The IMC concept meets political marketing : building brand relationships

There is a need to take a fresh look at the traditional application of the marketing concept to political marketing. As many businesses have learned, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) practices and principles will help them to build customer relationships and profitable brands. Political marketing must also change with the times and implement IMC practices toward building and nourishing brand relationships with voters and other important stakeholders. The nature of the contribution of this paper is the identification of a gap in the political marketing literature - the stagnation of political marketing at the 4P's marketing concept, and to play a role in the future development of political marketing. In recent developments, it is seen that there is a gradual movement away from this traditional marketing theory. There are a growing number of academics who have approached very closely to the IMC concept or aspects of it, but have not however embraced or have been reluctant to, the prospect of applying it to political marketing. IMC is a practical, logical and ultimately inevitable future for political marketing.

Gender and the Australian parliament : putting the political scientist into the picture

This paper draws on a study of gender and politics in the Australian parliament in order to make a contribution to methodological debates in feminist political science. The paper begins by outlining the different dimensions of feminist political science methodology that have been identified in the literature. According to this literature five key principles can be seen to constitute feminist approaches to political science. These are: a focus on gender, a deconstruction of the public/private divide, giving voice to women, using research as a basis for transformation, and using reflexivity to critique researcher positionality. The next part of the paper focuses more specifically on reflexivity tracing arguments about its definition, usefulness and the criticisms it has attracted from researchers. Following this, I explore how my background as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1987 to 1996 provided an important academic resource in my doctoral study of gender and politics in the national parliament. Through this process I highlight the value of a reflexive approach to research.

Constructing an Internationalisation Readiness Index

In this study we incorporate a pre-internationalisation phase into the traditional Uppsala model of firm internationalisation to address the question: Where does the process begin? We identify through the literature four concepts fundamental to the ability of a firm to begin internationalisation of its operations: stimuli, attitudinal/psychological commitment, resources and lateral rigidity. Through a survey of 274 Australian exporting and non-exporting firms we collect data relating to the four pre-internationalisation concepts. An internationalisation readiness index is constructed and applied to some representative cases to establish its validity as a diagnostic tool.

Twisted Edwards curves revisited

This paper introduces fast algorithms for performing group operations on twisted Edwards curves, pushing the recent speed limits of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) forward in a wide range of applications. Notably, the new addition algorithm uses for suitably selected curve constants. In comparison, the fastest point addition algorithms for (twisted) Edwards curves stated in the literature use . It is also shown that the new addition algorithm can be implemented with four processors dropping the effective cost to . This implies an effective speed increase by the full factor of 4 over the sequential case. Our results allow faster implementation of elliptic curve scalar multiplication. In addition, the new point addition algorithm can be used to provide a natural protection from side channel attacks based on simple power analysis (SPA).

PEPA workshops for allied health professionals : outcomes and directions for the future

The Program of Experience in the Palliative Approach (PEPA) started in 2003 as an initiative of the Australian Government, Department of Health and Ageing. The overall aim of PEPA is to improve the quality, availability and access to palliative care for people who are dying, and their families, by providing high quality learning experiences for primary care providers, including allied health professionals. As part of the program, an allied health workshop program has been developed following an extensive review of the literature and in consultation with experts in the field. The PEPA allied health workshops are offered across all states/territories.

Senior management teams in schools : understanding their dynamics, enhancing their effectiveness

Increasingly it has been argued that senior management teams (SMTs), comprising principals, deputy heads and other personnel, play a critical role in the governance of schools. In recent years, many researchers have drawn upon the tools of micropolitics to illuminate the relationships, dynamics and power plays between and amongst members of SMTs. The paper has two foci. Firstly, it overviews some of the seminal literature in the field of SMTs and micropolitics in an attempt to identify the working practices of and challenges facing members of SMTs. Secondly, it discusses an instrument, the TEAM Development Questionnaire, that emerged from a synthesis of this writing and research. The questionnaire presented here was especially devised to use with members of SMTs to help them (i) identify the dynamics amongst team members; and (ii) identify areas for the team to improve. A set of procedures for implementing the TEAM Development Questionnaire is provided to demonstrate its application to the field.

Power over, with and through : another look at micropolitics

Understanding micropolitics has become an important part of understanding leadership and power relations within schools. In this paper we review some of the pertinent literature and writing in the field, particularly as it relates to school leadership. Drawing on a couple of existing models, we present a new model that highlights three central power-based leadership approaches—‘power with’, ‘power through’ and ‘power over’. We put forward two contrasting vignettes that reveal a variety of micropolitical strategies used by school principals in the governance of their schools. These strategies range from favouritism and control at one end to empowerment and collaboration at the other. The vignettes are analysed in the light of the model and micropolitical literature presented in this article.

Transition into high school : a phenomenological study

Transition is a process of moving from the known to the unknown (Green, 1997) and transition from primary school to high school can be described in this way. In Australia, there is a two tiered system of primary and secondary schooling operating where school students typically undergo at least two transitions. Firstly, when they leave home to attend pre-school/primary school; and secondly, when they leave primary school to enter secondary school. Potentially some students may experience up to four transitions: from home to kindergarten to pre-school to primary school to secondary school while for a smaller number of students who attend P-12 schools, there may be only one transition: from home to preschool.

