Work readiness in graduate recruitment and selection : a review of current assessment methods

Graduate recruitment and selection differs from other contexts in that graduate applicants generally lack job-related experience. Recent research has highlighted that employers are placing increasing value on graduates being work ready. Work readiness is believed to be indicative of graduate potential in terms of long term job performance and career advancement. A review of the literature has found that current graduate recruitment and selection practices lack the rigour and construct validity to effectively assess work readiness. In addition, the variety of interchangeable terms and definitions articulated by employers and academics on what constitutes work readiness suggests the need to further refine this construct. This paper argues that work readiness is an important selection criterion, and should be examined systematically in the graduate assessment process, as a construct in itself. The ineffectiveness of current assessment methods in being able to measure work readiness supports the need to develop a specific measure of work readiness that will allow more effective decision practices and potentially predict long term job capacity and performance.

Client leadership capacity on international projects : exploring the client's complex decision-making environment through a critical cultural political economy lens

The global construction environment offers stakeholders a range of opportunities but is characterised by a high level of risks and uncertainty. Internationalisation is a relatively new field of research in the AEC sector and past research has largely focused on explaining the behaviour of the industry itself. To date there has been little research investigating the client's leadership role. Much effort has been placed on positioning clients towards overall industry performance improvement, however, with little emphasis on the client's capacity to undertake their role. Clients establish the decision-making environment through key early critical decisions including procurement strategy and team membership. To a large extent they establish a unique culture that project team members need to work within and make decisions, which is the social and cultural embedding of the economic activities on projects. This theoretical paper is positioned within a PhD study which undertakes a cultural political economy perspective to investigate the client's central role in setting the boundaries within which decisions affecting budgets, quality, design, project organisational structure and team membership throughout the project lifecycle come to be made. A conceptual model for client leadership on international projects is developed based upon two contextual indicators which seeks to describe and explain the economic decisions clients make, which are deeply embedded in social relationships, shared meanings and cultural norms and the associated power and influence clients have on the political economy of international design and construction practice. This paper also seeks to develop a research question for future empirical testing.

History researcher development and research capacity in Australia and New Zealand

 This article presents data and discussion on history researcher development and research capacities in Australia and New Zealand, as evidenced in analysis of history PhD theses’ topics. The article is based on two independent studies of history PhD thesis topics, using a standard discipline coding system. It shows some marked differences in the Australian and New Zealand volumes and distributions of history PhDs, especially for PhDs conducted on non-local/national topics. These differences reflect national researcher development, research capacities and interests, in particular local, national and international histories, and have implications for the globalisation of scholarship. Thesis topics are used as a proxy for the graduate’s research capacity within that topic. However, as PhD examiners have attested to the significance and originality of the thesis, this is taken as robust. The longitudinal nature of the research suggests that subsequent years’ data and analysis would provide rich information on changes to history research capacity. Other comparative (i.e. international) studies would provide interesting analyses of history research capacity. There are practical implications for history departments in universities, history associations, and government (PhD policy, and history researcher development and research capacity in areas such as foreign affairs). There are social implications for local and community history in the knowledge produced in the theses, and in the development of local research capacity. The work in this article is the first to collate and analyse such thesis data either in Australia or New Zealand. The comparative analyses of the two datasets are also original.

Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children’s social and emotional wellbeing : an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial

Background: Childhood mental health problems are highly prevalent, experienced by one in five children living in socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Although childcare settings, including family day care are ideal to promote children’s social and emotional wellbeing at a population level in a sustainable way, family day care educators receive limited training in promoting children’s mental health. This study is an exploratory wait-list control cluster randomised controlled trial to test the appropriateness, acceptability, cost, and effectiveness of “Thrive,” an intervention program to build the capacity of family day care educators to promote children’s social and emotional wellbeing. Thrive aims to increase educators’ knowledge, confidence and skills in promoting children’s social and emotional wellbeing.
Methods/Design: This study involves one family day care organisation based in a low socioeconomic area of Melbourne. All family day care educators (term used for registered carers who provide care for children for financial reimbursement in the carers own home) are eligible to participate in the study. The clusters for randomisation will be the fieldworkers (n = 5) who each supervise 10-15 educators. The intervention group (field workers and educators) will participate in a variety of intervention activities over 12 months, including workshops; activity exchanges with other educators; and focused discussion about children’s social and emotional wellbeing during field worker visits. The control group will continue with their normal work practice. The intervention will be delivered to the intervention group and then to the control group after a time delay of 15 months post intervention commencement. A baseline survey will be conducted with all consenting educators and field workers (n = ~70) assessing outcomes at the cluster and individual level. The survey will also be administered at one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. The survey consists of questions measuring perceived levels of knowledge, confidence and skills in promoting children’s social and emotional wellbeing. As much of this intervention will be delivered by field workers, field worker-family day care educator relationships are key to its success and thus supervisor support will also be measured. All educators will also have an in-home quality of care assessment at baseline, one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. Process evaluation will occur at one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. Information regarding intervention fidelity and economics will also be assessed in the survey.
Discussion: A capacity building intervention in child mental health promotion for family day care is an essential contribution to research, policy and practice. This initiative is the first internationally, and essential in building an evidence base of interventions in this extremely policy-timely setting.

