Improvising a future in the performing arts : a new strategy to help performance studies students successfully shift between academic culture, professional culture, industry and career?

If there is one thing performance studies graduates should be good at, it is improvising – play and improvisation are central to the contemporary and cultural performance practices we teach and the methods by which we teach them. Objective, offer, acceptance, advancing, reversing, character, status, manipulation, impression management, relationship management – whether we know them from Keith Johnson’s theatre theories or Erving Goffman’s theatre theories, the processes by which we play out a story, scenario or social situation to our own benefit are familiar. We understand that identity, action, interaction and its personal, aesthetic, professional or political outcomes are unpredictable, and that we need to adapt to changeable and uncertain circumstances to achieve our aims. Intriguingly, though, in a Higher Education environment that increasingly emphasises employability, skills in play, improvisation and self-performance are never cited as critical graduate attributes. Is the ability to play, improve and produce spontaneous new self-performances learned in the academy worth articulating into an ability to play, improvise and product spontaneous new self-performances after graduates leave the academy and move into the role of a performing arts professional in industry? A study of the career paths of our performance studies graduates over the past decade suggests that addressing the challenges they face in moving between academic culture, professional culture, industry and career in terms of improvisation and play principles may be very productive. In articles on performing arts careers, graduates are typically advised to find a market for their work, and develop career self-management, management and marketing skills, together with an ability to find, make and maintain relationships and opportunities for themselves. Transitioning to career is cast as a challenging process, requiring these skills, because performing arts careers do not offer the security, status and stability of other careers. Our data confirms this. In our study, though, we found that strategies commonly used to build the resilience, self-reliance and persistence graduates require – talking about portfolio careers, parallel careers, and portable, transferable or translatable skills, for example – can engender panic as easily as they engender confidence. In this paper, I consider what happens when we re-articulate some of the skills scholars and industry stakeholders argue are critical in allowing graduates to shift successfully from academy to industry in terms of skills like improvisation, play and self-performance that are already familiar, meaningful and much-practiced amongst performance studies graduates.

The standard bearers : Governing teachers through professional standards

Teacher professional standards have become a key policy mechanism for the reform of teaching and education in recent years. While standards policies claim to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools today, this paper argues that a disjunction exists between the stated intentions of such programmes and the intelligibility of the practices of government in which they are invested. To this effect, the paper conducts an analytics of government of the recently released National Professional Standards for Teachers (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2011) arguing that the explicit, calculated rationality of the programme exists within a wider field of effects. Such analysis has the critical consequence of calling into question the claims of the programmers themselves thus breaching the self-evidence on which the standards rest.

An exploration of the professional competencies required in engineering asset management

Engineering asset management (EAM) is a rapidly growing and developing field. However, efforts to select and develop engineers in this area are complicated by our lack of understanding of the full range of competencies required to perform. This exploratory study sought to clarify and categorise the professional competencies required of individuals at different hierarchical levels within EAM. Data from 14 interviews and 61 on-line survey participants has informed the development of an initial Professional Competency Framework. The nine competency categories indicate that Engineers working in this field need to be able to collaborate and influence others, complete objectives within organizational guidelines and be able to manage themselves effectively. Limitations and potential uses in practice and research for this framework are discussed.

Confronting the shortage of skilled and professional workers : A large scale industry-school partnership initiative

In most of the advanced economies, students are losing interest in careers especially in engineering and related industries. Hence, western economies are confronting a critical skilled labour shortage in areas of technology, science and engineering. The aim of this paper is to document how the organisational and institutional elements of one industry-school partnerships initiative – The Gateway Schools Program - contribute to productive knowledge sharing and networking. In particular this paper focuses on an initiative of an Australian State government in response to a perceived crisis around the skills shortage in an economy transitioning from a localised to a global knowledge production economy. The Gateway Schools initiative signals the first sustained attempt in Australia to incorporate schools into production networks through strategic partnerships linking them to partner organisations at the industry level. We provide case examples of how four schools operationalise the partnerships with the mining and energy industries and how these partnerships as knowledge assets impact the delivery of curriculum and capacity building among teachers. A program theory approach to analysis, informed by theoretical perspectives of Bailey (1994), Bagnall (2007) and Walsh (2004) was adopted. Each of these theorists provides a related but different perspective on the establishment, purpose, and effectiveness respectively of partnerships. Our ultimate goal is to define those characteristics of successful partnerships that do contribute to enhanced interest and engagement by students in those careers that are currently experiencing critical shortages.

