Recent research has challenged the way in which personality and attitude constructs are measured. Alternatives have been offered as to how non-cognitive responses are modeled, the mode of delivery used when administrating such scales, and the impact of technology in measuring personality. Thus, the major purpose of the studies in this thesis concerns two interrelated issues of personality research, namely the way personality responses are best modeled, and the most optimal mode by which personality items are presented and associated modal issues. Three studies are presented. First, recent developments using an ideal point approach to scale construction are outlined, and an empirical study compares modeling personality items based on an ideal point approach (generalized graded unfolding model; GGUM) and a dominance approach (graded response model: GRM). Second, an extensive review of literature pertaining to the mode effect when transferring paper-and-pencil measures to screen was conducted, in addition to a review of the various types of computerized and innovative items and their associated psychometric information. Finally, nine innovative items were developed using various multimedia features (e.g., video, graphics, and audio) to ascertain the advantages of these methods to present items constructed to elicit response behavior underlying ideal point approaches, namely, typical response behavior. It was found that the dominance IRT model continued to produce superior model-data fit for most items, more attention needs to be placed on developing principles for constructing ideal point type items, the web-based version supplied 20% more construct information than the paper version, and innovative items seem to provide more data-model fit for students with lower personality attributes. While the innovative items may require more initial outlay in terms of time and development costs, they have the capacity to provide more information regarding test-takers’ personality levels, potentially using fewer items.

Critical incidents impact on populations that experience them. Within secondary schools in Aotearoa New Zealand, there is an expectation that a response is made to schools that experience such incidents. There is much conflicting international research as to the efficacy of these responses. The adult experts are making decisions that they believe are in the best possible interests of the young people; they are putting together a quilt that they believe will nurture young people. The expertise and knowledge of a major stakeholder – the young people involved in the critical incident response – has been for the most part, omitted from research. This particular study set out to gather data about young people’s experiences of critical incident responses, so that the quilt being provided has input from this group and so is able to better meet their needs. The study had four major facets. It incorporated reflections on my intrinsic involvement in this field of practice and was, therefore, heuristic. Secondly, qualitative research was utilised to explore with young people their stories about what happened for them at the time of an incident. Thirdly, it incorporated principles of participatory research as an acknowledgement that young people are central stakeholders in secondary schools and that their voice was one that needed to be heard in order that the best responses may be offered. Lastly, it was utilisation focused. It was designed so that the findings were not just written up and filed away but disseminated to those who make decisions at the school level and policy level. At the analysis stage, two major methods were used. Firstly, inductive analysis was used to identify the themes that emerged from the interviews with the young people. Triangulation was then used to consolidate these themes using the input from Collaborative Groups and a systematic review of the knowledge that I have gained over the time that I have been involved with young people in the critical incident response area. This analysis of the contribution from the young people resulted in several areas being highlighted. Firstly, participants asked that those responding to critical incidents considered the use of language and the power of words, Secondly, they believed that schools needed to act proactively and to have a plan and, in association with this, that they develop a culture that better cared for the needs of young people. Thirdly, the young people involved requested that the ‘right’ people responded at the time of an incident: the qualities of the ‘right’ people and the ‘wrong’ people were also identified. Next, the young people were well able to identify the positives that could ensue out of negative situations, and lastly, they expressed their wish that there be a place for their involvement at the time of a critical incident response.

