Is language a barrier for quality care in hospitals? A case series from an Emergency Department of a teaching hospital in Brisbane

Aim: The aim of this pilot study is to describe the use of an Emergency Department (ED) at a large metropolitan teaching hospital by patients who speak English or other languages at home. Methods: All data were retrieved from the Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) of this tertiary teaching hospital in Brisbane. Patients were divided into two groups based on the language spoken at home: patients who speak English only at home (SEO) and patients who do not speak English only or speak other language at home (NSEO). Modes of arrival, length of ED stay and the proportion of hospital admission were compared among the two groups of patients by using SPSS V18 software. Results: A total of 69,494 patients visited this hospital ED in 2009 with 67,727 (97.5%) being in the SEO group and 1,281 (1.80%) in the NSEO group. The proportion of ambulance utilisation in arrival mode was significantly higher among SEO 23,172 (34.2%) than NSEO 397 (31.0%), p <0.05. The NSEO patients had longer length of stay in the ED (M = 337.21, SD = 285.9) compared to SEO patients (M= 290.9, SD = 266.8), with 46.3 minutes (95%CI 62.1, 30.5, p <0.001) difference. The admission to the hospital among NSEO was 402 (31.9%) higher than SEO 17,652 (26.6%), p <0.001. Conclusion: The lower utilisation rates of ambulance services, longer length of ED stay and higher hospital admission rates in NSEO patients compared to SEO patients are consistent with other international studies and may be due to the language barriers.

An action research approach for the professional development of Vietnamese nurse educators

Nurse education in Viet Nam is undergoing substantial reform. In order to facilitate the change, in 2007 the Viet Nam Nurses Association formed a collaborative partnership with the School of Nursing and Midwifery at an Australia university. This collaboration gave rise to the Viet Nam Nursing Capacity Building Project under the leadership of Professor Genevieve Gray, funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies. The new four year competency based nursing curriculum frame is expected to be implemented in September 2011 following approval by the Viet Nam Ministry of Education. The focus of this paper is the Teaching Fellowships Program, an initiative of the Viet Nam Nursing Capacity Building Project, developed to help meet the challenges associated with leading and dealing with the curriculum change. The paper explores the development of the program and justifies an action research approach, illuminates key issues, and briefly refers to changes to the next fellowship program.

Preservice teachers teaching technology with robotics

This study investigates the value of a robotics-based school engagement experience for preservice teachers enrolled in a fourth year technology education curriculum unit and analyses their perceived abilities and confidence to design and implement engaging technology activities following this experience. Technology is a key learning area in Australian schools but research shows that most teachers find this subject challenging to teach. This could be attributed to teachers’ attitudes and their lack of knowledge, hence investigating preservice teachers’ involvement with technology may provide further insights. In this study, 30 preservice teachers used robotics to implement technology activities with 22 primary school students from a school in a low socio-economic area. Surveys were administered to ascertain the preservice teachers' perceptions of their school engagement experiences. The data gathered from the participants showed that they had gained confidence and knowledge from the experience and felt the engagement activity would assist them to develop and implement technology activities in their future classrooms.

Urban pre-service teachers’ conceptions of teaching in rural communities

Encouraging quality teaching staff to apply for and accept teaching placements in rural and remote locations is an ongoing concern internationally. The value of different support mechanisms provided for pre-service teachers attending a rural and remote practicum[1] are investigated through theories of place and the school-community nexus. Qualitative data regarding the experiences of the pre-service teachers were collected through interviews and case study notes. This project adds to our understanding of practicum in rural areas by employing a conceptual understanding of place to propose how the experiences of a four-week practicum may contribute to urban pre-service teachers’ conceptions of work and life in a rural community

