Attitudes toward history,

Mode of access: Internet.

Hosting asylum seekers and attitudes toward cultural diversity in Australia

In 2012, the Australian government in office introduced a novel scheme of housing asylum seekers as guests of Australians in the community. A number of Australians participated in the scheme and volunteered as hosts. This study compared those who volunteered to assist asylum seekers with general members of the community to explore the impact attitudes towards cultural diversity and demographic factors had upon willingness to support asylum seekers. Further, the two groups were combined to examine the factors that can contribute to positive attitudes to diversity in society in general. Participants (N = 142; aged from 24-79 years) completed online questionnaires assessing demographic variables, attitudes towards cultural diversity and acculturation. Various analysis of variance procedures, Chi-squared tests and correlations were conducted. Group comparisons indicated that volunteers’ attitudes did not impact on willingness to support asylum seekers. However, some demographic differences between groups emerged. Volunteers were more likely to be professionals with stable jobs, ethnically diverse and well-travelled individuals. Analyses on the combined groups indicated age, education and not having a strong religious affiliation enhanced Australians’ positive attitudes to cultural diversity. The findings have implications for promoting positive attitudes to diversity in individuals, organisations and communities. Potential opportunities for professionals and policy-makers to promote support for cultural diversity in the community are discussed.

Attitudes and interests towards biotechnology: The mismatch between students and teachers

Increasing the scientific literacy of Australians has become an educational priority in recent times. The ‘Science State – Smart State’ initiative of the Queensland Government involves an action plan for improving science education that includes a Science for Life action. A desired outcome is for an increased understanding of the natural world so that responsible decisions concerning our future wellbeing can be made in an age of science and technology. Biotechnology is a technology that is having profound impact on our lives. This paper describes how 15-16 year old students and biology teachers revealed a mismatch in both attitudes and interests towards biotechnology between the students and teachers. The findings are of interest as the teachers are writing biotechnology into their work programs in response to new syllabus documents. The teacher’s areas of interest did not match those of the students, possibly resulting in a curriculum the teachers want to teach, but the students do not want to learn.

Rethinking the notion of culture in the national history curriculum

Major global changes are placing new demands on the Australian education system. Recent statements by the Prime Minister, together with current education policy and national curriculum documents available in the public domain, look to education’s role in promoting economic prosperity and social cohesion. Collectively, they emphasise the need to equip young Australians with the knowledge, understandings and skills required to compete in the global economy and participate as engaged citizens in a culturally diverse world. However, the decision to prioritise discipline-based learning in the forthcoming Australian history curriculum without specifically encompassing culture as a referent, raises the following question. How will students acquire the cultural knowledge, understandings and skills necessary for this process? This paper addresses this question by situating the current push for a national history curriculum, with specific reference to the study of Indigenous history and the study of Asia in Australia.

Swimming between the flags: A preliminary exploration of the influences on Australians’ intentions to swim between the flags at patrolled beaches

Swimming at patrolled beaches reduces the likelihood of drownings and near-drownings. The present study tested the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), with the addition of risk perceptions, in predicting people’s intentions to swim between the flags at patrolled beaches. We examined also the predictors of people’s willingness to swim [1] up to 10 metres and [2] more than 10 metres outside of the patrol flags. Participants (N = 526) completed measures of attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control (PBC), intentions/willingness, and both objective and subjective risk perceptions. Two weeks later, a sub-sample of participants reported on their beach swimming behaviour for the previous fortnight. Attitude and subjective norm predicted intentions to swim between and willingness to swim outside of the flags. Age and PBC influenced willingness to swim beyond the flags. Objective risk predicted willingness to swim beyond the flags (both distances) while subjective risk predicted willingness to swim up to 10 metres outside the flags. People’s intentions to swim between the flags were correlated with their behaviour at follow-up. This study provides a preliminary investigation into an important safety behaviour and identifies factors to target when promoting safe swimming behaviours to prevent drowning deaths on Australian beaches.

The relationship between Australians and the overseas graves of the First World War

The purpose of this thesis is to outline the relationship that existed in the past and exists in the present, between Australians and the War Graves and Memorials to the Missing. commemorations of Australians who died during the First World War. Their final resting places are scattered all over the world and provide a tangible record of the sacrifice of men and women in the war, and represent the final result by Official Agencies such as the Imperial, and later, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and its agency representative, the Office of Australian War Graves, of an attempt to appropriately commemorate them. The study follows the path of history from the event of death of an individual in the First World War, through their burial; temporary grave or memorial commemoration; the permanent commemoration; the family and public reaction to the deaths; how the Official Agencies of related Commonwealth Governments dealt with the dead; and finally, how the Australian dead are represented on the battlefields of the world in the 21st century. Australia.s war dead of the First World War are scattered around the globe in more than 40 countries and are represented in war cemeteries and civil cemeteries; and listed on large „Memorials to the Missing., which commemorate the individuals devoid of a known graves or final resting place.

