback and opinions in China through a survey. The research aims to illustrate how Industrial Heritage education can foster engagement in, and awareness of, important connected histories.

This article analyzes Vladimir Putin’s 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” as an example of political rhetoric invoking the language/dialect dichotomy. Curiously, Putin argued both that Ukrainian is a “dialect” of a greater Russian language and that Ukrainian is a distinct “language” different from Russian. As a form of political rhetoric, the language/dialect dichotomy draws its power from normative isomorphism, the idea that languages, nations, and states ought to coincide. According to the logic of normative isomorphism, claiming that Russian and Ukrainian are separate “languages” gives the Russian Federation a claim to annex the Russian-speaking south-east of Ukraine, while claiming that Ukrainian is a “dialect” of Russian would justify the Russian Federation’s annexation of Ukraine in its entirety. By endorsing both positions, Putin’s speech provided pre-emptively justifications for different policies, giving him room to maneuver. All that said, neither the language/dialect dichotomy nor normative isomorphism offers a solid basis for political legitimacy.

Internationally, research on mental health literacy (MHL) is increasing. However, the complex interplay between MHL components is not fully understood due to methodological limitations. We aimed to investigate the reciprocal links between beliefs, recognition ability and attitudes towards depression and schizophrenia in Ghana using the novel network analysis approach. A total of 410 participants from the general population of Ghana were included in a vignette-based study focusing on the Western concepts of depression and schizophrenia. Participants provided their impressions of a hypothetical person described in a vignette depicting either the Western concept of depression or schizophrenia symptoms. They then completed a set of validated MHL instruments, along with providing demographic information. Our findings indicated that spiritual causal attribution was the most influential variable in the network model for depression, whereas personal stigma emerged as the variable with the greatest impact in the model for schizophrenia. There was a reciprocal link between personal stigma and psychosocial causal attributions across the mental disorders and religiosity was positively linked to seeking professional help for these disorders. There was a bidirectional link between help-seeking preferences and causal attributions across the two disorders. Spiritual causal attributions were inversely related to professional help-seeking for both disorders. These findings emphasize the intricate interconnections between beliefs and attitudes towards depression and schizophrenia. Uncovering cultural and belief systems that are not explicitly expressed, as well as addressing stigma and incorporating the Western nosology of mental disorders, could promote mental well-being.

In July 2022 southeast England experienced a record breaking heatwave and unprecedented wildfires in urban areas. We investigate fire weather trends since 1960 in southeast England using a large ensemble of initialised climate models. We show that between the 1960's and 2010's annual maximum daily fire weather has increased, with a halving of the return period of a high risk day from a 1‐in‐4 year event in the 1960s to a 1‐in‐2 year event in the last decade. Modelled change in daily fire weather risk for South East England. Showing the percentage change between the past (1961–1970) and present (2013–2022) of total summertime days within each fire danger class, using the large ensemble of initialised climate model data. image

Background Being able to measure informed choice represents a mechanism for service evaluation to monitor whether informed choice is achieved in practice. Approaches to measuring informed choice to date have been based in the biomedical hegemony. Overlooked is the effect of epistemic positioning, that is, how people are positioned as credible knowers in relation to knowledge tested as being relevant for informed choice. Aims To identify and describe studies that have measured informed choice in the context of prenatal screening and to describe epistemic positioning of pregnant people in these studies. Methods Online databases to identify papers published from 2005 to 2021. The PRISMA-ScR checklist guided data collection, analysis and reporting. Secondary analysis that considered hermeneutics (e.g., knowledge that was tested, study design) and testimony (e.g., population descriptors) developed a priori. Findings Twenty-nine studies explored the measurement of informed choice. None reported that pregnant people were involved in the design of the study. Two studies reported pregnant people had some involvement in the design of the measurement. Knowledge tested for informed choice included technical aspects of screening, conditions screened and mathematical concepts. Twenty-seven studies attributed informed choice to population descriptors (e.g., race/ethnicity, age, education). Population descriptors were reified as characteristics of epistemic credibility for informed choice obtained. For example, when compared to a high school qualification, a tertiary qualification was a statistically significant characteristic of informed choice. When compared by race, white people were found to be significantly more likely to make an informed choice. Additional demographic descriptors such as age, language spoken, faith and previous pregnancies were used to further explain differences for informed choice obtained. Explanations about underlying assumptions of population descriptors were infrequent. Conclusion Using population descriptors in the biomedical hegemony as explanatory variables for informed choice can position (groups of) people as more, or less, epistemically credible. Such positioning could perpetuate epistemic injustices in practice leading to inequitable access to healthcare. To better uphold (pregnant) people as credible knowers population descriptors should instead be contextual (and contextualising) variables. For example, as indicators of social privilege. Further, making room for ways of knowing that go beyond the biomedical hegemony requires the development of epistemically just ‘measures’ through intentional, inclusive design.