Introduction. Locating men in the work-life nexus

In the last two decades there has been a plethora of research on a range of subjects collectively and rhetorically known as ‘work-life balance’. The bulk of this research, which spans disciplines including feminist sociology, industrial relations and management, has focused on the significant concerns of employed women and/or dual career couples. Less attention has been devoted to scholarship which explicitly examines men and masculinities in this context. Meanwhile, public and organizational discourse is largely espoused in gender neutral terms, often neglecting salient gendered issues which differentially impact the ability of women and men to successfully integrate their work and non-work lives. This edited book brings together empirical studies of the work-life nexus with a specific focus on men’s working time arrangements, how men navigate and traverse paid work and family commitments, and the impact of public and organizational policies on men’s participation in work, leisure, and other life domains. The book is innovative in that it presents both macro (institutional, how policy affects practice) and micro (individual, from men’s own perspectives) level studies, allowing for a rich and contrasting exploration of how men’s participation in paid work and other domains is divided, conflicted, or integrated. The essays in this volume address issues of fundamental social, labor market, and economic change which have occurred over the last 20 years and which have profoundly affected the way work, care, leisure and community have evolved in different contexts. Taking an international focus, Men, Wage Work and Family contrasts various public and organizational policies and how these policies impact men’s opportunities and participation in paid work and non-work domains in industrialised countries in Europe, North America, and Australia.

Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) : building the ICT in education capacity of the next generation of teachers in Australia

The Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) project is a unique nationally significant project funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations (DEEWR, Au$8.8 million) and the Information and Communication Technology Innovation Fund (ICTIF). This 2011-2012 project has ambitiously attempted to build the ICT education (ICTE) capacity of the next generation of Australian teachers through its focus on pre-service teachers, teacher educators and the new Australian Curriculum. This paper will provide an overview of the project including a description of its genesis in a changing educational and political landscape, its structure and operations, its grounding in contemporary theory, the research opportunities it has engendered and its tangible outcomes.

Unpacking the micro-macro nexus: narratives of suffering and hope among refugees from Burma recently settled in Australia

Narratives of forced migration are open to a variety of interpretations. In mental health, refugee narratives of arduous journeys in the face of systemic macro socio-political forces are often transformed from this context into a medicalized micro context of inner individual worlds. Both the dominant pathogenic lens of trauma studies and the growing salutogenic lens embodied in resilience research, often reflect a western cultural idiom of focusing on the individualized nature of these phenomena. Using qualitative data collected from refugees from Burma now settling in Australia, the article emphasizes the need for a more reflexive and expansive account of both suffering and hope within refugee narratives. It recounts these narratives within a conceptual framework which acknowledges the importance of the connections between the micro individual experience and the macro, socio-political context. This is not only a question of political principle, but also a matter of listening to the voice of those who know most about the relationship between macro forces of human rights violations and their impact on individual, family and community trajectories.

Knowing and teaching the indigenous other : teachers’ engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures

This is the first empirical study of teacher knowledge and classroom practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education. It describes the construction of a survey instrument to measure non-Indigenous Australian teachers’ knowledge of Indigenous culture and place, frequency of everyday intercultural exchanges, and attempts to integrate Indigenous knowledge into classroom practice. Many teachers reported low levels of knowledge of Indigenous cultures, and limited encounters outside of school. While the cohort expressed dissatisfaction with pre-service training, exposure to pre- and in-service courses in Indigenous education correlated with higher levels of cultural knowledge and cultural engagement. Teachers with higher levels of cultural engagement were more likely to attempt to integrate Indigenous knowledges in curriculum and pedagogy.

Becoming professionals : partnerships reshaping preservice teachers’ transition to full-time teaching

While strengthened partnerships between University and Schools have been proposed in recent reviews of teacher education (House of Representative Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training, 2007; Caldwell & Sutton, 2010; Donaldson, 2010), there is a need to understand the benefits and challenges for participants of these partnerships. The Teacher Education Centre of Excellence (TECE) in this study is a preservice teacher preparation partnership between a Queensland University, Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment (DETE) and an Education Queensland school. It was established in response to a mandated reform within the Improving Teacher Quality National Partnership Agreement (Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, 2011). High-achieving Bachelor of Education preservice teachers apply to be part of the 18-month program in the third year of their four-year Education degree. These preservice teachers experience mentoring in partner schools in addition to course work designed and delivered by a DETE appointed Head of Mentoring and a university academic. On completion of the program, graduates will be appointed to South West Queensland rural and remote Education Queensland schools. This paper analyses participant perspectives from the first phase of this partnership in particular identifying the benefits and challenges experienced by the preservice teachers and the leaders of the program from the participating institutions. A sociocultural theoretical perspective (Wenger, 1998) informed the analysis examining how preservice teachers experience a sense of becoming a professional teacher within a specific employment context. Data from interviews with 6 pre-service teachers and 8 program leaders were analysed inductively through coding of interview records. Findings indicate the importance of strong relationships and opportunity for reciprocal learning through ongoing professional conversations as contexts for preservice teachers to develop an identity as an emerging professional. This research has significance for the ongoing development of this partnership as well as informing the principles for the design of future similar partnerships.

