Second language social networks and communication-related acculturative stress: The role of interconnectedness

Although a substantial amount of cross-cultural psychology research has investigated acculturative stress in general, little attention has been devoted specifically to communication-related acculturative stress (CRAS). In line with the view that cross-cultural adaptation and second language (L2) learning are social and interpersonal phenomena, the present study examines the hypothesis that migrants’ L2 social network size and interconnectedness predict CRAS. The main idea underlying this hypothesis is that L2 social networks play an important role in fostering social and cultural aspects of communicative competence. Specifically, higher interconnectedness may reflect greater access to unmodified natural cultural representations and L2 communication practices, thus fostering communicative competence through observational learning. As such, structural aspects of migrants’ L2 social networks may be protective against acculturative stress arising from chronic communication difficulties. Results from a study of first generation migrant students (N = 100) support this idea by showing that both inclusiveness and density of the participants’ L2 network account for unique variance in CRAS but not in general acculturative stress. These results support the idea that research on cross-cultural adaptation would benefit from disentangling the various facets of acculturative stress and that the structure of migrants’ L2 network matters for language related outcomes. Finally, this study contributes to an emerging body of work that attempts to integrate cultural/cross-cultural research on acculturation and research on intercultural communication and second language learning.

Social Influence and Blood Donation: Cultural Differences Between Scotland and Australia

People can be motivated to carryout behaviours which contribute to improvement of quality of life for reasons driven by cultural norms. There is a common perception that people within a cultural cluster, particularly one with a common language such as English, will exhibit similar consumer behaviours. However there is an emerging field of research investigating intra-cultural differences in marketing that challenges this perception. In particular, the role of peers and norms as drivers of altruistic behaviours that benefit society may differ between these countries. Altruism is an important motivation for pro-social behaviours such as blood donation, water conservation and peer counselling for health problems. Understanding the social influences for these behaviours assists marketers to develop programs that meet the needs of donors and potential donors. An ongoing foundation of altruistic consumers is essential for delivering services that improve quality of life for people. Without blood donors, there would be no blood products for cancer sufferers or accident victims, without a sufficient water supply the quality of life for residents would be compromised and without breastfeeding peer counselling, new mothers and their babies would have reduced quality of life. This chapter reports the findings of two online surveys with Scottish and Australian blood donors and demonstrates differences in the way social norms influence donation behaviour, and importantly different impacts of cultural factors in the two populations.

Drink driving among Indigenous Australians in outer regional and remote communities and development of a drink driving program: A summary of findings and recommendations

Drink driving is a leading cause of criminal justice system contact for Indigenous Australians. National and state strategies recommend Indigenous road safety initiatives are warranted. However, there is sparse evidence to inform drink driving-related preventive and treatment measures. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, the study examines the profile of Queensland’s Indigenous drink drivers using court convictions and identifies the contributing psycho-social, cultural and contextual factors through qualitative interviews.

Rebuilding Native Nations Strategies for Governance and Development

This is a review of the book titled 'Rebuilding Native Nations. Strategies Governance and Development', edited by Miriam Jorgensen.

Enhancing research and development: designing collaborative environments for innovation

Work environments have previously been studied to identify the strategies, structures and processes which increase the likelihood of creativity, innovation and collaboration for productive workplaces. A number of perspectives have emerged which identify social and cognitive factors known to contribute to or to restrict innovation and collaboration. Recently more attention has been given to designing physical environments to encourage processes relevant to innovation such as creativity (McCoy & Evans, 2002) knowledge sharing (Hemlin, Allwood & Martin, 2008) and collaboration (Bozeman & Corley, 2004). Some attention has been given specifically to research and development environments (Boutellier et al, 2008) but little integration of this research has occurred. In the context of the construction of new purpose-built premises which will bring together under one roof separate public sector agencies engaged in research and development in agriculture, natural resource systems and the environment, this paper examines the extant literature and develops initial propositions for research relevant to the transition, collaboration and performance of research and development in new organizational environments where traditional boundaries have been redrawn.

Stability of the learning and development survey : findings for mature aged local government and private healthcare organisations.

This article investigates work related learning and development amongst mature aged workers from a lifespan developmental psychology perspective. The current study follows on from research regarding the construction and revision of the Learning and Development Survey (LDS; Tones & Pillay, 2008). Designed to measure adaptive development for work related learning, the revised LDS (R-LDS) encompasses goal selection, engagement and disengagement from individual and organisational perspectives. Previous survey findings from a mixed age sample of local government workers suggest that mature aged workers aged over 45 years are less likely to report engagement in learning and development goals than younger workers, which is partly due to insufficient opportunities at work. In the current paper, exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate responses to the R-LDS amongst two groups of mature aged workers from a local government (LG) and private healthcare (PH) organisation to determine the stability of the R-LDS. Organisational constraints to development accounted for almost a quarter of the variance in R-LDS scores for both samples, while remaining factors emerged in different orders for each data set. Organisational opportunities for development explained about 17% of the variance in R-LDS scores in the LG sample, while the individual goal disengagement factor contributed a comparable proportion of variance to R-LDS scores for the PH sample. Findings from the current study indicate that opportunities for learning and development at work may be age structured and biased towards younger workers. Implications for professional practice are discussed and focus on improving the engagement of mature aged workers.

