Cooperative inquiry in a business school : scope, process and dimensions

The presentation will describe a cooperative inquiry project being undertaken within the School of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law. This project involves both HRM and Management academics and was commenced in February 2008 with the broad aim of developing an ongoing teaching and learning dialogue within these discipline areas to enhance teaching and learning.
The project is also aimed at enabling individuals and unit teams to develop and pursue their own priorities in teaching and learning and align these with the goals and objectives of the Faculty and University.
In the presentation we will describe the scope, nature and methods of the inquiry and the outcomes of the project to date. One major outcome to date has been a comprehensive review of all the units within the HRM and Management majors. This review has, in turn, lead to the initiation of four further projects.
These include an activity to benchmark the School’s HRM and Management units against universities in Australia and overseas; a literature review entitled ‘Linking practice, research and the scholarship of teaching’; a project that seeks to integrate individual and institutional needs; and an action research project to capture the process of change within the Management and HRM team. These four projects will be described briefly in the presentation.

Bureaucratic, corporate/market and network governance : shifting spaces for gender equity in education

Education as a field of policy, research and practice has been reconfigured over four decades by economic, social and cultural globalization in conjuncture with neoliberal policies premised upon markets and new managerialism. One effect has been shifting boundaries between, and understandings of what constitutes the public and the private with regard to the role of the state vis-á-vis the formation of gendered subjectivities and civil society and the gendering of public– private relations in and between family and work. Drawing on feminist readings of Bourdieu and critical policy sociology, I consider the implications of a move from bureaucratic educational governance framed by state welfarism to corporate or market governance framed by the post-welfare state, and consider whether particular constructions of globalization and corporate/market governance lead to network governance. Network governance, it is argued, is premised on new forms of sociality and institutional reconfigurations of knowledge-based economies and a spatialized state that coordinates rather than regulates multiple public– private providers. The question is how each mode of governance frames various possibilities and problems for gender equity in education.

The impact of racism upon the health and wellbeing of young Australians

The Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University has worked in partnership with the Foundation for Young Australians to conduct this research project into the impact of racism upon the health and wellbeing of young Australians. The research has been carried out in eighteen Australian secondary schools in Victoria, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Queensland. Students aged 15-18 were surveyed and interviewed in both the government and Catholic education systems in order to ascertain the experience of racism and racist behaviours among Australian youth and their impact on health and wellbeing. The scope of the research brief included the nature of the racist experience, its setting, the individual and institutional responses and its reporting. The research also aimed to examine the impact of the experience of racism upon the health and wellbeing of Australian youth. A glossary of terms is included in Appendix 1 to assist with the reading of this Report.

Communication and meaning : the first year experience of off-campus study

The substantive field of the thesis is the sociology of distance education. The issues investigated centre on the relationship between off-campus students and the institutions of higher education with which they enrol, in which the first year experience is construed as an encounter between the students’ personal contexts and institutional cultures. A theoretical framework is constructed which synthcsises elements of phenomenology, hermeneutics and feminist theory. The author reports research into the way a small sample of people experienced off-campus study. The students selected resided in Victoria, Australia, and were enrolled with one of two Victorian tertiary institutions: the (then) Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education and Deakin University. Using a case study approach, the subjective experiences of the students were studied by means of a series of interviews which took place at their homes or places of employment in the period January 1988 to November 1989. Methodological issues relating to the application of hermeneutic principles to the use of interviews in educational research are explored. The results of the interpretation of the interview material are presented in terms of an integrationist model of socialisation. The thesis argued is that certain theoretical and practical issues in distance education are best understood as social and cultural phenomena rather than as technical problems. The implications of the findings about the effects of gender and culture on student experience are discussed in relation to the issues of access and equity, student support, and models of teaching and learning.

Career in writing : Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career

This thesis examines the literary career of Judah Waten (1911-1985) in order to focus on a series of issues in Australian cultural history and theory. The concept of the career is theorised as a means of bringing together the textual and institutional dimensions of writing and being a writer in a specific cultural economy. The guiding question of the argument which re-emerges in different ways in each chapter is: in what ways was it possible to write and to be a writer in a given time and place? Waten's career as a Russian-born, Jewish, Australian nationalist, communist and realist writer across the middle years of this century is, for the purposes of the argument, at once usefully exemplary and usefully marginal in relation to the literary establishment. His texts provide the central focus for individual chapters; at the same time each chapter considers a specific historical moment and a specific set of issues for Australian cultural history, and is to this extent self-contained. Recent work in narrative theory, literary sociology and Australian literary and cultural studies is brought together to revise accepted readings of Waten's texts and career, and to address significant absences or problems in Australian cultural history. The sequence of issues shaping Waten's career in writing is argued in terms of the following conjunctions of theoretical and historical categories: proletarianism, modernity and theories of the avant-garde; the "e;migrant"e; writer and minority literatures; realism, political purpose and narrative self-situation; communism, nationalism and literary practice in the cold war; utopianism and the "e;literary witness"e; narrative of the Soviet Union; assimilationism, multicultural theory and the "e;non-Anglo-Celtic"e; writer; theories of autobiographical writing, and autobiography in Waten's career. The purpose of the thesis is not to discover a single key to Waten's writing across the oeuvre but rather to plot the specific occasions of this writing in the context of the structure of a career and the cultural institutions within which it was formed.