New insights into rebound effects : theory and empirical evidence

The main objective of the thesis is to seek insights into the theory, and provide empirical evidence of rebound effects. Rebound effects reduce the environmental benefits of environmental policies and household behaviour changes. In particular, win-win demand side measures, in the form of energy efficiency and household consumption pattern changes, are seen as ways for households and businesses to save money and the environment. However, these savings have environmental impacts when spent, which are known as rebound effects. This is an area that has been widely neglected by policy makers. This work extends the rebound effect literature in three important ways, (1) it incorporates the potential for variation of rebound effects with household income level, (2) it enables the isolation of direct and indirect effects for cases of energy efficient technology adoption, and examines the relationship between these two component effects, and (3) it expands the scope of rebound effect analysis to include government taxes and subsidies. MACROBUTTON HTMLDirect Using a case study approach it is found that the rebound effect from household consumption pattern changes targeted at electricity is between 5 and 10%. For consumption pattern changes with reduced vehicle fuel use, the rebound effect is in the order of 20 to 30%. Higher income households in general are found to have a lower total rebound effect; however the indirect effect becomes relatively more significant at higher household income levels. In the win-lose case of domestic photovoltaic electricity generation, it is demonstrated that negative rebound effects can occur, which can potentially amplify the environmental benefits of this action. The rebound effect from a carbon tax, which occurs due to the re-spending of raised revenues, was found to be in the range of 11-32%. Taxes and transfers between households of different income levels also have environmental implications. For example, a more progressive tax structure, with increased low income welfare payments is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions. Subsidies aimed at encouraging environmentally friendly consumption habits are also subject to rebound effects, as they constitute a substitution of government expenditure for household expenditure. For policy makers, these findings point to the need to incorporate rebound effects in the environmental policy evaluation process.’

The enactment of the New Basics Project in a special school

This study investigates the impact of the New Basics Project on teachers at a special school for students with intellectual impairments. The study is aimed at exploring the complex nature of the work of special educators as they enact the New Basics curriculum with a particular focus on the teachers’ opinions about challenges that arose for their curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices. Attention is also paid to how the principal’s leadership supported the enactment of the New Basics in respect to what he did and why he used particular strategies. The nine teachers and their principal were involved in a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews from one of only three special schools in phase one of the New Basics trial in Queensland, Australia. These interviews produced data from the special educators as they were confronted with a new curriculum that challenged their previous teaching practices. The enactment of the New Basics curriculum occurred within the context of a state-sanctioned mandate to provide alternative programs to those offered in mainstream schools, for students with special needs. This thesis explores these teachers' experiences using critical theory as a basis for analyzing their opinions on issues such as the role of the special educator, tensions between old and new curricula, pedagogical and assessment practices, and connections between the at-school learning experiences for intellectually impaired students and the realities of post-school life. The investigation also examines the leadership conduct of the principal in changing times at the school. The findings suggest that the New Basics has played a significant role in providing structures for developing communities of practice amongst teachers; in supporting special educators to focus more on the educational needs of the students (e.g., literacy, numeracy, financial planning) and less on their medical needs (e.g., toileting, feeding, personal hygiene); and supporting school leadership that empowers and listens critically to teachers as essential components of the successful enactment of curriculum reforms like the New Basics.

The importance of school connectedness in adolescent risk taking and injury prevention

Background: Injury is the leading cause of mortality for young people in Australia (AIHW, 2008). Adolescent injury mortality is consistently associated with risk taking behaviour, including transport and interpersonal violence (AIHW, 2003), which often occurs in the context of alcohol and other substance use. A rapid increase in risk taking and injury through early to late adolescence highlights the need for effective school based interventions. Aim: The aim of the current research was to examine the relationship between school connectedness and adolescent risk and injury, in order to inform effective prevention approaches. School connectedness, or students’ feelings of belongingness to school, has been shown to be a critical protective factor in adolescence which can be targeted effectively through teacher interventions. Despite evidence linking low school connectedness with increased health risk behaviour, including substance use and violence, research has not yet addressed possible links between connectedness and a broader range of risk taking behaviours (e.g. transport risks) or injury. Method: This study involved background data collection to inform the development of an intervention. A total of 595 Year 9 students (aged 13-14 years) from 5 Southeast Queensland high schools completed questionnaires that included measures of school connectedness, risk taking behaviour, alcohol and other substance use, and injuries. Results: Increased school connectedness was found to be associated with fewer transport risk behaviours and with decreased alcohol and other substance use for both males and females. Similarly, increased school connectedness was associated with fewer passenger and motorcycle injuries for male participants. Both males and females with increased school connectedness reported fewer alcohol related injuries. Implications: These results indicate that school connectedness appears to have protective effects for early adolescence. These findings may also hold for older adolescents and indicate that it may be an important factor to target in school based risk and injury prevention programs. A school connectedness intervention is currently being designed, focusing on teacher professional development. The intervention will be implemented in conjunction with a curriculum based injury prevention program for Year 9 students and will be evaluated through a large scale cluster randomised trial involving 26 schools.

