Facilitating and integrating learning within sport studies cooperative education : exploring the pedagogies employed by students, academics and workplace supervisors

Using an interpretative case study methodology, the pedagogical approaches used to facilitate and integrate student learning in cooperative education programmes in sport studies were investigated. This research drew from two New Zealand university cohorts and involved six focus group interviews. Findings suggested there were limited direct explicit attempts to integrate on- and off-campus learning. Integration was implicitly or indirectly fostered, principally by reflection through assessments (e.g., journals, reports), and primarily consisted of reflection-on-action (Schön, 1991) after the learning activities. Significantly, the integration of learning also consisted of reflection on personal growth, rather than critical reflection on theory or organisational practice.

Barriers to kidney transplants in Indonesia : a literature review

Background: People living with chronic kidney disease will require renal dialysis or a kidney transplant to maintain life. Although Indonesia has a developing healthcare industry, Indonesia's kidney transplant rates are lower than comparable nations.

Purpose: To explore the healthcare literature to identify barriers to kidney transplants in particular in relation to Indonesia.

Methods: Healthcare databases were searched (CINAHL, Medline, EBSCOhostEJS, Blackwell Synergy, Web of Science, PubMed, Google Scholar and Proquest 5000) using the search terms: transplant, kidney disease, renal, dialysis, haemodialysis, Indonesia and nursing. The search was limited to English and Indonesian language data sources from 1997 to 2007. Reference lists of salient academic articles were hand searched.

Results: The results of our search identified six articles that met our criteria. Costs are the major barrier to kidney transplant in Indonesia, followed by cultural beliefs, perception of the law, lack of information and lack of infrastructure. In addition, kidney disease prevention strategies are required.

Conclusions: There are many complex socio-economic, geographical, legal, cultural and religious factors that contribute to low kidney transplant rates in Indonesia. Although an increase in transplantation rates will require strategies from various agencies, healthcare professionals, including nurses, can play a role in overcoming some barriers. Community education programmes, improving their own education levels and by increasing empowerment in nursing we may contribute to improved kidney transplant rates in Indonesia.

Demystifying the supply of capital and labour in a nation’s economic chain

Public capital has been considered to be the wheels of economic activity in a nation or region. The reverse effect, the contribution of economic growth to public capital, is also worth analysis. The non-structural vector auto-regression (VAR) approach is performed for the Australian economy using yearly data for the 1960-2008 period. The optimal lag is investigated to build the VAR model that is then tested for stability. The impulse response function is further employed to examine the response of one economic variable to the innovation of others and to determine the lagged terms for the maximum absolute value of the other variables’ responses. The results will provide historical evidence for the federal and regional governments of Australia to estimate the effects of these production variables, in particular, the effect of infrastructure spending on the gross domestic product.

Mobility, aspiration, voice : a new structure of feeling for student equity in higher education

There is a changed ‘structure of feeling’ emerging in higher education systems, particularly in OECD nations, in response to changed social, cultural and economic arrangements. Taking a student equity perspective, the paper names this change in terms of ‘mobility’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘voice’. It argues that (1) new kinds and degrees of mobility are now a significant factor in sustaining unequal access to and experience of higher education for different student groups, (2) despite government and institutional aspirations to expand higher education, students' desires for university are not a given among new target populations and (3) while universities are seeking to enroll different students in greater numbers, the challenge now is how to give greater voice to this difference. Drawing on these themes of mobility, aspiration and voice and taking recent changes to higher education policy in Australia as the case, the paper presents a new conceptual framework for thinking about student equity in HE. The framework extends from established approaches that focus on barriers to accessing higher education in order to focus on people's capacities in relation to higher education participation.

Appreciating aspirations in Australian higher education

Aspiration for higher education (HE) is no longer a matter solely for students and their families. With OECD nations seeking to position themselves more competitively in the global knowledge economy, the need for more knowledge workers has led to plans to expand their HE systems to near universal levels. In Australia, this has required the government and institutions to enlist students who traditionally have not seen university as contributing to their imagined and desired futures. However, this paper suggests that failing to appreciate the aspirations of different groups, understood as a collective cultural capacity, casts doubt over the ability of institutions to deliver increased numbers of knowledge workers. Moreover, inciting subscription to the current norms of HE is a weak form of social inclusion. Stronger forms of equity strategy are possible when HE is repositioned as a resource for different groups and communities to access in the pursuit of their aspirations.