Reverse immigration

This book (256 pages, written in Korean) is a critical essay that reviews, questions, and criticises Korean and Eastern immigrants’ thinking and behaviour styles in Australia from their cultural perspectives, and discuss and proposes a creative cultural dimension for their better life in a multicultural context. Multiculturalism is not supportive of Eastern cultures because of individualistic collection of cultures, while transculturalism facilitates nurture of their culture in a community-oriented way within multicultural circumstances. Korean and Eastern immigrants, sharing oriental cultural systems and values, should approach to the Australian multicultural context with transculturalism which allows creating new cultural values in collaboration with and by participation into local communities. ------------------------------------------------------------ Many Eastern immigrants live in their own ethnic communities without or less interacting with Australian (communities). The author defines this phenomenon as “reverse immigration”. Reverse immigration refers to re-immigrating to their ethnic community in Australia or to their birth country despite they did not anticipate that this would happen to them before immigration to Australia. The author argues that Easterners’ collectivistic culture often devalues individuality and vice versa. Cultural clash between West and East often forces the immigrants to choose reverse immigration because of their lack of understanding of Western culture and their cultural characteristics such as low individuality, high power distance, and high uncertainty avoidance. For example, a vague boundary between individualist and collectivist in a collectivistic context (within their ethnic group) often leads to maladjustment to local communities and enhancement of cultural conservatism. The author proposes that the cultural clash can be overcome by cross-cultural activities named “transculturalism”. To Eastern immigrants, transculturalism can be achieved by acculturation of their two predominant cultures, the third-person perspective and generalised others. In a multicultural context, the former refers to the ability to share another person's feelings and emotions as if they were your own, and the latter does the ability to manage community and public expectations. When both cultural values are used for quality interactions between East and West, they allow Eastern immigrants to be more creative and critical and Australian to be more socially inclusive and culturally tolerant. With these discussions, the author discusses cultural differences throughout the book with four topics (chapters) and proposes transculturalism as a solution to the reverse immigration. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 1 criticises Koreans’ attitudes and methods towards learning English that is less pragmatic and practical, but more likely to be a scholarly study. The author explains that Koreans’ non-pragmatic towards learning English has been firmly built based on their traditional systems and values that Koreans view English as a discipline and an aim of academic achievements rather than a means of communication. Within their cultural context, English can be perceived as more than a language, but something like vastly superior to their language and culture. Their collectivistic culture regards English as an unreachable and heterogeneous one that may threaten their cultural identity, so that “scholarly studying” is only the way to achieve (not learn) it. This discourages the immigrants to engage and involve in daily dialogues by “using” English as a second language. The author further advises the readers to be aware of Eastern collectivistic culture in communication and interaction that sometimes completely reverses private and public topics in a Western context. This leads them to feel that they have no content to talk to natives. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 2 compares between Korea and Australia in terms of their educational systems and values, and proposes how Eastern overseas students can achieve critical and creative thinking within a Western educational setting. Interestingly, this chapter includes an explanation of why Eastern overseas students easily fail assessments including essay writing, oral presentations and discussions. One of the reasons the author explains is that Eastern students are not familiar to criticise others and think creatively, especially when they recognise that their words and ideas may harm the collectivistic harmony. Western educational systems focuses on enhancement of individuality such as self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-expression, while Eastern educational systems foster group-oriented values such as interpersonal relationship, and strong moral and spiritual values. Yet, the author argues that the collectivistic approach to criticism and creativity is often more critical and creative than Western individuals when they know what they are supposed to do for a group (or a community). Therefore, Eastern students need to think their cultural merits and demerits by using an individual perspective rather than generalised others’ perspective. The latter often discourages individual participation in a community, and the generalised others in a Western culture is weaker than Eastern. Furthermore, Western educational systems do not educate students to transform (loose) their individuality to fit into a group or a community. Rather they cultivate individuality for community prosperity. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 3 introduces various cases of reverse immigration in workplaces that many immigrants return to their country or their ethnic community after many trials for acculturation. Reverse immigration is unexpected and not planned before immigration, so that its emotional embarrassment increases such severe social loneliness. Most Eastern immigrant workers have tried to adjust themselves in this new cultural environment at the early stages of immigration. However, their cultural features of collectivism, high power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, and long-term oriented cultures suppress individual initiative and eliminate the space for experiments in ways of acculturation. The author argues that returning to their ethnic community (physically and psychologically) leads to two significant problems: their distorted parenting and becoming more conservatives. The former leads the first generation of immigrants to pressure their children to pursue extrinsic or materialist values, such as financial success, fame and physical appearance, rather than on intrinsic values, while the latter refers to their isolated conservative characters because of their remoteness from the changes of their own country. The author also warns that their ethnic and religious groups actively strengthens immigrants’ social loneliness and systematically discourages immigrants’ interests and desire to be involving into local communities. The ethnic communities and leaders have not been interacting with Australian local communities and, as a result, are eager to conserve outdated cultural systems values. Even they have a tendency to weed out those people who wish to settle down within Australian local communities. They believe that those people can threaten their community’s survival and continuity. ------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter 4 titled multiculturalism argues that Korean and Eastern immigrants should more precisely understand Australia as a multicultural society in a way of collaboratively creating new cultural values. The author introduces multiculturalism with its definitions and history in Australia and argues the limitations of multiculturalism from an Easterner’s perspective. With well known tragedies of the second generations of U.S. immigrants, Cho Seung-Hui, a university student, massacred 32 people on the Virginia Tech before committing suicide and Hidal Hassan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 13 people at Fort Hood and the responses of ethnic community, the author explains that their mental illness may be derived from their parents’ (or ethnic group) culturally isolated attitude and socially static viewpoint of U.S. (Western system and values). The author insists that multiculturalism may restrict Eastern immigrants’ engagement and involvement in local communities. Multiculturalism has been systematically and historically developed based on Western systems and cultural values. In other words, multiculturalism requires high self-confidence and self-esteem that Eastern immigrants less prioritise them. It has been generally known that Easterners put more weight on human relationship than Westerners, but the author claims that this is not true. Within an individualistic culture, Westerners are more interested in building person-to-person connections and relationships. While Easterners are more interested in how individuals can achieve a sense of belonging within a group and a community. Therefore, multiculturalism is an ideology which forces Eastern immigrants to discard their strong desire to be part of a group and does not give a sense of belonging. In a consequence, the author advises that Eastern immigrants should aim towards “transculturalism” which allows them to actively participate in and contribute to their multicultural community. Transculturalism does not ask Easterners to discard their cultural values, but enables them to be a collectivistic individualist (a community leader) who is capable of developing new cultural values in a more creative and productive way. Furthermore, transculturalism encourages Western Australians in a multicultural context to collaborate with ethnic minorities to build a better community.

