E-simulations for the purpose of training forensic (investigative) interviewers

One of the most critical issues facing investigative organisations is how best to administer effective practice opportunities in investigative interviewing on a global scale. Interviewer evaluation research across the world has highlighted inadequacies in the adherence to and maintenance of best-practice interview approaches, and insufficient opportunities for practice and feedback are the major reasons attributed by experts for poor interviewer competency. “Unreal Interviewing: Virtual Forensic Interviewing of a Child” (an e-simulation created at Deakin University, Australia) was developed as a way to ‘expand the reach’ of trainers in the investigative interviewing area. The simulation enables trainers to provide ongoing professional development for forensic interviewers in dispersed work environments, without the financial burden on organisations of extracting large numbers of professionals from the workplace to the classroom. This chapter provides readers with: an overview of the key stages involved in the development of Unreal Interviewing and the education and technical decisions that needed to be made; and a review of the application of “Unreal Interviewing” in the training and continuing professional development of trainees in their workplace.

Whose purpose I don't know

It was bound to be a horrible night.

You see, I had begun working hard at conceptualising our separateness. Inventing my way back from the geomancy-of-two towards the alchemy-of-one. In this way, I could tolerate your bed. The frontiers were not at the level of skin, anyway, they were at the level of horizon, thought and interdiction.

Regulatory theory insights into the past, present and future of general purpose water accounting standard setting

Purpose – Accounting and water industry experts are developing general-purpose water accounting (GPWA) to report information about water and rights to water. The system has the potential to affect water policies, pricing and management, and investment and other decisions that are affected by GPWA report users' understanding of water risks faced by an entity. It may also affect financial returns to accounting and auditing firms and firms in water industries. In this paper the authors aim to examine the roles of the accounting profession, water industries and other stakeholders in governing GPWA. Recognising that the fate of GPWA depends partly upon regulatory power and economics, they seek to apply regulatory theories that explain financial accounting standards development to speculate about the national and international future of GPWA.

Design/methodology/approach – Official documents, internal Water Accounting Standards Board documents and unstructured interviews underpin the authors' analysis.

Findings – The authors speculate about the benefits that might accrue to various stakeholder groups from capturing the GPWA standard-setting process. They also suggest that internationally, water industries may dominate early GPWA standards development in the public interest and that regulatory capture by accounting or water industry professionals will not necessarily conflict with public interest benefits.

Practical implications – Accounting for water can affect allocations of environmental, economic, social and other resources; also, accounting and water industry professional standing and revenues. In this paper the authors identify factors influencing GPWA standards and standard-setting institutional arrangements, and thereby these resource allocations. The paper generates an awareness of GPWA's emergence and practical implications.

Originality/value – This is an early study to investigate water accounting standard-setting regulatory influences and their impact.

De-tooling technology : networked computing as an environment, purpose and medium for social action

Network technologies are very desirable for social action, allowing activists to achieve more with less, more quickly and with broader impact; on the other hand, the very advantages they bring are equally important to the world of contemporary capitalism that social action seeks to change. Thus, we must look beyond network technologies as the easy solution to every problem, and focus instead on the human relationships which might be enabled by them. This focus on relationships requires us to ‘de-tool’ information technology. Instead, for social action, it is more valuable to think of networked computing as part of the environment within which action can occur; an important purpose for such action; and as a medium that nurtures expression and engagement of self and belief.

