Nationalism and ideology in an anticonsumption movement

In this research we examine the role of the nationalist ideology of swadeshi in a contemporary anticonsumption movement and show that its deployment is linked to the experiences of colonialism, modernity, and globalization in India. Specifically, we offer a postcolonial understanding of reflexivity and nationalism in an anticonsumption movement opposing Coca-Cola in India. This helps us offer an interpretation of this consumer movement involving spatial politics, temporal heterogeneity, appropriation of existing ideology, the use of consumption in ideology, and attempts to bring together a disparate set of actors in the movement.

Building, shaping, forming, researching with metaphor

Ben Whitburn and Lucinda McKnight are two recent Deakin PhD graduates who thought with metaphor in their doctoral research projects, and found this process both exhilarating and frustrating. Ben teaches in inclusive education, and Lucinda is a professional writer who teaches in education; they bring to this workshop their different perspectives on how metaphor can be useful for consciously initiating creative and cohesive research strategies, and also how it can be insidious in restricting our worldviews.They will introduce participants to theory underpinning metaphor and provide opportunities to explore this theory in the context of HDR students' own projects, whether in Humanities, Communication, Creative Arts or Education.• How might metaphor assist with inspiring a research design?• How might metaphor invite researcher reflexivity?• What kinds of metaphors have other researchers employed?• What can we learn from the ways in which metaphor inevitably fails?These questions and others will be considered; participants should come prepared to write, talk, draw and think!

An analysis of the use of autobiographical narrative for teachers’ intercultural learning

The currency of intercultural education has risen worldwide in response to increased diversity within societies resulting from migration and global lows of populations. As intercultural education becomes a core responsibility of schooling, critical, detailed analysis of pedagogies for teachers’ own intercultural learning is largely absent in education research, in contrast to attention to developing students’ intercultural capabilities and theoretical and policy analyses. In beginning to address this limitation, this article offers a critical, reflexive analysis of our use and the efficacy of using autobiographical narrative for teachers’ intercultural learning. Framing theories include interculturality, autobiographical narratives for teachers’ professional learning, reflexivity, and the effects of silence and silencing in relation to diversity and intercultural relations in schools. Three instances of teacher autobiographical narrative elicited as part of a large-scale, longitudinal study of intercultural education in Australian schools are deconstructed to elucidate their explicit and hidden meanings and effects. The analysis reveals that while autobiographical narrative has productive potential as a strategy for stimulating teacher reflexivity about cultural identities and intercultural relations, it also contains hidden dangers and traps that caution against viewing it as a pedagogical cure-all in the development of teachers’ intercultural knowledge and skills.

Creating opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and patient-centred care: how nurses, doctors, pharmacists and patients use communication strategies when managing medications in an acute hospital setting.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: This paper examines the communication strategies that nurses, doctors, pharmacists and patients use when managing medications. BACKGROUND: Patient-centred medication management is best accomplished through interdisciplinary practice. Effective communication about managing medications between clinicians and patients has a direct influence on patient outcomes. There is a lack of research that adopts a multidisciplinary approach and involves critical in-depth analysis of medication interactions among nurses, doctors, pharmacists and patients. DESIGN: A critical ethnographic approach with video reflexivity was adopted to capture communication strategies during medication activities in two general medical wards of an acute care hospital in Melbourne, Australia. METHODS: A mixed ethnographic approach combining participant observations, field interviews, video recordings and video reflexive focus groups and interviews was employed. Seventy-six nurses, 31 doctors, 1 pharmacist and 27 patients gave written consent to participate in the study. Data analysis was informed by Fairclough's critical discourse analytic framework. FINDINGS: Clinicians' use of communication strategies was demonstrated in their interpersonal, authoritative and instructive talk with patients. Doctors adopted the language discourse of normalisation to standardise patients' illness experiences. Nurses and pharmacists employed the language discourses of preparedness and scrutiny to ensure that patient safety was maintained. Patients took up the discourse of politeness to raise medication concerns and question treatment decisions made by doctors, in their attempts to challenge decision-making about their health care treatment. In addition, the video method revealed clinicians' extensive use of body language in communication processes for medication management. CONCLUSIONS: The use of communication strategies by nurses, doctors, pharmacists and patients created opportunities for improved interdisciplinary collaboration and patient-centred medication management in an acute hospital setting. Language discourses shaped and were shaped by complex power relations between patients and clinicians and among clinicians themselves. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Clinicians need to be encouraged to have regular conversations to talk about and challenge each other's practices. More emphasis should be placed on ensuring that patients are given opportunities to voice their concerns about how their medications are managed.

Refreshed…reinforced…reflective: a qualitative exploration of interprofessional education facilitators' own interprofessional learning and collaborative practice

While there is extensive research examining the outcomes of interprofessional education (IPE) for students, minimal research has investigated how facilitating student learning influences the facilitators themselves. This exploratory case study aimed to explore whether and how facilitating IPE influences facilitators' own collaborative practice attitudes, knowledge, and workplace behaviours. Sixteen facilitators of an online pre-licensure IPE unit for an Australian university participated in semi-structured telephone interviews. Inductive thematic analysis revealed three emergent themes and associated subthemes characterising participants' reflexivity as IPE facilitators: interprofessional learning; professional behaviour change; and collaborative practice expertise. Participants experienced interprofessional learning in their role as facilitators, improving their understanding of other professionals' roles, theoretical and empirical knowledge underlying collaborative practice, and the use and value of online communication. Participants also reported having changed several professional behaviours, including improved interprofessional collaboration with colleagues, a change in care plan focus, a less didactic approach to supervising students and staff, and greater enthusiasm impressing the value of collaborative practice on placement students. Participants reported having acquired their prior interprofessional collaboration expertise via professional experience rather than formal learning opportunities and believed access to formal IPE as learners would aid their continuing professional development. Overall, the outcomes of the IPE experience extended past the intended audience of the student learners and positively impacted on the facilitators as well.

Supporting minority students through a reflexive approach to empowerment

Referring to the experiences of three Muslim refugee girls recently settled in Australia, this paper examines issues of schooling and empowerment. The paper draws on teacher and student interview data from a study that investigated inclusive approaches to addressing issues of cultural diversity in a secondary state high school in Queensland. The paper foregrounds the girls’ highly positive views of their experiences at the school; views that reflect the girls’ access to spaces of empowerment but belie the complexity and tensions involved in how empowerment was understood and approached by educators at the school. Theorising empowerment through poststructural understandings of agency, the paper examines conditions and ways of understanding that make possible spaces of empowerment for the girls. In particular, the paper argues for a reflexive approach to empowerment that is informed by an understanding of the framing discourses shaping minority student identity and a critical reflection on educator and school positionality.