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Purpose: Understanding the nature of wellbeing as multidimensional and complex provides a policy window to generate a strengths-based policy orientation to promote wellbeing in education settings. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to map how wellbeing is interpreted across public education policy documents in Aotearoa New Zealand. Method: To explore the narrative that this group of documents weave, we draw on models of holistic wellbeing, ecological systems and appreciative inquiry. Policy documents were analysed using text mining software to track notions of wellbeing; their occurrence and co-occurrence with related concepts. Results: Key findings include the predominance of wellbeing, the interrelatedness of wellbeing with relationships, and the predominance of student wellbeing over the wellbeing of other stakeholders, highlighting that current education policy does not interpret wellbeing as relational, complex or contextual. Conclusion: We argue that interpreting such documents through a wellbeing lens demonstrates the complexity and disparity of the conceptualization and contextualization. We assert that it is critical to explore possibilities for deliberate and ecological wellbeing connections within educational policy and practice for the good of all stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resolving challenges at the science–policy interface is key to improving the management of cumulative effects of pressures in catchments to meet societal goals for freshwater ecosystem health and water quality. This paper briefly reviews shifts in freshwater policy in New Zealand over the last six years, identifies implications for demands on science, and then offers a framework of topics to help guide freshwater scientists better help water resource managers both develop and implement policy. Key themes include: (i) being clear about the various potential roles of scientists and the particular importance of the ‘honest broker’ role at the interface; (ii) informing policy decisions on capacity for resource use, by predicting consequences of future scenarios; and (iii) integrating and communicating multidisciplinary technical and community-derived knowledge, including handling inevitable uncertainty. Understanding and practising these topics will contribute to improved policy for managing cumulative effects and benefit New Zealand’s freshwaters and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is mounting concern in New Zealand and worldwide about the impacts of current and projected land-use activities on freshwater quality. In 2011, the New Zealand government effected the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, requiring all regional councils to establish freshwater nutrient loads and water allocation measures in their land and water regional plans. These ‘limits’ must achieve locally defined social, economic and cultural outcomes while, as a minimum, halting any decline in water quality. The authors have participated in the Canterbury region’s strategic land and water planning activities. This has involved strategically assessing the social impacts of ‘limit options’ on aspects of catchment life and then integrating them into official reports and community deliberations, which ultimately inform the development of rules for catchment land use. This paper highlights practice issues which were confronted in the process and how they were managed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]