Anna Clark (2008) History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom. UNSW Press, Sydney, 178 pages

“History’s Children” stems from Anna Clark’s 2004 postdoctoral research into the ways in which Australian students connect with the past, and aims at bringing some classroom perspectives into the public debates about Australian history education. Although the title makes reference to the “History Wars”, there is little evidence of contestation, engagement, passion or intellectual excitement in Clark’s conclusions about what happens in history classrooms. Rather, Clark’s small focus groups with 182 high school students in 34 high schools around Australia indicate that “it got a bit dismal hearing student after student being so dismissive of Australian history” (p. 143). Apart from some enthusiasm for the study of Australians at war, a sort of resigned boredom seems to characterise what students have to say about learning Australian history, despite their acknowledgement that it is important to “know about” it.

Australian consumers' attitudes about sports sponsorship during an economic downturn

This paper provides an overview of the prevailing attitudes held by Australian residents as they relate to sports sponsorship during a global financial downturn. A survey of 1,158 Australians assessed changes in attitudes from 2008 to 2009; then it addressed issues specific to the economic conditions of 2009. In general, Australians view sports sponsorship favourably.

Haunted by the past : effects of poor management on employee attitudes and turnover

Change management research has largely ignored the effects of organizational change management history in shaping employee attitudes and behavior. This article develops and tests a model of the effects of poor change management history (PCMH) on employee attitudes (trust, job satisfaction, turnover intentions, change cynicism, and openness to change) and actual turnover. We found that PCMH, through PCMH beliefs, led to lower trust, job satisfaction and openness to change, and higher cynicism and turnover intentions. Also, PCMH beliefs predicted employee turnover over 2 years.