Metaphors are good mirrors: reflecting on change for teacher educators

In this paper we discuss the use of metaphor as an educative tool for reflection. In the instance of this paper we use metaphor to reflect on the personal images of change that were used by some women teacher educators to make sense of their professional lives and practices over the last decade. This last decade in teacher education has seen significant institutional and cultural change. The paper discusses the strengths and limitations of the use of metaphor. The different interpretations of these metaphors illustrates how these women have used metaphor for explaining facets of change in their professional lives. The challenge of professional renewal is apparent in the metaphors in the ways that complexity, change, journeys, and movement are indicated. Reflection on change in professional practice needs to be continuous. Use of metaphor in the way described in this paper encourages that ongoing process.

Financial accounting reforms in the Australian public sector: an episode in institutional thinking

In recent years in Australia, accounting regulations have been developed that require the adoption of commercial accounting and reporting practices by public-sector organisations, including the recognition of cultural, heritage and scientific collections as assets by non-profit cultural organisations. The regulations inappropriately apply traditional accounting concepts of accountability and performance, notwithstanding that the primary objectives of many of the organisations affected are not financial. This study examines how this was able to occur within the ideas outlined in Douglas’s (1986) How Institutions Think. The study provides evidence to demonstrate that the development; promotion, and defense of the detailed accounting regulations were each constrained by institutional thinking and, as a result, only certain questions were asked and many problems and issues associated with the regulations were not addressed. Thus, it seeks to further our understanding of the nature and limits of change in accounting and the role of institutions in promoting and defending changes to accounting practice.

`Zealotry or nostalgic regret`? women leaders in technical and further education in Australia : agents of change, entrepreneurial educators or corporate citizens?

Education has been restructured in many Western post-industrial nation states during the 1990s. The Australian Technical and Further Education sector (TAFE) has been particularly susceptible to discourses of responsiveness to the market and the new entrepreneuralism. This article explores how women have been repositioned in contradictory and ambiguous ways as the new entrepreneurial middle managers by existing and emergent discourses that circulated in and through TAFE organizations. In turn, it points to how discourses of change management and client responsiveness took on particular readings within specific institutional and professional cultures of the eight Technical and Further Education institutions (TAFEs). At the same time, the restructuring that arose from the corporatization of TAFE, in a highly gendered process, through the twin strategies of marketization and the new managerialism produced new possibilities for individual women educators who moved up into middle management. Yet these individual women were positioned within highly masculinist 'neo-corporate bureaucratic cultures' that co-opted their passion for the capacity of education to make a difference and incorporated these new entrepeneurial work identities.

Adaptation and change in the Australian life insurance industry : an historical perspective

In the wake of the deregulation of the financial sector in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s the life insurance industry has undergone a period of rapid change and reorganisation. Part of this adjustment has been the move towards the integration of financial service provision and the rise of bancassurance. This paper investigates the strategies adopted by Australian life insurers as they moved into the increasingly competitive environment triggered by the lifting of government restrictions on banking practices. It compares the approach of life insurers with that adopted in an earlier period of expansion and change. During the 1950s and 1960s an influx of foreign owned insurance companies into the Australian market precipitated the diversification of domestic life insurers into other insurance markets. The catalyst for change in both cases was the change in information costs brought about by the change in the competitive environment. The experience of the Australian life insurance market would suggest that there is a link between changing information costs and changing organisational structures. However this link is circumscribed by the institutional environment.

Securing institutional legitimacy or organizational effectiveness?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of a major initiative (the National Competition Policy) and pieces of legislation (the Local Government Act and the Local Government Finance Standards) on the internal practices of a large Australian local authority.

Design/methodology/approach: A theoretical framework is developed using new public management (NPM) and neo-institutional theory literatures to explain the findings. A case study approach was applied to collect the data for the research.

Findings: The findings reveal that the National Competition Policy 1993, the Local Government Act 1993 and the Local Government Finance Standards 1994 mainly have brought about significant changes to the organisation's internal management control processes, such as financial reporting, budgeting and performance appraisal. The changes brought in appeared to be coincidentally similar to NPM ideals. Furthermore, senior managers (such as the chief executive and divisional heads) played a major role in implementing new accounting technologies (activity-based costing and the balanced scorecard type performance measurement system).

Research limitations/implications: Future research on public sector financial management from the outset of organisational contexts could considerably further the stock of knowledge in this area, especially given the rapid changes occurring within the public sector throughout the world. Future research may wish to extend this study by assessing how external legitimating functions become internal reality, the perceptions of reality of the organisational members, and how these perceptions change over time.

