An Aboriginal nurse-led working model for success in graduating Indigenous Australian nurses

Australia needs more Indigenous nurses. This is widely recognised in both academic literature and government policy. In 2012, only 0.8 percent of the Australian nursing workforce was Indigenous (AIHW, 2012). In spite of the clear need, there is little discussion about how to successfully recruit, retain and graduate Indigenous nursing students. This paper describes a successful program being implemented at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Between 2000 and 2012, USQ graduated 80 Indigenous nurses and midwives, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In this paper, the authors outline the journey they undertook to develop the successful program at USQ: the Indigenous Nursing Support (INS) Model: Helping Hands. They argue that four elements underpin success for Indigenous nursing students: the availability of Indigenous academics, Indigenous health content in the nursing curriculum, Indigenous-specific recruitment materials, and individual mentoring and nurturing of Indigenous students.

The literacy curriculum: A critical review

This is a critical review of the scope of the literacy curriculum in the twenty-first century, uncovering the strengths, controversies, and silences that have divided literacy researchers and educators. It conceptualizes the literacy curriculum as a particular set of socially organized symbolic practices that are always selective, and which are inextricably connected to the function and organization of schooling. We trace the political, historical, and ideological antecedents of literacy curriculum and schooling as a form of cultural apparatus of the nation-state, before tracing some of the major interpretive paradigms that have influenced the shape of the literacy curriculum in many parts of the world. These include debates about skills-based approaches, whole language, systemic functional grammar, and critical literacy. It then draws attention to noteworthy advances and shifts in the field over recent decades: debates about the role of orality in the literacy curriculum, home-school community literacy practices, teacher and student knowledge of language and grammar, and the role of curriculum area literacies. It anticipates the future of the literacy curriculum in online textual environments and the changing sensorial and material nature of literacy practices, while acknowledging that curriculum innovation is always limited in complex ways by historically established pedagogic discourses of schooling.

Authorisation management in business process environments: An authorisation model and a policy model

This thesis provides two main contributions. The first one is BP-TRBAC, a unified authorisation model that can support legacy systems as well as business process systems. BP-TRBAC supports specific features that are required by business process environments. BP-TRBAC is designed to be used as an independent enterprise-wide authorisation model, rather than having it as part of the workflow system. It is designed to be the main authorisation model for an organisation. The second contribution is BP-XACML, an authorisation policy language that is designed to represent BPM authorisation policies for business processes. The contribution also includes a policy model for BP-XACML. Using BP-TRBAC as an authorisation model together with BP-XACML as an authorisation policy language will allow an organisation to manage and control authorisation requests from workflow systems and other legacy systems.

Curriculum and pedagogical practices in four Hong Kong kindergartens

This thesis uses a qualitative case study methodology to investigate kindergarten teachers' pedagogical practices in four Hong Kong (HK) kindergarten classrooms. It considers the transfer of early years teaching and learning approaches from Western cultural contexts to the predominantly Chinese, Confucian heritage culture, of Hong Kong. The study will be of particular interest in countries and contexts in which elements of traditional early childhood curricula are accorded different status.

Editorial for Journal of Learning Design, 6(3) - "Special issue: Legal education and curriculum renewal"

Welcome to this special edition of the Journal of Learning Design which focuses on legal education and curriculum renewal in law. At the outset ,we would like to thank the editors of the Journal, Margaret Lloyd and Nan Bahr for agreeing to host this special edition. The special edition is timely as legal education in Australia is enjoying a lively period of renewal.

