2010 overview

This has been a pretty intense and busy year as I consolidate research skills and complete several externally funded projects. Reports for the Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub project ‘learning a trade: Developing guidelines to study trades learning using multimodal discourse analysis’ completed along with the first eight reports (1 to each of 7 ITOs and a background report) for the ‘first year apprentices’ Ako Aotearoa National funded project also done (whew!) The final report for the ‘first year apprentices’ project due in June next year, allowing me time to consolidate the literature and my thoughts and to catch up on reading over the summer.


Final draft of the Phd also completed and awaiting final comments from my supervisor. Should be ready after that for delivery to the markers. Will be strange not having to continuously work on the dissertation but the Phd journey has been really worthwhile, providing the opportunity to learn, practice and hone a range of academic skills. I am forever grateful to my long suffering supervisor who patiently moved me through, using a range of impressive teaching skills including modelling the painstaking tasks of word smithing my early attempts literally word by word and sentence by sentence!

A busy year too with regards to continual professional development over a range of topics. I attended 10 conferences /symposiums presenting at 5, keynotes in 2 and helping with organisation of 1. Also presented in 8 other workshops / networking type meetings across a range industries / ITPs. On the academic side, assisted with reviewing papers for one conference and 2 journal articles.

At CPIT, research capability building begun and progressing with several projects moving on into 2011 and a couple to get started. Teaching commitments have been rewarding and there was re-development work to be done on some of the DTLT courses I teach as the programme is prepared for sharing with two other ITPs.

So lots of activities and I need to reflect on what has been achieved and how to build on these to move forward into the future. In particular, how to continue with development of vocational research capability both at CPIT and beyond and to scope and prioritise projects that will garner external funding support.