Strengthening the role of the adult education sector in training workers for the digital content industries in Australia and Singapore

In 2009, QUT’s Office of Research and the Institute for Adult Learning Singapore funded a six-month pilot project that represented the first stage of a larger international comparative study. The study is the first of its kind to investigate to what extent and how digital content workers’ learning needs are being met by adult education and training in Australia and Singapore. The pilot project involved consolidating key theoretical literature, studies, policies, programs and statistical data relevant to the digital content industries in Australia and Singapore. This had not been done before, and represented new knowledge generation. Digital content workers include professionals within and beyond the creative industries as follows: Visual effects and animation (including virtual reality and 3D products); Interactive multimedia (e.g. websites, CD-ROMs) and software development; Computer and online games; and Digital film & TV production and film & TV post-production. In the last decade, the digital content industries have been recognised as an industry sector of strong and increasing significance. The project compared Australia and Singapore on aspects of the digital content industries’ labour market, skill requirements, human capital challenges, the role of adult education in building a workforce for the digital content industries, and innovation policies. The consolidated report generated from the project formed the basis of the proposal for an ARC Linkage Project application submitted in the May 2010 round.

Global civil society and adult education for social change : a postcolonial perspective

Adult education plays an important role in global economic development and features prominently in debates about changing requirements of post-industrial knowledge societies. This dominant technical-instrumental understanding of adult education in public discourse masks the transformative function of certain types of adult education - that is, the possibilities of adult education to improve social justice issues such as workers’ rights, human rights, civic participation in governance and socially just development. Given the increasing social stratification between and within the North and South in the global era, the potential of adult education to effect social change has been rediscovered by organisations within global civil society, namely international non-governmental organisations (INGOs). The broad objective of this research was to carry out an in-depth qualitative case study of a human rights advocacy program provided by a Northern INGO predominantly operating within the global South. The study analyses how participants see this program in terms of its potential to contribute to progressive social change in their home communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The following questions guided the study: 1. To what extent does this adult education program challenge existing systems of domination and marginalisation? 2. How did completion of the program affect participants’ views of their abilities to facilitate social action within their communities? Data sources for this research were interviews with 19 participants and staff and questionnaires from 28 participants of the program from a variety of countries in the Asia-pacific region. The gap in the literature that this study addressed is that existing empirical research sidelines the analysis of the globalisation, adult education, and social change nexus from a perspective that takes the marginalised other seriously, tending instead to mirror the material subjugation of the South in discursive practices. Social change is highly context-specific and strategies to advance it depend on the way in which people understand their reality and are affected by adverse social conditions. The present study employed a postcolonial framework that provided a holistic approach to analysing adult education for social change inclusive of material, political, and social conditions and the interplay between these from the local to the global level. The program convincingly exemplified an example of adult education for counter-hegemonic resistance against the dominant neoliberal discourse. It achieved this by enabling participants, based on Freirian pedagogical principles, to locate the problem of social change and frame their strategies to address it within mutually constitutive local and global developments and the discourses that describe them. It provided the underpinning knowledge and skills for effective advocacy and created opportunities to build networks between various stakeholders. At minimum, most advocates accord their participation in the program a supporting role in enhancing their ability to examine causes for social injustices and ways to address these. Some advocates even regarded their program participation as fundamental in understanding these issues. Almost all participants reported an increased skill-set that enabled them to become more effective advocates.

Medical education and law: Withholding/withdrawing treatment from adults without capacity

BACKGROUND Law is increasingly involved in clinical practice, particularly at the end of life, but undergraduate and postgraduate education in this area remains unsystematic. We hypothesised that attitudes to and knowledge of the law governing withholding/withdrawing treatment from adults without capacity (the WWLST law) would vary and demonstrate deficiencies among medical specialists. AIMS We investigated perspectives, knowledge and training of medical specialists in the three largest (populations and medical workforces) Australian states, concerning the WWLST law. METHODS Following expert legal review, specialist focus groups, pre-testing and piloting in each state, seven specialties involved with end-of-life care were surveyed, with a variety of statistical analyses applied to the responses. RESULTS Respondents supported the need to know and follow the law. There were mixed views about its helpfulness in medical decision-making. Over half the respondents conceded poor knowledge of the law; this was mirrored by critical gaps in knowledge that varied by specialty. There were relatively low but increasing rates of education from the undergraduate to continuing professional development (CPD) stages. Mean knowledge score did not vary significantly according to undergraduate or immediate postgraduate training, but CPD training, particularly if recent, resulted in greater knowledge. Case-based workshops were the preferred CPD instruction method. CONCLUSIONS Teaching of current and evolving law should be strengthened across all stages of medical education. This should improve understanding of the role of law, ameliorate ambivalence towards the law, and contribute to more informed deliberation about end-of-life issues with patients and families.

