Measuring non-economic well-being achievement

Income per capita and most widely reported, non- or non-exclusively income based human well-being indicators are highly correlated among countries. Yet many countries exhibit higher achievement in the latter than predicted by the former. The reverse is true for many other countries. This paper commences by extracting the inter-country variation in a composite of various widely-reported, non-income-based well-being indices not accounted for by variations in income pre capita. This extraction is interpreted inter alia as a measure of non-economic well-being. The paper then looks at correlations between this extraction and a number of new or less widely-used well-being measures, in an attempt to find the measure that best captures these achievements. A number of indicators are examined, including measures of poverty, inequality, health status, education status, gender bias, empowerment, governance and subjective well-being.

I think it's a good idea, I just don't know how to do it : the struggle for PE reform in China

Among the many changes occurring across Chinese society in the early phase of Y2K is the construction and implementation of a new physical education (PE) curriculum. Not unlike recent changes in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, this process has seen a heightening of the emphasis on health. Presented within a wider framework for making the school curriculum more relevant, PE is more closely aligned with China’s emerging population health concerns around lifestyle practices of its youth. Foremost here are burgeoning social anxieties about decreased levels of physical activity, poor dietary practices, risk-taking tendencies, and a general shift in focus from ideology to skills.

This paper reports on a study undertaken to explore the perceptions of Chinese PE teachers and their engagement with the new PE & Health curriculum. The data reveals a number of structural, personal and cultural factors that work against PE teachers taking up the opportunities presented in the new curriculum. Prominent here are; low professional status, lack of resources, lack of training and the grip of deeply rooted cultural values.

Gender differences in motor skill proficiency from childhood to adolescence : a longitudinal study

Students' proficiency in three object control and three locomotor skills were assessed in 2000 (M age = 10.06 years, SD = 0.63) in New South Wales, Australia and in 2006-07 (M age = 16. 44 years, SD = 0. 64). In 2006-07, 266 students, 138 girls (51.9%) and 128 boys (48.1%), had at least one skill reassessed. Boys were more object control proficient than girls. Childhood object control proficiency significantly predicted (p =. 001) adolescent object control proficiency ([r.sup.2] = .39), and, while gender was significant (p = .001), it did not affect the relationship between these variables (p = .53). Because childhood object control proficiency is predictive of subsequent object control proficiency, developing skills in childhood is important.

Dog ownership, dog walking and children's and parents' physical activity

This study aimed to determine cross-sectional associations of dog ownership, dog walking, and physical activity (PA) among children and their parents. Objective measures of PA were obtained for children ages 5-6 and 10-12 years from 19 primary schools across Melbourne, Australia. Parents self-reported their PA, dog ownership, and frequency of dog walking: 53% of families owned a dog, 41% of children who owned a dog did not walk their dog at all, and 32% reported never or rarely walking their dog as a family. Dog ownership was associated with an additional 29 min/day in PA among younger girls, and 70 and 59 min/week more in PA among mothers of younger boys and older girls, respectively. Among mothers of older girls, dog owners were 1.6 times as likely to meet PA guidelines. Mothers with older boys and girls, and fathers with younger boys, who reported walking the dog regularly as a family, spent more time in PA (105, 90, and 158 more min/week, respectively). Promoting dog ownership and dog walking among children and as a family are potential strategies for increasing PA participation in some families.

Motives influencing soccer coaching : an empirical study of professional soccer coaches in South Africa

Heightened competition both on a global and national level has raised the bar regarding the expectations that sport organisations have of their coaches. Using the Self-Determination Theory (SOT), which emphasizes the distinction between intrinsically- and extrinsically- driven behaviours, the current study investigated the specific intrinsic and extrinsic factors that motivate professional soccer coaches in South Africa to coach. A non-experimental design using a quantitative approach to assess the motives of individual involvement of coaches in South Africa was employed. The Coach Motivation Scale (CMS) designed to assess motivational factors in coaching was administered to a purposive sample of 112 soccer coaches. Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess the number and nature of factors of the underlying structure of the data. In addition, correlation analysis was conducted on the data set. Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation correlated significantly with highest academic qualification. Arising from the findings of the study implications for further study are suggested and recommendations made.

Learning between schools and hospitals – young people and a curriculum of (dis)connection