The research pathway to developing a health promotion intervention for the high school curriculum

Introduction: Schools provide the opportunity to reach a large number of adolescents in a systematic way however there are increasing demands on curriculum providing challenges for health promotion activities. This paper will describe the research processes and strategies used to design an injury prevention program.----- Methods: A multi-stage process of data collection included: (1) Surveys on injury-risk behaviours to identify targets of change (examining behaviour and risk/ protective factors among more than 4000 adolescents); (2) Focus groups (n= 30 high-risk adolescents) to understand and determine risk situations; (3) Hospital emergency outpatients survey to understand injury types/ situations; (4) Workshop (n= 50 teachers/ administrators) to understand the target curriculum and experiences with injury-risk behaviours; (5) Additional focus groups (students and teachers) regarding draft material and processes.----- Results: Summaries of findings from each stage are presented particularly demonstrating the design process. The baseline data identified target risk and protective factors. The following qualitative study provided detail about content and context and with the hospital findings assisted in developing ways to ensure relevance and meaning (e.g. identifying high risk situations and providing insights into language, culture and development). School staff identified links to school processes with final data providing feedback on curriculum fit, feasibility and appropriateness of resources. The data were integrated into a program which demonstrated reduced injury.----- Conclusions: A comprehensive research process is required to develop an informed and effective intervention. The next stage of a cluster randomised control trial is a major task and justifies the intensive and comprehensive development.

Compliance in peritoneal dialysis : a qualitative study of renal nurses

End-stage renal failure is a life-threatening condition, often treated with home-based peritoneal dialysis (PD). PD is a demanding regimen, and the patients who practise it must make numerous lifestyle changes and learn complicated biomedical techniques. In our experience, the renal nurses who provide mostPDeducation frequently express concerns that patient compliance with their teaching is poor. These concerns are mirrored in the renal literature. It has been argued that the perceived failure of health professionals to improve compliance rates with PD regimens is because ‘compliance’ itself has never been adequately conceptualized or defined; thus, it is difficult to operationalize and quantify. This paper examines how a group of Australian renal nurses construct patient compliance with PD therapy. These empirical data illuminate how PD compliance operates in one practice setting; how it is characterized by multiple and often competing energies; and how ultimately it might be pointless to try to tame ‘compliance’ through rigid definitions and measurement, or to rigidly enforce it in PD patients. The energies involved are too fractious and might be better spent, as many of the more experienced nurses in this study argue, in augmenting the energies that do work well together to improve patient outcomes.

Teacher leadership : interns crossing to the domain of higher professional learning with mentors?

Over the last two decades, the notion of teacher leadership has emerged as a key concept in both the teaching and leadership literature. While researchers have not reached consensus regarding a definition, there has been some agreement that teacher leadership can operate at both a formal and informal level in schools and that it includes leadership of an instructional, organisational and professional development nature (York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Teacher leadership is a construct that tends not to be applied to pre-service teachers as interns, but is more often connected with the professional role of mentors who collaborate with them as they make the transition to being a beginning teacher. We argue that teacher leadership should be recognised as a professional and career goal during this formative learning phase and that interns should be expected to overtly demonstrate signs, albeit early ones, of leadership in instruction and other professional areas of development. The aim of this paper is to explore the extent to which teacher education interns at one university in Queensland reported on activities that may be deemed to be ‘teacher leadership.’ The research approach used in this study was an examination of 145 reflective reports written in 2008 by final Bachelor of Education (primary) pre-service teachers. These reports recorded the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their professional learning with a school-based mentor in response to four outcomes of internship that were scaffolded by their mentor or initiated by them. These outcomes formed the bases of our research questions into the professional learning of the interns and included, ‘increased knowledge and capacity to teach within the total world of work as a teacher;’ ‘to work autonomously and interdependently’; to make ‘growth in critical reflectivity’, and the ‘ability to initiate professional development with the mentoring process’. Using the approaches of the constant comparative method of Strauss and Corbin (1998) key categories of experiences emerged. These categories were then identified as belonging to main meta-category labelled as ‘teacher leadership.’ Our research findings revealed that five dimensions of teacher leadership – effective practice in schools; school curriculum work; professional development of colleagues; parent and community involvement; and contributions to the profession – were evident in the written reports by interns. Not surprisingly, the mentor/intern relationship was the main vehicle for enabling the intern to learn about teaching and leadership. The paper concludes with some key implications for developers of preservice education programmes regarding the need for teacher leadership to be part of the discourse of these programmes.

Brand placements in computer and video games : an overview and research questions

Despite the size and growth of the computer and video gaming industry – as well as the increasing use of the medium for the placement of advertising and product placement – researchers have neglected this area. By drawing on existing literature and research in similar and related areas of film product placement, sponsorship and interactivity, the authors present a conceptual overview and identify areas for research.