Establishing the Merger of a Tertiary Education System in Public Discourse: The Case of the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology
Establishing the Merger of a Tertiary Education System in Public Discourse: The Case of the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology

Summary/Abstract: The Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) is a large-scale transformation of the tertiary education system in New Zealand launched in 2018. Under RoVE, all existing Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics have been amalgamated to form a single nationwide institution: the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST) (later named Te Pūkenga). This study employed interpretative discourse analysis (IDA) to understand how the establishment of NZIST/Te Pūkenga was instituted in the public discourse. The official RoVE documents were interpreted within the conceptual framework of discursive closure. The findings demonstrate that the RoVE discourse utilised the discursive closure practices of disqualification, naturalisation, neutralisation, topical avoidance, legitimation and pacification, securing dominance for the official communication regarding the change.

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