Jane Higgins

Demystifying Academic Writing: Reflections on Emotions, Know-How and Academic Identity.

Writing is the foundation of academic practice, yet academic writing is seldom explicitly taught. As a result many beginning (and experienced) academics struggle with writing and the difficult emotions, particularly the self-doubt, that writing stirs up. Yet it need not be like this. In this paper, strategies are discussed for attending to the emotions of writing, and developing writing know-how and a stronger sense of identity as a writer. It is argued that addressing all three aspects of writing—emotions, know-how and identity—helps demystify the academic writing process and helps novices on their journey to becoming academic writers.

‘It's Just Like the Teenage Stereotype, You Go Out and Drink and Stuff’: Hearing from Young People who Don't Drink

In this article, we report on a study in which 39 final-year students at two New Zealand high schools were interviewed about their adoption of alternative subject positions in relation to the prevailing norm of alcohol consumption. There were four ways in which participants in our study constituted themselves as non-drinkers in relation to this norm: (1) by constituting legitimate alternative subject positions such as ‘sporty’ and ‘healthy’ or by complying with other norms defined by participants’ cultural and/or religious practices; (2) by constructing alternative leisure identities; (3) by reconstituting the norm of alcohol consumption as abject, as a way of legitimating their non-drinking subject position; and (4) by ‘passing’ as a drinker in social spaces where alcohol was being consumed. We show how participants used these processes in constituting opposition to the norm of alcohol consumption. We conclude with some suggestions about how these theoretical insights might be put to practical use.

New Zealand’s neoliberal generation: tracing discourses of economic (ir)rationality

Young New Zealanders currently in transition to post‐school lives have grown up during a period of intensive neoliberal reform, the speed and scope of which was unprecedented in Western economies. The authors explore how New Zealand’s neoliberal generation craft their identities in the transition years, making sense of their educational and employment experiences and choices in the context of neoliberal discourses. The transition talk of these young people is imbued with neoliberal rationality, mediated through two key discourses in particular: those of the knowledge economy and the cultural economy. It is argued that these individuals are not passive recipients of neoliberal rationality but are involved in actively crafting their identities, making use of the resources that neoliberal and other discourses provide, within the discursive and material constraints that their environments allow.

‘In transition’: choice and the children of New Zealand’s economic reforms

New Zealand’s rapid emergence as a late‐modern, neo‐liberal society following 1984 led to a transformation in the institutional infrastructure for youth transitions from school to post‐school worlds. Our research focuses on the ways that young people born after 1984 craft identities in transition. We investigate their perspectives on transition in their last year of school, and the processes by which they make choices about post‐school destinations. In particular, we examine the extent to which the transitions they negotiate are shaped by the institutional infrastructure for transition established by policy. Expecting some degree of mismatch between the complexities of participants’ lives and the linear transition process implicit in policy, we found instead a combination of traditional assumptions (that transition would be a straightforward, linear process) and late‐modern assumptions (about the construction of elective biographies through active choice). These combined to produce a particular perception of risk among participants.

Vocational imagination and labour market literacy: young New Zealanders making education–employment linkages

This paper explores the concepts of vocational imagination and labour market literacy, arguing that these are important elements in the crafting of effective education–employment linkages. Evidence of truncated understandings of both is found in the talk of 93 young New Zealanders in transition from secondary school to their post‐school lives. We argue that development of labour market literacy and vocational imagination requires that young people crafting career pathways are able to work on identity formation, to discover and develop their abilities, and to recognise relevant opportunities and constraints, all within an infrastructure that allows clear career pathways to be mapped. Changes in New Zealands economic and educational landscape, together with forms of career education that are ill‐matched for this developing landscape, have inhibited such an approach and so contributed to the truncation observed. We suggest that this analysis points to ways of enabling young people to make links between education and employment more effectively.

Post‐school horizons: New Zealand’s neo‐liberal generation in transition

Dominant conceptions of the world infuse educational experiences for young people in implicit rather than explicit ways—through becoming, as Stuart Hall argues, ‘the horizon of the taken‐for‐granted’. In this article we explore these horizons as experienced by New Zealand’s neo‐liberal generation, currently ‘in transition’ from high school to further education, training and/or employment. As in Britain, further education has become a taken‐for‐granted feature of post‐school horizons for young New Zealanders but it is not a meaningful destination for all of them. The 93 young New Zealanders in our study have grown up during a period of intensive neo‐liberal reform, the speed and scope of which were unprecedented in Western economies. We interviewed these young people in their last year of high school and again once they were well embarked on their post‐school lives. We explore how the landscapes of choice of these young people have been restructured in neo‐liberal times: for some, the influences of parents, teachers, schools, universities and educational policy have come together to construct apparently wide‐open horizons in which university is a taken‐for‐granted destination. For others, however, these influences have remained subject to assumptions about ‘race’ and class that have a long history in New Zealand and the result has been a narrowing of future possibilities for participants. In all cases, we are concerned to explore the costs that are borne by these young people in this new environment.

Alternative Ways of Expressing and Reading Identity.

This paper explores the use of an ‘anti-CV’ (anti-Curriculum Vitae), or identity portfolio, as a data collection instrument in research with young people. We analyse four visually based anti-CVs created by participants in a project on youth transitions, exploring their use of symbolism and space to show how these young people reworked public narratives in their crafting of identity at the child–adult border. We use Gillian Roses framework from 2001 for the analysis of visual material to interpret the portfolios in terms of the context of their production, their content and the audience for their performance. We argue that the anti-CV offered a more participant-led research process than the standard interview, but at the same time led to methodological and ethical complexities: respectively, concerning the significance of the research team as audience for the anti-CVs, and the intrusion into participants’ lives that photographs in these portfolios offered.

Towards a learning identity: young people becoming learners after leaving school

This article explores the development of learning identities among 51 young New Zealanders who left school with few or no qualifications. Most experienced a period of time after leaving school when they were not in education, employment or training (known as NEET). At the time of this research all had moved into a learning environment of some kind. The development of learning identities involved the explicit rejection of their former NEET identities and was facilitated by aspects of their current learning environment, particularly relationships with tutors and fellow students and styles of learning that differed from their school experiences. Within this context the young people were able to think about crafting future pathways into further education and employment. The article concludes with a discussion of current policy directions that attempt to reintegrate these young people into a school-like system, a process that may be unhelpful for them.