Putting literacy in the middle: key learnings from the middle years literacy research project

This article discusses the Middle Years Literacy Research Project and its design. The authors report on key findings and recommendations from the research. In particular the authors look at what is distinctive about teaching adolescent learners in middle years and what does the research show that is distinctive about teaching, the ways that literacy is understood and talked about, its various positioning in the middle years and, connections between effective literacy and effective learning. The article describes a Four Resources model as a framework for literacy teaching and learning for middle year education; literacy leadership, coordination, professional development and collaborative partnerships; and, what school strategies have the most potential to bring about long-term change and improvement in students' literacy and learning outcomes.

Key advances in Thailand biotechnology

This article denotes the advances on biotechnology in Thailand.

The key learning area movement : A force for pedagogical change or a facade for continued conservatism?

Throughout the early 1990s the formal curriculum across all Australian States and Territories was re-organised to accommodate a Key Learning Area (KLA) focus.  The KLA approach to schooling marked a departure from an historical reliance on individualised school subjects as the organisers of disciplinary knowledge.  Indeed a KLA structure has the potential to promote interdisciplinary teaching and learning, a focus on the skills, values, attitudes and knowledge students are to learn and to break away from the sometimes divisive subject subcultures that permiate schools.  In short the potential for a KLA 'movement' of positive benefit to teaching and learning exists.

Over the last decade however, the impact of the 'KLA movement' on teacher practice has become more apparent.  Far from being a force for pedagogical change, some KLAs are merely re-badged versions of traditionalist conceptions of school subject and knowledge.  This paper draws on data from a study of New South Wales (NSW) history and Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE) teachers and provides an evidenced argument about the use and misuse of Key Learning Areas.

Corporate social responsibility, some key theoretical issues and concepts for new ways of doing business

This paper brings together some of the main scholarly sources and thinkers of the last fifty years or so, who have been influential in the corporate social responsibility discussions which have become important, once again, as we begin the 21st century. The author creates a narrative of key social, economic and political concepts and themes, which are rationalised (in ways that others might not) from what is often a very disparate, diverse and not always connected discussion on corporate social responsibility. This is not an objective history, charting the developments chronologically, but is the bringing together of some serious thinking in the field of corporate social responsibility in a way that has considerable resonance for both the development of public policy and business practice in corporate citizenship at the beginning of the 21st century.

Same strategic HRM issues predict performance in both for-profit and non-profit organizations in a key knowledge-intensive industry

This paper examines the adoption of strategic human resource management (HRM) by for-profit and non-profit knowledge-intensive health services (HS) organisations in Australia. Survey data collected from senior executives is used to test the relationships between a strategic HRM model and firm performance. Path analysis found that, irrespective of whether for-profit or non-profit, adopting strategic HRM could increase organisational performance. Strategic HRM could be achieved through the cultivation of an external orientation to customers’ demands and an internal orientation highlighting commitment to employees. Public and non-profit organisations in the HS industry facing or undergoing health sector reform need to be aware of both of these orientations in order to adopt strategic HRM and improve their performance.

Key behavioural and cognitive employee outcomes : a social exchange model

This paper serves to integrate social exchange with organisational justice and performance theory. Social exchange relationships are represented by employees’ perceptions of workplace inequity and evaluated using justice rules. Employees are expected to have in-role and extra-role behavioural responses and cognitive responses to inequity. It is theorised that behavioural and cognitive responses are moderated by the employee’s perceptions of organisational justice. Much employee performance, commitment, engagement, retention and turnover may be explained by this comprehensive model.

Gender differences in organizational justice predicting the key employee outcomes of organizational commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention

All four types of organizational justice – distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational – were included in this study of gender differences. Both male and female respondents perceived the distributive-procedural justice and interpersonal-informational justice pairings similarly and weakly. Females consistently discriminated more clearly across the pairings, however. The effect of the four justices was also found to be gender-dependent. Males’ perception of distributive justice directly predicted their turnover intentions and commitment to the organization, while females’ perception of distributive justice predicted only job satisfaction. Males’ perceptions of procedural and information justice both predicted job satisfaction. Females’ informational justice perceptions predicted job satisfaction and commitment to the organization. The paper contributes to the literature by presenting results from all four justice types and the simultaneous use of the three outcomes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to quit. Overall, the males had a diffuse set of relationships between the justice types and the outcomes, whereas the relationships between the justice types and
the outcomes for females tended more to follow a limited number of pathways. The study was validated with data collected on two separate occasions.

Better journalism or better profits? A key convergence issue in an age of concentrated ownership

Convergence has become an accepted form of journalism at media organisations around the world. These organisations are adopting a range of business models to find ways to pay for these innovations. The main drivers behind this radical change in media production are consumers' changing media habits, cheaper digital technology, and the disruptive forces that these two drivers generate. Technology also makes possible new forms of storytelling, which potentially allows journalists the chance to do better journalism through convergence. This article focuses on the key issue of whether editorial managers and journalists are embracing convergence to save money, or to do better journalism. It begins by defining convergence (while accepting the wide variety of definitions) and describing two main models of implementation. It then considers the factors that lead to easy introduction of convergence followed by the factors that hinder its introduction. Examples are provided of converged media around the world. This article ends with a warning about the dangers for democracy of misapplied convergence in an era of increasing concentration of ownership.