Although American news satire trends towards the left side of the political spectrum, satire is not unique to liberal viewpoints. Conservative news satire, published by outlets such as The Babylon Bee , lend evidence to the ability for right-wing views to be advanced using satirical methods. Despite political differences, existing comparisons of left- and right-wing news satire suggest a high degree of structural similarity. In contrast, qualitative content-based analyses suggest clear political biases which differentiate the satire from these sources. In this study, we compare left- and right-wing American news satire across different structural and content-based features using a combination of quantitative, computational, and qualitative approaches. Our results mirror those of prior studies, indicating similarities in terms of structure but not content. These results further speak to the importance of taking conservative satire seriously, as well as to the necessity of a multi-pronged approach when studying the complex nature of satirical discourse.

In response to growing social and ecological pressures, ecosystem-based management (EBM) has been proffered as an alternative governance regime for marine and coastal systems in Aotearoa New Zealand. The challenge of how to engender a transition toEBM remains, however. This paper investigates the proposition that Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) can be a tool to drive the EBM transition by analysing the ocean and marine governance transition in Kaikōura over the past 20 years. The findings suggest that taking a top-down MSP approach to governance can crowd out some of the principles of EBM, but MSP can support the implementation of EBM principles if sufficient attention is given to developing institutions and processes that prioritise local decision-making and provide sufficient support for ongoing engagement and participation by local actors

The thriving advances in autonomous vehicles and aviation have enabled the efficient implementation of aerial last-mile delivery services to meet the pressing demand for urgent relief supply distribution. Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) is a promising technique for aerial emergency scheduling. However, the existing VNS methods usually exhaustively explore all considered neighborhoods with a prefixed order, leading to an inefficient search process and slow convergence speed. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel graph neural neighborhood search algorithm, which includes an online reinforcement learning (RL) agent that guides the search process by selecting the most appropriate low-level local search operators based on the search state. We develop a dual-graph neural representation learning method to extract comprehensive and informative feature representations from the search state. Besides, we propose a reward-shaping policy learning method to address the decaying reward issue along the search process. Extensive experiments conducted across various benchmark instances demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches. Further investigations validate the effectiveness of the newly designed knowledge guidance scheme and the learned feature representations.

Purpose: Autistic children have an increased likelihood of anxiety, but more research is needed on the characteristics that predict various types of anxiety in this population. Methods: In this study, we examined a range of child and family predictors of various types of anxiety using a sample of 452 autistic children from the Australian Autism Biobank. We used logistic regression to examine child and family predictors of four common types of anxiety in autistic children: generalised, phobic, separation, and social anxiety. Results: We found that 62.8% of children in this sample had symptoms of at least one type of anxiety. Poor quality sleep habits were the only predictive factor consistently identified across all anxiety symptom types. Specific to children with indicated generalised, separation, and phobic anxiety symptoms were the predictive factors of being older than five years, and specific to generalised and social anxiety were the predictive factors of higher cognitive abilities. Maternal anxiety was also a predictive factor in indicated children’s separation anxiety. Conclusion: These findings can help inform the provision of more targeted support for autistic people, particularly the interaction of poor sleep habits and anxiety symptoms.

This population study investigated the association between birth characteristics and fracture risk in 11,099 young adults (aged 19–54 years). Our findings indicate that birth weight, gestational age, and birth weight for gestational age were not associated with fractures in the wrist, humerus, hip, and spine in this population. Skeletal development starts during fetal life, and it is estimated that most bone formation occurs in the 3rd trimester. This study examined the association between birth characteristics and fractures of the wrist, humerus, hip, and spine, in young adults (19–54 years). 11.099 participants in the 3rd survey of the HUNT Study (2006–2008) were linked with the Medical Birth Registry of Norway and hospital records. Fractures of the wrist, humerus, hip, and spine were identified using ICD9/10 codes between 1988 and 2021. Follow-up was from date of participation in HUNT until a first fracture, emigration, death, or end of study. Cox regression was used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) of fracture associated with birth characteristics (95% CI), adjusted for birth year, sex, maternal age, and maternal morbidity. In a secondary analysis, follow-up started in 1988. During a median follow-up of 14.0 years (153,657 person-years), 290 fractures occurred. Mean age at first fracture was 41.4 years (SD 7.4). Overall, there were no clear associations between birth characteristics and fractures in these data. HR for fracture was 0.43 (0.15–1.24) for those with a birth weight < 2.5 kg (reference birth weight 3.5 − 3.9 kg); 1.04 (0.74 − 1.46) for those born small for gestational age (< 10th percentile, reference 10 − 90th percentile); and 0.63 (0.33 − 1.23) for those born preterm (reference term births). The secondary analysis from 1988, including 539 fractures, gave similar results as the main analysis. Birth weight, gestational age, or birth weight for gestational age was not associated with an increased risk of fractures of the wrist, humerus, hip, and spine in young adults.