Defining educational research : a perspective of/on presidential addresses and the Australian Association for Research in Education

This paper is concerned with the definition of the field of educational research and the changing and developing role of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in representing and constituting this field. The evidence for the argument is derived from AARE Presidential Addresses across its 40-year history. The paper documents the enhanced complexity and diversity of the field over these 40 years, including the emergence of a global educational policy field, theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences and new research accountabilities such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) measure. Specifically, the paper suggests that the evidence-based movement in public management and education policy, and the introduction of the ERA, potentially limit and redefine the field of educational research, reducing the usefulness and relevance of educational research to policy makers and practitioners. This arises from a failure to recognise that Education is both a field of research and a field of policy and practice. Located against both developments, the paper argues for a principled eclecticism framed by a reassessment of quality, which can be applied to the huge variety of methodologies, theories, epistemologies and topics legitimately utilised and addressed within the field of educational research. At the same time, the paper argues the need to globalise the educational research imagination and deparochialise educational research. This call is located within a broader argument suggesting the need for a new social imaginary (in a post-neoliberal context of the global financial crisis) to frame educational policy and practice and the contribution that educational theory and research might make to its constitution. In relation to this, the paper considers the difficulties that political representations of such a new imaginary might entail for the President and the Association, given the variety of its membership and huge diversity of its research interests.

Student equity in higher education : what to do when the queue is not long or diverse enough

In this paper I outline three broad propositions about or challenges to access and participation in Australian higher education, resulting from the Australian Government’s 20/40 targets for the sector and their attendant requirements for universities, such as the performance indicators for teaching and learning. While some of my analysis could be seen as speculative, in the sense that it represents our best guesses about the future, in aking these arguments I draw on publically available statistics on Australian schooling, vocational education and training (VET) and the higher education sector, as well as on recent research on outreach programs by universities in schools.

Let them eat cake : mobilising appetites for higher education

The Australian Government has set two targets for the nation's universities: (i) increase the proportion of people from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds attending university, to 20 percent of all undergraduate students by 2020; and (ii) increase the proportion of 25 to 34 year-old Australians holding a bachelor's degree, to 40 percent by 2025. Both targets will require an increased effort by governments and universities to enable and encourage more people to access higher education, particularly more from low SES backgrounds. It will also require them to think differently about the problem. Three new concepts are now redefining the equity dimensions of higher education. Despite aspirations to expand the system, students' appetites for university are no longer a given. While universities are seeking to enrol different students in greater numbers, the challenge now is how to give greater voice to this difference. And the limited mobility of students from low SES backgrounds, including those in outer metropolitan and regional areas, is now the most significant indicator of their limited access to higher education and to social mobility. The paper outlines these new conceptions of student equity and how they are informing the research of the National Centre.

Has equity's time come for VET? Observations and principles for equity policy and practice in Australian education

Equity has a long history in education. When compulsory schooling was first introduced in industrialising nations in the mid 1800s, many advocates saw it as a way of improving the circumstances of the poorest and most disadvantaged in their communities. But access to schooling did not prove to be the great equaliser that some had hoped. Instead, it became central in the reproduction of social and economic inequalities (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977). High academic achievement became highly correlated with high socioeconomic status, and vice versa (Teese & Polesel 2003). In Australia, the Karmel Report (1973) proved to be a watershed moment in naming the equity problem in schooling and, among other things, gave rise to the Disadvantaged Schools Program (DSP): an attempt to level the playing field albeit by ‘running twice as hard’ (Connell at al. 1991). Almost two decades later, A Fair Chance for All (1990) signalled official concern for equity in Australian higher education. While access to university was not to be universal, it was to be equitable; all social groups in the Australian population were to be proportionally represented among its university students. Today, Australia is still grappling with the inequities in its schooling and higher education systems, highlighted by renewed interest by governments to address the issues. Although not of the same order of magnitude, there now appears to be an emerging policy agenda around equity in VET. Has equity’s time come for VET? This paper canvasses the history of equity in Australian schooling and higher education, with a view to drawing out principles to inform a rejuvenated equity agenda in vocational education and training.

Rethinking higher education : implications of the Australian Government’s expansion and equity agenda

In this paper I outline three broad challenges to higher education, implied in the Australian Government’s 20/40 targets and their attendant requirements for universities. In identifying these challenges I draw on publically available statistics on Australian schooling, vocational education and training (VET) and the higher education sector, as well as on recent research on outreach programs by universities in schools.

