Tertiary education for social justice in an age of uncertainty

This thesis is concerned with tertiary teachers in a range of disciplines who focus on social justice. It found that current conditions of tertiary education are challenging for teachers and suggested that a "capabilities" approach can provide the basis for attending to professional and ethical issues for tertiary teachers.

The Ad-venture of architecture

This research highlights the shortcomings of the way architects promote themselves and the profession of architecture. It also exposes the inadequate levels of knowledge and awareness of the general public in relation to architects and the practice of architecture. This research recommends that the ad-venture of architecture should be pursued.

Training practices of multinational companies in Asia

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore a range of training practices adopted by multinational companies (MNCs) operating in Asia. It investigated the level of training expenditure, the nature of training programs offered and the concerns about training in MNCs.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained through a survey of 529 MNCs operating in six Asian countries to examine the average cost spent on training and the type of training programs offered to different groups of employees. The respondents were also asked to indicate their perceptions on the training provided and how effective the training has on firm performance.

Findings – It appears that MNCs invested significantly in training. Training was found to be more widespread in service organisations than manufacturing organisations operating in Asia. The majority of training emphasised managerial and professional staff development; and was generally conducted externally. Respondents were concerned mainly with the quality and relevance of training programs offered externally.

Originality/value – The results provide MNCs, especially those headquartered in European and other Western countries with insights into designing and offering more relevant and better quality training programs to their employees located in Asian subsidiaries.

Is offender rehabilitation a form of punishment?

This paper examines the consequences of the overlap between punishment and rehabilitation practices, and inquires into the implications for individuals who assess and treat offenders. More specifically, I make three claims concerning the relationship between offender rehabilitation and punishment. First, rehabilitation as it is commonly understood in the offending arena contains some components that meet the criteria for punishment, in the ethical sense of that term. It is also true that there are aspects of rehabilitation that are focused directly on assisting offenders to live better lives (higher levels of well-being) and therefore which do not meet the criteria for punishment. Second, there are a number of significant practice implications that follow from the hybrid nature of offender rehabilitation. Third, Duff's communicative theory of punishment (Duff, 2001) offers clinicians a stronger justification for the punishment aspects of rehabilitation than its retributive and consequential rivals.

Moral repair with offenders : ethical issues arising From victimization experiences

In this article, the authors examine the relevance of the concept of moral repair for sex offenders who have been victims of sexual or physical abuse. First, they briefly review the literature on victimization rates and effects in sexual offenders. Second, the notion of moral repair and its constituent tasks is examined with particular emphasis given to Margaret Walker's recent analysis of the concept. Third, the concept of moral repair is applied to offenders and its implications and possible constraints discussed. Fourth, the authors outline a normative framework for addressing victimization issues with sexual offenders, drawing on the resources of human rights theory and strength-based treatment approaches. Finally, they conclude with a brief consideration of the ethical and clinical implications of their normative model.

(Un)ethical practices and ethical dilemmas in universities : academic leaders’ perceptions

In this paper we report on the qualitative component of a study that explored middle-level academic leaders’ experiences of (un)ethical practices and ethical dilemmas in their daily work. An electronic survey was distributed to academic leaders from universities across three Australian states. There are three major findings in this study. First, the messy context of universities is providing a fertile ground for ethical dilemmas to flourish. Second, the two main categories of unethical practices identified by participants were academic dishonesty and inappropriate behaviour towards staff and students. Third, the ethical dilemmas that emerged focused on the academic leaders’ strong sense of professional ethics that were in conflict with an ethic of care, supervisors’ directives, and the rules and policies of the organisation.

The legal profession and the business of law

‘Professional Responsibility and Ethics’ is one of the ‘Priestley 11’ law subjects compulsorily undertaken by Australian law students who aspire to be admitted to practice. Many of the brightest join the major corporate law firms. Nevertheless, there is little theoretical analysis of how those firms are functioning to affect the professional and ethical conduct of their practitioners in the neoliberal state. In this article it is argued that in the mature and highly competitive marketplace for legal services, rather than working as autonomous professionals, corporate lawyers are now finding themselves working more and more as functionaries subservient to the dictates of their corporate clients. Drawing on interviews with Australian major law firm corporate lawyers and Charles Derber’s theory on the proletarianisation of professional workers, it is argued that corporate lawyers are losing key elements of their professional identity in the impetus to maintain the client list and the profit motive. Furthermore, as the balance of power in the corporate legal sector is shifting from law firms to clients, the professional ethics of law firm lawyers are at risk of being compromised as they find themselves being reduced to little more than ‘flush’ factory fodder for the major corporations.

