Professional accounting qualifications of audit committee membership : implications for curriculum and learning

A useful attribute of the audit committee is to have accounting financial experts on that committee of the Board. Defond, Haan and Hu (2005) argue there is a positive market reaction to the appointment of such experts. This study analyses how many qualified accountants there are on the Boards of Australia’s largest companies. The study finds that, while many Boards have at least one qualified financial accountant on their audit committee, the great majority of members are not qualified accountants. The paper considers whether this paucity of professionally qualified accountants on audit committees has any implications for the curriculum development and learning objectives of corporate governance and related topic areas within the disciplines of accounting and auditing in undergraduate and graduate professional accounting programs within the international tertiary education sector?

Onset of word form recognition in English, Welsh, and English-Welsh bilingual infants

Children raised in the home as English or Welsh monolinguals or English–Welsh bilinguals were tested on untrained word form recognition using both behavioral and neurophysiological procedures. Behavioral measures confirmed the onset of a familiarity effect at 11 months in English but failed to identify it in monolingual Welsh infants between 9 and 12 months. In the neurophysiological procedure the familiarity effect was detected as early as 10 months in English but did not reach significance in monolingual Welsh. Bilingual children showed word form familiarity effects by 11 months in both languages and also revealed an online time course for word recognition that combined effects found for monolingual English and Welsh. To account for the findings, accentual, grammatical, and sociolinguistic differences between English and Welsh are considered.

Development and implementation of agri-environmental policy: english experience and lessons for Australia

In this article we consider what Australia can learn from English experience with regard to the design, implementation and evaluation of Agri-Environmental Policy (AEP). First, we examine the emergence of the
need for farmers to meet Good Farming Practice standards to receive AEP payments. This concept closely relates to the 'duty of care' idea in Australia. Second, we explain how contracts have been used to implement AEP identifying important issues in design. Finally, we consider the importance of benefit and costs estimates of AEP implementation in determining policy developments. We conclude with a summary of results for AEP design and implementation in Australia.

Data quality issues in practice and theory : a cross-cultural example

Practical considerations and traditions play a substantial role in data collection exercises, often limiting the focus of study to either qualitative or quantitative issues. An industry with a particularly strong quantitative emphasis is the insurance and reinsurance industry, where actuarial decisions are based on detailed and exacting numerical analysis of data that are assumed to be reliable and valid. However, the qualitative investigation of the quality of data in one reinsurance setting reported in this paper shows that where the meanings of the questions asked and of the answers provided are subject to interpretation, the quality of data collected for entry to databases can be poor. While this can be exacerbated in cross-cultural contexts, it is also generally true. Due to the constrained nature of insurance practice, the existence of a range of techniques combining qualitative and quantitative methods is somewhat academic. Therefore, because researchers have the latitude to investigate both qualitative and quantitative factors in the industrial context, a call is made for researchers and industry to work more closely together.

The global corporate curriculum and the young cyberflâneur as global citizen

Contents: Introduction: youth, mobility, and identity / Nadine Dolby and Fazal Rizvi -- New times, new identities -- The global corporate curriculum and the young cyberfleneur as global citizen / Jane Kenway and Elizabeth Bullen -- Shoot the elephant: antagonistic identities, neo-marxist nostalgia, and the remorselessly vanishing past / Cameron McCarthy and Jennifer Logue -- New textual worlds: young people and computer games / Catherine Beavis -- Diasporic youth: rethinking borders and boundaries in the new modernity -- Consuming difference: stylish hybridity, diasporic identity, and the politics of culture / Michael Giardina -- Diasporan moves: African Canadian youth and identity formation / Jennifer Kelly -- Popular culture and recognition: narratives of youth and Latinidad / Angharad Valdivia -- Mobile students in liquid modernity: negotiating the politics of transnational identities / Parlo Singh and Catherine Doherty -- Youth and the global context: transforming us where we live -- The children of liberalization: youth agency and globalization in India / Ritty Lukose -- Youth cultures of consumption in Johannesburg / Sarah Nuttall -- Identities for neoliberal times: constructing enterprising selves in an American suburb / Peter Demerath and Jill Lynch -- Disciplining "Generation M": the paradox of creating a "local" national identity in an era of "global" flows / Aaron Koh -- Marginalization, identity formation, and empowerment: youth's struggles for self and social justice / David Quijada.