Development and testing of an iPad application for teaching self-management to heart failure patients. (Nursing/Allied Health Professional Investigator Award)- Abstract

Purpose: Heart failure (HF) is the leading cause of hospitalization and significant burden to the health care system in Australia. To reduce hospitalizations, multidisciplinary approaches and enhance self-management programs have been strongly advocated for HF patients globally. HF patients who can effectively manage their symptoms and adhere to complex medicine regimes will experience fewer hospitalizations. Research indicates that information technologies (IT) have a significant role in providing support to promote patients' self-management skills. The iPad utilizes user-friendly interfaces and to date an application for HF patient education has not been developed. This project aimed to develop the HF iPad teaching application in the way that would be engaging, interactive and simple to follow and usable for patients' carers and health care workers within both the hospital and community setting. Methods: The design for the development and evaluation of the application consisted of two action research cycles. Each cycle included 3 phases of testing and feedback from three groups comprising IT team, HF experts and patients. All patient education materials of the application were derived from national and international evidence based practice guidelines and patient self-care recommendations. Results: The iPad application has animated anatomy and physiology that simply and clearly teaches the concepts of the normal heart and the heart in failure. Patient Avatars throughout the application can be changed to reflect the sex and culture of the patient. There is voice-over presenting a script developed by the heart failure expert panel. Additional engagement processes included points of interaction throughout the application with touch screen responses and the ability of the patient to enter their weight and this data is secured and transferred to the clinic nurse and/or research data set. The application has been used independently, for instance, at home or using headphones in a clinic waiting room or most commonly to aid a nurse-led HF consultation. Conclusion: This project utilized iPad as an educational tool to standardize HF education from nurses who are not always heart failure specialists. Furthermore, study is currently ongoing to evaluate of the effectiveness of this tool on patient outcomes and to develop several specifically designed cultural adaptations [Hispanic (USA), Aboriginal (Australia), and Maori (New Zealand)].

Access to Cardiac Rehabilitation does not Equate to Attendance. (On Behalf of the Cardiac ARIA Project. Winner Nursing/Allied Health Professional Investigator Award)

Background/Aims Timely access to appropriate cardiac care is critical for optimizing positive outcomes after a cardiac event. Attendance at cardiac rehabilitation (CR) remains less than optimal (10%–30%). Our aim was to derive an objective, comparable, geographic measure reflecting access to cardiac services after a cardiac event in Australia. Methods An expert panel defined a single patient care pathway and a hierarchy of the minimum health services for CR and secondary prevention. Using geographic information systems a numeric/alpha index was modelled to describe access before and after a cardiac event. The aftercare phase was modelled into five alphabetical categories: from category A (access to medical service, pharmacy, CR, pathology within 1 h) to category E (no services available within 1 h). Results Approximately 96% or 19 million people lived within 1 h of the four basic services to support CR and secondary prevention, including 96% of older Australians and 75% of the indigenous population. Conversely, 14% (64,000) indigenous people resided in population locations that had poor access to health services that support CR after a cardiac event. Conclusion Results demonstrated that the majority of Australians had excellent ‘geographic’ access to services to support CR and secondary prevention. Therefore, it appears that it is not the distance to services that affects attendance. Our ‘geographic’ lens has identified that more research on socioeconomic, sociological or psychological aspects to attendance is needed.

Developing authentic professional knowledge through transformative community engagement in an interdisciplinary service learning project

This showcase presents a preliminary analysis of a community service learning project designed to align more authentically with contemporary society and emerging constructs of professional knowledge. As described in the paper, the project involves a multidisciplinary group of students working collaboratively with a community organisation to find creative presponses to challenging issues concerning the organisation's identity, how it interfaces with stakeholders, and how it evidences its inclusive practice. Of particular interest is how the interdisciplinary practice of the students within a service learning context encouraged reconsideration of their world0view and their rols as future professionals. Also highlighted is the need for greater congruence between the goals of the project and the structural elements of the curriculum.

Learning about being effective mentors : professional learning communities and mentoring

This study aimed to explore experienced mentors’ understandings about professional learning communities (PLCs), mentoring and leadership. This research analyses audio-taped transcripts and written responses from 27 experienced mentors who operate in varied roles (e.g., university academics, school executives, teachers, learning support personnel). Findings indicated that PLCs can provide professional renewal for existing teachers and that mentoring within PLCs can further advance knowledge about effective practices. PLCs can include other staff members and key stakeholders (e.g., preservice teachers, teacher aides) who can contribute to the learning within the group. Mentoring and PLCs can be cost-effective strategic levers for advancing professional knowledge.