PLT practitioners : soldiers For “vocationalism”, or double agents?

This presentation extends on some previous work around my PhD research.
I question ways in which social structures are inscribed into legal education practices, and conversely, whether practices can modify those structures. I argue PLT practitioners are not simply soldiers for a “vocationalist” strategy. Instead, I re-imagine PLT practitioners as “double agents” or “resistance fighters”, lamplighters in a still emergent professional trajectory. It is a trajectory catalysed by the 1970s introduction of institutional PLT; just a baby really, in the context of English common law.

In Bourdieu’s terms it is possible, by revisiting past struggles in Australian legal education, to conceptualise institutional PLT as the product of judicial, professional, and academic struggles to produce a vocationalised, non-academic, and critique-free sub-field within the juridical field. Those struggles succeeded, to some extent, in the extra-individual dimension of structures, regulation, and institutions, to collectively inculcate preferred dispositions within individuals about legal education and professional identity.

That account, however, ignores the potential for agency and alterity – the ways in which individuals might appropriate, in Certeau’s terms, the resources of the legal field to explore new professional trajectories. For some, these trajectories involve struggles to enrich, and add texture to, legal education. Drawing on interviews with PLT practitioners, I identify multi-vocal and multi-perspectival themes, including notions of social justice, equality, professional ethics, personal improvement, and indeed, interest in scholarship of teaching and learning.

It is in this sense I re-imagine PLT practitioners as “double agents”, operating betwixt and between dominant domains in law. In my view, PLT practitioners can participate in conceptualising and developing emergent approaches in legal education, and to theorise “practice” as lawyers and educators. Scholarship of teaching and learning has its part to play in this. It provides a means, as lawyers and as educators, to discover information, to reflect, critique, communicate, and conceptualise, insights about “practice” and practices.

Auditoria das demonstrações financeiras: impactos de novas regulações e tendências da atividade

Esta pesquisa foi elaborada com a intenção de discutir uma das questões mais atuais que envolve o cenário de incertezas quanto à credibilidade das demonstrações financeiras, o que afeta diretamente a atividade de auditoria independente. No conjunto dos fatores que contribuem para esse quadro, destaca-se, com ênfase na realidade brasileira, a intensificação das ações dos órgãos reguladores da referida atividade, através de novas regras que passam a vigorar no final da década de 1990. Salienta-se que, diante da escassa bibliografia sobre o assunto, este trabalho também toma como referência entrevistas realizadas com profissionais de empresas de auditoria e representantes de órgãos reguladores da atividade no Brasil. Demonstra-se que os principais aspectos em discussão fundamentam-se na independência profissional e no controle de qualidade das auditorias, destacando-se: o rodízio das empresas de auditoria; a prestação de serviços de consultoria; a revisão de qualidade pelos pares; e controle de qualidade interno. Na conclusão, apontam-se os impactos positivos e negativos decorrentes das novas regras de regulação e tendências da atividade. Por fim, considera-se a ética profissional como fator imprescindível na credibilidade do processo de elaboração e divulgação das demonstrações financeiras.

