The Politics of International Education: Constructing New Zealand's Export Education Industry

<p>International education today is an important export industry for New Zealand. It has come a long way from its origins as a developmental scholarship programme for countries in South and Southeast Asia under the Colombo Plan. This thesis studies the concepts and debates related to international education globally; and traces its development in New Zealand over three stages to investigate how it has been transformed from “education for aid” to “education for trade”. This transformation has taken place against the backdrop of neoliberal globalisation. Adopting a constructivist approach, I argue that the commercialisation of international education is influenced by normative factors such as globalisation and regionalism, as well as a conscious decision made by the state based on the material resources New Zealand possesses as an English language speaking country with a relatively advanced liberal education system attractive to developing countries, particularly in Asia. I construct New Zealand’s export education industry in its current state using Wendt’s framework of three elements of social structure. Assuming that the neoliberal norm persists, this thesis identifies the critical factors affecting the continued wellbeing and future development of the export education industry as follows: 1) the quality and reputation of New Zealand’s international education; 2) the continued economic growth of key student source countries and the ongoing demand for overseas education; and 3) the willingness of people from these countries to purchase education services from New Zealand.</p>

The Politics of International Education: Constructing New Zealand's Export Education Industry

<p>International education today is an important export industry for New Zealand. It has come a long way from its origins as a developmental scholarship programme for countries in South and Southeast Asia under the Colombo Plan. This thesis studies the concepts and debates related to international education globally; and traces its development in New Zealand over three stages to investigate how it has been transformed from “education for aid” to “education for trade”. This transformation has taken place against the backdrop of neoliberal globalisation. Adopting a constructivist approach, I argue that the commercialisation of international education is influenced by normative factors such as globalisation and regionalism, as well as a conscious decision made by the state based on the material resources New Zealand possesses as an English language speaking country with a relatively advanced liberal education system attractive to developing countries, particularly in Asia. I construct New Zealand’s export education industry in its current state using Wendt’s framework of three elements of social structure. Assuming that the neoliberal norm persists, this thesis identifies the critical factors affecting the continued wellbeing and future development of the export education industry as follows: 1) the quality and reputation of New Zealand’s international education; 2) the continued economic growth of key student source countries and the ongoing demand for overseas education; and 3) the willingness of people from these countries to purchase education services from New Zealand.</p>

Effect of Trichologist's Expertise on Scalp and Hair Care Service Usag

In modern society, the importance of scalp hair care is increasing. Therefore, we would like to suggest a direction for improving the expertise of trichologists as a way to meet the demand for customized scalp and hair care services. In this study, a total of 298 questionnaires were used as frequency analysis, factor analysis, reliability analysis, regression analysis, and correlation analysis data through SPSS 26.0. analyzed. The survey results regarding the use of scalp and hair care services are as follows. First, trichologist expertise was classified as a single factor, and service use intention was classified as perceived usefulness and subjective normative factors. Second, the higher the expertise of the trichologist, the greater the effect of the intention to use the scalp and hair care service on the perceived usefulness factor and the subjective normative factor. In conclusion, we hope that more research will be done to strengthen the expertise of the trichologist, a senior workforce in the rapidly evolving beauty and health care industry.

A Content Analysis of Public Policy Design and Implementation in Slovenia: Weighing Strategic and Normative Factors

"Policy processes are complex systems and require an in-depth and comprehensive analysis. Especially, factors that affect public policy design and implementation, as two important stages of the public policy cycle, have not been sufficiently explored. The aim of the paper is to analyze the relationship between two critical factors that influence the design and implementation of public policies in the case of Slovenia, namely strategic factors and normative factors, and offer a basis for comparison with similar countries. Based on twenty-two structured interviews with prominent public policy experts in Slovenia and content analysis of the responses, the findings reveal that, although strategic factors are identified by the interviewees as the most critical, the role of normative factors is also important and should not be underestimated. For various reasons, in practice, normative factors often turn out to be crucial."

Measuring political legitimacy with Twitter: Insights from India’s Aadhaar program

As emerging powers forge ahead with big data initiatives, questions arise regarding the implications of these programs for governance in the Global South more broadly. One understudied aspect deals with how actors attribute legitimacy to governments’ big data activities. We explore actors’ agency in one crucial case: the world’s largest demographic and biometric data program, India’s Aadhaar. Analyzing roughly 250,000 tweets collected in the first 10 years of Aadhaar’s operation, we find that both normative acceptance and cost–benefit calculations are crucial for legitimacy attribution. This finding challenges mainstream theoretical approaches, which prioritize normative factors and often fail to examine how normative and material factors interact during legitimacy attribution. In addition, our study demonstrates a new, mixed-methods approach to measuring legitimacy attribution using Twitter data, which overcomes traditional challenges. As such, we underline the viability of Twitter data as a tool for social measurement.

Feedback-related EEG dynamics separately reflect decision parameters, biases, and future choices

Optimal decision making in complex environments requires dynamic learning from unexpected events. To speed up learning, we should heavily weight information that indicates state-action-outcome contingency changes and ignore uninformative fluctuations in the environment. Often, however, unrelated information is hard to ignore and can potentially bias our learning. Here we used computational modelling and EEG to investigate learning behaviour in a modified probabilistic choice task that introduced two types of unexpected events that were irrelevant for optimal task performance, but nevertheless could potentially bias learning: pay-out magnitudes were varied randomly and, occasionally, feedback presentation was enhanced by visual surprise. We found that participants' overall good learning performance was biased by distinct effects of these non-normative factors. On the neural level, these parameters are represented in a dynamic and spatiotemporally dissociable sequence of EEG activity. Later in feedback processing the different streams converged on a central to centroparietal positivity reflecting a final pathway of adaptation that governs future behaviour.

Better Enforcement Is Essential, but May Be Inadequate: Findings of a Survey on the Factors Affecting Payment of Speeding Fines in Cape Town, South Africa

While a large body of research has established that effective enforcement of speeding laws is essential for reducing the economic and social costs of road accidents, some studies have suggested that interventions aimed at moral beliefs about speeding and peer-related and other social contagion effects may be important complements to law enforcement activities. This article presents tentative evidence of the complementary nature of interventions to influence moral beliefs and steps to strengthen the enforcement of traffic laws. It does this by presenting and discussing the results of a survey that elicited information about the attitudes of motorists in Cape Town regarding speeding fines and aspects of the administration of traffic laws in South Africa. The self-reported fine-paying behaviour of the respondents correlates with instrumental factors shaped by the effectiveness of enforcement actions (e.g., compliance and monetary costs) as well as normative factors influenced by the moral beliefs of drivers and their social groups as well as the perceived legitimacy of traffic laws and officials. Regression results also provide evidence of a statistically significant relationship between the respondents’ self-reported fine-paying behaviour and their moral beliefs regarding payment of speeding fines.

Transformative climate adaptation in the United States: Trends and prospects

As climate change intensifies, civil society is increasingly calling for transformative adaptation that redresses drivers of climate vulnerability. We review trends in how U.S. federal government, private industry and civil society are planning for climate adaptation. We find growing divergence in their approaches and impacts. This incoherence increases maladaptive investment in climate-blind infrastructure, justice-blind reforms in financial and professional sectors, and greater societal vulnerability to climate impacts. If these actors were to proactively and deliberatively engage in transformative adaptation, they would need to address the material, relational and normative factors that hold current systems in place. Drawing on a review of transformation and collective impact literatures, we conclude with directions for research and policy engagement to support more transformative adaptation moving forward.