How style came to matter : do we need to move beyond the politics of representation?

In response to the increasing difficulties facing museums that attempt to work within a pluralist framework as a strategy for representing cultural diversity, this essay argues for the need to move beyond a characterisation of museum work as either progressive or conservative, pluralist or consensual. Central to my arguments is an attempt to extend our understanding of possible narrative structures in museums by focusing on questions of style as much as of content. I do this by looking back at two case studies in which questions around the political intent of narrative structures were determined as much by the form of the exhibition as by its content. This focus enables are cognition that fragmentary narrative styles are not by definition associated with alack of strong narratives. Quite the contrary. An alternative approach to exhibition making might therefore lie in an approach that moves away from eclecticism but does so not by returning to progressive, chronological narratives but by privileging an understanding of 'shared experience'. I attempt to open up what I mean by this term towards the end of the essay.

Student experiences of work placement in school-based vocational programs

Using a sample of 446 secondary students who had participated in a vocational education and training in school (VETiS) program, compares the experiences and perceptions of students who had undertaken a work placement with those who had not. Shows that students who had participated in work placement enjoyed the VETiS experience more than those who had not, and that the work placement had assisted them in their decision whether to stay at school or not. A factor analysis of results showed a factor associated with self-confidence about employability, and a factor associated with assistance in achieving specific post-school employment. Students who had completed a work placement were significantly higher on both these factors than students who had not. Results are consistent with other research in the field, and it is argued that the work placement experience plays a considerable part in developing student agency in the decisions and the journey that they make in their transition from school to work.

Introduction: perspectives on work-life balance

Work-life balance has emerged as a major concern for researchers trying to map the dimensions and causes of the issue, for policy makers searching for uncontroversial solutions to the problem and for individuals trying to construct satisfying and productive lives. There is some agreement over the main contributors to the work-life balance 'problem': the increase in female participation in the workforce since the 1960s; changes to work from the mid-1970s, in particular greater work intensification, an increase in alternative work schedules away from the standard working week and the growth of casual jobs (particularly in Australia); and a de-differentiation of roles, which has contributed to greater spill-over between work and other roles.

These factors are embedded in economic, social and cultural changes that characterise the post-World War II development of late capitalism in the more developed economies. Each is itself the result of a set of complex processes of change. We do not attempt here to detail these changes in all their complexity but draw out those elements that are most important in attempting to understand the work-life issue in terms of causal forces, mediating support systems and the effects of work-life balance or 'imbalance' on individuals, households, communities and societies.

This issue of Labour and Industry brings together three papers that focus on different work-life balance issues as a result of differing causal forces, different configurations of work/life activities, varying outcomes and variations in terms of support available. In particular, the problem of work-life balance is examined through an analysis of change in attitudes to mothers working in Australia, a study of agency or labour hire, and a study of young professionals. These papers were first presented at the WorkTimes/LifeTimes Colloquium held in Geelong, Victoria in December 2004. The aim of this colloquium was to explore issues around working time and the impact that this has on other aspects of people's lives. Specialists in the area of working time, time use, employee relations, and work-family came together to share the results of their respective research areas and to debate the theoretical and policy implications of their findings.

`All things to all people`: indigenous teachers in the Australian teaching profession

This paper reports on the findings of a four-year study that seeks to understand the experiences and career pathways of Indigenous teachers in Australia. We present data obtained from in-depth interviews with current and former teachers in order to provide a qualitative account of what lies behind demographic trends in Indigenous teacher recruitment and retention in Australia. The paper highlights the expectations of school and wider communities that Indigenous teachers will be 'all things to all people' and will fill a number of complex and sometimes conflicting roles within and beyond classrooms. We speculate that these expectations contribute to their decisions to resign from the school system to work elsewhere. We also introduce and problematise the notion of the Indigenous teacher as a category in the consciousness of teachers, administrators and other participants in the discourses of Australian schooling.
We conclude by arguing the need for non-Indigenous student-teachers to be better prepared to work alongside Indigenous colleagues and to take more active roles in the implementation of policy and initiatives around Indigenous education. The paper also raises implications for the recruitment and retention of Indigenous teachers.

Attaching unit costs to Australia`s national survey of mental health and wellbeing

Background: In mental health, policy-makers and planners are increasingly being asked to set priorities. This means that health economists, health services researchers and clinical investigators are being called upon to work together to define and measure costs. Typically, these researchers take available service utilisation data and convert them to costs, using a range of assumptions. There are inefficiencies, as individual groups of researchers frequently repeat essentially similar exercises in achieving this end. There are clearly areas where shared or common investment in the development of statistical software syntax, analytical frameworks and other resources could maximise the use of data.

