The country's leading scholars have pocketed Fulbright awards to undertake research at world's top universities to improve New Zealand's health, wellbeing and education sectors.Fulbright senior scholar awards will fund research for ten academics, who will
The country’s leading scholars have pocketed Fulbright awards to undertake research at world’s top universities to improve New Zealand’s health, wellbeing and education sectors.
Fulbright senior scholar awards will fund research for ten academics, who will travel to the US in 2011.
One of the recipients –head of EIT Hawke’s Bay’s School of Nursing Rachel Vernon –will research models for the assessment of continuing competence of nurses at the University of California, San Francisco.
Ms Vernon will compare existing requirements in the US, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Canada to identify areas of consensus and best practice, before making recommendations for a new framework for assessing nurses’ competence in patient care.
Dr Gwenda Willis from Victoria University of Wellington, who previously received a shortterm Fulbright Travel Award while completing her PhD, will continue her research into treatment of sex offenders by examining American treatment programmes following the New Zealand-developed Good Lives Model, to measure adherence to the model and resulting successes.
Developed at Victoria University, the Good Lives Model has been adopted more widely in the US than in New Zealand, but the effectiveness of those programmes has not yet been surveyed and has implications wherever the model is used.
With the aim to improve New Zealand’s education sector, teacher Ngaire Addis from Havelock North High School will research how mathematics achievement data is used by leaders of American high schools to improve teaching and learning.
Veronica O’Toole from the University of Canterbury will research the development of an emotional literacy programme for New Zealand educators and students.
Students at Georgetown University’s Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies in Washington, DC will benefit from back-to-back visiting Fulbright Visiting Scholars in New Zealand Studies drawn from the University of Canterbury’s faculty.
Dr Chris Gallavin will teach a course on New Zealand’s constitutional structure and international relations for Georgetown University’s Spring semester from January to May 2011. He will also research different US states’ approaches to judicial oversight of the decision to prosecute within common law.
He will be followed in the Fall semester from August to December by Dr David Small, who will teach a course surveying major societal changes in New Zealand over the past three decades, whilst researching whether anti-terrorism measures adopted by “low risk” countries like New Zealand after 9/11 were appropriate or indeed too heavy-handed.
The remaining Fulbright New Zealand senior scholars will similarly conduct 3-5 months of research in their field of interest at a US institution of their choice.
