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This paper aims to provide a commentary on how the accelerated utilisation of online learning in accounting education could further impede Pasifika students from completing an accounting qualification, thus perpetuating Pasifika underrepresentation in accounting.

This commentary is based on the authors’ experiences and informal conversations with teaching colleagues and support staff. This paper uses Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) theory of practice with a focus on his notion of symbolic violence to evaluate the challenges faced by Pasifika students in the learning of accounting.

The social world is inherently unfair, and this can be seen in the inequality that persists in various settings, one of which is in the accounting field. Acquiring an accounting degree requires studying accounting content, which is taught and assessed in a particular way. Unfortunately for the Pasifika learner, learning and assessment in accounting education are according to the demands and rules of the accounting field. These demands and rules, with the increased utilisation of online learning, are at odds with the Pasifika student’s habitus. Thus, Pasifika accounting students are likely to be disadvantaged by the increased utilisation of online learning. This could potentially exacerbate their underachievement in accounting education and prolong Pasifika underrepresentation in the accounting profession.

This paper contributes to teaching practice by bringing to the fore the potential of online learning as an additional impediment for Pasifika students in accounting education. This will help inform policymakers, tertiary institutions, accounting accreditation bodies, educators and support staff and could result in the formulation of suitable strategies to better support Pasifika students in online learning.

This paper is original and provides a critical analysis of how some groups in society will be disadvantaged by the increased utilisation of online learning in accounting education, thus further hindering the slow progress in achieving greater diversity in the accounting profession.

This paper aims to examine the issues of underrepresentation and barriers that impede Pasifika students’ achievement and success in tertiary accounting education.

The participants of the study were the second- and third-year students from the “Pasifika” ethnic community enrolled in undergraduate accounting degree papers. The first stage of data were collected through face-to-face questionnaire survey and quantitatively analysed. Further data were collected through focus group meetings held as “talona” sessions and analysed using descriptive narrative, to capture the lived experience of the students.

The findings of the study suggest that low self-efficacy beliefs, low self-regulation and culturally unresponsive pedagogical practices negatively impact on Pasifika student success in accounting education. Better student engagement; use of culturally responsive pedagogy; utilisation of internal assessment tools; and more strategic use of group work could help enhance the retention and success of Pasifika students in accounting programmes. The findings also suggest that the institutional support framework for Pasifika students’ needs to be more responsive to proactively help develop their self-efficacy and self-regulation learning needs.

This research makes a significant contribution by informing accounting educators, support staff, tertiary institutions and other stakeholders including Pasifika students, of potential challenges faced by Pasifika students in completing a tertiary accounting qualification. The findings have the potential to assist in the design and implementation of actionable strategies to enhance the retention and success rates for students from this group.

This research complements earlier studies on barriers faced by students from disadvantaged communities in gaining tertiary qualifications and looks specifically at challenges faced by Pasifika students in gaining an accounting qualification.

Developing the health workforce is an ongoing concern, especially in New Zealand, where Māori and Pasifika populations are under-represented. Programme Incubator (PI) was developed by a health provider to raise awareness of careers in the health sector. The purpose of this paper is to report on a study undertaken in a tertiary institution which involved tracking and mentoring students who had been engaged in PI, and mentoring them through their tertiary studies.

In total, 40 students (n=40) were recruited into the four year study, which involved a survey and participating in focus groups.

PI was found to be an effective initiative of encouraging secondary students to enter a career in health, but more work is needed to facilitate students’ choice of tertiary provider and academic programme. Within the tertiary sector, mentoring was found to be lacking.

Group mentoring and peer mentoring are introduced to mitigate these concerns and provide students with the mentoring support they require.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate two recent examples of the New Zealand Ministry of Education's approach to reducing the persistent disparities in achievement between students of different social and ethnic groups. The first example is cluster‐based school improvement, and the second is the development of national standards for literacy and numeracy across the primary sector.

The evaluative framework used was derived from recent international analyses of the characteristics of school systems, which are either high performers or successful reformers on recent international surveys. Policy documents and evaluation reports provided the evidence on which the evaluation of the two New Zealand (NZ) examples is based.

The six criteria associated with high system performance and/or reform success were: system‐wide commitment to educational improvement; ambitious universal standards; developing capacity at the point of delivery; professional forms of accountability; strategic resourcing; and institutionalizing the improvement of practice. The present analysis of the NZ reform examples suggests that while there is a broad commitment to more equitable outcomes, a new resolve to introduce and report against national standards, and a high level of espousal of professional accountability, there are significant contradictions between school self‐management and the work that needs to be done to reduce achievement disparities.