Aims of the Study: This paper reports on an Australian project in which we calculated unit costs for mental health admissions and community encounters. In reporting on these calculations, our purpose is to make the data and the resources associated with them publicly available to researchers interested in conducting economic analyses, and allow them to copy, distribute and modify them, providing that all copies and modifications are available under the same terms and conditions (i.e., in accordance with the `Copyleft' principle). Within this context, the objectives of the paper are to: (i) introduce the `Copyleft' principle; (ii) provide an overview of the methodology we employed to derive the unit costs; (iii) present the unit costs themselves; and (iv) examine the total and mean costs for a range of single and comorbid conditions, as an example of the kind of question that the unit cost data can be used to address.

Method: We took relevant data from the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (NSMHWB), and developed a set of unit costs for inpatient and community encounters. We then examined total and mean costs for a range of single and comorbid conditions.

Results: We present the unit costs for mental health admissions and mental health community contacts. Our example, which explored the association between comorbidity and total and mean costs, suggested that comorbidly occurring conditions cost more than conditions which occur on their own.

Discussion: Our unit costs, and the materials associated with them, have been published in a freely available form governed by a provision termed `Copyleft'. They provide a valuable resource for researchers wanting to explore economic questions in mental health.

Implications for Health Policies: Our unit costs provide an important resource to inform economic debate in mental health in Australia, particularly in the area of priority-setting. In the past, such debate has largely been based on opinion. Our unit costs provide the underpinning to strengthen the evidence-base of this debate.

Implications for Further Research: We would encourage other Australian researchers to make use of our unit costs in order to foster comparability across studies. We would also encourage Australian and international researchers to adopt the `Copyleft' principle in equivalent circumstances. Furthermore, we suggest that the provision of `Copyleft'-contingent funding to support the development of enabling resources for researchers should be considered in the planning of future large-scale collaborative survey work, both in Australia and overseas.

Will he get back to normal? survival and functional status after intensive care therapy

The study aim was to address healthcare workers’ and patients’ questions about the likely level of recovery at 6 months of patients admitted to an Australian intensive care unit (ICU). Ninety-three consecutive, eligible adults were identified and followed prospectively. Severity of illness on admission was assessed using Acute Physiological and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II), while functional status at 6 months was evaluated using the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP). Cumulative mortality was 25%. Admission severity of illness was associated with survival at 6 months (P≤0.001). Fifty-one (78%) of the 70 survivors were interviewed. Admission severity of illness scores correlated with functional status at 6 months (r=0.34, P=0.01), a finding reported in only one other study. More than half of those interviewed had returned to near pre-admission functional status. Those with poor functional status included high proportions of people with chronic illness and head injury. Overall, physical recovery was more complete than psychosocial recovery. The findings provide useful information for addressing questions relating to physical and psychosocial recovery, appetite, sleep patterns and return to work post discharge.

Developing student agency through VET in schools: the role of structured work placements

Using a sample of 446 secondary students who had participated in a vocational education and training in school (VETiS) program, this study compares the experiences and perceptions of students who had undertaken a work placement with those who had not. The study shows that students who had participated in work placement enjoyed the VETiS experience more than those who had not, and that the work placement had assisted them in their decision whether to stay at school or not. A factor analysis of results showed a factor associated with self-confidence about employability, and a factor associated with assistance in achieving specific post-school employment. Students who had completed a work placement were significantly higher on both these factors than students who had not.

These results are consistent with other research in the field, and it is argued that the work placement experience plays a considerable part in developing student agency in the decisions and the journey that they make in their transition from school to work.

Integration or collision? : middle managers' concerns for work-life balance

As increased work demands and longer working hours become the reality for many employees, the concept of work-life balance has received increasing attention. This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of Australian middle managers, which investigated the impact of middle managers’ daily organisational experiences on their lives both in and beyond the workplace. We focus on respondents’ concerns for the encroachment of work on their personal lives, both through the advent of new technologies and the introduction of flexibility initiatives in the workplace. The unwelcome effects of frustration, stress and fatigue highlight the need for organisations to gain a better understanding of employees’ experiences related to work-life balance.

Patient engagement and coaching for health: the PEACH study- a cluster randomised controlled trial using the telephone to coach people with type 2 diabetes to engage with their GPs to improve diabetes care: a study protocol.

