Anticipating policy and logics of practice : Australian institutional and academic responses to the globalising "quality research" agenda

Research assessment is now an international trend. This article mobilises a critical policy sociology informed by Bourdieu to unpack the differential effects of research policy shifts in Australia on universities, academics and the field of educational research. It argues in anticipating policy moves - from surveying the logics of practice that have emerged elsewhere from research assessment - that institutional, individual and field responses, while specific to the Australian policy context and mix, have assumed a logic of practice counter productive to "quality" research, education as a field, and equity.

Clinical nurse research consultant : a clinical and academic role to advance practice and the discipline of nursing

Aims:  This article presents a proposal for the Clinical Nurse Research Consultant, a new nursing role. Background:  Although healthcare delivery continues to evolve, nursing has lacked highly specialized clinical and research leadership that, as a primary responsibility, drives evidence-based practice change in collaboration with bedside clinicians. Data sources:  International literature published over the last 25 years in the databases of CINAHL, OVID, Medline Pubmed, Science Direct, Expanded Academic, ESBSCOhost, Scopus and Proquest is cited to create a case for the Clinical Nurse Research Consultant. Discussion:  The Clinical Nurse Research Consultant will address the research/practice gap and assist in facilitating evidence-based clinical practice. To fulfil the responsibilities of this proposed role, the Clinical Nurse Research Consultant must be a doctorally prepared recognized clinical expert, have educational expertise, and possess advanced interpersonal, teamwork and communication skills. This role will enable clinical nurses to maintain and share their clinical expertise, advance practice through research and role model the clinical/research nexus. Implications for nursing:  Critically, the Clinical Nurse Research Consultant must be appointed in a clinical and academic partnership to provide for career progression and role support. Conclusion:  The creation of the Clinical Nurse Research Consultant will advance nursing practice and the discipline of nursing.

Substitution and complementarity in the creation and communication of Australian university research

The generation of research is one of the major functions of the university sector. In most disciplines, journal articles continue to be the main outlet for the communication of research findings. However, in Australia, government induced distortions have rewarded refereed conference papers an equal status to refereed journal papers. The aim of this paper is to explore the association between research published in journals and research published in conference proceedings. We use a panel dataset of the research output of 36 Australian universities, for the period 1995–2004. Cobb-Douglas research production functions are estimated, as well as a system of research production functions that allows for simultaneity. The results indicate that journals and conferences are contemporaneous substitutes – an expansion in conference publications displaces journal publications. There is also a 'DEST effect'. On average, conference papers are not converted into subsequent journal papers. The DEST effect is found also through analysis of the publication histories of 152 business and law academics. Postgraduate enrolments are shown to contribute only to conferences and have no effect on journal publications. Research income has a positive effect on both conferences and journal publications.

Art embodied and disembodied : expression, representation, and reflection

In this chapter a group of writers from very diverse academic backgrounds deal with the embodied and disembodied arts - from an exploration of dance with preschool children to the use of the webblog for eleven and twelve year olds to reflect on the creation of a group performance about how to change the world. The Deans & Young case study takes the reader into the world of the preschooler and the delicate craft of the dance and drama teachers who guide their small dancers through myriad choreographic and conceptual tasks in their pursuit of kinaesthetic learning. Jo Raphael allow the young bloggers to speak from themselves in her case study. How to Change the World. Through the voices of the Year 6 students, Jo raises the critical question of how to build meaningful reflection into the arts-making process, and suggests that for the current generation of 'cyber-natives', the digital world offers many great possibilities. Theory concerning forms of expression and representation in the embodies and digital world is also discussed.

Australian PhD theses in selected professional and academic disciplines 1987–2006 and the implications for future research capacity

This commences with an overview the research methods and outcomes. It is contextualised in terms of the current Australian and international debates about the nature, substance and impact of doctoral education on nations, societies, communities and economies. Four professional disciplines (architecture and building, education, librarianship and nursing) and four academic disciplines (astronomy, chemistry, cultural studies and demography) are selected for analysis of their 1987–2006 PhD thesis records. These selections were made to reflect a range of professional and academic disciplines in Australia and to illustrate the changes that have occurred over the past two decades. The period 1987-2006 covers several major changes in Australian university education and PhD education in particular.