Transitional employment aspirations for bridging retirement : implications for training and development

Purpose: The aim of this study was to identify the transitional employment aspirations and training and development needs of older and younger workers at risk of early retirement due to limited education and/or employment in blue collar occupations. Design/ Methodology/ Approach: A computer based methodology was used to evaluate the demographic effects of gender, education level and occupation group on aspirations pertaining to transitional employment and training and development in a sample of over 1000 Local Government employees. Findings: Older blue collar, secondary school educated and younger workers were less interested in transitional employment than older workers with higher levels of education or from white collar backgrounds. The early retirement risk factors of blue collar work and secondary school education had a more limited effect on perceived training and development needs for older workers. However for younger workers, these risk factors provided the impetus to undertake training to move into less physically demanding or more challenging roles as their careers progressed. Practical Implications: Via the identification of education level and occupation types groups’ transitional employment aspirations and perceptions of preparatory training and development within younger and older cohorts, long term strategies to develop and retain staff may be formulated. Originality/ Value: Past studies of transitional employment have rarely included younger workers or older workers at risk of early retirement. Preparatory training and development for transitional employment roles has not been considered in the literature.

How to progress forward in improving safety outcomes in the work-related driving field : a review of work-related driving research and development of an intervention framework [Extended abstract]

Road crashes are now the most common cause of work-related injury, death and absence in a number of countries. Given the impact of workrelated driving crashes on social and economic aspects of business and the community, workrelated road safety and risk management has received increasing attention in recent years. However, limited academic research has progressed on improving safety within the work-related driving sector. The aim of this paper is to present a review of work-related driving safety research to date, and provide an intervention framework for the future development and implementation of workrelated driving safety intervention strategies.

Advancing e-learning policy and practice : influences on academics’ adoption, integration and development of multimodal e-learning courses

Tertiary education is increasingly a contested space where advances in Information Communications Technologies and their application to technology-mediated e-learning environments have forced university administrators and educators to dislocate themselves from traditional correspondence modes of student engagement. Compounding this paradigmatic shift within the traditional sphere of distance education pedagogy are multiple and conflicting pressures on academics to develop flexible, engaging, cost-effective and sustainable interactive learning resources that incorporate both multimedia and hypermedia. This chapter reports on a study that examined factors that influence educators’ decision to adopt and integrate educational technology and convert traditional print-based distance education materials into interactive multimodal e-learning formats. Although the broader study was conducted in a single Australian university and investigated pedagogical, institutional and individual factors, this chapter restricts its focus to solely the pedagogical motivations and concerns of educators. It is argued that findings from the study have significance at the institutional level, particularly in terms of developing an underlying pedagogical rationale that can permeate the e-learning culture throughout the university, while at the same time, providing a roadmap for educators who are yet to fully engage with the e-learning format.

Social procurement and its implications for social enterprise : a literature review [Working Paper No. CPNS48]

This paper reviews the available academic and policy literature to identify the possibilities and limitations of social procurement, and the factors that enable its implementation. In doing so, it aims to contribute to an evidence-based approach to social enterprise development in Australia, and to provide practical information of use to both policy makers and social enterprises considering social procurement arrangements. Based on the available evidence, the dominant focus of this review is on social procurement by governments.

Personalized recommender systems integrating social tags and item taxonomy

The social tags in web 2.0 are becoming another important information source to profile users' interests and preferences to make personalized recommendations. To solve the problem of low information sharing caused by the free-style vocabulary of tags and the long tails of the distribution of tags and items, this paper proposes an approach to integrate the social tags given by users and the item taxonomy with standard vocabulary and hierarchical structure provided by experts to make personalized recommendations. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can effectively improve the information sharing and recommendation accuracy.

Social inequalities and parent involvement in children’s education in the early years of school

Strengthening cooperation between schools and parents is critical to improving learning outcomes for children. The chapter focuses on parental engagement in their children’s education in the early years of school. It considers issues of social and cultural capital as important to whether, or not, parents are involved in their children’s schooling. Analyses of data from a national representative sample of children and their families who participate in Growing up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children are presented. Results indicated that higher family socio-economic position was associated with higher levels of parental involvement and higher expectations about children’s future level of education.

Internationalising the curriculum : attending to cultural diversity in teaching and learning across three faculties at QUT

This was a two-year project focusing on internationalising the curriculum within the context of the QUT Graduate Capabilities and teaching and learning issues within three Faculties. It was based on the assumption that there is an increased need for social and cultural responsiveness in curriculum that intersects local, national and global contexts and priorities. The Internationalising the Curriculum Project sought to challenge and support staff (academic and general) and students to engage with complex concepts of identity, values, awareness and sensitivity as they relate to internationalising the curriculum. The project took a case study approach to planning, implementation and evaluation in a way that complements and enhances platforms developed and emerging from the Indigenous Perspectives and cultural diversity projects already underway in Education, Creative Industries and QUT, Carseldine.