In the Western world, and specifically in New Zealand, a major impetus for retraining has arisen quite recently and gone largely unnoticed. The new social phenomenon, retraining in the sense of education for occupational change, is examined in this study. Alongside the three traditionally recognised groups of adult learners: those learning for leisure; second chance learners who have been previously educationally disadvantaged; and upskillers who seek to enhance their existing credentials through further tertiary education; is a fourth; the reskillers, those who are seeking education for occupational change. Women are shown to be pioneers in leading social change in this area of retraining. The key questions investigated in this thesis concern the existence of this new phenomenon in New Zealand; whether it is national or worldwide; and whether its origins are local or international. Whether there are distinctive characteristics to the manifestation of this phenomenon in New Zealand is investigated by examining current policy and practice. Additional questions concern whether there are feature of New Zealand employment or education which make upskilling and reskilling more or less likely in this country; the significance of women being the first to take up education for occupational change and what can be learnt from comparison with other countries specifically the Netherlands and England. Education takes place within a set of intersecting socio-political contexts. In the modern world these are simultaneously international, national, local and institutional. They impact on participants in a course of study yet are not often manifest to the individual. 'Learning for life’ is a significant area of both international and national socio-political concern, manifesting itself in a significant set of public discourses and in social phenomena which, as in this case of education for occupational change, are little researched or understood. The historical evolution of public policy relating to adult learners, internationally, and in New Zealand, is documented, with a particular focus on the period from the 1960s onwards. The major theoretical and ideological constructs are outlined and critiqued particularly with reference to public policy in New Zealand. Analysis shows an inexorable shift over time away from knowledge and skills attained through praxis, to knowledge and skills attained through formal institutionalised learning. At the same time as this change was taking place, participation rates in first secondary, and then tertiary, education rose. Concurrently more and more women entered tertiary education in order to make their way into an increasingly credentialised workforce. It is suggested that, credentials are used for screening purposes in addition to providing individuals with knowledge and skills needed for the occupations they enter. Case studies are used to illustrate and document these changes. Policies relating to learning for life are examined with reference to three different countries: New Zealand, England and the Netherlands. Provision of tertiary education for adults is investigated, and then illustrated through the coverage provided by institutions in three cities, Christchurch, Leicester and Utrecht. These studies show that different countries are subject to international geo-political and ideological forces but respond to them in locally and historically determined ways. The case study/qualitative analysis of the Christchurch Polytechnic’s Next Step Centre for Women and the New Outlook for Women courses illustrates the ways in which the twists and turns of public policy in New Zealand over thirty years have affected women wishing to seek education for occupational change. A quantitative study of mature students and their motivations for returning to study at the Christchurch Polytechnic allows for the impact of public policy and institutional provision on a group of mature individuals to be assessed. The study concludes that education for occupational change appears to be more advanced in New Zealand than in the European countries chosen for comparison. This may result more from individual initiative and the conditions which promote this, than from state policy direction or institutional provision. Policy consequences are proposed on the basis of these findings.

This thesis is concerned with creativity as an object of educational governance and a category of subjective identification. It studies a ‘creativity explosion’ in higher education in New Zealand, focusing on how fashion design students are being mobilized as subjects of creativity through ‘joined up’ modes of governance and technologies of educational choice. Using a poststructural ethnographic ‘methodology’ I explain how, from the late 1990s, models of educational governance began to appear dysfunctional and unable to deliver the attributes and capacities expected of citizens in a knowledge economy. I argue that creativity gained significance as a result of new ways of ‘thinking culture and economy together’. Neoliberal rhetorics representing creativity as flexible human capital and a generic, transferable skill needed by workers in the new economy, were articulated with liberal humanist notions about creativity, which are commonly understood and performed through the social categories of art. All kinds of individual and institutional actors took advantage of these shifting opportunity structures to position themselves with ‘creative’ identities. Within various cultural organisations, including universities, moves to strengthen a liberal agenda and retain creativity as a form of ‘arts knowledge’ with high cultural capital, rubbed up against counter-hegemonic strategies to enlist and develop more universal concepts about creativity as a collaborative endeavour, vital to new forms of capitalist enterprise. By historicising the context in which a new ‘normative doctrine’ of creativity has emerged, and by treating its theorisation as culturally performative, I develop the position that fashion design graduates, as ‘creative girls’, are highly productive performers in the new categories of cultural economy. However I argue that the creative girl occupies a subject position fitted to after-neoliberalised social and economic arrangements, not because she is shaped by neoliberal ideologies, but because she is made up by techniques and tactics of an ‘after-neoliberal’ governmentality. This demonstrates the mutual constitution of ‘creative economy’ and ‘creative persons’ and underlines the fact that despite after-neoliberal ambitions for managing education, there can be no simple cause and effect relation between higher education and economic performance.

