He moana pukepuke: navigating gender and ethnic inequality in early career academics’ conference attendance

Drawing on data collected in a cross-disciplinary survey of early-career academics (ECAs) in New Zealand, this article explores the factors influencing ECA conference attendance. Our conceptual framework uses conference attendance as the dependent variable and measures gender, ethnicity, family responsibilities and workload. Three key features affect conference attendance: demographic characteristics (background features and prior experiences that affect an academic’s willingness and ability to attend), accessibility (constraints to attending, such as financing, family responsibilities, institutional support or teaching commitments) and purpose (the value placed on attending conferences by the individual, the institution, or the discipline). In particular, we identify differences for women, Indigenous people, and those born overseas with respect to their ability to navigate and their inclination to attend national and international conferences

Understanding the uncomfortable kōkako: the challenge of applying threshold concepts in Māori studies

There are Māori studies programmes in all eight New Zealand universities and thousands of Māori studies students enrol each year. However, little research has been done on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) within the Māori studies discipline. This article investigates, through the process of an integrative literature review, the potential to apply the theory of threshold concepts (Meyer & Land 2006) – the idea that there is a set of transformational concepts that can unlock understanding in any discipline – to the Māori studies discipline. It highlights issues that arise in applying threshold concepts to a relatively new discipline that centres Indigenous knowledge and practices. The transformative elements of Māori studies and the irreversible change that Western epistemologies have caused to Māori studies’ knowledge are discussed. The bounded aspect of Māori studies is canvased, as well as the ability of Māori studies to integrate with other cognate disciplines. The troublesome nature of Māori studies content is explored, along with the discursive elements of its formal and coded curricula. Also, the idea of liminality is examined, as a way to demarcate the academic territory of Māori studies and clarify the curriculum. Ultimately, many questions emerge in this article but also opportunities to advance the SOTL research in both threshold concepts as a theory and Māori studies as a discipline.   How to cite this article: HALL, Meegan; ADDS, Peter; ROSS, Mike; BORELL, Phillip. Understanding the uncomfortable kōkako: the challenge of applying threshold concepts in Māori studies. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, [S.l.], v. 1, n. 1, p. 91-107, sep. 2017. Available at: . Date accessed: 12 Sep. 2017. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0