Locating Indigenous Australia within community development practice : clients, consumers or change makers?

The philosophical promise of community development to “resource and empower people so that they can collectively control their own destinies” (Kenny 1996:104) is no doubt alluring to Indigenous Australia. Given the historical and contemporary experiences of colonial control and surveillance of Aboriginal bodies, alongside the continuing experiences of socio-economic disadvantage, community development reaffirms the aspirational goal of Indigenous Australians for self-determination. Self-determination as a national policy agenda for Indigenous Australians emerged in the 1970s and saw the establishment of a wide range of Aboriginal community-controlled services (Tsey et al 2012). Sullivan (2010:4) argues that the Aboriginal community controlled service sector during this time has, and continues to be, instrumental to advancing the plight of Indigenous Australians both materially and politically. Yet community development and self-determination remain highly problematic and contested in how they manifest in Indigenous social policy agendas and in practice (Hollinsworth 1996; Martin 2003; McCausland 2005; Moreton-Robinson 2009). Moreton-Robinson (2009:68) argues that a central theme underpinning these tensions is a reading of Indigeneity in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, behaviours, cultures, and communities are pathologised as “dysfunctional” thus enabling assertions that Indigenous people are incapable of managing their own affairs. This discourse distracts us from the “strategies and tactics of patriarchal white sovereignty” that inhibit the “state’s earlier policy of self-determination” (Moreton-Robinson 2009:68). We acknowledge the irony of community development espoused by Ramirez above (1990), that the least resourced are expected to be most resourceful.; however, we wish to interrogate the processes that inhibit Indigenous participation and control of our own affairs rather than further interrogate Aboriginal minds as uneducated, incapable and/or impaired...

Community development in sustainable livelihoods approaches: an introduction

This article introduces sustainable livelihoods approaches, explaining what they are and how they have emerged. It examines how different organizations have taken up a sustainable livelihoods approach, and considers whether in so doing they have drawn on community development thinking and practice. It is found that community development is largely absent from sustainable livelihoods thinking and contended that part of the reason lies with the locally situated character of community development practice, which makes it difficult for externally driven sustainable livelihoods interventions to systematically incorporate community-level methods and practices. More fundamentally, sustainable livelihoods approaches embody a technocratic development drive, which is at odds with the principles, ethos and values that underpin much development work.

Tensions and dilemmas in community development: new discourses, new Trojans?

This paper begins by noting the range of contradictions and dilemmas facing those involved in community development today. It then draws on research into the operating frameworks that set the stage for much current community development activity. It discusses four key operating frameworks and how each framework can affect community development practice. The final section deals with the ways in which the frameworks, and the discourses associated with them, come together.

