How do academically successful Pasifika students perceive task value?

New Zealand has implemented two key measures to recognise and promote micro-credentials at tertiary level in recent years. In 2018, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) implemented a process for recognising micro-credentials as part of the country’s regulated education and training system. This was based on a pilot programme, in which the NZQA collaborated with partners from the education and youth sectors to investigate the role micro-credentials could play in New Zealand’s qualification system of the future (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, n.d.[6]). The NZQA considers applications from tertiary education organisations (TEOs) based on a set of criteria published on its website. The criteria aim to ensure that micro-credentials meet the skill-development needs of employers, industry and communities, and that they do not duplicate learning that already exists within the tertiary education system. Once approved, qualifications are reviewed on a yearly basis. A range of other organisations, such as professional bodies, partner with TEOs to develop micro-credentials that meet their skill-development needs.

Maritime Mathematics is a fundamental part of Maritime Training Programs, as it is deeply involved in maritime affairs, e.g. ship stability and navigation are the problems that can be solved by computing using mathematics. Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) requires the trainees to be assessed and deemed competent in maritime mathematics, a New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) Level 3 course with 15 credits is to assess for competency in maritime mathematics in the following six topics: Algebra, Mensuration, Graphs, Calculus, Geometry, Trigonometry. Until end of 2021, the program specific regulations allow open entry for domestic students and no mathematics access criteria for international students. This means that the students start their maritime mathematics class at varying levels of proficiency. However, all learning outcomes in six maritime mathematics topics must be achieved for a student to be deemed competent by completion of their training programs. A study is conducted to identify the gaps caused by the open entry policy, based on observation of interaction of teaching and learning with results in course final exam, to analyze the weakness of the current teaching contents and start Maritime Mathematics course renovation in maritime training programs in New Zealand. This study has contributions to Programme Change Application, which has been approved by NZQA at end of 2021, that Applicants must meet the following criteria for admission into the programme Applicants with no seagoing experience: 14 credits in either Mathematics (calculus, algebra or equivalent) and/or Physics. As the programme Applicants with seagoing experience still have no mathematics access criteria, this study has led to the production of a new Industry-oriented teaching strategy to the course development in 2022. And a formative test at the time of student enrolment to identify this group of students. thus, a pre-course session will be offered to the group of students who are lack of Mathematics foundation. Further study is to follow and enhance Maritime Mathematics course renovation in New Zealand.

This article describes the development and implementation of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) in New Zealand, regarded as the most comprehensive standards--based qualifications system in the world. The origins of the NQF, and the advantages that a unitary framework was seen to have for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) as a new government-funded agency responsible for implementing qualifications reform in a market-driven environment, are explored. Key concepts borrowed from SCOTVEC and NCVQ were instrumental in the NQF's development. However, following opposition to the unitary framework by some schools and universities, and national consultation, the NQF was broadened. The development of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, a school-based qualification based on 'achievement standards'--an adaptation of the 'unit standard'--is used to exemplify the broadened framework. The conclusion focuses on some of the enduring issues associated with New Zealand's qualifications reforms.

This study investigates what teaching practices in the ‘non-lecture context of a foundation programme' help or hinder Māori and Pasifika students' success in a New Zealand university. This two-year qualitative project used Kaupapa Māori and Pasifika Research (KM/PR) methodologies conducted in three phases: (1) needs analysis, (2) intervention and (3) evaluation. Twenty-eight Māori or Pasifika students were interviewed using the Critical Incident Technique identifying 798 incidents grouped into four themes for institutional development: (I) use effective practices for teaching and learning, (II) grow independent learners, (III) support the empowerment of the learner and (IV) harness the positive cohort effect. Initially, students reported that intensive support provided by the foundation programme was not preparing students well for success in degree-level study. Following interventions of institutionally-led changes, students reported better preparation for ongoing study. The overall learning environment and provision of Māori and Pasifika academic and pastoral support were important factors for success.

Students’ subjective task values (STVs) are vital in academic learning as they directly influence student engagement and academic performance. STVs are shaped by various personal, psychological, affective and cultural factors. While personality traits, positive emotions and learning motives have been linked to STVs, the degree to which they predict specific dimensions of STVs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning remains underexplored. This study investigates the predictive power of L2 grit, foreign language enjoyment and learning motives on different dimensions of STVs among 577 EFL university students in Taiwan. Data were collected through an online questionnaire and analysed using standard multiple regression. The findings revealed that perseverance of effort, personal enjoyment and deep motives positively predicted intrinsic, attainment and utility values. Consistency of interest and social enjoyment positively predicted intrinsic values only, while surface motives negatively predicted intrinsic values. Additionally, teacher appreciation and surface motives positively predicted perceived cost. These results underscore the significance of personal, emotional and motivational factors in shaping students’ task value perceptions in EFL learning.

