Jack of all trades, master of some ...or none? Training teachers in Integrated Arts

This article reports on the integration of music with other ‘Arts’ in teacher training at a South African university where a challenge tertiary educators face is how to successfully integrate music within the Arts and Culture learning area of the school education system. The article firstly provides a brief background to the South African educational context. Secondly, it outlines current practices in the in the implementation of the integrated arts curriculum in schools and teacher training. Thirdly, it discusses pertinent issues and challenges in relation to team teaching, integration and curriculum change in teacher training. Given the constraints and opportunities that universities currently experience, this article investigates and reports on the issue of whether students should be trained as Jack of all trades and master of some…or none or Master of one trade and Jack of some with regard to integrating the Arts.

Public research commercialisation, entrepreneurship and new technology based firms : an integrated model

Entrepreneurship is the engine of innovation. The accumulated tacit knowledge and culture of the entrepreneur are the resources essential to create wealth from research commercialisation leading to technological innovation and the creation of New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs). The authors explore, in definitional terms, discovery of entrepreneurial opportunity and entrepreneurial capacity as the essential elements in the interaction between all types of tacit knowledge (technological, managerial, risk management, financial, etc.). These both derive from and affect interactions between the institutions (sets of rules), organisational culture and external business environment. They also interact with the entrepreneur’s own background and personality. This leads then to a wider analysis of the importance of such tacit knowledge as the glue bringing together effective mechanisms for wealth creation out of research commercialisation.

Forming and sustaining partnerships to provide integrated services for young people : an overview based on the headspace Geelong experience

Aim: To discuss critical considerations in the formation and maintenance of agency partnerships designed to provide integrated care for young people.

Methods: Two years after its establishment, an evaluation of the headspace Barwon collaboration and a review of the health-care and management literature on agency collaboration were conducted. The principal findings together with the authors' experience working at establishing and maintaining the partnership are used to discuss critical issues in forming and maintaining inter-agency partnerships.

Results: Structural and process considerations are necessary but not sufficient for the successful formation and maintenance of inter-agency partnerships and integrated care provision. Specifically, organizational culture change and staff engagement is a significant challenge and planning for this is essential and often neglected.

Conclusions: Although agreeing on common goals and objectives is an essential first step in forming partnerships designed to provide integrated care, goodwill is not enough, and the literature consistently shows that most collaborations fail to meet their objectives. Principles and lessons of organizational behaviour and management practices in the business sector can contribute a great deal to partnership planning.

The role of culture in understanding child sexual offending : examining feminist perspectives

Psychological theories on child sexual abuse continue to dominate etiological and rehabilitative approaches to understanding and treating sexually abusive behavior. However, even though psychological researchers are motivated toward development of comprehensive and highly integrated theories, there has been continued neglect of the cultural dimensions of child sexual abuse. Feminist theories of child sexual abuse have been particularly helpful in filling this explanatory gap, as they have persisted in locating sexually abusive behavior within a cultural context. In this paper we review and critique selected feminist theories on child sexual abuse with the aim of establishing their explanatory scope and utility. Overall, we found that feminist perspectives were useful in justifying and establishing social policies aimed at preventing the sexual abuse of children from ever commencing. However, despite this strength, they offer little guidance in the treatment of individual offenders.

Security networks and occupational culture: understanding culture within and between organisations

Security networks are organisational forms involving public, private and hybrid actors or nodes that work together to pursue security-related objectives. While we know that security networks are central to the governance of security, and that security networks exist at multiple levels across the security field, we still do not know enough about how these networks form and function. Based on a detailed qualitative study of networks in the field of ‘high’ policing in Australia, this article aims to advance our knowledge of the relational properties of security networks. Following the organisational culture literature, the article uses the concept of a ‘group’ as the basis with which to analyse and understand culture. A group can apply to networks (‘network culture’), organisations (‘organisational culture’) and sections within and between organisations (‘occupational subcultures’). Using interviews with senior members of security, police and intelligence agencies, the article proceeds to analyse how cultures form and function within such groups. In developing a network perspective on occupational culture, the article challenges much of the police culture(s) literature for concentrating too heavily on police organisations as independent units of analysis. The article moves beyond debates between integrated or differentiated organisational cultures and questions concerning the extent to which culture shapes particular outcomes, to analyse the ways in which security nodes relate to one another in security networks. If there is one thing that should be clear it is that security nodes experience cultural change as they work together in and through networks.