Practical implications: The findings reported provide evidence to further our understanding of how the introduction of private sector styles of organisational practices into large areas of the public sector brought about significant changes in the demand for “new” financial management practices.

Originality/value: The findings reported on in this paper will open a new path of research that may increase our understanding about the factors that play a role in the design of management and accounting systems in a public sector context. Further, they will help policy makers and public sector managers in their day-to-day decision-making.

Patellar tendons with normal imaging and pain: change in imaging and pain status over volleyball season

Objective: Patellar tendon injury commonly presents as abnormal imaging with pain or abnormal imaging without pain. Normal imaging with pain has also been reported clinically, but little is known about the behavior of these tendons over time. This study investigated the behavior of tendons with normal imaging and pain over a volleyball season.

Design: Prospective study.

Setting: Institutional.

Participants: One hundred and one male and female volleyball players.

Main outcome measurements: At the beginning and end of the season ultrasound determined imaging status and the single leg decline squat test determined pain. The imaging and pain status at follow-up of tendons with normal imaging and pain at baseline was reported and contrasted to the imaging and pain status of the other patellar tendon injuries.

Results: Tendons with normal imaging and pain [relative risk (RR) 15.1], abnormal imaging without pain (RR 14.6), and abnormal imaging with pain (RR 51.5) had a greater risk of having abnormal imaging with pain at the end of the season when compared with normal tendons (P < 0.01). Among tendons with normal imaging and pain at baseline, 27% had abnormal imaging without pain and 21% contained abnormal imaging with pain at the end of the season.

Conclusions: Patellar tendons with normal imaging and pain at the beginning of a volleyball season are equally as likely to have abnormal imaging and pain at the end of the season as tendons with abnormal imaging without pain. Normal imaging with pain may represent a clinically relevant patellar tendon injury.

Structural adjustment and change in the Australian life insurance industry post demutualization

Deregulation of financial markets has been an important platform for government policy in recent times. It has been a catalyst in the expansion of financial sector. The experience of Australian life insurers during this period represents an interesting case study into the impact of regulatory transition. The lifting of restrictions changed the institutional environment within which life insurers operated. In doing so it precipitated changes in strategies and organizational structures of these financial intermediaries. An information cost framework is used to analyse the consequences of deregulation and its implications for the Australian life insurance industry in emerging global financial markets.

Unhealthy landscapes: policy recommendations on land use change and infectious disease emergence

Anthropogenic land use changes drive a range of infectious disease outbreaks and emergence events and modify the transmission of endemic infections. These drivers include agricultural encroachment, deforestation, road construction, dam building, irrigation, wetland modification, mining, the concentration or expansion of urban environments, coastal zone degradation, and other activities. These changes in turn cause a cascade of factors that exacerbate infectious disease emergence, such as forest fragmentation, disease introduction, pollution, poverty, and human migration. The Working Group on Land Use Change and Disease Emergence grew out of a special colloquium that convened international experts in infectious diseases, ecology, and environmental health to assess the current state of knowledge and to develop recommendations for addressing these environmental health challenges. The group established a systems model approach and priority lists of infectious diseases affected by ecologic degradation. Policy-relevant levels of the model include specific health risk factors, landscape or habitat change, and institutional (economic and behavioral) levels. The group recommended creating Centers of Excellence in Ecology and Health Research and Training, based at regional universities and/or research institutes with close links to the surrounding communities. The centers' objectives would be 3-fold: a) to provide information to local communities about the links between environmental change and public health ; b) to facilitate fully interdisciplinary research from a variety of natural, social, and health sciences and train professionals who can conduct interdisciplinary research ; and c) to engage in science-based communication and assessment for policy making toward sustainable health and ecosystems.

Pedagogy and institutional values : the social capital that underpins socially constructive pedagogy and the common good

The analysis of Syed Hussein Alatas, provides us with a basic framework from which to engage the way creativity and change can be articulated in education without slipping into a neo-colonial mindset. The core binary that Alatas presents us is between the ‘captive’ mind and the ‘creative’ mind. Contemporary Malaysian educational literature recognises that the demands of the knowledge economy and globalization necessitate engaging with socially constructivist pedagogy as a way of addressing the limitations and narrowness of what are referred to as traditional authoritarian ‘top down’ teaching methods. However this retheorization of pedagogical practice needs to be approached in a fashion that recognises and respects local values and culture. The social values and capital that inform pedagogy both in its formal level as officially sanctioned techniques but also in its informal level as the implicit practices that characterise human interaction on campus require a much closer look at the relationship between pedagogy, social structure and social values. The clear yet very deep insight of Syed Hussein Alatas, on the importance of the creative mind as an alternative to captivity provides us with a Malaysian theorization that is both local but also global and relevant to how we understand reform and education in the higher education sector.

