Education Faculty

This paper explores diversity management in university settings by focusing on key issues namely cultural awareness; agency and identity and their impact on university policies and supervisory practices. These issues are investigated against the legal and policy framework in a regional Australian university. This university is a leading provider of distance and online education. Focusing more specifically on the doctoral candidate – supervisor relationship, this paper presents examples of university policies and practices aimed at managing diversity within the supervisory relationship. The university has a significant proportion of distance or external students in its doctoral programs, especially in two faculties. Based on these practices and ideas from research in this area, recommendations for best practices for the management of cultural diversity within the supervisory relationship in the context of universities are presented.

The article on which this paper reflects presented elements of a research project investigating learning interactions in online courses at two Australian universities. This paper revisits that earlier account of researching “classrooms without walls” by distilling and updating the authors’ propositions and by examining these propositions’ potential wider applicability. The twin foci of this examination relate to effective online learning designs and innovative cross-institutional research collaborations.

Few research papers have been written specifically about women refugees learning English language skills in Australia. The chance to work with a group of Sudanese women (with limited English language skills), endeavouring to settle in an Australian regional city, afforded us the opportunity to use electronic puzzles to enhance their language learning. These women had spent many years in refugee camps in Africa with basically no formal education in their first language, or in any other language. According to 2006 Australian census data, there were 19,049 (7.7%) Sudanese-born residents in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Nationally, ‘the Humanitarian program offers resettlement to refugees and to displaced persons who have suffered discrimination amounting to gross violations of their human rights’ (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). During the 10 years to 30 June 2007, Sudan accounted for most settler arrivals in Australia from Africa under the Australian human...

Numerous studies have reported on the loss of L1 literacy skills amongst second and third generation immigrants but few have investigated the maintenance of L1 literacy skills amongst Generation 1b, individuals who were born overseas but moved to their new community in the early years of life. This study considers the literacy skills of Generation 1b South African immigrants to Australia, attitudes towards their L1 literacy maintenance, and language use in electronic media. Four findings emerge from the study: there is a general decline in L1 proficiency amongst Generation 1b; this decline is most noticeable in the areas of L1 literacy, family attitudes have relatively little importance in the decline in proficiency levels and L1 literacy is related to language use in electronic media. The findings also point to attitudinal differences towards L1 literacy by mothers and fathers and suggest electronic communication as a useful means of promoting literacy amongst Generation 1b.

The provision of effective formative feedback is a crucial element of enacting quality learning and teaching at all levels of education. In the context of assessing doctoral students’ learning, this provision is often unstated and hence undervalued, overshadowed by the formal processes associated with the confirmation of candidature and the examination of the dissertation. Yet those formal processes are unlikely to be successful unless the student’s supervisors present helpful feedback on draft versions of the confirmation proposal and dissertation chapters. This paper focuses on the strategies used by the authors in providing feedback on the written work of their doctoral students, and in so doing elicits some of the underlying educational principles framing that provision. Those principles derive from aspects of the authors’ separate and shared value systems and worldviews, thereby constituting an individualised and even idiosyncratic approach to presenting feedback. In order to l...

A number of aspects influencing the relationship between the doctoral candidate and the supervisor have been identified as impacting on the success of postgraduate research supervision but the influence of the cultural diversity of doctoral candidates and supervisors on this relationship has not been addressed. Australian universities attract a large percentage of international doctoral candidates and many of these candidates relocate to Australia for the duration of their candidature and have to face the challenges of settling temporarily in a foreign country and working closely with a supervisor from a different cultural background. Through a comparative case study approach, this study investigated the influence of cultural dimensions on the doctoral candidate-supervisor relationship. Qualitative data obtained through interviews with six cases from various cultural clusters were analysed and compared based on four dimensions of national culture values (Hofstede, 2001). The finding...

Education is seen as a vehicle for supporting sustainability in rural and regional contexts, but attracting and retaining teachers in rural and regional contexts remains an area of concern across Australia as well as internationally. Therefore attracting teachers to rural and remote locations requires targeted intervention during pre-service teacher education. Ninety-nine students enrolled in a Bachelor of Education program offered by the University of Queensland participated in this study. A mixed method approach was used to capture the ways in which the sample of pre-service teachers understood their experiences of 'being, knowing and doing' (Gee, 1996) teaching in rural and remote contexts. The outcomes of this study provide insights into the effectiveness of initial exposure to a targeted online intervention, in terms of challenging pre-existing perceptions of practice in such contexts and the possibilities of accepting a rural and remote teaching position upon graduatio...