Spatial/surveying programs repositioning within new STEM Faculty at QUT

Many of the undergraduate and postgraduate programs of the former Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering PLUS Faculty of Sciences and Technology are changing as a result of merging these two large organisations, with some disciplines relocating to faculties of Creative Industries and Health respectively. The new STEM precinct under construction has begun rising from the proverbial hole-in-the-ground. Existing Surveying and Spatial Sciences programs, assets and staff are being repositioned with the newly formed School of Earth, Environment and Biological Sciences.2011. Golden graduates morning tea organised by QUT Alumni. Technology upgrades to the Mapping Sciences lab benefits 3-D learning experiences. Second and third-year students are undertaking Work Integrated Learning (WIL) over the summer vacation period. Final year students recently presented capstone project presentations at mini-conference in the Gibson Rooms overlooking a vibrant Southbank and sparkling Brisbane River. Discussion on end of year graduation ceremony held at QPAC.

Four years after graduation : occupational therapists' work destinations and perceptions of preparedness for practice

Objective: The present study sought to identify the work destinations of graduates and ascertain their perceived preparedness for practice from a regional occupational therapy program, which had been specifically developed to support the health requirements of northern Australians by having an emphasis on rural practice. ---------- Design: Self-report questionnaires and semistructured in-depth telephone interviews. ---------- Participants: Graduates (n = 15) from the first cohort of occupational therapists from James Cook University, Queensland. ---------- Main outcome measure: The study enabled comparisons to be made between rural and urban based occupational therapists, while the semistructured interviews provided a deeper understanding of participants' experiences regarding their preparation for practice. ---------- Results: Demographic differences were noted between occupational therapists working in rural and urban settings. Rural therapists were predominantly younger and had worked in slightly more positions than their urban counterparts. The study also offered some insights into the value that therapists placed on the subjects taught during their undergraduate occupational therapy training, and had highlighted the differences in perceptions between therapists with rural experience and those with urban experience regarding the subjects that best prepared them for practice. Generally, rural therapists reported that all subjects included in the curriculum had equipped them well for practice. ---------- Conclusions: Findings suggest the need to undertake further research to determine the actual nature of rural practice, the personal characteristics of rural graduates and the experiences of students while on rural clinical placements.

Ceremony analysis : strengths and weaknesses

We investigate known security flaws in the context of security ceremonies to gain an understanding of the ceremony analysis process. The term security ceremonies is used to describe a system of protocols and humans which interact for a specific purpose. Security ceremonies and ceremony analysis is an area of research in its infancy, and we explore the basic principles involved to better understand the issues involved.We analyse three ceremonies, HTTPS, EMV and Opera Mini, and use the information gained from the experience to establish a list of typical flaws in ceremonies. Finally, we use that list to analyse a protocol proven secure for human use. This leads to a realisation of the strengths and weaknesses of ceremony analysis.

Tea ceremony and Sukiya : negating social hierarchy

There is a widely held view that architecture is very strongly and even primarily determined by the society and culture rather than geographical, technical, economic or cli-matic factors. This is especially evident in societies where rituals, customs and tradition play a significant role in the design of built forms. One such society was that of Feudal Japan under the rule of samurai warriors. The strictly controlled hierarchical society of Feudal Japan, isolated from the rest of the world for over 250 years, was able to develop the art and architecture borrowed from neighboring older cultures of China and Korea into what is now considered uniquely Japanese. One such architecture is the Sukiya style tea houses where the ritual of tea ceremony took place. This ritual was developed by the tea masters who were Zen monks or the merchants who belonged to the lowest class in the hierarchical feudal society. The Sukiya style developed from 14th to 16th century and became an architectural space that negated all the rules imposed on commoners by the samurai rulers. The tea culture had a major influence on Japanese architecture, the concept of space and aesthetics. It extended into the design of Japanese gardens, clothes, presentation of food, and their manners in day to day life. The focus of this paper is the Japanese ritual of tea ceremony, the architecture of the tea house it inspired, the society responsible for its creation and the culture that promoted its popularity and its continuation into the 21st century.

Ceremony and cybrary : Digital libraries and the dialectic of place and space

This article examines social, cultural and technological change in the systems and economies of educational information management. Since the Sumerians first collected, organized and supervised administrative and religious records some six millennia ago, libraries have been key physical depositories and cultural signifiers in the production and mediation of social capital and power through education. To date, the textual, archival and discursive practices perpetuating libraries have remained exempt from inquiry. My aim here is to remedy this hiatus by making the library itself the terrain and object of critical analysis and investigation. The paper argues that in the three dominant communications eras—namely, oral, print and digital cultures—society’s centres of knowledge and learning have resided in the ceremony, the library and the cybrary respectively. In a broad-brush historical grid, each of these key educational institutions—the ceremony in oral culture, the library in print culture and the cybrary in digital culture—are mapped against social, cultural and technological orders pertaining to their era. Following a description of these shifts in society’s collective cultural memory, the paper then examines the question of what the development of global information systems and economies mean for schools and libraries of today, and for teachers and learners as knowledge consumers and producers?

