What pre-service teachers need to know to be effective at values-based education

Evidence is mounting that values education is providing positive outcomes for students, teachers and schools (Benninga, Berkowitz, Kuehn, & Smith, 2006; DEST, 2008; Hattie, 2003; Lovat, Clement, Dally, & Toomey, 2010). Despite this, Australian pre-service teacher education does not appear to be changing in ways necessary to support skilling teachers to teach with a values focus (Lovat, Dally, Clement, and Toomey, 2011). This article presents findings from a case study that explored current teachers’ perceptions of the skills pre-service teachers need to teach values education effectively. Teachers who currently teach with a values focus highlighted that pre-service teacher education degrees need to encourage an ongoing commitment to continual learning, critical reflection and growth in pre-service teachers, along with excellent questioning and listening skills. Further, they argued that pre-service teachers need to be skilled in recognising and responding to student diversity. This article ends by arguing for some changes that need to occur in pre-service teacher education in order for teachers to teach effectively with a values focus, including the need for stronger connections between pre-service and experienced teachers.

Politicians : Be killed or survive

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. To investigate this phenomenon, rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using a large data set covering close to 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition to security measures, are shown to significantly reduce the probability of politicians being attacked or killed: extended institutional and governance quality, democracy, voice and accountability, a well-functioning system of law and order, decentralization via the division of power and federalism, larger cabinet size and a stronger civil society. There is also support for a contagion effect.

Learning how to be responsive to public policy issues affecting SSSI members

Human survival depends on human ingenuity in using resources at hand to sustain human life. The historical record – in wrings and archaeological artefacts – provides evidence of the growth and collapse of political organisations and societies. In the institutions of Western civilisation, some traditions have endured over millennia where the roles of monarchs and public officials have been organised in perpetual succession. These roles were developed as conventions in the British Parliament after 1295 and provided the models of corporate governance in both public and private enterprise that have been continuously refined to the present day. In 2011, the Queensland Parliament legislated to introduce a new and more open system of scrutiny of legislation through a system of portfolio-based parliamentary committees. The committees began to function more actively in July 2012 and have inviting submissions from stakeholders and experts in a structured way to consider the government’s priorities in its legislative programme. The questions now are whether the Surveying and Spatial Sciences can respond expertly to address the terms of reference and meet the timetables of the various parliamentary committees. This paper discusses some of the more important and urgent issues that deserve debate that the profession needs to address in becoming more responsive to matters of public policy.

A comparative analysis of Anglo-Australian pre-packs : can the means be made to justify the ends?

Pre-packaged administrations have been prevalent in the UK for years. However, Australia's voluntary administration regime has been more restrictive of the practice. This article analyses the evolution of UK pre-packs, why they are not prevalent in Australia and the challenges for UK and Australian lawmakers in striking the right balance with pre-packs in their respective administration regimes. The article proposes a mechanism that might make ‘connected-party’ pre-pack business sales work more fairly for stakeholders — that is, by obligating a connected-party purchaser to make a future-income contribution in favour of the insolvent company whose business has been ‘rescued’ by a pre-packaged sale in administration.

When the right to be counted doesn’t count : the politics and challenges of researching the health of asylum seekers

A fundamental prerequisite of population health research is the ability to establish an accurate denominator. This in turn requires that every individual in the study population is counted. However, this seemingly simple principle has become a point of conflict between researchers whose aim is to produce evidence of disparities in population health outcomes and governments whose policies promote(intentionally or not) inequalities that are the underlying causes of health disparities. Research into the health of asylum seekers is a case in point. There is a growing body of evidence documenting the adverse affects of recent changes in asylum-seeking legislation, including mandatory detention. However, much of this evidence has been dismissed by some governments as being unsound, biased and unscientific because, it is argued, evidence is derived from small samples or from case studies. Yet, it is the policies of governments that are the key barrier to the conduct of rigorous population health research on asylum seekers. In this paper, the authors discuss the challenges of counting asylum seekers and the limitations of data reported in some industrialized countries. They argue that the lack of accurate statistical data on asylum seekers has been an effective neo-conservative strategy for erasing the health inequalities in this vulnerable population, indeed a strategy that renders invisible this population. They describe some alternative strategies that may be used by researchers to obtain denominator data on hard-to-reach populations such as asylum seekers.

Johnny be gonzo

The legend of Hunter S. Thompson*the great gonzo*has grown deeper and more layered since his death in February 2005 than it was even in his exotic and controversyfilled life. The most recent addition to the mythology*The Rum Diary(Bruce Robinson, 2011)*stars Johnny Depp, possibly Thompson’s greatest fan, and certainly a man dedicated to keeping the man’s memory alive. Not for the first time, Depp brings his A-list status and good looks to playing the Thompson character on the big screen. In Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) he played the writer’s alter ego, Raoul Duke. Duke was Thompson, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a fictionalized account of what is generally accepted to have been a real-life episode. In The Rum Diary he plays Paul Kemp, the young journalist who lands a job as a crime reporter on a struggling Puerto Rican newspaper. Again, the protagonist is a version of Thompson himself, who did indeed spend time in 1960 working for the Puerto Rican press. Both films join Gonzo (Alex Gibney, 2008) to form a trilogy of Depp-infused movies about a journalist some regard as one of the greatest of the twentieth century, and others view as an overrated charlatan who leveraged his one big idea into a four decades-long career brought low by drugs, booze, dysfunctional sex and, finally, Hemingwayesque despair...

