Massey Documents by Type

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Exploring the Challenges of Context in Accessing Mental Health Support in Rural New Zealand: A Case Study Approach.
(John Wiley and Sons Ltd., 2024-10-28) Ferris-Day P; Harvey C; Minton C; Donaldson A
Objective This paper explores the complexities that impact access to mental health services in rural New Zealand. Historical, cultural, social and political factors will be examined against the philosophical positioning of Foucault and Fairclough. Study Design This research is a single-embedded case study design exploring participants' discourses in the context of a rural, bounded geographical area of New Zealand. Results The results show that mental health support that addresses people's actual needs rather than the needs that governments map against ever-changing policy is required and that an awareness of context within case study research is important. Discussion The process of case study design is described, including building upon a rationale for selecting the case, collecting data and conducting case analysis and interpretation. This study examines factors influencing the real-life rural context of accessing mental health support. This article demonstrates that case-study research can be valuable for navigating context complexity and developing nuanced understandings of complex phenomena. Conclusion The paper highlights how the multifaceted case study context is more than mapping discourses against a rural backdrop. It is necessary to consider the power dynamics that shape experiences and their impact on service creation and its consequent delivery. Implications for Research Policy and Practice Rather than services being created that are complex and not meeting people's needs, there is a need to listen to the people who have experienced mental health distress and provide services and support in locations other than clinical settings.
A Foucaultian discourse analysis of educational 'underachievement' : psychology's run away concept : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2017) Eggleton, Tamsin
Underachievement is a dominant feature in educational discourse; it is often framed as a ‘crisis’ affecting different social groups, or even whole countries. A particularly common depiction of underachievement is that of a ‘gap’ affecting ethnic minority and working class groups. Nearly 60 years of research, reform and policy attempts to address this ‘gap’ have made little progress in lifting achievement levels. This paper uses a Foucaultian discourse analysis method to encourage a reformulation of underachievement discourse, particularly as it relates to minority ethnic students. A genealogy of the conditions of possibility which gave rise to underachievement reveals this concept and its related assumptions and processes (such as testing) to be part of a broader system of power relations which structure education in favour of dominant cultural and economic needs. The discipline of psychology has been instrumental in providing a supposed scientific basis to the dominant educational values of scientific management, efficiency and neoliberalism. This thesis posits that underachievement is a socially located concept which is able to exist and shape social realities due to its convenience to dominant educational and cultural practices. In revealing the social nature of psychological knowledge on underachievement, psychology’s claims of the possibility of objective social knowledge under post-positivistic, empirical methods are also brought into question. Keywords: Underachievement, Foucault, Discourse Analysis, Genealogy, Psychology, Education
The New Zealand nurse practitioner polemic : a discourse analysis : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
(Massey University, 2007) Wilkinson, Jillian Ann
The purpose of this research has been to trace the development of the nurse practitioner role in New Zealand. Established in 2001, this advanced nursing practice role was birthed amid controversy as historical forces at play both inside and outside nursing struggled for power to control the future of the profession. Using a discourse analytical approach informed by the work of Michel Foucault, the study foregrounds the discourses that have constructed the nurse practitioner role within the New Zealand social and political context. Discourses, as explained by Foucault, are bodies of knowledge construed to be ‘truth’ and connected to power by reason of this assumption, serving to fix norms and making it virtually impossible to think outside them. Discourses of nursing and of medicine have established systems of disciplinary practices that produce nurses and physicians within defined role boundaries, not because of legislation, but because discourse has constructed certain rules. The nurse practitioner role transcends those boundaries and offers the possibility of a new and potentially more liberating identity for nurses and nursing. A plural approach of both textuality and discursivity was used to guide the analysis of texts chosen from published literature and from nine interviews conducted with individuals who have been influential in the unfolding of the nurse practitioner role. Both professionally and industrially and in academic and regulatory terms dating back to the Nurses Registration Act, 1901, the political discourses and disciplinary practices serving to position nurses in the health care sector and to represent nursing are examined. The play of these forces has created an interstice from which the nurse practitioner role in New Zealand could emerge. In combination with a new state regime of primary health care, the notion of an autonomous nursing profession in both practice and regulation has challenged medicine’s traditional right to surveillance of nursing practice. Through a kind of regulated freedom, the availability of assessment, diagnostic and prescribing practices within a nursing discourse signals a radical shift in how nursing can be represented. The nurse practitioner polemic has revolutionised the nursing subject, and may in turn lead to a qualitatively different health service.

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