Death and late-stage dementia in institutions : a cultural analysis

The first purpose of this study was to describe the deaths of fifteen nursing home residents with late-stage dementia. The devastating effect of dementia on a person has been called a ‘living death’ (Woods, 1989). The caring which occurs when someone is going through this process in a nursing home was recorded and analysed. In analysing this act of caring, the second purpose was to look for the origins of the structures and the sources of pressure that shaped the context and therefore helped determine the behaviour of the various groups under observation. These groups were residents and their relatives, the staff of the nursing home and the treating doctors. Before commencing observations and carrying out this study, an understanding needed to be developed of: the condition of dementia as it is perceived by health professionals and presented in the media; the institutions in which the majority of people with dementia end their days; the background and conditions of the staff who nurse in them; the models of care that guide and determine policies; and the conceptions of life and death which underpin relevant laws and moral standpoints. Accordingly, in part 1. chapter 1 the history, causes, pathology and effects of dementing conditions are examined. Relevant medical and lay literature including media influences are examined which pertain to the subject of death and dementia and nursing home care. The history of this institutional care is briefly examined together with the growth of the discipline of gerontological nursing. Chapter 2 discusses some of the effects of this history on present day care and the concept of emotional work being carried out within the present day aged care public policy regulations. The moral arguments surrounding illness and dying in Australian society today are briefly discussed. Chapter 3 describes the conceptual framework for the study, the ethnographic method that has been employed and an outline of critical theory as the basis for analysis. The chapter concludes by recounting the practical steps taken to arrange the field work, secure the consent of participants, record data and gather documents, and outlines the ethical considerations given to the undertaking of the study. Chapter 4 describes the context in which the study took place and the first tentative exploration of the culture from an etic perspective. Part 2 describes the death trajectories observed and raises some questions about alternative strategies that may have been considered within a different paradigm of caring. In chapter 5 the death trajectories of each of the fifteen residents in the study are described, each written with a particular emphasis to illustrate aspects of the culture of care that emerged through thematic analysis. Observations, comments and feelings from staff and family are wound in and around these case studies. Chapter 6 looks more closely at the impact of policy and institutional pressure on the milieu in which these deaths took place. Part 3 draws conclusions from the observations and makes suggestions for emancipatory change as viewed from the author's standpoint of critical ethnographic analysis. In the final chapter an argument is presented for policy change that leads a movement towards palliative care practices for people with late-stage dementia. Approaches to implementation of palliative care will need to take account of any expression by the resident such as an advanced directive, indicating a preferred approach to treatment in the period prior to death; a need for a better understanding of such issues as the significance of body breakdown, the manifestations of pain and electrolyte imbalances; the surrounding ethical complexities and shift in public opinion, and perhaps, most of ail, the culture of the institutions in which this dying will take place. A definition of late-stage dementia which might be used in determining patterns of care is set out. A discussion about changes in practice which relate lo communication with treating doctors, the administering of antibiotics, the relief of pain, the mobilisation of residents and the provision of food and water takes place in light of the evidence found. The discussion of these issues is raised in the form of debate. Each aspect needs more rigorous analysis and information so that evidence-based practice, rather than care which is value-laden and emotional, can be used when treatment decisions are made for people with late-stage dementia.