Innovative approaches to teaching engineering drawing at tertiary institutions

This paper arises from our concern for the level of teaching of engineering drawing at tertiary institutions in Australia. Little attention is paid to teaching hand drawing and tolerancing. Teaching of engineering drawing is usually limited to computer-aided design (CAD) using AutoCAD or one of the solid-modelling packages. As a result, many engineering graduates have diffi culties in understanding how views are produced in different projection angles, are unable to produce engineering drawings of professional quality, or read engineering drawings, and unable to select fits and limits or surface roughness. In the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology new approaches to teaching engineering drawing have been introduced. In this paper the results of these innovative approaches are examined through surveys and other research methods.

Teaching in Inclusive School Communities

"Teaching in Inclusive School Communities, 1st Edition is the essential resource to provide pre-service teachers with the most contemporary, ethical and useful framework for incorporating diversity and inclusive practices in today’s classroom. Fourteen concise chapters compose a focused picture of the values and beliefs that inform the inclusive education approach, with the most up-to-date connections to curriculum and pedagogy throughout. Complemented by the latest research in the field, this text provides the practical knowledge and skills needed for inclusive classroom teaching in Australia and New Zealand, as well as a thorough analysis of exactly what is required to build respectful relationships in modern school communities."--publisher website

Multimodal approaches to reflective teaching and assessment in higher education

Reflection is not a new concept in the teaching of higher education and is often an important component of many disciplinary courses. Despite this, past research shows that whilst there are examples of rich reflective strategies used in some areas of higher education, most approaches to and conceptualisations of reflective learning and assessment have been perfunctory and inconsistent. In many disciplinary areas reflection is often assessed as a written activity ‘tagged onto’ assessment practices. In creative disciplines however, reflective practice is an integral and cumulative form of learning and is often expressed in ways other than in the written form. This paper will present three case studies of reflective practice in the area of Creative Industries in higher education – Dance, Fashion and Music. It will discuss the ways in which higher education teachers and students use multi-modal approaches to expressing knowledge and reflective practice in context. The paper will argue that unless students are encouraged to participate in deep reflective disciplinary discourse via multi-modes then reflection will remain superficial in the higher education context.

Teaching about trafficking : opportunities and challenges for critical engagement

When I was first invited to teach a women's studies course called Sex Trafficking in 2002, most of my students had never heard of the issue. Internet and literature searches for "trafficking" mostly turned up references to trafficking in drugs and weapons, not people. When I revised the course for a topical capstone in Criminology, Justice, and Policy Studies in 2006, all of my students had heard about human trafficking, and a handful had already studied it in other classes. The availability of books, films, scholarly articles, and advocacy pieces had all increased exponentially since I first became engaged in the field. This bounty provided a wealth of resources for teaching but also presented a greater challenge when it came to deciding which texts to include. It also added to the inevitable pedagogical angst over what to leave out. I came to know about trafficking by accident, when I was hired as a research assistant at The Protection Project (TPP) in 1999. In my time at TPP I authored a literature review on human trafficking. At that time, my comprehensive database of sources contained fewer than one hundred books and articles, a few UN documents, a handful of films, and some websites from nongovernmental organizations. My review of the literature inevitably reflected the ideological chasm between those who saw trafficking as primarily a labor, migration, and rights issue and those who saw it as primarily a sexual exploitation issue. On the policy end, these ideological orientations created bizarre bedfellows of individuals and organizations that otherwise would have been at odds. The ideological divide has not diminished in the intervening years, and it is important to be aware of and to negotiate this in designing a course on trafficking. As a feminist teacher, I was very aware of the divisions among feminists on the subject of trafficking, and was interested in communicating these differences to students who were not well versed in the varieties of feminist thought. I was also mindful of the difficulties my American students had in engaging with some of the course texts and issues the first time around. For some students, moral judgments about prostitutes were as far as they were able to go in engaging with the course. These students could not find a way in to think about the many issues involved in trafficking. How could I reach them? In this article, I share some of my texts and tactics with others who might find themselves in a position to teach about human trafficking. I include my case for why feminist teachers should teach trafficking, an overview of the debate that divides the field, my rationale for organizing the course the way that I did, issues to consider when designing a course on trafficking, and some suggested readings, films, and web resources.