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    Community preparedness for volcanic hazards at Mount Rainier, USA
    (BioMed Central Ltd, 2021-12-09) Vinnell L; Hudson-Doyle EE; Johnston DM; Becker JS; Kaiser L; Lindell MK; Bostrom A; Gregg C; Dixon M; Terbush B
    Lahars pose a significant risk to communities, particularly those living near snow-capped volcanoes. Flows of mud and debris, typically but not necessarily triggered by volcanic activity, can have huge impacts, such as those seen at Nevado Del Ruiz, Colombia, in 1985 which led to the loss of over 23,000 lives and destroyed an entire town. We surveyed communities around Mount Rainier, Washington, United States, where over 150,000 people are at risk from lahar impacts. We explored how factors including demographics, social effects such as perceptions of community preparedness, evacuation drills, and cognitive factors such as risk perception and self-efficacy relate to preparedness when living within or nearby a volcanic hazard zone. Key findings include: women have stronger intentions to prepare but see themselves as less prepared than men; those who neither live nor work in a lahar hazard zone were more likely to have an emergency kit and to see themselves as more prepared; those who will need help to evacuate see the risk as lower but feel less prepared; those who think their community and officials are more prepared feel more prepared themselves; and benefits of evacuation drills and testing evacuation routes including stronger intentions to evacuate using an encouraged method and higher self-efficacy. We make a number of recommendations based on these findings including the critical practice of regular evacuation drills and the importance of ongoing messaging that focuses on appropriate ways to evacuate as well as the careful recommendation for residents to identify alternative unofficial evacuation routes.
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    Tsunami awareness and preparedness in Aotearoa New Zealand: The evolution of community understanding
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2021-11-01) Dhellemmes A; Leonard GS; Johnston DM; Vinnell LJ; Becker JS; Fraser SA; Paton D
    After catastrophic events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami there is a clear need for vulnerable countries like Aotearoa New Zealand to get prepared for tsunami. In the last ten years, the New Zealand government initiated major efforts to raise awareness of tsunami risk among coastal residents. This study explores tsunami awareness, preparedness, and evacuation intentions among residents of the East Coast of the North Island in a 2015 survey. The ten chosen locations also participated in a tsunami survey in 2003, with results demonstrating that tsunami awareness rose in the twelve years between the surveys. The 2015 survey also included questions on preparedness and intended action. Even though coastal residents know they live in a tsunami prone area, preparedness is relatively low and high expectations of a formal warning remain, even for a local source tsunami scenario. Furthermore, survey respondents had unrealistic ideas of evacuation procedures. When asked about their evacuation intentions, respondents intended to undertake a number of different actions before evacuating their homes, which could cause significant delays in the evacuation process. Most respondents were also reluctant to evacuate on foot and prefer using their vehicles instead, which could create dangerous traffic congestion. These surveyed intentions are consistent with a study of actual evacuation behaviours in the subsequent 2016 Kaikōura earthquake and tsunami, providing validation for the survey indicators. This paper identifies the procedures least understood by the public and offers some solutions to improve tsunami preparedness.
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    Beginner teacher preparedness for inclusion : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology
    (Massey University, 2017) Attwood, Sophia
    The exclusion of students who experience disability is a social justice issue that persists in New Zealand despite efforts to establish a fully inclusive education system. Although there has been some research into the teaching of inclusive practice in initial teacher education (ITE) in New Zealand, little research examining beginner teachers’ feelings of preparedness for inclusion has been undertaken. This mixed-methods study investigated the role of ITE in preparing beginner, secondary school teachers for including diverse groups of learners by capturing their experiences of ITE and early career. Phase one involved an online questionnaire to secondary school teachers in the first three years of their career. Phase two involved conducting four follow-up interviews exploring salient findings from the questionnaire. The findings of this study suggest that while ITE recognises the diversity of the classroom, it falls short when it comes to the pragmatic implications for teaching and learning. The vast majority of participants felt their ITE did little or nothing to help them develop their knowledge of legislation and policy as it relates to inclusion. Two-thirds of participants felt that their ITE did little or nothing to help them develop their knowledge of supports available for students who experience disability while the majority had little to no experience teaching such students on practicum. Teachers’ sense of preparedness to include learners varied significantly according to their personal connection with a person with a disability. Several key themes which align with literature in the field of teacher education for inclusion emerged, namely: knowledge about, and understanding of inclusive pedagogy; lack of focus on legislation, policy and human rights; lack of focus on collaborative practice; and beginner teachers not identifying as lifelong learners. Research-driven practices that are beneficial in preparing teachers to make socially just decisions are discussed in light of the themes. These include: (1) critical reflection about experiences gained during practicum and service-learning opportunities; (2) explicit teaching of human rights; (3) explicit teaching about effective collaboration with professionals, teacher aides and whānau.