Plain Language Summary Reconstructions of Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) retreat during past warm periods provide important constraints for projections of future ice mass loss and sea level rise. The Last Interglacial (LIG) is a particularly useful example, when global temperatures were 1±1oC $\pm {1}^{o}C$ warmer than preindustrial (PI) conditions, to explore future sea level rise projections associated with the successful implementation of the Paris Agreement. Here, we use data from six East Antarctic ice cores and two new, unpublished records from West Antarctica that capture LIG conditions. Water isotopes in ice cores are sensitive to changes in temperature, AIS elevation, atmospheric circulation pattern, sea ice area, and ocean conditions. We compare model simulations of the LIG with ice core data and find that elevation changes, an important indicator of ice mass loss, explain only around 9% of the isotope change captured in East Antarctic ice cores. Due to the limitation of our simulations in the coastal regions, our West Antarctic coastal sites are more challenging. In summary, we find that while the range of our simulations does not fully explain average East Antarctic PI‐to‐LIG isotope changes, they do capture some of the geographical variations in isotope change patterns.

Hatred and fear of trans people, particularly trans women, are worldwide social phenomena. Transphobic rhetoric rests on essentialist understandings of sex and gender, but ethnomethodology shows how the "natural attitude" to sex/gender is a practical accomplishment. We use conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis to examine the workings of the natural attitude in a public submission to a government select committee about a law that would affect trans-gender people. We adapt Garfinkel's concept of the status degradation ceremony to show how the submission systematically used categories of sex and gender to present trans women as illegitimate and dangerous in women's spaces. We also show how the submission was recognized as transmisogynistic and challenged by government ministers of the select committee. We thus show how people can accomplish and challenge transmisogyny through common-sense knowledge about sex and gender.

Background The impact of the pandemic on Indigenous and disabled people's access to healthcare has resulted in significant disruptions and has exacerbated longstanding inequitable healthcare service delivery. Research within Aotearoa New Zealand has demonstrated that there has been success in the provision of healthcare by Māori for their community; however, the experiences of tāngata whaikaha Māori, disabled Māori, have yet to be considered by researchers. Methods Underpinned by an empowerment theory and Kaupapa Māori methodology, this research explores the lived realities of tāngata whaikaha Māori or their primary caregivers. Twenty in-depth interviews gathered participants’ lived experiences, and a discursive lens was brought to the narratives of tāngata whaikaha Māori who have accessed, and received, culturally responsive healthcare services during the pandemic. Results Positive experiences accessing primary and secondary services were associated with Māori-centred healthcare and seamless engagement with support services that were founded upon the active dismantling of structural inequities and the prioritisation of Māori cultural values in their care delivery, inclusive of tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty), and mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). Conclusions This study provides a novel and solid foundation for comprehending how healthcare can be realigned to cater to the requirements of disabled Indigenous populations.

Claims about human behavior have been hampered by limited availability of comparable data across cultures. Invariance testing has been proposed to address questions about the comparability of data, yet statistical methods have been challenged on various grounds across psychology and related fields. We highlight how current debates confuse distinct issues and fail to consider the role of data within science. We aim to overcome the impasse by a) summarizing various criticisms, b) distinguishing five mapping processes that occur during a typical research project and c) exploring how thinking about invariance as mapping can move current discussions forward. Specifically, we differentiate 1) mapping ideas to theoretical constructs and concepts, 2) mapping constructs to stimuli, 3) mapping participants’ responses to stimuli onto numerical representations, 4) testing internal relations of stimuli responses (the typical focus of statistical invariance testing) and 5) mapping empirical observations back to theoretical statements. We treat invariance testing as a theory-guided process that offers important insights about instruments, construct validity and psychological theories throughout the research process that are currently missed by focusing on only the statistical details. Psychological claims that are valid for all humans depend on questions of invariance in the broad sense that we outline here.

As an entitlement to rights, well-being and equity, young children’s citizenship lays the foundation for a democratic, just and sustainable world. This article interrogates the discursive constructions of ‘citizenship’ within recent early childhood curriculum documents in China and Aotearoa New Zealand. Since the 1990s, both nations have released national curricula to facilitate children’s growth and learning, unveiling the potential of children to act as competent and active citizens. A previous study explained ways in which citizenship in both nations’ curricula is discursively constructed as a ‘neoliberal construction’. However, other possible constructions of children’s citizenship are worthy of exploration. This article draws from the first author’s doctoral study and further examines alternative discursive constructions of children’s citizenship in both nations’ curricula to address this research gap. Engaging a post-structural positioning that incorporates critiques of power and knowledge drawing from the work of Michel Foucault, we present examples of ways that young children’s citizenship is discursively constructed as (1) development and preparation, (2) rights and participation and (3) relationships and connectedness. The power of cultural and historical discourses in creating these constructions is explored, whereby neoliberal discourse may either be problematised or strengthened.

A common way of acquiring multiword expressions is through language input, such as during reading and listening. However, this type of learning is slow. Identifying approaches that optimize learning from input, therefore, is an important language-learning endeavor. In the present study, 85 learners of English as a foreign language read short texts with 42 figurative English phrasal verbs, repeated three times. In a counterbalanced design, we manipulated access to definitions (before text, after text, no definition) and typographic enhancement (with bolding, without bolding). The learning was measured by immediate and delayed gap-fill and meaning generation posttests. All posttests showed that learning with definitions was better than without, and that access to definitions after reading was more beneficial than before reading. Typographic enhancement effectively promoted con-textual learning of phrasal verbs and increased the learning advantage associated with presenting definitions after reading.