This study examined the perceived influence of significant others’ beliefs on students’ expectancies of success and task value in physical education (PE). PE students (N = 231) between Grades 9 and 12 participated. Multiple regressions examined the influence of perceived parents’, teachers’, and classmates’ beliefs on students’ ability expectations and task value. Findings revealed that perceptions of parents’, teachers’, and classmates’ beliefs concerning ability expectations and attainment value were positive predictors of students’ own beliefs and attainment value for PE. Perceptions of parents’ and classmates’ utility value were significant in predicting students’ utility value for PE. Higher ability expectancies, attainment value, and utility value were related to lower intrinsic motivation. Higher attainment value predicted lower extrinsic motivation, and higher utility value predicted lower social motivation. In conclusion, perceptions of parents’, teachers’, and classmates’ ability expectancies, attainment value, and utility value positively predicted students’ ability expectancies, attainment value, and utility value.Subscribe to TPE

Examining interactions between baseline expectancy beliefs and task values on weekly motivation in an introductory statistics course

Although the existing literature has always established strong ties between student motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes, few studies have focused on the motivation and engagement of Māori and Pasifika students. Also, large-scale quantitative and qualitative studies that focus solely on the views of Māori and Pasifika learners (i.e., not compared to their Pākehā/NZ European counterparts) are limited. In response, the COMPASS project (comprising seven studies) has examined the ways Māori and Pasifika ākonga and whānau successfully navigate their way through the schooling system, maintaining positive motivation, academic engagement, cultural connectedness, and high aspirations. We also set out to highlight the practices, pedagogies, and beliefs of school leaders, teachers, and whānau committed to Māori and Pasifika student success. In this article, we bring together the findings from across all seven COMPASS studies to provide practical recommendations for schools, their communities, and others who are committed to enabling Māori and Pasifika students to flourish.

Drawing on expectancy-value theory, the present study examined the unique contributions of the four major value beliefs and self-concept on achievement, self-reported effort, and teacher-rated behavioral engagement in mathematics. In particular, we examined the multiplicative effects of self-concept and task values on educational outcomes using the latent moderated structural equation approach. Participants were 1,868 German ninth-grade students. The data analyses relied on a higher-order structure of value beliefs, which is suited to parsing the differential patterns of predictive relations for different value beliefs. The findings revealed that (a) self-concept was more predictive of achievement, whereas value beliefs were more predictive of self-rated effort; (b) self-concept and value beliefs emerged as equally important predictors of teacher-reported engagement; (c) among the four value beliefs, achievement was more associated with low cost, whereas effort was more associated with attainment value; and (d) latent interactions between self-concept and value beliefs predicted the three outcomes synergistically.

An Instrument to Assess Subjective Task Value Beliefs Regarding the Decision to Pursue Postgraduate Training

Demand for diverse, well-qualified engineers in the United States is higher than ever, and yet, recent research shows that a majority of engineering undergraduates are undecided about whether to enter the engineering profession, even in the months leading up to graduation. From the engineering education and career development literature, it is known that interest in other fields accounts for some diversion of engineering graduates from engineering careers. Students’ lack of confidence in their ability to obtain and succeed in engineering positions, and other incorrect or misleading assumptions about the engineering career search, are partially responsible as well. To better understand these issues, a longitudinal, mixed-methods study about engineering students’ career decision-making funded by the National Science Foundation has been undertaken. The study is grounded in Eccles’ expectancy-value theory, which conceptualizes engagement in a task (in this case, the career search) as a function of expectancies of success and four subjective task values: (1) attainment value, the perceived importance of engaging in the task, (2) intrinsic value, the perceived enjoyment of engaging in the task, (3) utility value, the perceived benefit of engaging in the task, and (4) cost value, the perceived consequences of engaging in the task. The focus of this research paper is on the development and validation of survey measures to capture engineering students’ expectancy-value beliefs related to their post-undergraduate career search, whether for jobs and/or graduate school. Such measures could be used by researchers, career services professionals, and educators to identify and address causes of problematic career indecision among engineering undergraduates through targeted interventions. The expectancy-value measures designed for this study were piloted as part of a survey of 300 engineering juniors and seniors at a large, southwestern public university in August and September of 2016. Exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation was applied on 27 items which produced six unique factors: two factors related to expectancies of success (expectancies of success for developing plans for one’s career pathway, and expectancies for success for obtaining a post-undergraduate job or graduate school offer) and four factors consistent with the four components of subjective task values in EVT. Of the 27 items, three items related to attainment value and one item related to utility value were modified slightly in the hopes of increasing their respective factor loadings. All 27 items are currently being re-tested in a survey of engineering juniors and seniors at six universities nationwide (expected sample size: 1,500) from September through November of 2016. Results of the exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability analyses for the final data set will be presented in the full paper. Since the study for which these measures were created is longitudinal, plans to include these measures in future models of engineering seniors’ attainment of a first post-undergraduate position will also be discussed.