As noted in other papers in this volume, a group of health and education researchers and practitioners came together to further develop their understanding of the situation of young people, who were clients of The Royal Children's Hospital Education Institute in 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. The resultant research project, funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, aimed to understand young people's perspectives on who they are and what matters to them in relation to education connectedness, identity, social relationships, and experiences with professionals. The project team was aware of the persisting patterns of relationships between the hospital, schools, young people, and their families. They were also cognizant of the heavy emphasis in the research and professional literature on evidence from relevant family adults and from health and education professionals. The intention of this project was to put the young people at the centre a study with the stories they told through word and image. Identity issues and school connections framed the analytical work. Thirty-one adolescents dealing with chronic illness participated in this longitudinal qualitative study for a 3-year period of their lives. Given the apparently active role of teachers and health professionals in the lives of these young people, the researchers wanted to include the various relevant adults to see what coherence or lack of coherence existed in the categories, emphases, and values they expressed compared with those of the young people. The researchers have had to determinedly keep their focus on the data from the young people and not be seduced by the familiar and readily accessible data from these professionals. Nonetheless, this data set does provide a ‘curriculum conversation’, which is profitably read behind the stories of the young people and in the foreground of new pathways of curriculum construction. It is this data which informs the work reported in this paper and which has led the researchers to resist the rhetoric of currently held story lines in this field, to see beyond the present hierarchies of power over relevant ‘knowledges’, to maintain a dual focus with the young people at centre stage and the professionals as ‘walk ons /extras’ and to argue for a ‘curriculum of connection’ between young people and the relevant education and health professionals. These issues are readily engaged in arguments for change through the interweaving of larger discourses of inclusivity, curriculum, and policy. This paper works those intersections in the everyday positionings of professionals and young people.

Shared care for chronic eye diseases : perspectives of ophthalmologists, optometrists and patients

Objective: To report the perspectives of optometrists, ophthalmologists and patients on a model of shared care for patients with chronic eye diseases.

Design, setting and participants: Qualitative study of a model of shared care between optometrists and ophthalmologists for patients with stable age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma, trialled by the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne during 2007–2009. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with optometrists, ophthalmologists and patients at completion of the project to obtain their perspectives on this model.

Results: Seventeen optometrists submitted expressions of interest to participate, and 12 completed web-based training modules and clinical observerships and adhered to specified examination and reporting protocols. All five participating ophthalmologists and 11 of the optometrists were interviewed. Ninety-eight patients participated and 37 were interviewed. Optometrists not only met ophthalmologists’ expectations but exceeded them, appropriately detecting and referring patients with additional, previously undetected conditions. Patients reported savings in travel time and were satisfied with the quality of care they received. Optometrists, ophthalmologists and patients indicated a general acceptance of shared care arrangements, although there were some issues relating to interprofessional trust.

Conclusions: Shared care between local optometrists and hospital-based ophthalmologists can help to reduce patient waiting time for review and offers an opportunity for these two groups of eye care professionals to collaborate in providing localised care for the benefit of patients. However, trust and relationship building need to be further developed.

Developing game sense through tactical learning

The article discusses how to form game sense approach via tactical learning. Students are provided with challenges in game sense approaches to solve structured games. Game sense approach to teaching can be used to foster behavioural, social, cognitive, and affective learning results.

Winds of change in Myanmar? Implications for international cooperation In poverty alleviation

We are witnessing the beginnings of what could well be significant change in Myanmar. Elections in November 2010 were quickly followed by the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, then by the resignation of Senior-General Than Shwe, dissolution of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the opening of parliament, and the inauguration of Thein Sein as President on 30th March 2011. Thein Sein's inauguration speech called for national reconciliation and an end to corruption, promised a more market-oriented economy, and vowed to create employment opportunities. He also pledged to develop the health and education sectors in cooperation with international organisations, and to alleviate poverty. While some fear this may only be rhetoric, a growing number of indications suggest that major political and economic reform may indeed be getting underway. This paper traces these recent developments and the possibility of significantly improved international development cooperation in Myanmar, particularly as it affects the prospects of poverty alleviation efforts and cooperation with Western INGO and multilateral agencies. It analyses the implications of this reform on international development assistance and cooperation from the perspectives of humanitarian needs, international relations theory, development theory, and political philosophy.

Keeping connected: the design and overview of the research

The special issue Keeping Connected: Identity, Social Connection and Education for Young People opens with a paper that discusses the research design and overview of a three-year project by a Melbourne (Australia)-based multi-disciplinary team. Over 2007–2009, the Keeping Connected team of 10 researchers investigated the lives of adolescents with ongoing health conditions. The project centrally is developed by the young people's perspectives, their identity and wellbeing, relationships with others and engagement within changing contexts and their altered opportunities in the world. The research design includes image production underpinned by visual methods and a narrative-informed approach to interview and interpretation of images. The study, which crosses the health and education interface, set out to highlight differences of perspectives adopted by 31 young people, their families and the professional groups, such as teachers and health professionals. The special issue discusses key project findings and contributes a body of scholarship that expands our knowledge of evidence-based research across the education and health interface. The longitudinal study highlighted two themes of importance for education, and poorly catered for in current policies and guidelines: that the situation of these young people needs to be addressed by schools as a process over time (including prospectively); and that the young people's identity is strongly marked by a desire to be seen and treated as ‘normal’ combined with an awareness of being vulnerable.