Current measure of food insecurity used in the National Health Survey may be underestimating its prevalence

Objective: Food insecurity may be associated with a number of adverse health and social outcomes however our knowledge of its public health significance in Australia has been limited by use of a single-item measure in the Australian National Health Surveys (NHS) and, more recently, the exclusion of food security items from these surveys. The current study compares prevalence estimates of food insecurity in disadvantaged urban areas of Brisbane using the one-item NHS measure with three adaptations of the United States Department of Agriculture Food Security Survey Module (USDA-FSSM). Design: Data were collected by postal survey (n= 505, 53% response). Food security status was ascertained by the measure used in the NHS, and the 6-, 10- and 18-item versions of the USDA-FSSM. Demographic characteristics of the sample, prevalence estimates of food insecurity and different levels of food insecurity estimated by each tool were determined. Setting: Disadvantaged suburbs of Brisbane city, Australia, 2009. Subjects: Individuals aged ≥ 18 years. Results: Food insecurity was prevalent in socioeconomically-disadvantaged urban areas, estimated as 19.5% using the single-item NHS measure. This was significantly less than the 24.6% (P <0.01), 22.0% (P = 0.01) and 21.3% (P = 0.03) identified using the 18-item, 10-item and 6-item versions of the USDA-FSSM, respectively. The proportion of the sample reporting more severe levels of food insecurity were 10.7%, 10% and 8.6% for the 18-, 10- and 6-item USDA measures respectively, however this degree of food insecurity could not be ascertained using the NHS measure. Conclusions: The measure of food insecurity employed in the NHS may underestimate its prevalence and public health significance. Future monitoring and surveillance efforts should seek to employ a more accurate measure.

'It had to be my choice' Indigenous smoking cessation and negotiations of risk, resistance and resilience

While Australia is considered a world leader in tobacco control, smoking rates within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population have not declined at the same rate. This failure highlights an obvious shortcoming of mainstream anti-smoking efforts to effectively understand and engage with the socio-cultural context of Indigenous smoking and smoking cessation experiences. The purpose of this article is to explore the narrative accounts of 20 Indigenous ex-smokers within an urban community and determine the motivators and enablers for successful smoking cessation. Our findings indicated that health risk narratives and the associated social stigma produced through anti-smoking campaigns formed part of a broader apparatus of oppression among Indigenous people, often inspiring resistance and resentment rather than compliance. Instead, a significant life event and supportive relationships were the most useful predictors of successful smoking cessation acting as both a motivator and enabler to behavioural change. Indigenous smoking cessation narratives most commonly involved changing and reordering a person’s life and identity and autonomy over this process was the critical building block to reclaiming control over nicotine addiction. Most promisingly, at an individual level, we found the important role that individual health professionals played in encouraging and supporting Indigenous smoking cessation through positive rather than punitive interactions. More broadly, our findings highlighted the central importance of resilience, empowerment, and trust within health promotion practice.

Assessment bias : physical activity questionnaire assessment inadvertently influences patients’ desire to be ‘more physically active’

Evaluating physical activity is important for public health population research and evaluating lifestyle interventions among targeted groups. Self-reported questionnaires are frequently used to evaluate physical activity in a variety of contexts where resource or pragmatic limitations prohibit the use of more sophisticated approaches. However, prior research in the use of other patient reported outcomes in healthcare settings has highlighted that simply completing a questionnaire may change a patients’ behaviour or responses to subsequent questions. This methodology study aimed to examine whether completing a standard physical activity questionnaire altered patients responses to two related questions a) whether they are ‘sufficiently physically active’ and b) whether they desire ‘to be more physically active.’

Changing the culture of teaching and learning in ICT and engineering : facilitating research professors to be teaching and learning leaders

This is the project report of a leadership project undertaken jointly by the Queensland University of Technology, University of Technology Sydney, and Monash University. Specific project objectives were to: -To build leadership capacity in teaching and learning, and to improve teaching quality in ICT and Engineering disciplines at three leading Australian universities, and -To facilitate the transference of research leadership to T&L leadership, and disseminate this transference model developed through the project within the Engineering and ICT domains to other disciplines and universities.

Symposium - How effective are brief motivational interviewing interventions : Are they necessary? Do they require enhancement? Can they be translated into routine clinical practice?

Brief interventions are effective for problem drinking and reductions are known to occur in association with screening and assessment. Design and methods: This study aimed to determine how much change occurred between baseline assessment and a one-session brief intervention (S1), and the predictors of early change among adults with comorbid depression and alcohol misuse (n=202) participating in a clinical trial. The primary focus was on changes in Beck Depression Inventory fastscreen scores and alcohol consumption (standard drinks per week) prior to random allocation to nine further sessions addressing either depression, alcohol, or both problems. Results: There were large and clinically significant reductions between baseline and S1, with the strongest predictors being baseline scores in the relevant domain and change in the other domain. Client engagement was also predictive of early depression changes. Discussion and Conclusion: Monitoring progress in both domains from first contact, and provision of empathic care, followed by brief intervention appear to be useful for this high prevalence comorbidity...