Summer scholar will study the effects of earthquakes on children
Wed Jan 13 2016 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Summer scholar will study the effects of earthquakes on children
13 January 2016
Jayden Hickman
Over the next few months Jayden Hickman will develop an appreciation for what earthquake survivors go through.
That’s because Jayden will be spending his summer as a Summer Research Scholar at the Faculty of Education and Social Work’s School of Critical Studies in Education. He will be working with Associate Professor Carol Mutch’s project “My story; Your story.”
The project is the first part of an international study of how children who have been through disasters make sense of what has happened.
It builds on Associate Professor Mutch’s prior study: 'Christchurch schools tell their earthquake stories' in which 45 children aged between five and ten shared their experiences of the first Christchurch earthquakes. The “My story: Your Story” project returned to some of these children after the September 2010 and February 2011 quakes to investigate how the earthquakes had changed their lives.
In this study, ten of the children were recruited from those whose stories were already on record. Each child gave a new video interview of their experiences during the quakes and how they are feeling now.
Jayden has just finished his second year towards the four-year Bachelor of Social Work programme. His role is to edit, transcribe, translate and caption the videos as well as be part of the team that will analyse the raw data and write up the findings.
So far, for Jayden, who lives in Auckland’s Mt Roskill, the project is proving to be an eye opener on what going through the Christchurch quakes was like.
“I think more than anything it’s an issue of proximity and shared experiences, as in Auckland we don’t have many, if any, earthquakes.”
“It’s quite hard for us to empathise; it’s the other end of the country, and if you don’t have friends or relatives there, it’s quite easy to put it off as another world.”
The 22-year-old has limited experiences of earthquakes during previous visits to Wellington, all of which were relatively small.
“My first earthquake would have lasted a good couple of minutes, and coming from Auckland it was just out of my range of experiences.”
As well as the “My Story: Your Story” project, a parallel project is being carried out in two other disaster settings. Researchers at the University of Melbourne will research children and young people involved in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires,and researchers from Gunma University in Japan will study children involved in the 2011 triple disaster in Japan. It is hoped that other relevant countries will join the project in the future.
There are three aims to the project: To investigate how the disaster that children faced when they were aged between five and ten (and are now between eight and 15) impacted on their lives; to compare the impacts with children and young people of a similar age in different disaster contexts, and to add to our growing understanding of children's roles in disasters and post-disaster contexts.
For Jayden, the opportunity to work on the project has been rewarding already.
“Being a student, when taken seriously, is a high calling that takes a lot out of a person. For me it is a matter of investment on both my part and the University’s, to allow me to grow as an academic by offsetting the costs of study and providing a new means of exploring the ideas, connections, and skills that come with the scholarship.”
Contact
Anna Kellett, Media Relations Adviser
Email: anna.kellett@auckland.ac.nz