This paper's evaluation of these two examples raises important policy questions about the assumptions that are made in the NZ self‐managing system about teacher and leader capability and about where responsibility for school improvement lies.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which performance indicators (PIs) reported by New Zealand (NZ) higher education institutions (HEIs) correspond with accounting standards and guidance and the effects issuance of principles-based authoritative guidance and early adoption of Public Benefit Entity Financial Reporting Standard 48 (PBE FRS 48) have on the PIs disclosed.

Using a content analysis index derived from accounting standards and guidance, we conduct a longitudinal assessment of the 2016 and 2019 statements of service performance published by 22 NZ HEIs.

The PIs reported extend beyond the service performance elements proposed by standard-setters. Despite few indicators on intermediate and broader outcomes, the measures disclosed by HEIs are reflective of their role in the NZ economy and the national Tertiary Education Strategy. The results show that principles-based authoritative guidance and early adoption of PBE FRS 48 influence the focus and type of measures disclosed, while there is no evidence of improvements in the reporting of impacts, outcomes and information useful for performance evaluation.

This paper provides timely insights for standard-setters and regulators on the influence principles-based accounting standards and guidance have on non-financial reporting practices.

This study contributes to the scant literature on HEIs’ service performance reporting. It presents a model for conceptualising HEIs’ PIs that can be used as a basis for future research on non-financial reporting. It also reflects on the tension between accountability and “accountingisation”, suggesting that, although the PIs reported support formal accountability, they do not communicate whether HEIs’ activities and outputs meet their social purpose.

Research into the literacy of Pasifika (Pacific Island) children has predominantly focused on what the children cannot do. We present a layered account as we report on the issues, strategies and learnings from a project that set out to focus on success. With the guidance of matai (chiefs) we drew on the traditional Pasifika approach of Talanoa to allow important stories to be told. Talanoa both supports and challenges traditional and alternative Palagi (a Polynesian word for European) approaches to qualitative research. Three critical issues for researchers are identified: group ownership and control of the process and outcomes, the importance of collaboratively sharing research outcomes with the researched and the wider Pasifika community, and the value of opportunities for Pasifika and Palagi to undertake Pasifika research together.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how critical discourse analysis can help to uncover the dominant discursive formations that underlie policy guidelines within education. Focusing on the policy guidelines for career education and guidance in New Zealand, it illustrates how these have been used by the state in an attempt to normalise ideological standpoints, shape “common‐sense” thinking and delimit the scope of practice.

Critical discourse analysis was employed as this approach helps to uncover the hidden meanings, political imperatives and uneven workings of power/dominance and oppression that are employed in/through textual representations.

Neoliberal discourse is infused throughout the policy guidelines for career education and guidance in New Zealand, and demands that career advisers/teachers should produce entrepreneurial and self‐responsibilised global economic subjects.

Although this paper is situated within a New Zealand context, given the creeping influence of neoliberalism in many English‐speaking states, the issues identified have international relevance in relation to the kind of citizen career education is expected to produce.

Much of the literature within the career arena adopts an uncritical, and apolitical, stance, with the truth‐claims made by neoliberal states tending to be positioned as authoritative and inviolable. Drawing from critical theory, this paper contributes a social justice perspective that looks beneath the surface of the seemingly benign and well‐intentioned discourses that permeate the guidelines for career education and guidance in New Zealand.

The purpose of this research is to use a collective responsibility theoretical lens to examine the work of three school principals as they focussed on school-wide goal-setting processes to achieve valued student achievement goals. The tensions principals face in creating collective responsibility are examined so that these might be intentionally navigated.

Qualitative case studies of three New Zealand schools include data from interviews with principals, middle leaders and teachers. An inductive and deductive thematic analysis approach was employed.

Principals face four key tensions: (1) whether to promote self or centrally directed and voluntary or mandatory professional learning; (2) how to balance a top-down versus a middle-up process for accountability; (3) ways to integrate both educator and student voice and (4) the complexity of both challenging teachers' beliefs and providing support. These challenges seemed inherent in the work of developing collective responsibility and leaders tended to move along response continuum.

This research highlights the importance of being intentional and transparent with staff members about both the nature of these tensions and their navigation, and opens up further questions in relation to leader, and teacher perceptions of tensions in creating collective responsibility for achieving school-improvement goals.

An understanding of the tensions that need to be navigated can help leaders and other educators to take effective action, scrutinize the reasoning behind decisions, and understand the inherent challenges faced.

Leadership tensions in creating collective responsibility are explored and implications for leadership practice and learning considered.