Work differences by sector for medical specialists : evidence of a public sector ethos

Work-related characteristics representative of the ethos for medical specialists have been relatively unexplored, particularly compared to the array of research on primary care physicians. Analyses of 4,166 specialists, from the first wave of the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL) study, revealed that specialists have a choice between either challenging work in the public sector or straightforward yet well-paid work in the private sector. Despite more challenging conditions, health and intent to leave were not key issues for specialists in the public sector, with specialists in private rooms more likely to leave the profession despite more positive work conditions. This result may be due to the public sector ethos suggested in other studies. Ultimately this study provides evidence that suggests differences in the ethos between medical specialists in the public and private sectors.

Female physical educators in all boys' schools - opportunities for enhancing social interactions?

The significance of physical education (PE) and sport in a boys’ school has long been highlighted as a device for the privileging of hyper-masculine identities (tough, stoic & assertive) at the expense of marginalised masculinities and femininities. The propensity for some “members of male sporting clique’s to engage in practices of bullying, shaming, violating and excluding” (Hickey, 2008, p. 148) raises important questions about how the practice of boys’ PE and sport can sometimes lead to unhealthy and damaging social interactions between different types of boys. In response to this rhetoric, some boys’ schools have acted to employ female PE teachers to disrupt “concern about the codes of unity, entitlement and privilege that can be forged among groups of boys whose identities are strongly aligned with sporting forms of hyper-masculinity” (Hickey, 2008, p. 148). Given this potential, we suggest that there is something unique or different about working in spaces or contexts around boys’ physicality. More specifically this paper raises questions about the particular implications for a PE teacher’s professional work, particularly as a female PE teacher.

In current educational climates the performance of boys in social and educational contexts attracts considerable concern. Better understanding the contributions and capacities of female PE teachers in all boys’ schools, (as localised social and political environments in which gendered identities are formed) is warranted. Professional identities and “the meaning of gender is negotiated in everyday interactions” (Priola, 2007, p. 23) implicating the culture of all boys’ schools as significant in the development of ideas around effective, gender inclusive, pedagogical practices. Drawing on case study data, this paper seeks to explore how notions of effectiveness about boys’ PE are formed, with intent to make visible the extent to which female PE teachers influence dominant gendered practices of social interaction in all boys’ PE settings.

Midwifery work and the making of narrative

This paper draws on a study of birth support conducted across three Melbourne maternity units. Midwife informants were asked to participate in semistructured interviews with two researchers and describe the activity and role of lay birth support people. In the course of the study, the activity of the midwives themselves became a research focus. The study found that one of the key tasks midwives described was assisting birthing women to develop and negotiate satisfactory birth narratives that could encompass the intense and sometimes difficult experience of birth. Midwife informants offered strategies for the development of such narratives as part of their professional and personal labour in the birth room.

Student preferences for bachelor degrees at TAFE: the socio-spatial influence of schools

This report on Student Preferences for Bachelor Degrees at TAFE (Technical and Further Education) institutions is derived from research commissioned by Australia’s National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) hosted at Curtin University and conducted by researchers at Deakin University’s Strategic Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation (CREFI). The report focuses on the influence of schools on their students’ higher education (HE) preferences – particularly their preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees – as recorded by the Victorian and South Australian Tertiary Admissions Centres (VTAC and SATAC). Influence is researched in terms of a school’s socioeconomic status, geographical location and sector. The SATAC data set is considerably smaller, at around 8 per cent of the VTAC data set.Bachelor degrees offered by TAFEs are relatively small in number but a growing higher education option for students in Australia (Gale et al. 2013). The Australian Government’s proposal to extend Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) to include Australian higher education not delivered by the nation’s public universities (Department of Education 2014b), is likely to fuel further growth in TAFE bachelor degree offerings. The recent Report of the Review of the Demand Driven Funding System in Australian higher education (Kemp & Norton 2014), which recommended this change, also makes special mention of non-university degree options as something that would be of particular benefit to students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.The research reported herein is informed by a review of the international research literature, which indicates three main influences on students’ HE preferences: (1) students’ families and communities; (2) the socio-spatial location of their schools; and (3) school practices. This report contributes to understandings on the second of these: the influence of school context (their socio-spatial location) on students’ preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees.The research found that the annual rate of student preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees was relatively stable (at around 1,500 per annum) from 2009 to 2012 but rose significantly (by 30%) in 2013. Students from high socioeconomic status schools (and with an average ATAR of 56.9) were the group that registered the largest number of preferences. The number of preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees lodged by students from metropolitan schools exceeded the preferences of students from schools located in all other regions combined. This might reflect the fact that TAFE institutions offering bachelor degrees tend to be located in metropolitan areas.The research also found that students’ preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees increased after announcement of their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), by between 25 and 30 per cent each year. The post-ATAR increase was most noticeable in the Health and Education fields of study and among students from high socioeconomic status schools. The report concludes that while the public perception of TAFE is that it is a sector primarily for students from low SES backgrounds, this is not reflected in students’ preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees. Instead, the preferences of students from high socioeconomic schools outnumber other SES groups in almost every TAFE-degree field of study. This includes the fields of Health and Education, which are often seen to be typical low SES student choices in universities (Gale & Parker 2013).