Background
The PEACH study is based on an innovative 'telephone coaching' program that has been used effectively in a post cardiac event trial. This intervention will be tested in a General Practice setting in a pragmatic trial using existing Practice Nurses (PN) as coaches for people with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Actual clinical care often fails to achieve standards, that are based on evidence that self-management interventions (educational and psychological) and intensive pharmacotherapy improve diabetes control. Telephone coaching in our study focuses on both. This paper describes our study protocol, which aims to test whether goal focused telephone coaching in T2D can improve diabetes control and reduce the treatment gap between guideline based standards and actual clinical practice.
Methods/design
In a cluster randomised controlled trial, general practices employing Practice Nurses (PNs) are randomly allocated to an intervention or control group. We aim to recruit 546 patients with poorly controlled T2D (HbA1c >7.5%) from 42 General Practices that employ PNs in Melbourne, Australia. PNs from General Practices allocated to the intervention group will be trained in diabetes telephone coaching focusing on biochemical targets addressing both patient self-management and engaging patients to work with their General Practitioners (GPs) to intensify pharmacological treatment according to the study clinical protocol. Patients of intervention group practices will receive 8 telephone coaching sessions and one face-to-face coaching session from existing PNs over 18 months plus usual care and outcomes will be compared to the control group, who will only receive only usual care from their GPs. The primary outcome is HbA1c levels and secondary outcomes include cardiovascular disease risk factors, behavioral risk factors and process of care measures.
Discussion
Understanding how to achieve comprehensive treatment of T2D in a General Practice setting is the focus of the PEACH study. This study explores the potential role for PNs to help reduce the treatment and outcomes gap in people with T2D by using telephone coaching. The intervention, if found to be effective, has potential to be sustained and embedded within real world General Practice.

Investigating the shared visual context in distributed collaborative work

Distributed collaborators require computermediated communication (CMC) technologies in order to work together. Various systems have been developed for this express purpose with varying degrees of success. A basic method of evaluating the usability of a system is to compare it with face-to-face interaction. To replicate the face-to-face context, it is necessary to investigate how visual information plays a role in supporting collaborators performing tasks.
This research examines the effects of visual information and its role in both face-to-face and video generated visual contexts. The results were generated by asking participants to collaboratively solve visual tasks in either of the two contexts. The results show that both the face-to-face and the video conferencing contexts have similar effects on subjects’ ability to perform tasks. Task outcomes exhibited no significant difference between these two contexts. Awareness and conversational grounding had positive effects on the subject’s task performance and communication. On the other hand, presence had mixed effects on a subject’s task performance and communication behaviors.

Assessing cost-effectiveness in mental health : vocational rehabilitation for schizophrenia and related conditions

Objective: Existing evidence suggests that vocational rehabilitation services, in particular individual placement and support (IPS), are effective in assisting people with schizophrenia and related conditions gain open employment. Despite this, such services are not available to all unemployed people with schizophrenia who wish to work. Existing evidence suggests that while IPS confers no clinical advantages over routine care, it does improve the proportion of people returning to employment. The objective of the current study is to investigate the net benefit of introducing IPS services into current mental health services in Australia.

Method: The net benefit of IPS is assessed from a health sector perspective using cost–benefit analysis. A two-stage approach is taken to the assessment of benefit. The first stage involves a quantitative analysis of the net benefit, defined as the benefits of IPS (comprising transfer payments averted, income tax accrued and individual income earned) minus the costs. The second stage involves application of 'second-filter' criteria (including equity, strength of evidence, feasibility and acceptability to stakeholders) to results. The robustness of results is tested using the multivariate probabilistic sensitivity analysis.

Results: The costs of IPS are $A10.3M (95% uncertainty interval $A7.4M–$A13.6M), the benefits are $A4.7M ($A3.1M–$A6.5M), resulting in a negative net benefit of $A5.6M ($A8.4M–$A3.4M).

Conclusions: The current analysis suggests that IPS costs are greater than the monetary benefits. However, the evidence-base of the current analysis is weak. Structural conditions surrounding welfare payments in Australia create disincentives to full-time employment for people with disabilities.

Catchment to regional scale indicators of sustainability

Ecologically sustainable development requires an integrated approach to environmental integrity, social equity and economic performance. Development of sustainability strategies and empowerment of communities to achieve sustainability will only be effective if progress is monitored. This project provides an opportunity to work within a regional partnership to develop indicators for measuring progress toward sustainability in the south west region of Victoria, Australia. As sustainability is contextual, local organizations have been involved in the identification of key regional values (social, environmental, economic and institutional) and in selecting indicators that can be used to assess to what extent these values are being protected, depleted or enhanced. These indicators are to be used as the basis for exploring relationships between biophysical and socio-economic indicators, to determine what can be deduced from these relationships about sustainability and whether these relationships hold at different spatial scales (catchment, regional and sub-catchment). A rigorous and systematic analysis of indicators and the relationships between them will assist in developing a tool to facilitate decision making for regional sustainability.