Research mentoring on the edge : early career researchers and academic fringe-dwelling

Discourses of research leadership define not only what quality research leadership can and should be, but also identify those who speak and act with authority. Similarly, these discourses construct particular professional identities and idealised ‘ways of being’. They provide possibilities for research leaders as well as those categorised as 'Early Career Researchers' (ECRs) to create alternative identities and representations of themselves. This study reports the views of 32 academics across 16 Australian universities in four States about research mentoring and leadership for ECRs. The primary interest was to explore how research leadership is conceptualised, implemented and negotiated in the disciplinary fields of business, nursing and education. Whilst a number of ECRs viewed formal research mentoring as taking a ‘tick the box’ approach that they believed of limited value, a number of research leaders had different views. Most senior research leaders viewed the systemic provision of assistance their universities offered in a positive light. The dissonance in views centred on the subject positioning of academics in research. The dissatisfaction expressed by ECRs, a number of whom positioned themselves as fringe-dwellers ‘on the edge’ of their institutional research culture, raises questions about research sustainability and succession planning in Australian tertiary
institutions.

State-of-the-art review and critical success factors for mobile business intelligence

Due to ubiquitous information requirements, market interest in mobile business intelligence (BI) has grown markedly. However, mobile BI market is a relatively new area that has been driven primarily by the IT industry. Yet, there is a lack of systematic study on the critical success factors for mobile BI. This research reviews the state-of-the-art of mobile BI, and explores the critical success factors based on a rigorous examination of the academic and practitioner literature. The study reveals that critical success factors of mobile BI generally fall into four key dimensions, namely security, mobile technology, system content and quality, and organisational support perspectives. The various research findings will be useful to organisations which are considering or undertaking mobile business intelligence initiatives.

Writing groups, change and academic identity: research development as local practice

The development of the research potential of university staff has been given less attention than many other aspects of professional development, particularly teaching development. Yet there is an important need for the development of staff in the research role in the light of growth of higher education and changes to the organisation of the sector in many countries. This article examines one strategy for research development: the use of writing groups. It argues that writing is best seen as a starting point, rather than an endpoint, of the research process and hence that fostering academic writing is a useful place to do research development work. The article provides details of the use of a number of writing groups over three years in a particular faculty and explores the responses of leaders and participants. It identifies factors important in the use of this strategy and focuses on the contextual conditions required for initiatives of this kind to be effectively implemented.

Urban growth centres on the periphery : ad hoc policy vision and research neglect

The focus of this paper is peripheral urban growth centres on the edges of capital cities in Australia and the challenges they face as dormitory suburbs attempting to establish their own local business development. These challenges create dilemmas as infrastructure and climate change place pressure on long commuting times, while developing strong locally based communities is limited by many resource and demand constraints. The main research question is to examine how these challenges are being addressed in both public policy and academic research. Two propositions emerge from this analysis. The first is that, despite clear recognition of these challenges by public policy makers, there is a lack of coherent policy vision in addressing the dilemmas that are facing these urban growth centres. The second is that, despite all the concerns and lack of policy vision, there is a dearth of useful academic research in Australia to understand the dilemmas and provide guidance for appropriate policy options. In the context of ad hoc policy and academic neglect; Casey, Melton and Wyndham are the three major urban peripheral local government areas in Victoria that are profiled in this paper. They serve as examples in examining incoherence of policy and then analysing the elements that are needed for effective and strong peripheral growth centres that could propel these centres towards efficient and equitable liveable communities. A broad composite model of regional economic development is used to examine the attendant problems in these urban centres and the various viable policy options for addressing these problems. In the process, this paper aims to provide a basis for further rigorous academic investigation of peripheral urban growth centres in Australia and, arising from this, more coherent policies for the economic development of such centres.