Web 2.0 : an argument against convergence

Web 2.0 has been a dominant concept in recent discussion and development of Internet applications, businesses and uses. Dating from 2004, the term Web 2.0 is variously understood as new forms of website development and delivery technology, changing uses of the Internet to emphasise sociability over consumption, new understandings of the possible financial exploitation of the web, and more broadly, a new way of thinking about the Internet as a whole. However, Web 2.0 is, conceptually, both more and less than these various understandings and we can only grasp why it has become such a key term in contemporary usage by appreciating two key discursive foundations for this term. Firstly, much Web 2.0 thinking is a re-expression of long-held ideas about the Internet and the web. Secondly, at the particular time when Web 2.0 was made popular, net technology policy makers and financial analysts were primarily enthused by the possibilities of broadband networks for improved and more profitable versions of the well-established businesses of telephony and audio-visual entertainment, and had to some extent consigned novel, web-based services to a lesser role, following the dot.com crash. Thus, as I argue in this paper, Web 2.0 can be understood as a key intervention, from within the dot.com / new media business sector, recovering from the crash, that re-asserts the equal legitimacy of the use of networked computing, over high-speed lines, for computing-oriented activities, and not just video on demand and voice over IP. In short, in the first years of this century, discussions about the future of the Internet had become dominated by arguments for increased broadband access, substantially concerned with providing more traditional video and voice services in new ways. The World Wide Web was seen as relatively unimportant for this purpose, even though it was part of the so-called 'triple play' of voice and data services. At this time, first in the hands of Tim O'Reilly and then from others who took up his position, Web 2.0 became a catchy simple term under which to mount a campaign for the renaissance of the World Wide Web as a quite distinct, yet equally important, form of media and communications. So, Web 2.0 provides evidence that, while there is a convergence of all forms of media and communications towards similar data traffic over the Internet, there remain diverging views over the nature, control and use of the Internet, views that express the degree to which corporate players imagine themselves to be 'media', 'telephony' or 'computing' in primary orientation.

Leadership in pursuit of purpose : social, economic and political transformation

This chapter critiques the field of educational administration and leadership from a feminist perspective,. It argues that leadership should focus on social justice and this requires wider transforantive social, economic and political  change.

The discursive practices of nurse practitioner legislation in Australia

Aim.  The aim of this paper was to examine the nurse practitioner legislative framework in Australia from a critical social theory perspective. Background.  National regulation for nurses and midwives has superseded all previous state legislation with effect from July 2010. The aim of this change was to streamline regulation processes across all health professionals requiring regulation, in order to eliminate diverse state-based regulatory policies that were identified as hindering transferability of the workforce across Australia. This paper explores the changes with reference to nurse practitioners. Since their introduction to Australia different legislative practices between states have presented difficult endorsement procedures which have affected employment. Data sources.  Information for the paper is drawn from a doctoral study which examined the politics of advancing nursing in Australia, with particular reference to the discourses of nurse practitioners. This is augmented by more recent legislative documents and policies, as well as media reports, to examine the process of change in legislation and the unfolding discourses on employment and practice. Implications to nursing.  Nurse practitioner endorsement may be more complicated, defeating the original premise of transferability of a skilled workforce across state jurisdictions. Conclusion.  This paper exposes the influence that powerful discourses can have on a major change to professional practice.

Postcolonial theory and cross-culturalism : collaborative ‘signposts’ of discursive practices

This paper is a forerunner of a detailed piece of work. It explores the notions of postcolonial theory and cross-culturalism, and whether they can be regarded as collaborative ‘signposts’ of discursive practices. The aim of this paper is to move beyond the contemporary constructs of race, culture and identification and into the arena of hybridity and multiplicity and the constituting and reconstituting of self. In this discussion, I will first outline the notions of postcolonial theory and cross-culturalism, and then explore focal points of collaborative discursive practices. In doing so, I will discuss perceptions of language and discourse and their relationships to postcolonial theory and cross-culturalism. In the context of this topic, I shall use Australia as an example of a diverse community and English as the language being discussed under the term ‘discursive practices’.

A feminist critical perspective on educational leadership

Since the 1980s, there has been a burgeoning literature on women and educational leadership. The focus has primarily been on the underrepresentation of women in leadership informed by a feminist critique of the mainstream literature. Over time, key feminist theories and research have been appropriated in education policy and are now embedded in the mainstream literature, with little recognition of their provenance or political intent. This article identifies the discursive moves that have domesticated feminist research by depoliticizing and decontextualizing leadership and argues for refocusing the feminist gaze away from numerical representation of women in leadership to the social relations of gender and power locally, nationally and internationally. A feminist critical sociological perspective treats leadership as a conceptual lens through which to problematize the nature, purpose and capacities of educational systems and organizations to reform and indeed re-think their practices in more socially just ways. Feminist understandings provide substantive and normative alternatives to how we theorize and practice leadership.