Challenging Australian higher education : three places to begin

I want to begin by thanking Professor Johnson for this opportunity to rehearse and indeed expand on the comments I made earlier this year at the Universities Australia meeting of Vice‐Chancellors in Brisbane. My comments then and now are in part speculative, given that they comment on what might be, although they are also cognizant of what we already know about student equity issues in Australian higher education and of the research data currently available, including research undertaken by the National Centre but also research available more widely, nationally and internationally. Informed by this work, the central thesis that I want to put to you today and to open up to discussion is that if the Australian higher education sector is to take seriously the federal government’s 20/40 targets, then there are three main challenges that need to be confronted.

First, that expansion of higher education provision and of a particular mix, will need to be done in the context of limited excess student demand, certainly compared with previous periods of expansion by the sector. Second, that the 20/40 targets have brought into sharp relief the problems with our current set of definitions and measurements of students: of equity groups (including socioeconomic status) but also student achievement and aspiration. And third, that universities will need to confront the teaching and learning that is higher education. This is the very thing – or at least one of them – for which we would hope school students would aspire.

Rural teacher education 2010-2011 interview data

Contains data relating to six rural case studies of work integrated learning outcomes for pre-service teachers, teachers and other stakeholders in the community. Case studies were conducted in Hamilton, Horsham, Maryborough, Portland, Nhil and Swan Hill. 30 audio files of interviews and 30 interview transcripts are in doc and xls format.

Strengthening work integrated learning (WIL) experiences for rural education students : exploring community based partnerships

This paper investigates three areas of priority for rural teacher education: work integrated learning (WIL); attraction and retention of teachers to rural areas; and the potential challenges and benefits of community based partnerships to address these areas of need. The data on which this paper is based focuses on a Victorian project around six case studies that explored the research and scholarship of teaching graduates to be work ready for the needs of rural and regional communities. The project also aimed to explore how preservice teacher education can develop and better support pre-service teachers (PSTs) through rural and regional community-based WIL experiences.
The project investigated what sort of support PSTs undertaking WIL experiences in rural and regional communities need in order to develop positive attitudes and understandings in relation to working in a rural/regional community. Consideration was also given to how support from the university, school,
supervising teacher and broader local community enhances or detracts from the PST’s experience of WIL in rural and regional areas. In order to explore these issues in this paper the authors will outline some recommendations with regards to ways in which teacher education programs may enhance the experiences of stakeholders involved in rural and regional WIL experiences, including PSTs, supervising teachers, university teacher educators and community members.
The project’s underlying conceptual framework of place, productivity and partnerships will be explained in terms of its overlapping dimensions of community, creativity and capital in order to reconceptualise preservice teacher education in local, rural and regional and global contexts as adaptive community-based work integrated learning within a knowledge economy.
The final discussion will make recommendations on how universities and other identified stakeholders can better facilitate WIL and enhance stakeholder engagement in rural and regional areas in order to equip PSTs
and classroom teachers to work creatively together in productive partnerships to meet the future demands of local rural and global contexts of change in a knowledge economy.

Massaging desire : disadvantaged students' aspirations for higher education.

Australia is in a challenging position. Having ridden the resources boom up and down, it now finds it has fallen back from the OECD pack in terms of the number of young adults (25 to 34 year olds) with higher education qualifications. This, coupled with a change of government, has prompted transformation in the Australian higher education system that will increasingly require research and policy to address students’ aspirations for university. Aspiration has long been considered an important condition for entry to higher education (Anderson, Boven, Fensham & Powell, 1980). However, recent policy reforms, specifically the setting of targets for significant increases in participation, now demand a rethinking of the concept. Across Australian universities, the current attainment rate for bachelor degrees among 25 to 34 year olds is around 32 per cent, while over the past twenty years the enrolment rate of students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds has stagnated at around 15 per cent (Commonwealth of Australia, 2009). In response to the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education in 2008, the Australian Government has set ‘20/40 targets’ in a bid to increase low SES enrolment to 20 per cent by 2020, and to increase to 40 per cent by 2025 the number of 25 to 34 year olds holding bachelor degrees. This will require that around 220,000 additional students attain bachelor degrees by 2025. Given current levels of unmet demand for university entry, this overall increase in participation, and the proportional increase of low SES students in particular, will only be achievable by engaging with populations of potential students who do not currently seek university places.