In 2014, the Australian Government introduced the New Colombo Plan (NCP), whereby undergraduate students would become 'informal ambassadors' enhancing Australia's 'soft power' within the Asia-Pacific region. Participation by students, universities, host organisations and communities expanded rapidly before Australia's pandemic-driven closure of…

When Indigenous and non-Indigenous postgraduate research students start researching Indigenous topics, how can we best prepare them for the task ahead? In this article, I describe the approach taken by one regional Australian university to support research students with Indigenous topics through a Master of Philosophy (Indigenous). Drawing on…

A review of the trends in doctoral education reveals that the focus has been on what supervisors should do in supervision and very little on ways of being in the supervisory relationship. A new direction for doctoral supervision foregrounds the importance of mindfulness traits that well-regarded supervisors embody in their highly valued…

Recent research has linked the development of self-directed learning of building and construction apprentices to the quality of relationship between the apprentice and their sponsor. This relationship was found to be critical for the apprentice to develop the capacity for self-directed learning. The sponsor as a more confident or experienced other…

Encouraging doctoral students to publish during their candidature is becoming more widely accepted and practised, both in Australia and internationally, although it is still less common in some fields. Almost all universities in Australia now offer candidates an option to include publications in their doctoral thesis. This paradigm shift has…

This article outlines the potential for Research Higher Degree (RHD) supervisors at universities and similar institutions to use ethical review as a constructive, dynamic tool in guiding RHD students in the timely completion of effective, innovative research projects. Ethical review involves a bureaucratized process for checking that researchers…

In Australia, the university ethics approval process is guided by the "National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research." The "National Statement" does not provide a hurdle to be overcome or avoided, nor is it a Godzilla-like monster that must be slain for "truth" to survive. Rather the "National…

The purpose of this Decision Regulation Impact Statement (Decision RIS) is to recommend preferred options for improving the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care. The Decision RIS follows the public release of the Consultation RIS and incorporates stakeholders' views and comments received during the ten week stakeholder…

There has been a conversation about university graduate employability within the Higher Education literature for some time (Cryer, 1997; Barrie, 2004, 2006, 2007; Murray, 2000; McAlpine, 2006). Within this, and often under the banner of questioning the relevance of the PhD (Murray, 2000), there have been discussions about the employability of…

There are many different forms that work-integrated learning (WIL) takes and variants go by a range of different names. Based on current literature, key dimensions, shared by the various and disparate forms of WIL curricula, were identified and operationalised in a measurement model. The key dimensions identified were: authenticity, integrated…

Chinese is now a global language because of the global flow of Chinese people throughout the world. This development provides an important intellectual basis for engaging in the transnational exchange of Chinese theoretical knowledge. The argument developed here is that learning from international (and migrant) research students from China is a…

A great deal of literature in recent years has focused on the supervisory relationship, yet very little has been written about the nature or content of supervisory meetings, beyond commenting on the frequency and length of meetings. Through semi-structured interviews, informal discussions with colleagues and students, a critical review of…

An honours year is an introduction to new relationships with supervisors, fellow students, research participants and, importantly, yourself. This paper is based upon the experiences of four former Australian honours students who felt there was a distinct lack of guidance for first-time researchers in the available academic literature. In this…

One issue universities face is the need to demonstrate excellence in postgraduate research supervision at the individual, faculty and university level. While poor supervision might become obvious over time, with grievances, withdrawals and poor completion times and rates, this paper focuses specifically on identifying and demonstrating supervisory…

The purpose of the doctorate and the desirable outcomes of doctoral education are the focus of debates in the UK, the USA, Australia and other Organisation for Economic Development countries. Part of that reconceptualisation of the doctorate includes a growing international interest in university-industry research, which, as a consequence, has…