A hermeneutic phenomenological investigation of business and IT alignment

The maximum potential potential alignment between business and IT is constrained by the mutually interacting factors of communications, shared understanding, trust, use of an appropriately scaled project and risk management methodology, distributed business ownership of all its processes and a pervasive IT ownership of every technology-enables business process.

Gender inequality and education : changing local/global relations in a ‘post colonial’ world and the implications for feminist research

This article explores the relationship between education reform and gender equity, both within and between nation states. Utilising feminist critical policy analysis and post-colonial theory, it examines how education reform over the past decade has impacted on gender equity, and how educational reform is itself gendered. It considers the nature of gender restructuring; maps significant shifts in gender equity policy in the wider context of educational and social inequality debates; and through an analysis of recent research on gender identity, schooling and leadership argues that gender can no longer be privileged when identifying and responding to educational inequality. Key assumptions underpinning how social change and education reform delivers equity are questioned, concluding with feminist theorising about how social justice may inform equity policy and practice in culturally diverse educational contexts.

Unpacking academic practices: international students in management and education disciplines

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative case study that explores how international students in different disciplines struggle to interpret their disciplinary requirements. The study shows the emergence of five main forms of unpacking academic expectations that individual students in the study employed. It will be argued that these international students appear to be active and capable of drawing on various strategies and problem‐solving skills in order to take control of their academic life and enable them to participate in the academic practices of their discipline. The students' experiences also indicate that the interaction and dialogue they establish with their lecturers plays a significant role in their success in the course.

Creativity and education :teaching the unfamiliar

The development of capacities of creativity has long been important in creative arts education (Morgan, 2012) and is increasingly becoming important to other fields in higher education (McWilliam and Haukka, 2008, Csikszentmihalyi, 2006, Edward, McGoldrick & Oliver, 2006). To develop such capabilities at least two factors need to be addressed: defining 'creativity' and thinking about how to teach it. This paper has two aims; firstly to consider the idea that creativity is a process (Morgan, 2012) of changing habits (Koestler, 1964, McWilliam and Sandra Haukka, 2008) that is inherently traumatic (Peirce, 1940) because it involves taking risks with habits which have previously proven useful and comforting. The centrality of trauma and risk raises concerns if creativity is to become a standard graduate attribute; concerns for students asked to take risk and the concern that the university is traditionally adverse to risk-taking. Secondly, a technique for teaching how to be creative derived from Russian Formalism is considered. Ostranenie, or making strange might be deployed with the aim of teaching students a technique for habit breaking