Biography
Role
Ashlie teaches the Bachelor of Teaching Primary and the Bachelor of Education at all stages. Her role closely aligns with her research interests and teaching philosophy. She enjoys supporting the tauira to become the best teachers.
Education background
Ashlie has been involved in education for over 20 years and have experience in teaching across Early Childhood and Primary ITE programmes and Social Sciences. She has worked in undergraduate and graduate roles as well as master’s supervision roles at the university level.
Research background
As a researcher she has a strong focus in two areas. The first is research in human development with a particular interest in child development, childhood studies and using children’s voices in research. Her current doctoral research contribution focuses on the pre-teen age group and how they view and navigate their social worlds. Her second area of research includes disability studies, inclusive education, and using discourse analysis to explain exclusionary practices in the classroom. She draws on many approaches like discourse theory to challenge attitudes about disability and question understandings of inclusion and exclusion in the classroom and in society in general.
Teaching interests
Inclusive practices are at the heart of the mahi she does. Living with a visible disability underpins her inclusive teaching and learning pedagogy in all aspects of her academic life. In her research with students in Initial Teacher Education, she has explored ways in which ‘othering’ becomes normative and how marginalization and exclusionary practices cuts through all groups of society not only disability. This has been researched using a variety of approaches for example, using photographs to explore ironies of seemingly inclusive spaces while good intentions were intended, no longer were.
Recent publications
Kecskemeti, M., Hamilton,, C., & Brink, A. (2017). Developing inclusive practices. Deconstructing and reconstructing partnerships in times of change. In R. McNae, & B. Cowie (Eds.), Realising Innovative Partnerships in Educational Research, (pp. 33-43). Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-6351-062-2#toc
Brink, A., & Kotze, E. (2017). Stitching hope through loss in celebration. In F. L. Cohen (Ed.), Hope Individual Differences, Role in Recovery and Impact on Emotional Health (pp. 159-171). New York, USA: Nova Science Publishers Inc.
Brink, A. (2016). When age descriptive words matter: Children, tweenies or tweens. Children's perspectives of childhoods. In V. Sharma, & A. Brink (Eds.), Childhood through the looking glass (pp. 223-232). Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Sharma, V., & Brink, A. (2016). Introduction. In V. Sharma, & A. Brink (Eds.), Childhood through the looking glass (pp. vii-xiv). Oxford, United Kingdom: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Claiborne, L., Peters, S., & Brink, A. (2015). Shaking up human development: A reflection from Aotearoa New Zealand on Erica's Burman's contribution. Feminism & Psychology, 1-7. doi:10.1177/0959353515570920