Reforming Australian public sector accounting : an episode of institutional thinking

In recent years in Australia, accounting reforms have been developed which have resulted in the application of commercial systems of accounting to diverse public sector organisations. The reforms, which include the requirement to recognise infrastructure and heritage resources as assets in financial reports, endorse financial notions of accountability and performance that have been traditionally applied within private sector, profit-seeking organisations. Such notions are applied to a range of public sector organisations for the first time, even though the primary missions or objectives of many of these organisations are social, rather than financial in orientation. This critical, interpretative case study, set within the context of not-for-profit public museums, seeks to enhance an understanding of public sector accounting change based on these unique social organisations. The study examines three aspects of the reforms, namely, their development, their promotion and their defence. This examination is undertaken using the ideas contained in Mary Douglas’ (1986) How Institutions Think as the key theoretical construct. The supplementary perspectives of problematisation and epistemic communities are used to assist in applying the primary theoretical construct by explaining how, and by whom, these reforms were advocated and implemented in this specific instance. The study shows how the interpretation and application of the statements comprising the conceptual framework have shaped the development, promotion and defence of detailed standards developed for specific public sector organisations. In doing so, the study addresses two key research questions: (1) How were financial notions of accountability and performance of Australian public sector organisations constructed during the period 1976-2001 and articulated in the CF, once its development began, within this reform period? (2) How were these notions and other concepts of financial reporting outlined in the CF interpreted and applied in the (i) development; (ii) promotion; and (iii) defence of detailed accounting standards for not-for-profit public museums in Australia during the period under investigation? The study demonstrates that the concepts of financial reporting outlined in the conceptual framework were used by a relatively small group of technical experts located in influential positions in accounting regulation and in other fields to justify the application of accrual accounting within diverse public sector organisations. During the period examined, only certain questions were posed and certain issues considered and many problems associated with the implementation of the reforms were not considered. Accordingly, a key finding of the study is that each aspect of the reform period was guided and constrained by institutional thinking. In addition, the study shows how the framework's content can be used to permit equally well-argued, but conflicting, accounting policies to be adopted and defended for the same items, indicating the framework to be of only limited value as a technical tool. This leads to another key finding of the study, namely, that the framework is best understood as a political tool, serving a crucial role in enabling accrual accounting reforms to be developed, promoted and defended within the public sector. Thus, the study seeks to offer an enhanced understanding of the nature and determinants of accounting change, and accordingly, it broadens an understanding of the use of the conceptual framework, as an institution, in developing, promoting and defending changes to accounting practice.

Theorizing change in the educational 'field' : re-readings of 'student participation' projects

There is a burgeoning literature on educational change – how to make it and how to understand its failures in order that the causes can be remedied next time. Much of this literature implies that when free and autonomous policy agents know what they are doing, they can shift institutional structures and habituated ways of doing and being. In this article we mobilize Bourdieu, who rejected this binary of structure and agency, in favour of the notion of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘capitals’, to theorize one case of change. We describe the shifting policy-scape in Australia in the latter part of the twentieth century which created some opportunities for students to act as educational leaders and participate in making decisions about their learning and schooling. We then develop a specific and situated theorization of change in a contested and hierarchical educational ‘field’. We argue that the continued press from the political field and the wider field of power to increase levels of mass schooling produced a ‘principal opposition’ in the schooling field between democratization and hierarchization. This opposition, we propose, is now in policies, institutional changes and
the varying actions of educators, making the field not only contested but also unstable: this produces further spaces and opportunities for both hierarchic and democratic changes.

Organisational change and the care of the self : stress management as ethical self-problematisation

In diverse arenas there is much discussion about the dangerousness of contemporary lifestyles, including the stressful nature of work. These stresses associated with contemporary lifestyles and work are dangerous in so far as they are conceived as placing at-risk the emotional, physical and psychic health and wellbeing of large populations. In this paper I engage with debates about the stressful nature of teachers’ work, and the ways in which teacher health and wellbeing is constructed as being central to the task of delivering more effective schools. I am not so much concerned with the nature of teacher stress as an indication of individual physical, emotional or psychic health and wellbeing. Rather I am more concerned with understanding how it is that at this particular historical juncture the self can be so widely conceived in terms of stress. Moreover, what processes make it possible at this moment to link the success or otherwise of a massive institutional process of state regulated schooling to the health and wellbeing of teachers and the management of this health and wellbeing by school managers?