Community development and enterprise culture : prospects and dilemmas

Community Development as a form of practice promotes empowerment and social justice. Its origins lie in people's collective struggle to be heard, recognised and accorded full citizenship in society. It has developed strategies to achieve social change that challenge dominant ways of thinking, policy and resource allocation in society. 'Enterprise culture has its origins in the individualism and competitiveness of capitalism. These essentially neo-liberalist concepts have been remoulded into a radical political program of change sponsored by the state under the guise of new managerialism, competitive tendering and privatization. This research seeks to examine the interface between community development and enterprise culture as a potential site of tension and contestation through an analysis of discourse. The initial task, therefore, was to elaborate the concept of enterprise culture and examine the ways enterprise culture has been manifested in community development. The focus has been on practitioners committed to community development through a qualitative, empirical approach with a view to discerning their views on the relevance and impact of enterprise culture on their work. Community development provides a useful domain for interrogating the infiltration of the concept of the enterprise culture because of its history of opposition and mobilisation. The research seeks to understand the ways in which the forms of enterprise culture as an essentially cultural project are manifested in practice contexts and to analyse the nature of the response to its various manifestations. As a result, it constitutes more than just a critique of any one of these forms, eg, privatisation, tendering out, managerialism, and instead seeks to investigate the degree to which a cultural shift may be occurring towards notions of greater individualism and away from collective notions of responsibility, obligation and citizenship. The research critically analyses the impact of enterprise culture on Australian social policy through the case study of community development practice. The manifestations of enterprise culture are investigated at various levels, with an emphasis on the responses of practitioners. A related aim is to reveal the range of possible responses to the infiltration of the enterprise culture in terms of values, language and practice into community development. Are new forms of practice emerging or is the field being steadily co-opted by government social and educational policy? Finally, the research should enable some future directions to be identified for the field of community development. The findings represent an initial attempt in an Australian context to establish the degree of influence that enterprise culture has had and/or will have on social policy. Chapter 1 examines the concept of enterprise culture and a background to its impact on community development as a domain of practice. The meaning of enterprise culture and its origins will be examined in Chapter 2. Its influence on Australian social policy is then discussed with particular reference to recent changes in Victoria regarding family services. In Chapter 3, the main features of critical discourse analysis are outlined as a framework for subsequent analysis of the links between discourse and hegemony. The work of Fairclough (1992, 1995) is utilised to highlight the relevance of discourse analysis to an examination of the infiltration of ideas associated with enterprise culture into the domain of community development. Chapter 4 provides an overview of the origins and defining characteristics of community development practice. The diverse beginnings and philosophical underpinnings are discussed and the main features of community development outlined in order to establish meanings attached to key concepts such as empowerment and participation. In Chapter 5, the findings of initial interviews with sixteen community development practitioners are discussed in terms of their perceptions of the impact of enterprise culture on their practice and the organisational culture within which they operate. These initial interviews were conducted in November-December 1996. A primary focus of the interviews was to establish the key words in their lexicon of practice and to provide an opportunity for reflection on the relative influence of discourse and practices associated with enterprise culture. A framework for analysing and making sense of the forms of response to enterprise culture is applied to the responses. Four forms of possible response are proposed and discussed in the context of the data. Follow up interviews were conducted in November-December 1997 and the findings of these interviews are discussed in Chapter 6. A particular emphasis in these interviews was on any changes in the lexicon of practice and indications of a change in the impact of discourse and practices associated with enterprise culture. The forms of response suggested in the framework outlined in Chapter 5 are discussed in the light of any movement in the responses of participants in the study. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the framework of responses or forms of embrace of enterprise culture analysed in earlier chapters. Finally, in Chapter 7, the potential for community development as a form of practice to transcend or at least accommodate the impact of enterprise culture through strategic forms of embrace is discussed and possible strategies based on the research that may assist in the development of this response are proposed.

Towards unsettling community development

Community development was born out of a commitment to practising ways of empowering people to take collective control of their own lives. It requires profound changes in the ways in which societies are organized, and has held out the promise of heroic change. Although community development practitioners have been able to secure spaces for community development processes and policies, overall the successes of community development have been uneven and often quite modest. Indeed, the story of community development so far is one of the considerable unfinished businesses. Drawing on two research projects, this paper considers whether third-sector organizations, which are the main sites within which community development practice takes place, generate and nurture the types of active citizenship that are appropriate to community development activities. The paper develops a typology of active citizenship and considers manifestations of the types in seven countries. The applicability of the types to community development is dependent upon what form of community development is being considered. The paper argues that we need more than a settled form of community development based around social maintenance and defensive active citizenship. An unsettled and edgy community development is also needed that requires critical, proactive, visionary, cosmopolitan and active citizens who are prepared to challenge the existing power relations.

Community development today:engaging challenges through cosmopolitanism?

This article begins by outlining some of the challenges and opportunities for community development theory and practice today. Some of these have been present from the 1960s and 70s, some have been evident for several decades, others are new and some demand urgent attention. The second part of the paper notes three types of responses to the challenges. It argues the case for embracing one specific response, namely a deepening of a cosmopolitan outlook in both the theory and practice of community development. While acknowledging that community development is in someways already a cosmopolitan endeavour, the paper concludes with a call for exploration of the ways in which embracing a broader and deeper cosmopolitanism might enhance community development as it responds to contemporary challenges.