Indigenous climate change adaptation perspectives : understanding urban and peri‐urban indigenous people’s vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change

The National Climate change Adaptation Research Plan: Indigenous Communities (2011) highlighted that research on Indigenous communities and climate change, including the variables of impacts, vulnerability and adaptive capacity and adaptation has been limited. While most research has focused on identifying the biophysical impacts of climate change, a minority of studies have considered the Indigenous knowledge and peoples whom continue to reside in Australia and care for; ‘country’;. The report concluded that “there is a need for research that expands knowledge about these and other dimensions of Indigenous adaptation to climate change.“ This paper reviews work in progress on a NCCARF funded research project that is seeking to investigate select coastal urban and per-urban Indigenous community vulnerability to, and capacity for climate change adaptation. Working collaboratively with Indigenous communities resident in Adelaide, Heywood/Portland, Mornington Peninsula, Stradbroke Island and Brisbane, it seeks to explore and articulate strategies that enhance Indigenous capacity to climate change including possible protocols, frameworks, processes and procedures that may lead directly to a more informed appreciation of what is transpiring around Australia’s coastal per-urban regions for their Indigenous communities who still hold strong bonds and responsibilities to their ‘country’.

Developing graduate knowledge and skills for the world of work: The case of the translation curriculum in Vietnam

National and global challenges have given rise to the need to prepare Vietnamese graduates for effective adaptation to the increasingly changing professional field, their community, their society and the globalised world. The tertiary education curriculum thus needs to take into account the employment market, socio-cultural demands and students’ individual needs in order to develop highly educated populations for the world of work and for the current knowledge economy.

Based on a case study of the translation curriculum in a B.A. (Bachelors of Arts) language program, this paper addresses the mismatch between the demands of the translation employment market and the curriculum within the context of Vietnamese tertiary education. It raises a number of important issues related to the tensions between the centralised curriculum, learner-centred education, the actual demands of the employment market as well as the issue of capacity building in response to the socialist-oriented market economy and the changing workplace context in Vietnam. Implications are drawn not only for the translation curriculum, but also for the reform of the Vietnamese tertiary education curriculum as a whole, in order to enhance graduate employability.

The Virtualopolis archipelago: creatively interconnecting work-based virtual scenarios

One of the key elements of a quality student experience in higher education, outlined in the 2008 Bradley Report on the review of Australian higher education, is access to well-designed and engaging courses that lead to good vocational outcomes. 1 The Virtualopolis project concerns the development of a virtual city or platform which can encompass a community or vocational context for learning resources, linking these to engaging course delivery across disciplines and faculties. It is a virtual community with great potential to scaffold the imaginative immersion of the modem net generation learner. It was designed to incorporate virtual scenarios which were already in use, such as the country town of Bilby and the Pacific-style island of Newlandia, and has expanded to provide a virtual city of Virtualopolis across faculties and disciplines. One of the key strengths of this form of virtual environment is its capacity to focus on graduate attributes across disciplines. Virtualopolis provides access and a virtual city context to an interactive teamwork scenario, to develop attributes related to working with others, interrelating virtual business entities across all faculties. The teamwork scenario has multiple applications, with capacity to be a hurdle requirement, assessment item or training activity depending on the needs of the faculty's Work-integrated Leaming (WIL) policy. By developing the online virtual framework or platform of Virtualopolis, work-integrated team assessment can be used as skills preparation for experiential learning units such as internships, professional experience and workplace-based projects university-wide. It also provides the opportunity to repeatedly reuse the virtual city context for resources to support other courses. The Virtualopolis city and its interactive team scenario will be transferable for future cross-faculty and interdisciplinary virtual developments. Plans are already made for content areas as diverse as community health, nursing, creative arts, international relations and management.

Principal led school improvement and teacher capacity building in the Barwon South Network : final report, May 2013

The period of interest for this report is the beginning of 2011 to the end of 2012. The period commenced when the Regional Network Leader of the Barwon South Network of schools in the Barwon South Region of the Department of Education and Early Childhood contacted the School of Education at Deakin University, Waurn Ponds Campus Geelong. The Regional Network Leader outlined a desire to engage with Deakin University to research a short-term-cycle model of school improvement to be implemented in the region. While the model was expected to be taken on by all schools in the region the research was limited to the 23 schools in the Barwon South Network with four schools to be investigated more closely for each of two years (2001 & 2012) – eight focus schools in total.