Envisioning Indochina : the spatial and social ordering and imagining of a French colony

The emergence of Indochina in the French imagination was articulated in both representational and institutional modes. Representation involves the transmission of colonial ideals through more obtuse means; that is, through literary texts, travelogues, exhibitions, film and advertising. However, these textual sites feed from and invest in a material situation, which was the institutional arm of colonialism. Indochina was institutionally articulated in cartographic maps and surveys, in the new social spaces of cities and towns, in architectural and technological forms, through social technologies of discipline and welfare and in cultural and religious organisations. The aim of this thesis is to analyse, across a number of textual sites, the representation and institutionalisation of Otherness through the politics of space in the French colony of Indochina, Indochine in this sense becomes a spatial discourse. The French constructed a mental and physical space for Indochina by blanketing and suffocating the original cultural landscape, which in fact had to be ignored for this process to occur. What actually became manifest as a result of this projection stemmed from the French imagination. Just as the French manipulated space, language also underwent the same process of reduction. The Vietnamese script was latinised to make it more 'useable' and ‘accessible’. Through christening the union of Indochina; initiating a comprehensive writing reform; and renaming the streets in the colonial cities, the French used language us another tool for 'making transparent'. Furthermore, the colonial powers established a communication and transport network throughout the colony in an attempt to materialise their fictive (artificial) vision of a unified French Indochinese space. The accessibility and design of these different modes of transport reflected the gendered, racial and class divisions inherent in the colonial establishment. At the heart of representing and institutionalising Indochina was the desire to control and contain. This characterised French imperial ordering of space in the city and the rural areas. In rural areas land was divided into small parcels and alienated to individuals or worked into precise grids for the rubber plantation. In urban centres the native quarter was clearly demarcated from the European quarter which functioned as its modern, progressive Other. The rationale behind this segregation was premised on European, nineteenth century discourses of race, class, gender and hygiene. Influenced by Darwinian and neo-Lamarkian theories of race, this biological discourse identified the 'working class', 'women' and 'the native' as not only biologically but also culturally inferior. They were perceived as a potential, degenerative threat to the biological, cultural and industrial development of the nation. In the colonial context, space was thus ordered and domesticated to control the native population. Coextensively, the literature which springs from such a structure will be tainted by the same ideas, and thus the spaces it formulates within the readers mind feed on and reinforce this foundation. Examples of gender and indigenous narratives which contest this imaginative, transparent topography are analysed throughout this thesis. They provide instances of struggle and resistance which undermine the ideal/stereotypical level of architectural and planned space and delineate an alternative insight into colonial spatial and social relations. The fictional accounts of European women and indigenous writers both challenge and reaffirm the fixity of some of these idealised colonial boundaries. In various literary, historical, political, architectural and cinematic discourses Indochina has been und continues to be depicted as a modern city and exotic Utopia. Informed by the mood of nostalgia, exotic images of Indochina have resurfaced in contemporary French culture. France's continued desire to create, control and maintain an Indochinese space in the French public imagination reinforces the multi-layered, interconnected and persistent nature of colonial discourse.

Theoretical passages and boundaries : the indigenous subject, colonialism, and governmentality

Theoretical paternalism and the convenience of working within ‘accepted’ frameworks have appropriated the Indigenous subject within the boundaries of colonial relations. The establishment of post-colonial theory as one of the only ‘acceptable’ frameworks for exploring the Indigenous subject has limited the subject’s theoretical development within the binary of coloniser/colonised. Breaking from this tradition, the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, ethics and care-ofthe-self will be used as a template for expansion. This paper will explore the passages of the Indigenous subject in theoretical development. It will examine the significance of post-colonial and settler colonial theories in the conceptualisation of the subject, and consider the transformations that occur when the borders established by these theories are crossed. The paper will therefore be comprised of four sections. The first will address the value and limitations of post-colonial and settler colonial theory. The second will posit reasons and implications for why theoretical neglect has occurred. The third will present and critique the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, ethics and care-of-the-self. Applying Foucault’s concepts to examples of Indigenous offenders in the settler societies of Australia and New Zealand, the final section will examine the impact of the Indigenous subject in Western thought and institutional practice.

Sustainability in online communities of practice : the case study of a group of Secondary School Educators in Victoria

This paper reports on Information Technology (IT) secondary school educators in Victoria and their involvement in an online community of practice. It examined the social effects of the online mailing list technology on their participation and factors that influenced their collaboration with other colleagues. In mapping these elements, the motivations of educators and the effects on online communities of practice can be distilled and then used to build and sustain other architectures of participation. It was found that mailing list subscribers seem to trade a currency of support, thoughts, ideas and answers, which helped them in their day-to-day teaching. Online communities of practice provide a convenient way to keep up professional networks while continuing to stay abreast with subject specific knowledge and skills. The findings of this case study may be generalised to other educational mailing lists to guide designers and managers and inspire educators to join and ultimately benefit from these text based online environments.

What, how and why Web 2.0?

This article focuses on introducing Web 2.0 technologies and possible uses for student and teacher learning and collaboration. Many of these tools are already used in social and business contexts. These new and emerging applications are also gaining popularity in classrooms across all education levels. Various applications are introduced to raise awareness and encourage educators to explore these new avenues for teaching and learning.