A (bio)ética e a Odontologia: os (des)caminhos de uma formação humana

The present research carried out from three national dentistry magazines published in the period between 1990 and 2004, has as a goal to analyze how bioethics has been approached in this area, not only identifying the main concerns and tendencies, but also aiming to learn how this knowledge is produced and divulged in the dentistry circuit. We have articulated a quantitative-qualitative approach, studying 2995 articles. The articles were selected and assorted in twenty thematic categories, through their titles and key words. The analysis of the empiric material shows that, although there is a growth tendency of this discussion, little has been published about this theme (1,9%). Besides, it seems that there is an arrhythmia between the present bioethic approach in dentistry and the present life demands, where the deontology and legalist focuses are predominant, seeming to correspond to the inner aspects of the profession alone. In spite of this, through the qualitative approach it was possible to identify ways to build a more complex and integral odontological formation and practice. Within the conclusions, we still point out, that, this investigation, even face to its limitations, seems to offer subsidies for reflection and further studies about the theme, working as a parameter to keep up with the evolution of the bioethic thinking in the Odontology

Por uma ética em profissão: rumo a uma nova paideia

O presente artigo procura discutir a atualidade do conceito de paideia, à luz do entrelaçamento entre o original referente grego e a categoria operatória do que aqui nomeamos uma ética em profissão. Trata-se de um estudo que busca formular algumas diretrizes para se pensar o tema do ensino e do aprendizado, metodologicamente partindo da acepção de interdisciplinaridade. Assim, poder-se-á, fugindo das fragmentárias especializações do campo, recompor a arte do pensamento pedagógico, incluindo nela seus essenciais aspectos éticos. Desse modo, supomos possível estabelecer para professores e estudantes contemporâneos desse terceiro milênio uma nova e moderna paideia.

Processo de trabalho em saúde: uma análise das condições de trabalho dos assistentes sociais no âmbito hospitalar

This paper presents the survey results: PROCEDURE FOR WORK IN HEALTH: an analysis of working conditions of social workers in hospitals. Analyzes the inclusion of social workers in work processes in healthcare, specifically in the public hospital, from the objective conditions of work, according to which materializes professional action. The aim is to understand them from the point of view of its relationship with users and other health professionals through the privatization of health, which prevents the Unified Health System (SUS), limiting the operation of the services and the guarantee of rights. The approach to the reality studied was through theoretical and methodological procedures based on the qualitative and quantitative research, focusing on documentary research, observation, semi-structured interview and the theoretical foundation. It is observed that the inclusion of social workers in this context arises from the demands derived from expressions of social issues, "raw material" of professional work, and the gaps resulting from contradictions in the process of rationalization / reorganization of the SUS, meaning that the needs the population are confronted with the content and form of organization of services. At the hospital, the professional actions are developed through the shift, space contradictory clash between the collective and individual, in which individual activities are prioritized and ad hoc unplanned and reduced to the solution of "problems" of users, through actions assistance in an emergency and bureaucratic. These findings emphasize the inadequacy of space and lack of minimum conditions of service to users, which undertakes the professional with regard to ethical and political principles of the profession, since it is the responsibility and duty of the social guarantee the secrecy and privacy of users what is revealed during the process of professional intervention. The professional social workers is permeated by the diversity of skills and competence; lack of planning activities, by incorporating the institutional discourse at the expense of professional goals, by knowing the Code of Professional Ethics, for small number of professionals, the increasing number informality; by poor working conditions and wages; by discouraging research and participation in social policy councils, as well as professional training

Dentistry and HIV: University professors' role in establishing a basis for judgment

The aim of this study was to determine whether there are differences in the attitudes of Dentistry School Professors from two universities, one private and one public concerning HIV-positive patients or HIV-positive health care professionals. A questionnaire Was handled to all profession at the Araçatuba Dental School of São Paulo State University - FOA-UNESP (public) and Lins Dental School of the Piracicaba Methodist University - FOL-UNIMEP (private). When asked if they would be willing to be treated by an HIV-infected health care professional, 38.9% of the 77 professors at FOA-UNESP replied that they would accept only non-invasive treatments and 13% would not accept any kind of treatment; the same applied to 42.4% and 15.2% of the 33 FOL-UNIMEP professors. Among the 54 professors at FOA-UNESP and 27 at FOL-UNIMEP providing clinical service, only 31.5% and 18.5% stated that they treat HIV-infected persons like any other patient. The results were very similar in both schools. Although they reported that they taught their students not to act in a discriminatory manner towards HIV-positive patient the professors themselves showed prejudice towards infected patients and professionals. Consequently, this topic trust be further debated in the academic milieu.