Developing leaders of change in the teaching of large university chemistry classes

Final report of the the Active Learning in University Science (ALIUS) project.

This project aims to establish a new direction in first year chemistry teaching – away from didactic teaching methods in large lecture style teaching to more active, student centred learning experiences. Initially six universities have been involved in practice-based innovation: Charles Sturt University (NSW), The University of Sydney (NSW), Curtin University of Technology (WA), The University of Adelaide (SA), Deakin University (Vic), University of Tasmania (Tas).

Three domains have been identified as the architecture upon which sustainable L&T innovation will be built. These domains include Learning and Teaching innovation in project leaders’ and colleagues’ classrooms, development of project leaders as Science Learning Leaders, and creation of a Science Learning Hub to serve as a locus and catalyst for the development of a science teaching community of practice.

Progress against specified outcomes and deliverables

Learning and Teaching Innovation

The purpose of this domain is to improve student learning, engagement, retention and performance in large chemistry classes through increased use of student-centred teaching practice.
• The Project is named: ALIUS (Active Learning in University Science) - Leading Change in Australian Science Teaching
• All six ALIUS universities have now implemented Teaching Innovation into ALIUS team member classrooms
• Chemistry colleagues at three ALIUS universities have now implemented Teaching Innovation into their classrooms
• The ALIUS member in physics has implemented Teaching Innovations into his classrooms
• Chemistry colleagues at three ALIUS institutions have tried some Teaching Innovations in their classrooms
• Non-chemistry colleagues at four ALIUS institutions have tried, or expressed an interest in trying, Teaching Innovations in their classrooms
• The POGIL method has proved to be a useful model for Teaching Innovation in the classroom
• Many classroom resources have been developed and used at several ALIUS institutions; some of these have been submitted to the ALIUS database for public access. The remainder will continue to submitted
• Two seminars about Teaching Innovation have been developed, critiqued, revised, and presented at five ALIUS universities and three non-ALIUS universities
• Particular issues associated with implementing Teaching Innovations in Australian classrooms have been identified and possible solutions developed
• ALIUS members have worked with Learning and Teaching Centres at their universities to share methods.

Developing Science Learning Leaders

The purpose of this domain is to develop leadership capacity in the project leaders to equip them with skills to lead change first at their institutions, followed by developing leaders and leading change at other local institutions
• ALIUS members participated in Leadership Professional Development sessions with Craig McInnis and Colin Mason; both these sessions were found to be valuable and provide context and direction for the members and the ALIUS team
• The passion of an ‘early adopter’ was found to be a significant element in each node of the distributed framework
• Members developed an awareness of the necessity to build both the ‘sense of urgency’ and the ‘guiding coalition’ at each node
• ALIUS found the success of the distributed framework is strongly influenced by the relational aspects of the team.

Create a Science Learning Hub

The online Hub serves as a local and national clearinghouse for development of institutional Learning Leaders and dissemination of L&T innovation.
• The ALIUS website is now active and being populated with resources
• The sharing resource database structure is finalised and being populated with contributed materials.

Lessons Learnt

In order to bring about change in teaching practice it is necessary to:
• demonstrate a convincing benefit to student learning
• show that beyond an initial input of effort classroom innovations will not take more time than what is now done
• maintain a prominent exposure among colleagues - repeatedly give seminars, workshops, and everyday conversations; talk about teaching innovation; talk about easy tools to use; invite people to your classroom; engage colleagues in regular peer review of classroom practice
• have support from people already present in leadership roles to lead change in teaching practice
• have a project leader, someone for whom the project is paramount and will push it forward
• find a project manager, even with money budgeted
• meet face-to-face.

Dissemination
• Seminars presented 19 times including over 400 individuals and more than 24 Australian universities
• Workshops presented 25 times, over 80 participants at 11 Australian and two New Zealand Universities
• Two articles published in Chemistry in Australia, the Australian Chemistry Industry Journal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute
• One refereed paper published in the Journal of Learning Design.

Policy change and industry associability: the Australian mining sector

In this paper we use evidence from the recent trajectories of mining industry associations in the Australian federation to argue for the significance of institutional explanations for the formation and maintenance of interest groups. We argue that the recent lack of consultation by the Commonwealth government with the Minerals Council of Australia over resources rent taxation proposals reflected a weakness that resulted from the shifting basis of associability stemming from institutional changes.