Barriers to indigenous education and educational research reform in Australia

Across all Indigenous education sectors in Australia there continues to be extensive debate about the appropriateness of proposed assessment criteria, curriculum content, language of instruction, pedagogical approaches, research practices and institutional structures. Until relatively recently, policy initiatives targeting these issues have been developed and implemented separately and without reference to the interrelated nature of the barriers that confront Indigenous peoples in their attempts to challenge mainstream educational and research practices that potentially marginalise their individual and collective interests. Increasingly, these issues are being linked under the banner of 'Indigenous education reform', and the potential for collective Indigenous community action is being realised. The current Indigenous education reform process in Australia is concerned with reversing the trend associated with patterns of academic underachievement by Indigenous students in the nation's school systems. Concurrently, reforms in the area of Indigenous education research are concerned with achieving fundamental changes to the way Indigenous education research is initiated, constructed and practised. Mainstream institutions. Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples have different interests in the outcome of the resolution processes associated with proposals to reform Indigenous education and research practices. It is through investigation of stakeholder positioning in relation to key issues, and through reference to stakeholder interests in the outcome of negotiated resolutions, that a critical approach to analysing Indigenous education and research reform initiatives can be achieved. The three case studies contained within this portfolio represent an attempt to investigate the patterns of contestation associated with the delivery of primary school education for Aboriginal students in the Northern Territory and the problems associated with implementing reformed Indigenous education research guidelines. This research has revealed pervasive mainstream community and institutional support for assimilatory policies and a related lack of support for policies of Indigenous community 'self-determination1. This implies insufficient support within the Nation-State for Indigenous proposals for education and research reforms that legitimise the incorporation of Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge and that aim to re-position Indigenous peoples as central to the construction and delivery of education and educational research within their own communities. Common barriers to the implementation of reformed institutional structures and educational and research practices have been identified across each of the three case studies. The analysis of these common barriers points to a generalised statement about the nature of the resistance by mainstream Australians and their institutions to Indigenous community proposals for educational and research reforms. This research identifies key barriers to Indigenous Australian education and research reforms as being: Resurgent mainstream community and institutional support for assimilatory policies implies a lack of support for increasing the level of Indigenous community involvement in the construction and delivery of education and educational research; Mainstream institutional commitment to the principles of economic rationalism and the incorporation of corporate managerialist approaches reduces the potential for Indigenous community involvement in the setting of educational and research objectives; The education and social policy agendas of recent Australian governments are geared toward the achievement of national economic growth and the strengthening of Australia's position in the global economy. As a direct result, the unique cultural identities and linguistic heritages of Indigenous peoples in Australia are marginalised; Identified 'disempowenng' attitudes and practices of educators, researchers and institutional representatives continue to impact negatively upon the educational outcomes of Indigenous students; Insufficient institutional support for the development of mechanisms to ensure Indigenous community control over all aspects of the research project continues to impede the successful negotiation of research in Indigenous community contexts; The promotion of 'deficit' educational approaches for Indigenous students reinforces the marginalisation of their existing linguistic and cultural knowledge bases; The relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia continues to be constrained by the philanthropically based 'donor-recipient' model of service delivery. The framing of Indigenous peoples as recipients of mainstream community benevolence has ongoing disempowering and negative consequences; Currently proposed national Indigenous education policies and programmes for the implementation of these polices do not adequately take into account the diversity in linguistic, political, cultural and social interests of Indigenous peoples in Australia; Widespread 'institutional racism' within mainstream educational institutions perpetuates the disadvantage experienced by Indigenous students and Indigenous community members who aim to derive benefit from education and educational research.

Factors influencing the relationship between sexual abuse and academic achievement

This study examined factors expected to influence the relationship between sexual abuse and academic achievement in an adolescent inpatient psychiatric population. It was found that sexual abuse combined with either low intelligence, substance abuse, internalising behaviour problems or externalising behaviour problems predicted poor academic achievement. The supporting portfolio aims to discuss the proposed relationship between attachment and adolescent depression, highlighting the clinical relevance of this body of research with four cases of adolescent depression.

Automated parallel application creation and execution tool for clusters

This research investigated an automated approach to re-writing traditional sequential computer programs into parallel programs for networked computers. A tool was designed and developed for generating parallel programs automatically and also executing these parallel programs on a network of computers. Performance is maximized by utilising all idle resources.

‘Inspired and assisted’, or ‘berated and destroyed’? Research leadership, management and performativity in troubled times

Research leadership in Australian universities takes place against a backdrop of policy reforms concerned with measurement and comparison of institutional research performance. In particular, the Excellence in Research in Australian initiative undertaken by the Australian Research Council sets out to evaluate research quality in Australian universities, using a combination of expert review process, and assessment of performance against ‘quality indicators’. Benchmarking exercises of this sort continue to shape institutional policy and practice, with inevitable effects on the ways in which research leadership, mentoring and practice are played out within university faculties and departments. In an exploratory study that interviewed 32 Australian academics in universities in four Australian states, we asked participants, occupying formal or informal research leadership roles, to comment on their perceptions of research leadership as envisioned and enacted in their particular workplaces. We found a pervasive concern amongst participants that coalesced around binaries characterized in metaphoric terms of ‘carrots and whips’. Research leadership was seen by many as managerial in nature, and as such, largely tethered to instrumentalist notions of productivity and performativity, while research cultures were seen as languishing under the demoralizing weight of reward and punishment systems. Here, we consider what is at stake for the future of the academic workforce under such conditions, arguing that new models of visionary research leadership are urgently needed in the ‘troubled times’ of techno-bureaucratic university reforms.