Circles of care : should community development redefine the practice of palliative care?

Specialist palliative care, within hospices in particular, has historically led and set the standard for caring for patients at end of life. The focus of this care has been mostly for patients with cancer. More recently, health and social care services have been developing equality of care for all patients approaching end of life. This has mostly been done in the context of a service delivery approach to care whereby services have become increasingly expert in identifying health and social care need and meeting this need with professional services. This model of patient centred care, with the impeccable assessment and treatment of physical, social, psychological and spiritual need, predominantly worked very well for the latter part of the 20th century. Over the last 13 years, however, there have been several international examples of community development approaches to end of life care. The patient centred model of care has limitations when there is a fundamental lack of integrated community policy, development and resourcing. Within this article, we propose a model of care which identifies a person with an illness at the centre of a network which includes inner and outer networks, communities and service delivery organisations. All of these are underpinned by policy development, supporting the overall structure. Adoption of this model would allow individuals, communities, service delivery organisations and policy makers to work together to provide end of life care that enhances value and meaning for people at end of life, both patients and communities alike.

Rationale, restrictions and responses : online academic development to promote a community of practice

Casual academics play a major role in higher education in Australia today. In their roles as tutors, demonstrators and markers, casual academics need access to opportunities to develop as teachers. As such, Deakin University has developed an online academic development program designed to better equip new and inexperienced casual academics for their roles. This paper reports on the approach that has been taken to designing one module of an online academic development program for casual academics, considering the influence of information and communication technology (ICT) on this design, and discusses an analysis of the feedback on the module by the participants who completed it. A conclusion is drawn that aligning self paced online learning with induction into a community of practice via ICT presents particular challenges.

Book review : Community development in theory and practice : an international reader

Book review of Community Development in Theory and Practice: An International Reader. Edited by G. Craig, K. Popple and M. Shaw.

The evolution of a community of practice at the Queensland University of Technology for lecturers involved in large first year units

Communities of practice (CoPs) may be defined as groups of people who are mutually bound by what they do together (Wenger, 1998, p. 2), that is, they “form to share what they know, to learn from one another regarding some aspects of their work and to provide a social context for that work” (Nickols, 2000, para. 1). They are “emergent” in that the shape and membership emerges in the process of activity (Lees, 2005, p. 7). People in CoPs share their knowledge and experiences freely with the purpose of finding inventive ways to approach new problems (Wenger & Snyder, 2000, p. 2). They can be seen as “shared histories of learning” (Wenger, 1998, p. 86). For some time, QUT staff have been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at sharing ideas and resources for teaching first year students such as the Coordinators of Large First Year Units Working Party. To harness these initiatives and maximise their influence, the leaders of the Transitions In Project (TIP)1 decided to form a CoP around the design, assessment and management of large first year units.

ePortfolio use by university students in Australia : Developing a sustainable community of practice