Many positive outcomes flowed from the implementation of short-term-cycle school improvement plans and their associated practices but there was wide variation in the nature and degrees of success and of the perception of the process. The research team asked the following questions of the data:

1. What aspects of the School Improvement Plan (SIP) approach were important for initiating and supporting worthwhile change?
2. What might we take from this, to provide guidance on how best to support change in teaching and learning processes in schools?

The School Improvement Plan (SIP) worked in a range of ways. At one level it was strongly focused on school leadership, and a need to improve principals’ capacity to initiate worthwhile teaching and learning processes in their schools. Underlying this intent, one might think an assumption is operation is that the leadership process involves top down decision-making and a willingness to hold staff accountable for the quality of their practice.

The second strong focus was on the translation into practice and the consequent effect on student learning, involving an emphasis on data and evidence led practice. Hence, along with the leadership focus there was a demand for the process of school improvement to reach down into students and classrooms. Thus, the SIP process inevitably involved a chain of decision-making by which student learning quality drove the intervention, and teachers responsible for this had a common view. The model therefore should not be seen as an intervention only on the principal, but rather on the school decision-making system and focus. Even though it was the principal receiving the SIP planning template, and reporting to the network, the reporting was required to include description of the operation of the school processes, of classroom processes, and of student learning. This of course placed significant constraints on principals, which may help explain the variation in responses and outcomes described above.

The findings from this study are based on multiple data sources: analysis of both open and closed survey questions which all teachers in the 23 schools in the network were invited to complete; interviews with principals, teachers and leaders in the eight case study schools; some interviews with students in the case study schools; and interviews with leaders who worked in the regional network office; and field notes from network meetings including the celebrations days. Celebrations days occurred each school term when groups of principals came together to share and celebrate the improvements and processes happening in their schools. Many of the themes emerging from the analysis of the different data sources were similar or overlapping, providing some confidence in the evidence-base for the findings.

The study, conducted over two years of data collection and analysis, has demonstrated a range of positive outcomes in at the case study schools relating to school communication and collaboration processes, professional learning of principals, leadership teams and classroom teachers. There was evidence in the survey responses and field notes from ‘celebration days’ that these outcomes were also represented in other schools in the network. The key points of change concerned the leadership processes of planning for improvement, and the rigorous attention to student data in framing teaching and learning processes. This latter point of change had the effect of basing SIP processes on a platform of evidence-based change. The research uncovered considerable anecdotal and observational evidence of improvements in student learning, in teacher accounts in interview, and presentations of student work. Interviews with students, although not as representative as the team would have liked, showed evidence of student awareness of learning goals, a key driver in the SIP improvement model. It was, however, not possible over this timescale to collect objective comparative evidence of enhanced learning outcomes.

A number of features of the short-term-cycle SIP were identified that supported positive change across the network. These were: 1) the support structures represented by the network leader and support personnel within schools, 2) the nature of the SIP model – focusing strongly on change leadership but within a collaborative structure that combined top-down and bottom-up elements, 3) the focus on data-led planning and implementation that helped drill down to explicit elements of classroom practice, and 4) the accountability regimes represented by network leader presence, and the celebration days in which principals became effectively accountable to their peers. We found that in the second year of the project, momentum was lost in the case study schools, as the network was dismantled. This raised issues also for the conduct of research in situations of systemic change.

Alongside the finding of evidence of positive outcomes in the case study schools overall, was the finding that the SIP processes and outcomes varied considerably across schools. A number of contextual factors were identified that led to this variation, including school histories of reform, principal management style, and school size and structure that made the short-term-cycle model unmanageable. In some cases there was overt resistance to the SIP model, at least in some part, and this led to an element of performativity in which the language of the SIP was conscripted to other purposes. The study found that even with functioning schools the SIP was understood differently and the processes performed differently, raising the question of whether in the study we are dealing with one SIP or many. The final take home message from the research is that schools are complex institutions, and models of school improvement need to involve both strong principled features, and flexibility in local application, if all schools’ interests in improving teaching and learning processes and outcomes are to be served.

Leading WIL: A distributed leadership approach to enhance work integrated learning : final report 2014

Work Integrated Learning (WIL) provides rich, relevant learning through a partnership between universities and employers. Through a collaborative approach to building knowledge, the capability and capacity of experienced WIL leaders in the university and orkplace will be enhanced for improved student outcomes. Having established how and where WIL leadership is situated, the project will identify the critical challenges to WIL leadership capabilities and structures. Through institutionally-based Master Classes that model and employ a distributed learning approach, through national Communities of Practice and a WIL Leadership Summit, a framework and guidelines to support WIL leadership capacity building nationally will be developed, trialled and validated. The project will draw upon expertise and experiences of staff from five Australian universities, each with a demonstrated strong WIL commitment. The distributive leadership approach to WIL will be developed and tested within employer-based individual disciplines. The framework and guidelines will be sustained nationally through the key WIL professional association, the Australian Collaborative Education Network.