Creating a global law graduate: The need, benefits and practical approaches to internationalise the curriculum

The increasingly integrated world has facilitated important international and trans-border trends, such as a progressively connected global economy, a significant growth in transnational business transactions and an increase in global regulation of global issues. Such globalisation has had a transformational impact on the legal profession in a number of ways. These include the need to provide advice on issues or transactions that have a transnational or international element; the increasing globalisation of large law firms; and the delivery of offshore services by legal service providers. This means that not only do law graduates need to be prepared to practice in an increasingly globalised economy and legal profession, there will also be new career opportunities available to them which require understanding of international law, for example in emerging international institutions and non-government organisations. Accordingly there is a need to ensure that law students develop the knowledge and skills they will require to succeed in a globalised legal profession. That is, there is a need to internationalise the law curriculum. This paper provides an insight into the recent progression of law schools in internationalising the law curriculum and provides practical avenues and strategies for the increased integration of international law, foreign law and a comparative perspective into core subjects which will develop the graduates’ knowledge and skills in international and foreign law, in order to enhance their ability to succeed as legal professionals in a globalised world.

Conceptualising recognition of prior learning processes in the age of open learning

This chapter interrogates what recognition of prior learning (RPL) can and does mean in the higher education sector—a sector in the grip of the widening participation agenda and an open access age. The chapter discusses how open learning is making inroads into recognition processes and examines two studies in open learning recognition. A case study relating to e-portfolio-style RPL for entry into a Graduate Certificate in Policy and Governance at a metropolitan university in Queensland is described. In the first instance, candidates who do not possess a relevant Bachelor degree need to demonstrate skills in governmental policy work in order to be eligible to gain entry to a Graduate Certificate (at Australian Qualifications Framework Level 8) (Australian Qualifications Framework Council, 2013, p. 53). The chapter acknowledges the benefits and limitations of recognition in open learning and those of more traditional RPL, anticipating future developments in both (or their convergence).

You're hot, then you're cold: Creative industries policy making in Australia

Much compelling evidence has emerged over the last two decades demonstrating the importance of Australia’s creative industries. In 2014, the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirmed that culture is ‘big business’ in this country. Yet despite this, interest by policy makers at all levels of government has been intermittent, at best. This chapter gives a brief history of policy development, and offers a number of reasons for why policy and politics have not focussed more resolutely on Australia’s creative economy. It finishes with a discussion of Australia’s ‘unfinished agenda’, one which demands attention not only by government, but also industry and higher education, if we are to properly meet both the challenges and opportunities before us.

Submission to the draft Migration Assurance Policy - Improving the transition to the fixed-line national broadband network review

The rights of individuals to self-determination and participation in social, political and economic life are recognised and supported by Articles 1, 3 and 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966.4 Article 1 of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council’s Resolution on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights on the Internet of July 2012 confirms individuals have the same rights online as offline. Access to the internet is essential and as such the UN: Calls upon all States to promote and facilitate access to the Internet and international cooperation aimed at the development of media and information and communications facilities in all countries (Article 3) Accordingly, access to the internet per se is a fundamental human right, which requires direct State recognition and support.5 The obligations of the State to ensure its citizens are able, and are enabled, to access the internet, are not matters that should be delegated to commercial parties. Quite simply – access to the internet, and high-speed broadband, by whatever means are “essential services” and therefore “should be treated as any other utility service”...

Building creative connections: An analysis of a creative arts widening participation program

Widening participation or outreach agendas have been a major part of higher education policy since the early 2000s. These policies and programs seek to increase marginalised groups’ access to further study through activities, tutoring programs, workshops, and other provisions. Some programs openly state their intention to assist people from low socioeconomic backgrounds to become more civically engaged and socially mobile by improving their education, which creates an immediate link between education and social capital (see Morley 2012; Hillmert and Jacob 2010). Social capital refers to the ‘connections among individuals’ and the consequent value of the things they do together (Putnam 2000; Gauntlett 2011). Media and creative arts widening participation programs, arguably, are better equipped to build social capital than any other form of outreach, due to their relationship-building capacity (Gauntlett 2011; Kinder and Harland 2004). This article analyses Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Industries Widening Participation Program. It investigates social capital and its relationship with higher education in outreach initiatives in order to identify how media and creative arts widening participation programs have the capacity to influence the attitudes of low socioeconomic background students towards higher education.