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    Increasing household preparedness for earthquakes : understanding how individuals make meaning of earthquake information and how this relates to preparedness : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Becker, Julia Susan
    New Zealand’s susceptibility to experiencing damaging earthquakes makes managing the associated risk a societal imperative. A prominent component of earthquake risk management is fostering household earthquake preparedness. This involves encouraging people to acquire survival items (e.g. food, water, torches, and other essential items), implement mitigation measures (e.g. retrofit buildings), make emergency plans, learn survival skills and engage in socially-based preparedness activities. Despite considerable effort and expenditure incurred by emergency management to encourage such activities, levels of overall preparedness remain low in New Zealand. This identifies a need for more effective earthquake education programmes. To develop more effective programmes, it is important to understand how people make sense of hazards and make decisions about how to manage the associated risk. One particular gap in current understanding relates to how individuals render earthquake hazard and preparedness information meaningful and how this influences actual preparedness. In particular, questions remain about how individual, community and societal factors interact to influence how people interpret risk and decide whether to prepare or not. This thesis explores the earthquake information meaning-making and preparedness processes. A series of qualitative interviews using grounded theory methodology was undertaken in 2008 with household residents in three New Zealand locations at risk of earthquakes. The interviews explored personal, community and societal influences on how people interpret and impose meaning on earthquake information and how the outcome of this process relates to undertaking actual preparedness actions. Three main types of information were identified: passive; interactive; and experiential information. Each type of information makes unique contributions to the interpretation and preparedness process. Passive information has a more restricted effect, and interactive and experiential information a wider-ranging effect. People utilise all these types of information when interpreting and making meaning of hazard and preparedness issues. Consequently, future earthquake education programmes should accommodate passive, interactive and experiential information in their design and implementation. In making meaning of information, and making decisions about whether to prepare or not, a number of aspects were found to be important to the overall process including: raising awareness and knowledge of earthquakes and preparedness; understanding earthquake consequences; stimulating thought and discussion; developing skills; information seeking; salient beliefs; emotions and feelings; societal influences; intentions to prepare; and resource issues. Key societal influences on meaning-making and preparedness include: community (community participation, sense of community); leadership; responsibility (responsibility for preparing, responsibility for others); social norms; trust; and societal requirements. Earthquake education programmes also need to take such factors into account in their design.
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    Bodies of knowledge : early childhood teachers' experiences of their initial teacher education programme and sense of preparedness for teaching : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Ord, Katherine Ann
    This thesis investigates the phenomenon of ‘preparedness’ as it is employed in relation to the preparation of early childhood teachers through initial teacher education. It is a descriptive account of how newly qualified teachers made sense of their learning to teach process through the lens of preparedness; a construct that was brought to the research process. Individual and group interviews with field-based and pre-service newly qualified early childhood teachers participating in the study were conducted over eighteen months. The programme leaders of participating teacher education institutions were also interviewed, and a range of teacher education programme and official documentation was examined. An interpretivist approach was employed in the design of the research, including data generation, data analysis and presentation of findings. This thesis argues that newly qualified teachers equate ‘being prepared’ with ‘being knowledgeable’. Rather than holding this knowledge as a store of ‘in-the-head’ knowledge, the research texts strongly suggested that as students approaching newly qualified teacher status, they desired to hold this knowledge in a practice, or an embodied sense. Through investigating participants’ stories of becoming knowledgeable this thesis argues that the process of accessing and acquiring the formal knowledge of teaching was aligned to the structural form of each institution, and to the way in which each positioned students in relation to that knowledge. From participants’ perspectives each institutional setting represents discursively different ways of coming to know teaching and being teachers. This thesis clarifies the conditions for teacher education students to understand knowledge for teaching and thus become “self authoring members” (Edwards et al., 2002) of early childhood communities of practice. It argues that the key to teacher education students’ sense of preparedness lies within the design of teacher education programmes. The stories of newly qualified teachers and the author’s interpretations of them make a contribution to on-going dialogue about what constitutes knowledge and knowing for teachers. It adds a voice to those who argue that learning to teach is not principally a cognitive process that privileges thought over action and theory over practice. Rather, this thesis contends that the nature of knowledge for teaching must be reconceptualised to take account of practice theories of knowledge.