Standardising differences? Theorising 'identities' and pedagogical approaches to working with diversity

‘Race’, socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity are theorised as fluid, dynamic and interconnected categories of identity within post-structural theories. Understanding identities as socio-culturally constructed offers opportunities to think differently about how teachers and teacher education students position themselves and are positioned within these discourses. In Australia, where the teaching profession is overwhelmingly Anglo-Australian (Rizvi 1992; Santoro et al, 2001), mono-lingual and of middle-class background, Australian students are becoming far more linguistically and culturally diverse. Since engagement with teachers who ‘know’ their students, (Delpit, 1995) and the communities from which they come is a major predictor of successful educational outcomes, the growing disparity between teachers’ and students’ cultural and classed experiences is of concern. While teacher education programs focus on developing the attributes in new graduates to work productively with difference, the actualities of doing so are problematic.

This paper reviews some current Australian, North American and United Kingdom approaches to working with student teachers’ constructs of self in terms of ethnicity, ‘race’ and class in order to problematise taken-for-granted ideas of ‘normal’. It considers debates that surface around ‘individuality’ versus ‘collective’ differences; additionally, some of the resistances and dilemmas that emerge when ‘white’, middle class students are asked to rethink their own positionality are examined. Questions regarding what constitutes productive ways to teach inclusive and transformative pedagogies are raised in light of current theory and practice.

Leaders and their teams : learning to improve performance with emotional intelligence and using choice theory

Looks at the relationship between emotional intelligence and choice theory in the work world, with particular emphasis on the implications on health and productivity. Most of us have a managing or leading role of some sort, whether at home, in community life, or at work. Also, as a professional, one can be leading through professional expertise and not necessarily because of one's place in the organizational hierarchy. There is an increasing awareness of the role of leadership and team development in organizational development, for example in health care where change is needed to manage the chronic disease burden (Dunbar et al., 2007) and utilizing and retaining a dwindling workforce (Schoo, Stagnitti, Mercer, & Dunbar, 2005). This is forcing leaders and their teams to work as smart as they can with resources that are available to them. Positive leadership has been associated with outcomes that include happy relationships, teamwork, learning, recognition, staff retention, and health and wellbeing. There is evidence that emotionally intelligent leaders in workplaces are able to bring about these positive out- comes because they are attuned to the emotions that move people around them (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002). In this sense, emotion can be defined as aroused energy that takes a direction (Hunt, 2004a) (Latin: e = from, movere = to move). Valerie Hunt regards emotion as the metronome of life (Hunt, 2004b). Although emotion can be a feeling state (e.g., fear, anger, joy, hate or sorrow) associated with action, its energy is, according to Hunt, directed to action, to behave(Hunt, 2004b). As mentioned in an earlier publication (Schoo, 2005), Pert (Flowers, Grubin, & Meryman-Brunner, 1993) regards emotions as a bridge that connects the mental and physical realities (p.187), and sees neuropeptides as the physical representations of these emotions. Negative thoughts and emotions such as excitement and anger have been found to increase gut motility, cancer risk and arterial plaque formation which can lead to a heart infarct (Pert, 1997), whereas positive emotions seem to do the opposite.

Using sister city relationships to access the Chinese market

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer a new approach for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Australia to engage in sustainable trade with China through the use of Sister City relationships. The reason for writing this paper is to address this research gap with the aim of influencing government policy at the national and the local level.

Design/methodology/approach – The main methods used is a historical literature review, a critical review of the effectiveness of the Sister City relationships and an examination of a special Sister City relationship between Latrobe City in Australia and the Chinese city of Taizhou.

Findings – Throughout the course of the paper it was established that Sister City relationships had been insufficiently utilized as commercial facilitators and especially SMEs in regional Australia. This was especially evident in terms of trade relations with China.

Research limitations/implications – This conceptual paper will require further research at different levels. Future research should establish what Australian sister cities with China are actually doing and how a more focused relationship utilizing SMEs in their territory might be utilized. This is clearly a limitation with this conceptual paper, which it is hoped will be overcome with new research planned by the authors.

Practical implications – The practical implications emerging from this paper is that Sister City relationships can be refocused from their current role to becoming structurally integrated into trade facilitators for SMEs in pursuing trade with China. Most Sister City relationships do not have a trade focus in the first instance. As a result of this paper we are hoping that local government policy makers and state government trade facilitators will see Sister City relationships in a new light.

Originality/value – This paper brings to attention cases of Sister City relationships which have gravitated towards a trade focus (an exception like Latrobe City) in which results are already evident. A paper of this kind is directed at governments at all levels as well as SMEs who wish to work better with government.