The bias and assumptions in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Action Plan

This presentation argues that “genuine” engagement and consultation is required where Indigenous voice is included within the policy development process for “true” progress to be achieved. With the ever increasing engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the decision making processes of Indigenous education, it is anticipated that there will be provision of opportunities for better outcomes and a greater acceptance of the policy within community (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2014). This presentation is derived from a larger project where the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Action Plan (MCEECDYA, 2011) was critically analysed using Fairclough’s (2001) Critical Discourse Analysis framework and Rigney’s (1999) Indigenist Research Principles. Within this study, the underlying assumptions and bias identified within the policy and how it positions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were articulated. The major findings that emerged from the data included: - a) the homogenous grouping of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; - b) the maintenance of the prevalent dominant ideology within policy, and finally; - c) the expectation by the power elite of increased engagement and connections by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples without consideration of the detrimental effects of past policies and reforms.

Moving on (part 2): Power and the child in curriculum history

This paper is the second in a two-part series that maps continuities and ruptures in conceptions of power and traces their effects in educational discourse on 'the child'. It delineates two post-Newtonian intellectual trajectories through which concepts of 'power' arrived at the theorization of 'the child': the paradoxical bio-physical inscriptions of human-ness that accompanied mechanistic worldviews and the explanations for social motion in political philosophy. The intersection of pedagogical theories with 'the child' and 'power' is further traced from the latter 1800s to the present, where a Foucaultian analytics of power-as-effects is reconsidered in regard to histories of motion. The analysis culminates in an examination of post-Newtonian (dis)continuities in the theorization of power, suggesting some productive paradoxes that inhabit turn of the 21st-century conceptualizations of the social.

Moving on (part 1): The physics of power and curriculum history

This is the first of two papers that map (dis)continuities in notions of power from Aristotle to Newton to Foucault. They trace the ways in which bio-physical conceptions of power became paraphrased in social science and deployed in educational discourse on the child and curriculum from post-Newtonian times to the present. The analyses suggest that, amid ruptures in the definition, role, location and meaning given 'power' historically in various 'physical' and 'social' cosmologies, the naming of 'power' has been dependent on 'physics', on the theorization of motion across 'Western' sciences. This first paper examines some (dis)continuities in regard to histories of motion and power from Aristotelian 'natural science' to Newtonian mechanics.

Disorganizing educational tropes: Conceptions of dis/ability and curriculum

A study examined the politics of dis/ability and curriculum. Data were obtained from a review of the new disability studies literature, focusing on the areas of history, sociology, anthropology, and critical legal theory. The results indicate that this new literature challenges popular psychoeducational models that assume disability as an objective medical, individual, and pathological deficiency, effectively restricting the systematic study of dis/ability as relational, external, shifting, and socially constituted. The findings suggest ways in which perceptions of “school problems” have to be adjusted to understand how the constant refiguration of normativities in everyday activities creates perceptions of disability-negative ontologies, generates experiences that incite efforts to modify those perceptions in multiple ways, and produces unintended effects from well-intended approaches that in the end remain irreducible to simplistic definitions for the one “ethical” or “politically correct” strategy.

Borders, belonging, beyond: New curriculum history

For Iain Chambers, understanding the redefinition of social life and hence of social theories is not aided by splitting the analytical register simply between global and local. This is especially problematic if global is taken to mean the dispersal of an already-dominant or privileged version of the local within wider coordinates that ensure the continuation of forms of representation and frames of reference that are familiar and over-exposed. The chapters in New Curriculum History take up the challenge posed by Chambers, collectively confronting the dread of a rationality confronted with what exceeds and slips its grasp. Finding purchase and continually slipping away from the strictures of the taken-for-granted and of fixity, New Curriculum History embodies the dueling reverberations of its non-localizable domains – in some ways, a shaping by its pasts and in others, contributions irreducible to dominant narratives about the field of education and “its” histories...