University students' ability-expectancy beliefs and subjective task values for exergames

Declining enrolments in senior secondary science have heightened concerns for meeting the demands for more STEM-qualified workers and a scientifically literate society. Students' attitudes to science are formed during schooling, particularly in adolescence when they are exposed to a variety of science topics. Students’ perceptions of their ability in science and their subjective task values are well established as predictors of their likelihood of engaging with and continuing their study of science. However, the role of classroom-based social support in supporting ability perceptions and task values is less well understood. In this study, we examined relationships between adolescents’ perceived classroom-based social support, task values, and self-efficacy, and how these perceptions and attitudes predicted adolescents’ intentions to study the three major science subjects (biology, chemistry, and physics) in senior high school. Participants were 475 adolescents in Grades 8 to 10 recruited from six schools in Sydney, Australia. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypothesised model in which social support from science teachers and peers predicted intended science subject selections through science self-efficacy, intrinsic valuing of science, and utility value of science. Results indicate that science teacher and peer support were not directly related to adolescents’ intentions to study senior science subjects. Instead, they were indirectly related via their positive relationship with science self-efficacy and task values. Utility value was the strongest predictor of adolescents’ intentions to study biology, chemistry, and physics, while self-efficacy and intrinsic value also predicted adolescents’ intentions to study chemistry. These results suggest that classroom-based social supports are important for supporting adolescents’ attitudes towards science, and that science utility value interventions may be useful in efforts to improve enrolments in senior science subjects.

Higher education in Aotearoa New Zealand – we have a problem. Māori and Pasifika academics are not given time to talk together about Māori and Pasifika student success. Often framed by ‘the academy’ from a deficit position, initiatives to address the ‘problem’ of Māori student and Pasifika student success is often ad hoc and disconnected, rarely prioritised and inevitably under-resourced despite aspirational-sounding rhetoric. Furthermore, Māori and Pasifika academics are grossly under-represented in higher education (McAllister, T. G., Kidman, J., Rowley, O., & Theodore, R. (2019). Why isn’t my professor Māori? MAI Journal, 8(2), doi:10.20507/MAIJournal.2019.8.2.10; Naepi, S. (2019). Why isn’t my professor Pasifika? MAI Journal, 8(2), doi:10.20507/MAIJournal.2019.8.2.9.) as we negotiate institutional and cultural expectations. This article describes a Māori and Pasifika-led research fellowship focused on Māori and Pasifika student success in Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest university, The University of Auckland. He Vaka Moana is a strength-based model, framed by principles and methodologies that emerge from the language, connections and ways of being which sustain us as Oceanic people. Drawing on nautical notions of traversing the Pacific Ocean, we encourage Māori and Pasifika researchers to come together in purposeful and transformational ways, not to further homogenise Oceanic identities, but to pikipiki hama – lash our canoes together – to support our common aspirations for revolutionary change in higher education for our diverse communities. Here, we share the voices of Māori and Pasifika He Vaka Moana fellows engaged with the tensions and complexities of transforming the tertiary experience for Māori and Pasifika students.

<p>In formal education and training, internal assessment (in which assessor judgements are made within education organisations) is widely used for summative purposes to contribute to the award of qualifications. In many jurisdictions including New Zealand, organisations that conduct these high-stakes internal assessments are required by regulation to engage in moderation within the organisation and with external quality assurance bodies to quality-assure those assessments. However, policies are rarely implemented directly as intended. Instead, they are enacted by organisations, that is, policies are interpreted and translated, with multiple factors influencing this process. One such factor is the person who takes the role of ‘policy narrator’ and leads the policy interpretation and translation within the organisation. In New Zealand there is further potential for enactment variation because education organisations are largely self-governing, and thus have substantial freedom regarding organisational systems and practices. Moderation is commonly held to have both accountability and improvement purposes. However, it is unknown what policy narrators within New Zealand organisations consider the functions of moderation to be. This study sought to explore what the academic leaders who are responsible for moderation in New Zealand secondary and tertiary organisations (i.e., those likely to be policy narrators) perceive as the functions of internal moderation and national moderation conducted by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA moderation). Further, the study sought to ascertain whether there are any observable differences in perceptions according to organisation type. A pragmatic mixed methods sequential research design was implemented. An online survey instrument was developed informed from interview findings, and then administered using a census approach to collect data (n = 221). Both qualitative and quantitative data analyses were conducted. Academic leaders were found to believe that moderation functions across multiple embedded contexts, from the immediate assessment event, to organisational and societal contexts. Internal and NZQA moderation were seen to work in the narrowly-focused area of assessment quality, and the broader areas of professional learning, organisational quality assurance, maintaining public and stakeholder confidence, and educational quality (internal moderation only). Instead of subscribing to the dominant improvement and accountability discourses, for the most part academic leaders tended think of moderation in more encompassing ways than the literature suggests. Respondents from Private Training Enterprises (PTEs) tended to see the organisational quality assurance and educational quality functions as being more important or having a stronger emphasis, and to hold a broader view of moderation functions, than those from schools. These findings could assist those in organisations to recognise and examine the influence of their own perceptions on practice, and identify opportunities to optimise how their organisations use moderation. The findings enable policy makers to ascertain the degree of alignment between policy intent and enactment, and could inform policy development and communication to the sector. Further, the potential for NZQA to increase the broader and improvement-focused aspects of moderation practice, while maintaining—and enhancing—its accountability focus is highlighted.</p>