Retention and graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in initial teacher education : a review of the literature

While the need to increase numbers of Indigenous teachers has been highlighted for many years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers are still significantly underrepresented in Australia making up less that 1% of teachers in schools. Nationally, little has changed since the 1980s when Hughes and Wilmot (1992) called for ‘1000 Indigenous teachers by 1990’. This paper reports on an initial literature review of teacher education as related to the preparation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Alongside the scholarly literature, the review to date includes analysis of over twenty policy documents and government reports as well as web-based descriptions of historical and current models of Indigenous teacher education including both mainstream Education programs and cohort-based and community models. While the literature provides examples of successful models of Indigenous teacher education it also illuminates the longstanding and interrelated factors that continue to impact on the success or failure of teacher education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders

Origins of the Anzac Dawn ceremony : spontaneity and nationhood

Three separate claims to originating the dawn service – a core element of the Australian Anzac Day ritual and sense of Australian national identity – circulate persistently in contemporary Australian culture. This article offers a critical comparative analysis of these claims, examining in particular the complex interactions between official and lay narratives as part of regional and state identity politics, conventions establishing validity and worth, and the ways in which these narratives incorporate and enable multiple origins. In the process it becomes clear that multiple narratives of origin are vital to a strong sense of spontaneous national identity.

Improving retention and graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in initial teacher education programs

In 2012, the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE), through the Queensland University of Technology, led a MATSITI project focusing on issues related to the retention, support and graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers in initial Teacher Education programs across Australia. While some of the barriers that impact on the graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers are well, known, this was the first large-scale Australian study to look at the issues nationally and in depth. Thirty-four Teacher Education programs across the country were audited, meetings were held in each state, both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous Faculty were consulted and approximately 70 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pre-service teachers interviewed. This paper reports on the outcomes of that project, including the evidence that while recruitment into Teacher Education has, in some sites, reached parity, retention rates are well-below expected across the nation. The paper focuses both on the quantitative data and, even more significantly, on the voices of the pre-service teachers themselves, offering insights into the ways forward. As a result of this study, Deans and Heads of School of Teacher Education programs across the country have developed Action Plans alongside their university's Indigenous Higher Education Centres to improve support and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers.

Transnationalism and the Karen wrist-tying ceremony: An ethnographic account of Karen settlement practice in Brisbane

When settling, people often use cultural schema from their original homeland to build familiarity in unfamiliar surrounds. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the first author in Brisbane, with the Karen community from Burma, during which participant observation and interview methods were used. We present an ethnographic account of the Brisbane Karen wrist-tying ceremony. The ceremony acts as an insight into the challenges for Karen whilst settling into Australia. It reflects multiple accounts of history and tradition, but simultaneously speaks to emerging, contemporary Karen contexts. This research contributes to richer understandings of settlement: it frames transnational cultural practice as a flexible mode of integration, rather than an exclusionary mode of othering. We propose that the integrative discourse of the ceremony creates familiarity and social connection in local and diasporic spaces. This acts as a counter to the challenges of Karen settlement including the negotiations of local/global identity politics.

The trend toward pre-graduation professional work experience for Australian young planners: Essential experience or essentially exploitation

This paper explores the changing employment expectations that frame the early professional work experiences of young planners in Australia. In particular, it considers the rising popularity of pre-graduation professional work experience as a precursor to formal entry into the workforce as a practising planner. This shift is being driven in part by employer expectations that graduates will already have ‘real world’ and relevant work experience. However, an equally significant driver appears to be a growing desire for early career and graduate planners to find ways to distinguish themselves from their peers in an increasingly tight labour market. Using data from an ongoing research project into the formative work experiences of young people this paper describes the three main types of pre-graduation professional work experience undertaken by young planners. It highlights the potential challenges and benefits of pre-graduation work experience from a legal, social and ethical perspective as well as from the perspective of young planners themselves. The paper concludes by reflecting on the role of the planning profession – employers, peak bodies and planning educators – in managing the tensions between producing ‘work ready’ graduates and safeguarding the employment conditions of early career planning professionals.

Reduced attrition of accelerated nursing students from pharmacology – is it associated with graduation?

In order to reduce the attrition of accelerated nursing students in bioscience/pharmacology, we introduced an innovation to help these students. Although this innovation was associated with reduced attritions from the units in their first year at university, we now show that there was a reduced graduation rate of the accelerated students who survived pharmacology, compared to the traditional students.

Retention and graduation of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in initial teacher education

This paper reports on an Australian national project to address retention, success and graduation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teacher education students. The project, led by the Australian Council of Deans of Education and managed by Queensland University of Technology, forms a sub-set of the More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative (MATSITI) directed by the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research and funded by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. MATSITI will develop Action Plans within participating universities (n=33) to improve the retention/graduation rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers. The paper provides an overview of the teacher education component of the MATSITI project and presents preliminary research from 33 Australian universities.

Creating and enabling opportunities for increased student participation in experience based learning in professional practice

This paper explores models for enabling increased participation in experience based learning in legal professional practice. Legal placements as part of “for-credit” units offer students the opportunity to develop their professional skills in practice, reflect on their learning and job performance and take responsibility for their career development and planning. In short, work integrated learning (WIL) in law supports students in making the transition from university to practice. Despite its importance, WIL has traditionally taken place in practical legal training courses (after graduation) rather than during undergraduate law courses. Undergraduate WIL in Australian law schools has generally been limited to legal clinics which require intensive academic supervision, partnerships with community legal organisations and government funding. This paper will propose two models of WIL for undergraduate law which may overcome many of the challenges to engaging in WIL in law (which are consistent with those identified generally by the WIL Report). The first is a virtual law placement in which students use technology to complete a real world project in a virtual workplace under the guidance of a workplace supervisor. The second enables students to complete placements in private legal firms, government legal offices, or community legal centres under the supervision of a legal practitioner. The units complement each other by a) creating and enabling placement opportunities for students who may not otherwise have been able to participate in work placement by reason of family responsibilities, financial constraints, visa restrictions, distance etc; and b) enabling students to capitalise on existing work experience. This paper will report on the pilot offering of the units in 2008, the evaluation of the models and changes implemented in 2009. It will conclude that this multi-pronged approach can be successful in creating opportunities for, and overcoming barriers to participation in experiential learning in legal professional practice.