Purpose: Much of the existing literature note how students' academic difficulties result from their background and lack of cultural capital. This paper aims to focus on internal structural inequality where people with particular backgrounds are disadvantaged within an institution. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use a case study approach…

Since 2011 the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University has been actively supporting an ethos of belonging throughout their learning and teaching. In 2017 'belonging' became a formal university priority, embedded in the institution's strategy and dispersed across Colleges and Schools through a range of activities and interventions.…

Peer review has been the focus of an ongoing study at a series of recent annual conferences of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE). A further development of this study has been to explore the perspective/s of the authors of these conference papers and the impact that peer review can have on their development as…

This paper explores the enormous variation in views, championing behaviours and impacts of liaison people: staff nominated to facilitate, tailor and promote SPIRIT (a research utilisation intervention trial in six Australian health policy agencies). Liaison people made cost/benefit analyses: they weighed the value of participation against its…

Despite receiving growing international recognition and regard, the scholarship of engagement remains undervalued internally at academic institutions, especially in relation to career development and academic promotion. This form of scholarship presents difficulties relating to evaluation, assessment, and evidencing that are not generally present…

This study was aimed at identifying the critical interactions within work environments that support the development of early career academics as researchers in institutions with lower order research profiles, that is, environments that differ from research-intensive universities. Ten early career academics, five from Australia and five from the…

Purpose: This article outlines the emergence of programme teams in the Australian dairy farm sector as a response to counter weaknesses in the institutional environment for agricultural innovation which favours technology adoption/diffusion approaches. Design/methodology/approach: The strengths, weaknesses and risks of different approaches to…

Learning in workplaces is always mediated through talk. It is tempting for management to seek to utilise everyday talk as part of learning and therefore enhance productivity. This paper examines the responses of workers to interventions that aim to formalise informal conversations at work as part of an explicit workplace learning strategy. It…

A study of perceptions of the school climate among the students of two secondary schools over two years is reported. The measures used were a scale of teacher concern for students and a measure of student alienation. Differences by sex, school year, and school and their implications are examined. (MSE)

In order to test the validity of a measure of Australian students' views on the quality of life within their schools, a small-scale study was conducted in seven secondary schools, including both public and private institutions. The 52-item survey instrument was administered to 651 students in grades 9-12. Followup interviews of students were held…

Higher education in Australia and the Netherlands illustrates two international trends: restructuring toward systems of fewer, larger institutions; and government tendencies to continue setting broad policies while decentralizing other responsibilities to institutions. Success in restructuring is attributed to the interaction of public policy and…

The Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (OCDQ), modified by Thomas and Slater for use in South Australian schools in 1970, was based on four factors (rather than the original eight): principal supportiveness or operations emphasis and teacher disaffiliation or intimacy. A recent study in New South Wales has validated this four-factor…

A study examined institutional influences on the instructional planning decisions of nurse-academics presenting basic nursing curricula in colleges of advanced education (CAEs) in New South Wales. Data were collected from the following sources: survey of 86 selected nurse-academics from 12 of New South Wales' 15 tertiary institutions running basic…

Findings of a study that examined the role of the governing body in the independent school's self-renewing processes are presented in this paper. From the holistic paradigm, the school is viewed as a self-renewing system that is able to maintain its identity despite environmental changes through existing structures that define and create…

Reflects on ideas of feminism and critical literacy and their significance in relation to the current policy environment. Topics explored include the dilemmas of personal development; issues of culture, power, and coercion; shifting the focus to teaching; personal and pedagogical influences; pedagogical praxis; and developing a collective…