Successful outcomes in vocational education and training courses : how pedagogy and expectations influence achievement

This paper reports on a four year Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled Skilling Indigenous Queensland, conducted in regional areas of Queensland, Australia from 2009 to 2013. The project sought to investigate vocational education, training (VET) and teaching, Indigenous learners’ needs, employer cultural and expectations and community culture and expectations to identify best practice in numeracy teaching for Indigenous VET learners. Specifically it focused on ways to enhance the teaching and learning of courses and the associated mathematics in such courses to benefit learners and increase their future opportunities of employment. To date thirty-nine teachers/trainers/teacher aides and two hundred and thirty-one students consented to participate in the project. Nine VET courses were nominated to be the focus on the study. This paper focuses on questionnaire and interview responses from four trainers, two teacher aides and six students. In recent years a considerable amount of funding has been allocated to increasing Indigenous Peoples’ participation in education and employment. This increased funding is predicated on the assumption that it will make a difference and contribute to closing the education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (Council of Australia Governments, 2009). The central tenet is that access to education for Indigenous People will create substantial social and economic benefits for regional and remote Indigenous People. The project’s aim is to address some of the issues associated with the gap. To achieve the aims, the project adopted a mixed methods design aimed at benefitting research participants and included: participatory collaborative action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) and, community research (Smith, 1999). Participatory collaborative action research refers to a is a “collective, self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social and educational practices” (Kemmis et al., 1988, p. 5). Community research is described as an approach that “conveys a much more intimate, human and self-defined space” (p. 127). Community research relies on and validates the community’s own definitions. As the project is informed by the social at a community level, it is described as “community action research or emancipatory research” (Smith, 1999, p. 127). It seeks to demonstrate benefit to the community, making positive differences in the lives of Indigenous People and communities. The data collection techniques included survey questionnaires, video recording of teaching and learning processes, teacher reflective video analysis of teaching, observations, semi-structured interviews and student numeracy testing. As a result of these processes, the findings indicate that VET course teachers work hard to adopt contextualising strategies to their teaching, however this process is not always straight forward because of the perceptions of how mathematics has been taught and learned historically. Further teachers, trainers and students have high expectations of one another with the view to successful outcomes from the courses.

Grenada, Education and Revolution, 1979-83

Grenada’s New Jewel Movement, led by Maurice Bishop, was the first indigenous political grouping in the history of the English-speaking Caribbean to overthrow an existing government by armed force. Yet most of the four and a half years of the Revolution (1979-83) were characterized by considerable popular support for the new People’s Revolutionary Government before it came to it’s tragic, unexpected and shocking end in October 1983. Social, economic and political change seems possible in the 1970s and ‘80s. People in newly decolonizing countries were encouraged by the beginnings of the Non-Aligned Movement of Third World nations demanding new international economic order that would win them some economic justice after the ravages of colonialism. People also saw that some radical regimes, such as that led by Michael Manley in Jamaica and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, were articulating and implementing basic rights that held the promise of countering the social and political oppression that they had endured throughout the centuries of colonial history. A majority of Grenadians committed themselves to fighting by the side of the People’s Revolutionary Government for such new goals. This chapter will analyse how the Grenada Revolution reconceptualised the education, planned new goals, and implemented bold new educational policies. It will discuss the extent to which the government and people were able to reshape education as a tool for national reconstruction and the raising of national consciousness.

Living with the Legacy of Conquest and Culture : Social Justice Leadership in Education and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia and America

Indigenous peoples have survived the most inhumane acts and violations against them. Despite acts of genocide, Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans have survived. The impact of the past 500 years cannot be separated from understandings of education for Native Americans in the same way that the impact of the past 220 years cannot be separated from the understandings of Australian Aboriginal people’s experiences of education. This chapter is about comparisons in Aboriginal and Native American communities and their collision with the dominant, white European settlers who came to Australia and America. Chomsky (Intervention in Vietnam and Central America: parallels and differences. In: Peck J (ed) The Chomsky Reader. Pantheon Books, New York, p 315, 1987) once remarked that if one took two historical events and compared them for similarities and differences, you would find both. The real test was whether on the similarities they were significant. The position of the coauthors of this chapter is in the affirmative and we take this occasion to lay them out for analysis and review. The chapter begins with a discussion of the historical legacy of oppression and colonization impacting upon Indigenous peoples in Australia and in the United States, followed by a discussion of the plight of Indigenous children in a specific State in America. Through the lens of social justice, we examine those issues and attitudes that continue to subjugate these same peoples in the economic and educational systems of both nations. The final part of the chapter identifies some implications for school leadership.

Residential real estate education and globalisation in Australian real estate markets and practices

The purpose of this scoping paper is to offer an overview of the literature to determine the development to date in the area of residential real estate agency academic and career education in respect to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) transactions and implications in Australia. This paper will review studies on the issue of foreign real estate ownership and FDI in Australian real estate markets to develop an understanding of the current state of knowledge on residential real estate agency practice, career education and real estate licensing requirements in Australia. The distinction between the real estate profession education, compared to other professions such as accounting, legal and finance is based on the intensity of the professional career training prior or post formal academic training. Real estate education could be carried out with relatively higher standards in terms of licensing requirement, career and academic education. As FDI in the Australian real estate market is a complex globalisation and economic phenomenon, a simple content of residential real estate training and education may not promote proper management or capacity in dealing with relevant foreign residential property market transaction. The preliminary summarising from the literature of residential real estate agency education, with its current relevant or emerging licensing requirement are focused on its role and effectiveness and impact in residential real estate market. Particular focus will be directed to the FDI relevant residential real estate agency transactions and practices, which have been strongly influenced by the current residential real estate market and agency practices. Taken together, there are many opportunities for future research to extend our understanding and improving the residential real estate agency education and training of Foreign Direct Investment in the Australian residential real estate sector.