New Zealand's tertiary education sector has experienced political reform, social changes, economic changes and globalisation in the last two decades, and the sector has become more internationally competitive. DeShields, Kara, and Kaynak (2005) recommended that management of higher education should apply a market-oriented approach to sustain a competitive advantage. Therefore, understanding and managing students' satisfaction and their perceptions of service quality is important for university management if they are to design and implement a market-oriented approach. The purpose of this research is to gain an empirical understanding of students' overall satisfaction in a university in New Zealand's higher education sector. A hierarchal model is used as a framework for the analysis. Fifteen hypotheses are formulated and tested to identify the dimensions of service quality as perceived by university students, to examine the relationship between students' overall satisfaction with influential factors such as tuition fees (price) and the university's image, and to determine the impact of students' overall satisfaction on favourable future behavioural intentions. In addition, students' perceptions of these constructs are compared using demographic factors such as gender, age, and ethnicity. The findings of the study are based on the analysis of a sample of 223 students studying at Lincoln University. Support is found for the use of a hierarchical model and the primary dimensions; Interaction Quality, Physical Environment Quality, and Outcome Quality, as broad dimensions of service quality. Ten sub-dimensions of service quality, as perceived by students, are identified. These are: Academic Staff, Administration Staff, Academic Staff Availability, Course Content, Library, Physically Appealing, Social Factors, Personal Development, Academic Development, and Career Opportunities. The results indicate that each of the primary dimensions vary in terms of their importance to overall perceived service quality, as do the sub-dimensions to the primary dimensions. In addition, the statistical results support a relationship between service quality and price; service quality, image, and satisfaction; and satisfaction and favourable future behavioural intentions. However, there is no statistical support for a relationship between price and satisfaction. The results also suggest that students' perceptions of the constructs are primarily influenced by their ethnicity and year of study. The results of the analysis contribute to the service marketing theory by providing an empirically based insight into the satisfaction and service quality constructs in the New Zealand higher education sector. The study also provides an analytical framework for understanding the effects of the three primary dimensions on service quality and the effects of service quality on constructs including price, image, satisfaction, and favourable future behavioural intentions. This study will assist management of higher education to develop and implement a market-oriented service strategy in order to achieve a high quality of service, enhance students' level of satisfaction and create favourable future behavioural intentions.

This thesis is concerned with creativity as an object of educational governance and a category of subjective identification. It studies a ‘creativity explosion’ in higher education in New Zealand, focusing on how fashion design students are being mobilized as subjects of creativity through ‘joined up’ modes of governance and technologies of educational choice. Using a poststructural ethnographic ‘methodology’ I explain how, from the late 1990s, models of educational governance began to appear dysfunctional and unable to deliver the attributes and capacities expected of citizens in a knowledge economy. I argue that creativity gained significance as a result of new ways of ‘thinking culture and economy together’. Neoliberal rhetorics representing creativity as flexible human capital and a generic, transferable skill needed by workers in the new economy, were articulated with liberal humanist notions about creativity, which are commonly understood and performed through the social categories of art. All kinds of individual and institutional actors took advantage of these shifting opportunity structures to position themselves with ‘creative’ identities. Within various cultural organisations, including universities, moves to strengthen a liberal agenda and retain creativity as a form of ‘arts knowledge’ with high cultural capital, rubbed up against counter-hegemonic strategies to enlist and develop more universal concepts about creativity as a collaborative endeavour, vital to new forms of capitalist enterprise. By historicising the context in which a new ‘normative doctrine’ of creativity has emerged, and by treating its theorisation as culturally performative, I develop the position that fashion design graduates, as ‘creative girls’, are highly productive performers in the new categories of cultural economy. However I argue that the creative girl occupies a subject position fitted to after-neoliberalised social and economic arrangements, not because she is shaped by neoliberal ideologies, but because she is made up by techniques and tactics of an ‘after-neoliberal’ governmentality. This demonstrates the mutual constitution of ‘creative economy’ and ‘creative persons’ and underlines the fact that despite after-neoliberal ambitions for managing education, there can be no simple cause and effect relation between higher education and economic performance.

Educational activity preceded official British presence in New Zealand. The development of the New Zealand state from crown colony, to a system of relatively autonomous provincial councils, to a centralized administration took place within a period of four decades. Co-terminous with and essential to the state's progressive securing of its authority was the institutionalization of separate national systems of education for Maori and Pakeha. Whilst the ascendancy of the state and the securing of education as a central state concern proceeded ultimately with the sanction of the state and in accordance with its objectives it was not a straight forward process in a young nation which was born democratic, but was struggling to consolidate political and cultural unity. The various stages and the ultimate form that education in New Zealand took were closely linked to shifts in the nature and role of the state in its formative years, in the nature of its relationship with civil society, and in its official relationship with Maori. This provided the context and dynamic of the shift to state control as public schooling came to dominate over private or voluntary efforts, and as the particularism of isolated provincial settlements was replaced by a system designed to serve the nation as a whole. Positing conceptual links between the development of national education and the processes of state formation and nation building in a colonizing context, this thesis argues that the institutionally differentiated form that universal education took in New Zealand produced a site through which socially, culturally and ideologically determined conceptions of “normality” would be legitimated and become hegemonic. By nationalizing education to legitimate a culture of uniformity based on a specific set of norms, individual New Zealanders were differentially created according to class, gender and ethnicity, and to physical, intellectual, behavioural and sensory functioning.