The ambiguous politics of teachers in the reconstruction of Iraq

The opportunity to rebuild community after conflict requires rapid responses to reinstall key institutions. This paper examines the role of educators in the reconstruction of educational systems and in the rebuilding of community through a case study of Iraq. While ongoing conflict continues in Iraq, reconstruction efforts persist through large scale infrastructure and institutional rebuilding that aims to bring stability to political, legal and financial systems. The interim Iraqi government, given sovereignty on June 28, 2004, continues to support the road map underpinning rebuilding efforts in Post-Saddam Iraq.1 The restructuring of education systems is a cornerstone of rebuilding efforts since an intact and functioning education system complements other social and economic transformations, rebuilds social relations and instigates a routine normalcy to post conflict communities . The paper problematises rebuilding efforts through critical policy analysis that questions the nature of policy, how assistance is constructed and the ambiguous political role of educators in educational rebuilding.

Teacher's professional knowledge and the teaching of reading in the early years

What are the sources of teachers’ professional knowledge for the teaching of reading? This paper reports findings from a study that investigated the role of teachers in the current Research-Policy-Praxis Nexus (RPPN). This was achieved by a specific focus upon constructions of reading in the early years in Victoria, Australia. All of the teacher participants either implemented or coordinated the Victorian Early Years Literacy Program (EYLP) in the primary school setting. These teachers were interviewed in order to hear their views on reading development and reading pedagogy and to identify the sources of this professional knowledge. The findings from this study are important for all teachers and teacher educators as they have implications for teaching practise, teacher education and teacher professional development programs.

Barriers experienced by Asians in accessing injury-related services and compensations

Introduction: The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) administers New Zealand’s (NZ) accident compensation scheme. Asians in NZ are apparently under-serviced by ACC and may be experiencing barriers to accessing services. This study identifies barriers that Asians in NZ face in accessing ACC’s injury-related services and compensations.

Methods: By utilising a qualitative research design, 113 Chinese, Korean, Indian, and South East Asian participants residing in Auckland, NZ were recruited through maximum variation and purposive snowball sampling. Data were gathered during 2006 through 22 individual in-depth interviews and 14 focus group discussions based on semi-structured interview schedules. Interviewees included Asian general practitioners, traditional health providers, users and non-users of injury-related services, case managers and Asian community leaders. Data were analysed using a general inductive approach.

Findings: Results show that personal/cultural characteristics such as age, gender, English language competence, injury-related language competence, differing Asian worldviews, and consequent help-seeking behaviours act as barriers to accessing services and entitlements. This is exacerbated by logistical and environmental factors such as cost, transport, time, inadequate interpretation and translation services, as well as institutional barriers such as lack of information about services, culturally inappropriate services, discriminatory attitudes and employment risks.

Conclusion: It is evident that Asians living in NZ are experiencing several cultural, environmental and institutional barriers to accessing ACC services. There is clearly a need for more culturally relevant information and injury-related services if Asian immigrants’ use of such services and entitlements is to be increased.

Australia's international students : policies and experiences

Examines the experiences of international students, the impact of government and institutional policies and practices on international students, and the implications of such policies and experiences for Australia's engagement with Asia. The thesis concentrates on the period from 1980 to the present.

Reproduction, resistance and transformation at Marantha High School

The focus of this thesis is the attempt by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to reproduce SDA culture in students attending one of its schools, Maranatha High School. As a 'critical ethnography', it adopts a theoretical perspective from critical social theory to examine problems associated with this attempt. These problems are reflected in data gathered by a range of ethnographic techniques. The study first portrays the socio-political dynamics underlying the historical creation of Adventist culture generally, its embodiment in institutional forms, and the development of a substantial educational structure intended to transmit that culture to succeeding generations.

The study then focuses on current SDA educational philosophy, and the assumptions underlying the principles of selection, organisation, transmission and evaluation of knowledge considered to be valid. It then examines how Maranatha High School itself seeks to implement those principles. In this context, the study also reflects on the political implications of the modes of management and institutional control adopted at various levels of the organisation and in the school.

As a dialectical study, the thesis views the school as a social setting in which knowledgeable humans engage in communicative interaction. Rather than promoting smooth reproduction, the school is portrayed as a site of struggle, negotiation and potential transformation as participants resist forces that they perceive to be constraining and oppressing them. Consequently the thesis examines the perceptions of the various groups of participants, and the nature and impact of their interaction. In as much as teachers are official 'managers' of SDA culture and knowledge, this examination focuses especially on their personal definitions of the situation, the dilemmas that confront them from internal and external sources, the development of their own cultural forms in response, and the implications this action has for cultural reproduction and continuity.