Mandate for remote sensing education and the remote sensing core curriculum

Consensus was developed by the remote sensing community during the 1980s and early 1990s regarding the need for an organized approach to teaching remote sensing fundamentals for collegiate institutions. Growth of the remote sensing industry might be seriously hampered without concerted efforts to bolster the capacity to teach state-of-the-practice remote sensing theory and practice to the next generation of professionals. A concerted effort of educators, researchers, government, and industry began in 1992 to meet these demands leading to the creation of the Remote Sensing Core Curriculum. The RSCC is currently sustained by cooperative efforts of the ASPRS, ICRSE, NASA, NCGIA, and others in the remote sensing community. Growth of the RSCC into the K-12 community resulted from its Internet teaching foundation that enables comprehensive and response reference links to the whole of the education community.

Successful outcomes in vocational education and training courses and mathematics: how pedagogy and expectations influence achievement

This paper reports on a four year Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled Skilling Indigenous Queensland, conducted in regional areas of Queensland, Australia from 2009 to 2013. The project sought to investigate Vocational Education and Training (VET) and teaching, Indigenous learners’ needs, employer culture and expectations and community culture and expectations to identify best practice in numeracy teaching for Indigenous VET learners. Specifically it focused on ways to enhance the teaching and learning of courses and the associated mathematics in such courses to benefit learners and increase their future opportunities of employment. To date thirty - nine teachers/trainers/teacher aides and two hundred and thirty - one students consented to participate in the project. Nine VET courses offered in schools and Technical and Further Education Institutes (TAFE) were nominated to be the focus on the study. This paper focuses on student questionnaire responses and interview responses from teachers/trainers one high school principal and five students as a result of these processes, the findings indicated that VET course teachers work hard to adopt contextualising strategies to their teaching; however this process is not always straight forward because of the perceptions of how mathematics has been taught and learned by trainers and teachers. Further teachers, trainers and students have high expectations of one another with the view to successful outcomes from the courses.

Everything you do : young adult fiction and surveillance in an age of security

Espionage, surveillance and clandestine operations by secret agencies and governments were something of an East–West obsession in the second half of the twentieth century, a fact reflected in literature and film. In the twenty-first century, concerns of the Cold War and the threat of Communism have been rearticulated in the wake of 9/11. Under the rubric of ‘terror’ attacks, the discourses of security and surveillance are now framed within an increasingly global context. As this article illustrates, surveillance fiction written for young people engages with the cultural and political tropes that reflect a new social order that is different from the Cold War era, with its emphasis on spies, counter espionage, brainwashing and psychological warfare. While these tropes are still evident in much recent literature, advances in technology have transformed the means of tracking, profiling and accumulating data on individuals’ daily activities. Little Brother, The Hunger Games and Article 5 reflect the complex relationship between the real and the imaginary in the world of surveillance and, as this paper discusses, raise moral and ethical issues that are important questions for young people in our age of security.

Assessment of motivation to control alcohol use: The motivational thought frequency and state motivation scales for alcohol control

Introduction The Elaborated Intrusion Theory of Desire holds that desires for functional and dysfunctional goals share a common form. Both are embodied cognitive events, characterised by affective intensity and frequency. Accordingly, we developed scales to measure motivational cognitions for functional goals (Motivational Thought Frequency, MTF; State Motivation, SM), based on the existing Craving Experience Questionnaire (CEQ). When applied to increasing exercise, MTF and SM showed the same three-factor structure as the CEQ (Intensity, Imagery, Availability). The current study tested the internal structure and concurrent validity of the MTF and SM Scales when applied to control of alcohol consumption (MTF-A; SM-A). Methods Participants (N = 417) were adult tertiary students, staff or community members who had recently engaged in high-risk drinking or were currently trying to control alcohol consumption. They completed an online survey comprising the MTF-A, SM-A, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), Readiness to Change Questionnaire (RCQ) and demographics. Results Confirmatory Factor Analysis gave acceptable fit for the MTF-A, but required the loss of one SM-A item, and was improved by intercorrelations of error terms. Higher scores were associated with more severe problems on the AUDIT and with higher Contemplation and Action scores on the RCQ. Conclusions The MTF-A and SM-A show potential as measures of motivation to control drinking. Future research will examine their predictive validity and sensitivity to change. The scales' application to both increasing functional and decreasing dysfunctional behaviours is consistent with EI Theory's contention that both goal types operate in similar ways.