Evidence for healthy cities : reflections on practice, method and theory

The European Healthy Cities project can be characterized as a social movement that employs an extremely wide range of political, social and behavioural interventions for the development and sustenance of urban population health. At all of these levels, the movement is inspired by ideological, theoretical and evidence-based perspectives. The result of this stance is a dynamic, complex and diverse landscape of initiatives, plans, programmes and actions. In quantitative terms (the number of WHO designated cities and associated cities and communities through national networks), ‘Healthy Cities’ can be regarded as an extraordinary accomplishment and a credit for both WHO and cities in the movement. In qualitative terms, however, critics of the movement have maintained that little evidence on its success and effectiveness has been generated. This critique finds its foundations in the mere perceptions of evidence, the politics of science and urban governance, and perspectives on the preferred or professed utilities of evidence-based health notions. The article reviews the nature of evidence and its interface with politics and governance. Applying a conceptual framework combining insights from knowledge utilization theory, theoretical perspectives on (health) policy development, theory-based evaluations and planned intervention approaches, it demonstrates that, although the evidence is overwhelming, there are barriers to the implementation of such evidence that should be further addressed by ‘Healthy Cities’.

Indigenous values informing curriculum and pedagogical praxis

As an Indigenous research study into the cultural quality of Indigenous education this thesis focuses on the proposition that mainstream education marginalises Indigenous learners because of its entrenchment in the Western worldview. The thesis opens with an analysis of the cultural dynamics of Indigenous values, the politics of Indigenous identity, and the hegemonic constraints of West-centric knowledge. This analysis is then drawn upon to critically examine the cultural predisposition of mainstream education. The arguments proffered through this critical examination support the case that Indigenous learners would prosper culturally and educationally by having access to educational programmes centred within an Indigenous cultural framework, thereby addressing the dilemma of lower Indigenous retentions rates. This research study was conducted using a qualitative Indigenous methodology specifically designed by the researcher to reflect the values and cultural priorities of Indigenous Australians. Collective partnership was sought from Indigenous Australians, whom the researcher respected as Indigenous stakeholders in the research. Collegial participation was also sought from non-Indigenous educators with significant experience in teaching Indigenous learners. The research process involved both individual and group sessions of dialogic exchange. With regard to the Indigenous sessions of dialogic exchange, these resulted in the formation of a composite narrative wherein Indigenous testimony was united to create a collective Indigenous voice. Through this research study it was revealed that there is indeed a stark and deep-seated contrast between the value systems of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. This contrast, it was found, is mirrored in the cultural dynamics of education and the polemics of knowledge legitimacy. The research also revealed that Australia’s mainstream education system is intractably an agent for the promulgation of Western cultural values, and as such is culturally disenfranchising to Indigenous peoples. This thesis then concludes with an alternative and culturally apposite education paradigm for Indigenous education premised on Indigenous values informing curriculum and pedagogical praxis. This paradigm specifically supports independent Indigenous education initiatives.

Interrupted cadence : the mismatch of the school music curriculum and the intercultural understandings of pre-service teachers in Victoria, Australia

In Victoria, Australia, the curriculum framework for schools, Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) stipulates multiculturalism as an integral part of the education of students. This encompasses knowledge, skills, values and behaviours (Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority, 2009). In this curriculum framework, teachers must consider ‘intercultural understanding’. It seems logical that, to teach this, preservice teacher education students should be able to embrace this idea. VELS addresses multicultural understanding and the development of thinking skills. The Arts domain specifically provides diverse opportunities for students to “develop aesthetic and critical awareness … of arts works from different social, historical and cultural contexts”. In this research, undertaken between 2005 and 2008, semi-structured interviews were completed with final year pre-service music education students about their intercultural understandings in music education. Interpretative phenomenological analysis of the data showed that, although many feel confident including music of other cultures, having had some experience in their tertiary education, some have pursued other ways to inform themselves about music of other cultures. There appears to be a mismatch between curricular expectations and the limited time and resources available in tertiary education programs for music. The disparity between the school music curriculum framework and the preparation of teachers requires attention and resolution.

Using the Victorian Curriculum and Standards Framework in music education

This research examined the usefulness of the Victorian Curriculum and Standards Framework as the basis for school music education in Victoria. Interviews with experienced primary and secondary teachers sought to determine the extent to which the Curriculum and Standards Framework had impacted upon their classroom teaching practice and contributed to an understanding of learning in music education.

Sleeping with the enemy : creative writing and theory in the academy

This paper will contend that as literary studies elevates creative writing to the highest level, by studying and analysing creative texts; creative writing is similarly enhanced when it is underpinned by theory. This flies in the face of the view that theory has no relevance to the needs of contemporary writers. This paper will examine the way in which theoretical insights and their applications are essential to the creative writing process and propose that without theory, creative writing classes might be at risk of constantly going over the same ground, with no way of being elevated to the next level.
Without the study of literary theory in creative writing, writers are in danger of producing imitations of acclaimed literature. Similarly, without studying creativity in literary studies, writers are at risk of imitating the language of French theorists in translation and failing to harness imaginative ways to create new ideas and theories. This paper encourages new ways of thinking about the union of literary studies and creative writing by focusing on theories and poetry of the sublime. This can assist creative and analytical writers with the anxiety of the blank page and the problem of the ineffable, through an examination of the role of imagination and reason in this process. Creative writing and theory should be studied simultaneously; they invigorate one another and this paper focuses on this important reciprocal relationship.