This report documents Stage Two of the Australian ePortfolio Project (AeP2), to specifically explore the current scope of national and international ePortfolio communities of practice in order to identify the factors that have contributed to their success and sustainability. The study has built on Stage One of the Australian ePortfolio Project (Hallam, Harper, McCowan, Hauville, McAllister, & Creagh, 2008), which outlined the broad range of issues and challenges, as well as significant opportunities, that faced the higher education sector in terms of ePortfolio practice, to determine how the emergent community of ePortfolio researchers and practitioners in Australia might be advanced. ---------- The overarching aims of this project were to focus on building the Australian community of practice through an online forum and further symposium activities. Through the research activities the project sought to generate the following major outcomes: develop a forum within the ALTC Exchange to support an ePortfolio community of practice; develop strategies to encourage interest in and engagement with community of practice activities; develop and promote resources to support the diverse stakeholders in ePortfolio practice; collaborate in the establishment of a cross-sector ePortfolio community of practice; host a second Australian ePortfolio Symposium (AeP2) to disseminate the findings from the Australian ePortfolio Project, to explore innovative practice in ePortfolio use in higher education, to articulate policy developments, and to stimulate discussion on international ePortfolio issues; host an associated trade display as a forum for strengthening the higher education sector’s understanding of the features and functionality of ePortfolio platforms; develop resources to support an ePortfolio symposium model that may be adopted for future events. ----------- The project activities encompassed a survey of stakeholders, a program of semi-structured interviews with community managers and a series of case studies depicting successful ePortfolio communities. The survey of ePortfolio practitioners sought to determine the potential value of an ePortfolio CoP, the preferred focus for and the desired features of such a community, as well as the options for the technical and social architecture of an online forum. Through the semi-structured interviews it was possible to examine current examples of CoP activity, to identify the critical success factors and the challenges faced by individual ePortfolio CoPs, so that the attributes of good practice could be presented. The data collected in the interviews contributed to the development of 14 case studies, which have been beneficial in illustrating the diverse nature of CoPs in Australia and overseas.----------- The report presents a rich picture of national and international ePortfolio communities of practice, with an examination of the factors that have contributed to their success and sustainability.

Transferring knowledge through peer-reviewed assessment : the creation of a community of practice and the threats to its survival

While it is generally accepted in the learning and teaching literature that assessment is the single biggest influence on how students approach their learning, assessment methods within higher education are generally conservative and inflexible. Constrained by policy and accreditation requirements and the need for the explicit articulation of assessment standards for public accountability purposes, assessment tasks can fail to engage students or reflect the tasks students will face in the world of practice. Innovative assessment design can simultaneously deliver program objectives and active learning through a knowledge transfer process which increases student participation. This social constructivist view highlights that acquiring an understanding of assessment processes, criteria and standards needs active student participation. Within this context, a peer-assessed, weekly, assessment task was introduced in the first “serious” accounting subject offered as part of an undergraduate degree. The positive outcomes of this assessment innovation was that student failure rates declined 15%, tutorial participation increased fourfold, tutorial engagement increased six-fold and there was a 100% approval rating for the retention of the assessment task. In contributing to the core conference theme of “seismic” shifts within higher education, in stark contrast to the positive student response, staff-related issues of assessment conservatism and the necessity of meeting increasing research commitments, threatened the assessment task’s survival. These opposing forces to change have the potential to weaken the ability of higher education assessment arrangements to adequately serve either a new generation of students or the sector's community stakeholders.

Transferring knowledge through peer-reviewed assessment : the creation of a community of practice and the threats to its survival

While it is generally accepted in the learning and teaching literature that assessment is the single biggest influence on how students approach their learning, assessment methods within higher education are generally conservative and inflexible. Constrained by policy and accreditation requirements and the need for the explicit articulation of assessment standards for public accountability purposes, assessment tasks can fail to engage students or reflect the tasks students will face in the world of practice. Innovative assessment design can simultaneously deliver program objectives and active learning through a knowledge transfer process which increases student participation. This social constructivist view highlights that acquiring an understanding of assessment processes, criteria and standards needs active student participation. Within this context, a peer-assessed, weekly, assessment task was introduced in the first “serious” accounting subject offered as part of an undergraduate degree. The positive outcomes of this assessment innovation was that student failure rates declined 15%, tutorial participation increased fourfold, tutorial engagement increased six-fold and there was a 100% approval rating for the retention of the assessment task. In contributing to the core conference theme of “seismic” shifts within higher education, in stark contrast to the positive student response, staff-related issues of assessment conservatism and the necessity of meeting increasing research commitments, threatened the assessment task’s survival. These opposing forces to change have the potential to weaken the ability of higher education assessment arrangements to adequately serve either a new generation of students or the sector's community stakeholders.