Accelerated professional development and peer consultation : two strategies for continuing professional education for nurses

A comparison was made of accelerated professional development (APD) for nurses (n=64), involving peer consultation and reflective practice, and peer consultation alone (n=30). Although APD participants had a higher completion rate, improvements in caregiver behaviors and work environment were not significantly different.

'Going live' : establishing the creative attributes of the live multi-camera television professional

In my capacity as a television professional and teacher specialising in multi-camera live television production for over 40 years, I was drawn to the conclusion that opaque or inadequately formed understandings of how creativity applies to the field of live television, have impeded the development of pedagogies suitable to the teaching of live television in universities. In the pursuit of this hypothesis, the thesis shows that television degrees were born out of film studies degrees, where intellectual creativity was aligned to single camera production, and the 'creative roles' of producers, directors and scriptwriters. At the same time, multi-camera live television production was subsumed under the 'mass communication' banner, leading to an understanding that roles other than producer and director are simply technical, and bereft of creative intent or acumen. The thesis goes on to show that this attitude to other television production personnel, for example, the vision mixer, videotape operator and camera operator, relegates their roles to that of 'button pusher'. This has resulted in university teaching models with inappropriate resources and unsuitable teaching practices. As a result, the industry is struggling to find people with the skills to fill the demands of the multi-camera live television sector. In specific terms the central hypothesis is pursued through the following sequenced approach. Firstly, the thesis sets out to outline the problems, and traces the origins of the misconceptions that hold with the notion that intellectual creativity does not exist in live multi-camera television. Secondly, this more adequately conceptualised rendition, of the origins particular to the misconceptions of live television and creativity, is then anchored to the field of examination by presentation of the foundations of the roles involved in making live television programs, using multicamera production techniques. Thirdly, this more nuanced rendition of the field sets the stage for a thorough analysis of education and training in the industry, and teaching models at Australian universities. The findings clearly establish that the pedagogical models are aimed at single camera production, a position that deemphasises the creative aspects of multi-camera live television production. Informed by an examination of theories of learning, qualitative interviews, professional reflective practice and observations, the roles of four multi-camera live production crewmembers (camera operator, vision mixer, EVS/videotape operator and director's assistant), demonstrate the existence of intellectual creativity during live production. Finally, supported by the theories of learning, and the development and explication of a successful teaching model, a new approach to teaching students how to work in live television is proposed and substantiated.

Mentoring as professional development: ‘growth for both’ mentor and mentee

Teachers need professional development to keep current with teaching practices, although costs for extensive professional development can be prohibitive across an education system. Mentoring provides one way for embedding cost-effective professional development. This mixed-method study includes surveying mentor teachers (n = 101) on a five-part Likert scale and interviews with experienced mentors (n = 10) to investigate professional development for mentors as a result of the mentoring process. Quantitative data were analysed through a pedagogical knowledge framework and qualitative data were collated into themes. Survey data showed that although mentoring of pedagogical knowledge was variable, mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices occurs with the majority of mentors, which requires mentors to evaluate and articulate teaching practices. Qualitative data showed that mentoring acted as professional development and led towards enhancing communication skills, developing leadership roles (problem-solving and building capacity) and advancing pedagogical knowledge. Providing professional development to teachers on mentoring can help to build capacity in two ways: quality mentoring of preservice teachers through explicit mentoring practices, and reflecting and deconstructing teaching practices for mentors’ own pedagogical advancements.

Mobius markets : professional families in rural educational markets

Australia has many isolated communities that require human services provided by qualified professionals. Maintaining a viable and equitable spread of such educational capital across space as a public good is a challenge. Reports investigating this problem repeatedly point to ‘family issues’ such as limited options for children’s education, and limited access to ongoing professional development, as deterrents for rural/remote employment despite lucrative incentive schemes. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with 30 parents of school-aged children, who work as doctors, nurses, teachers and police in six rural/remote towns in Queensland. We asked them how their family units reconcile career opportunities with educational strategy for family members over time and space. This paper considers these issues as a sociology of education problem in a context of educational marketisation and spiralling credentialism. This paper offers the concept of ‘mobius markets’ to capture the cyclical and intergenerational process underway in middle class professional families of investing in educational capitals, maintaining or maximising their value and profiting from them. A mobius strip is the topological anomaly of a single loop with one twist in it, whereby the loop becomes one continuous surface, not the double-sided shape it appears to be. This project is interested in how the middle class professional family is similarly on a constant circuit, investing in educational capitals, upgrading their currency/value, and profiting from them. This elaborated sense of educational markets extends the more usual sociological focus on school choice.