Lithium storage in disordered graphitic materials: a semi-quantitative study of the relationship between structure disordering and capacity.

The application of the graphitic anode is restricted by its low theoretical specific capacity of 372 mA h g(-1). Higher capacity can be achieved in the graphitic anode by modifying its structure, but the detailed storage mechanism is still not clear. In this work, the mechanism of the lithium storage in a disordered graphitic structure has been systematically studied. It is found that the enhanced capacity of the distorted graphitic structure does not come from lithium-intercalation, but through a capacitive process, which depends on the disordering degree and the porous structure.

'Of course I didn't work … only when I had to': narratives of women's working lives and what really counted

There was a long-held belief, that, prior to the 1970s, women were no longer involved in paid labour once they were married or began to have children. Official statistics also supported this particular national narrative. This paper argues that this narrative did not accurately reflect the historical situation because the methods used to determine who worked and when did not fully capture all of women's paid labour at the time. This is reflected in a small study of older women and their recollections of paid employment. Some women initially claimed that they did no paid work after marriage, but with low key, in-depth and persistent questioning, it became clear that many women did work in an unofficial capacity (in the black economy) or alongside their husbands in their paid employment. This is a preliminary study that underlines the importance of life-course narratives in the social sciences to delve deeply into women's memories and thus their experiences.

Soil-liming effects on the development and nutritional status of the carambola tree and its fruit-yielding capacity

Soil acidity is one of the most important factors limiting agricultural production in the tropics. For this reason, the objective of this research work was to evaluate the effects of soil liming on the performance of carambola (Averrhoa carambola) trees. The experiment took place at the Citrus Experimental Station in Bebedouro, state of São Paulo, Brazil. The soil was a Typic Haplustox (V = 26% at the 0- to 20-cm layer) between August 1999 and July 2003. The following doses of limestone were employed: 0, 1.85, 3.71, 5.56, and 7.41 t ha(-1). During 40 months after the experiment was set up, soil chemical attributes were periodically examined. For a period of 2 years, the trees had their leaves analyzed for micro-and macronutrients; their trunk diameter, height, and crown volume measured; and the production of fruits determined. Liming improved in evaluated chemical attributes of the soil: pH, calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), BS, V, and hydrogen and aluminium (H + At) from the upper 60 cm of soil when the samples were taken from both the line and between the lines of plants. In the leaves, the levels of Ca and Mg also increased. The highest fruit yields were observed when soil base saturations reached 45% on the lines and 50% between the lines, as well as when foliar levels of 8.0 g of Ca and 4.7 a of Mg per kilogram of leaves were attained.

Combined exercise training in asymptomatic elderly with controlled hypertension: Effects on functional capacity and cardiac diastolic function

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Evaluation of Antioxidant Capacity and Synergistic Associations of Quinonemethide Triterpenes and Phenolic Substances from Maytenus ilicifolia (Celastraceae)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Parasitism capacity of Telenomus remus Nixon (Hymenoptera: Scelionidae) on Spodoptera frugiperda (Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) eggs

Este trabalho estudou a capacidade de parasitismo de Telenomus remus Nixon (Hymenoptera: Scelionidae) em ovos de Spodoptera frugiperda (Smith) (Hymenoptera: Scelionidae) nas temperaturas de 15, 20, 25, 28, 31 e 35ºC objetivando usar esse inimigo natural em programas de controle biológico em culturas onde S. frugiperda é considerada praga. O parasitismo ocorrido nas primeiras 24 h foi de 60,90; 81,65; 121,05; 117,55 e 108,55 ovos parasitados por fêmea em massas ovos com aproximadamente 150 ovos, nas temperaturas de 15, 20, 25, 28 e 31ºC. Fêmeas de T. remus causaram mais de 80% do parasitismo dos ovos nas temperaturas de 15, 20, 25, 28 e 31ºC aos 5, 27, 8, 2 e 2 dias, respectivamente. Na temperatura de 35ºC não houve parasitismo. As maiores taxas de parasitismo ocorreram nas temperaturas de 20, 25, 28 e 31ºC. A longevidade média de fêmeas de T. remus nas temperaturas compreendidas entre 15 e 31ºC variou de 15,5 a 7,7 dias. A temperatura máxima testada (35ºC) foi inadequada ao desenvolvimento de T. remus, sendo que nessa temperatura as fêmeas apresentaram longevidade bastante reduzida (1,7±0,02 dia) e não houve emergência de adultos. Todas as curvas de sobrevivência para T. remus foram do tipo I o que mostram que para todas as temperaturas há um aumento da taxa de mortalidade com o tempo.