This thesis is concerned with creativity as an object of educational governance and a category of subjective identification. It studies a ‘creativity explosion’ in higher education in New Zealand, focusing on how fashion design students are being mobilized as subjects of creativity through ‘joined up’ modes of governance and technologies of educational choice. Using a poststructural ethnographic ‘methodology’ I explain how, from the late 1990s, models of educational governance began to appear dysfunctional and unable to deliver the attributes and capacities expected of citizens in a knowledge economy. I argue that creativity gained significance as a result of new ways of ‘thinking culture and economy together’. Neoliberal rhetorics representing creativity as flexible human capital and a generic, transferable skill needed by workers in the new economy, were articulated with liberal humanist notions about creativity, which are commonly understood and performed through the social categories of art. All kinds of individual and institutional actors took advantage of these shifting opportunity structures to position themselves with ‘creative’ identities. Within various cultural organisations, including universities, moves to strengthen a liberal agenda and retain creativity as a form of ‘arts knowledge’ with high cultural capital, rubbed up against counter-hegemonic strategies to enlist and develop more universal concepts about creativity as a collaborative endeavour, vital to new forms of capitalist enterprise. By historicising the context in which a new ‘normative doctrine’ of creativity has emerged, and by treating its theorisation as culturally performative, I develop the position that fashion design graduates, as ‘creative girls’, are highly productive performers in the new categories of cultural economy. However I argue that the creative girl occupies a subject position fitted to after-neoliberalised social and economic arrangements, not because she is shaped by neoliberal ideologies, but because she is made up by techniques and tactics of an ‘after-neoliberal’ governmentality. This demonstrates the mutual constitution of ‘creative economy’ and ‘creative persons’ and underlines the fact that despite after-neoliberal ambitions for managing education, there can be no simple cause and effect relation between higher education and economic performance.

Educational activity preceded official British presence in New Zealand. The development of the New Zealand state from crown colony, to a system of relatively autonomous provincial councils, to a centralized administration took place within a period of four decades. Co-terminous with and essential to the state's progressive securing of its authority was the institutionalization of separate national systems of education for Maori and Pakeha. Whilst the ascendancy of the state and the securing of education as a central state concern proceeded ultimately with the sanction of the state and in accordance with its objectives it was not a straight forward process in a young nation which was born democratic, but was struggling to consolidate political and cultural unity. The various stages and the ultimate form that education in New Zealand took were closely linked to shifts in the nature and role of the state in its formative years, in the nature of its relationship with civil society, and in its official relationship with Maori. This provided the context and dynamic of the shift to state control as public schooling came to dominate over private or voluntary efforts, and as the particularism of isolated provincial settlements was replaced by a system designed to serve the nation as a whole. Positing conceptual links between the development of national education and the processes of state formation and nation building in a colonizing context, this thesis argues that the institutionally differentiated form that universal education took in New Zealand produced a site through which socially, culturally and ideologically determined conceptions of “normality” would be legitimated and become hegemonic. By nationalizing education to legitimate a culture of uniformity based on a specific set of norms, individual New Zealanders were differentially created according to class, gender and ethnicity, and to physical, intellectual, behavioural and sensory functioning.

This thesis is concerned with creativity as an object of educational governance and a category of subjective identification. It studies a ‘creativity explosion’ in higher education in New Zealand, focusing on how fashion design students are being mobilized as subjects of creativity through ‘joined up’ modes of governance and technologies of educational choice. Using a poststructural ethnographic ‘methodology’ I explain how, from the late 1990s, models of educational governance began to appear dysfunctional and unable to deliver the attributes and capacities expected of citizens in a knowledge economy. I argue that creativity gained significance as a result of new ways of ‘thinking culture and economy together’. Neoliberal rhetorics representing creativity as flexible human capital and a generic, transferable skill needed by workers in the new economy, were articulated with liberal humanist notions about creativity, which are commonly understood and performed through the social categories of art. All kinds of individual and institutional actors took advantage of these shifting opportunity structures to position themselves with ‘creative’ identities. Within various cultural organisations, including universities, moves to strengthen a liberal agenda and retain creativity as a form of ‘arts knowledge’ with high cultural capital, rubbed up against counter-hegemonic strategies to enlist and develop more universal concepts about creativity as a collaborative endeavour, vital to new forms of capitalist enterprise. By historicising the context in which a new ‘normative doctrine’ of creativity has emerged, and by treating its theorisation as culturally performative, I develop the position that fashion design graduates, as ‘creative girls’, are highly productive performers in the new categories of cultural economy. However I argue that the creative girl occupies a subject position fitted to after-neoliberalised social and economic arrangements, not because she is shaped by neoliberal ideologies, but because she is made up by techniques and tactics of an ‘after-neoliberal’ governmentality. This demonstrates the mutual constitution of ‘creative economy’ and ‘creative persons’ and underlines the fact that despite after-neoliberal ambitions for managing education, there can be no simple cause and effect relation between higher education and economic performance.