Work experiences of nurse academics : a qualitative study
- Authors: Singh, Charanjit , Jackson, Debra , Munro, Ian , Cross, Wendy
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Nurse Education Today Vol. 106, no. (2021), p.
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- Description: Background: The evidence suggests that heavy workloads, pressure to publish, lack of recognition and job insecurity has led to increased job stress among nurse academics. Lack of proper mentoring, reorientation and transition into an academic role are contributory factors towards the lack of retention and recruitment among nurse academics. Internationally, the sustainability of the nurse academic workforce is an area of great concern. The experiences of nurse academics have not been extensively investigated. Objectives: To explore the work experiences of nurse academics. Design: Qualitative Exploratory study. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Participants: A purposive sample of nurse academics (n = 19), recruited from all states and territories of Australia, lecturer to professor level and work experiences from 2 to 30 years. Methods: Data were collected using semi-structured face to face and telephone interviews. Data were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed based upon Braun & Clark's model. The study is reported in accordance with the COREQ guidelines. Ethical approval was granted by the relevant University Human Research Ethics Committee. Results: Four main themes were identified (a) Helping students achieve, finding satisfaction through student engagement, (b) working with challenging students, (c) increased workloads, lack of support and resources and (d) difficulty with retention of newly appointed staff. Conclusions: Although the findings highlighted the interactions with nursing students were a positive experience, many of the participants raised great concern about the challenging, difficult, academically weak, rude, and manipulative students. The growing workload increased non-academic administrative work, and the inability to sustain newly appointed staff were areas of great concern. Doing more with less and not being recognized were pertinent factors that needed to be addressed. © 2021
Writing difference differently
- Authors: Fisher, Karen , Williams, Miriam , Fitzherbert, Stephen , Instone, Lesley , Duffy, Michelle , Wright, Sarah , Suchet-Pearson, Sandie , Lloyd, Kate , Burarrwanga, Laklak , Ganambarr, Ritjilili , Ganambarr-Stubbs, Merrkiyawuy , Ganambarr, Banbapuy , Maymuru, Djawundil , Country, Bawaka
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: New Zealand Geographer Vol. 71, no. 1 (2015), p. 18-33
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- Description: This paper investigates the writing of situated knowledge and explores the possibilities of enacting difference by writing differently. We present a selection of research stories in which carrier bags, sounds, baskets, gardens and potatoes are interpreted less as objects of research or metaphors to aid in analysing phenomena, than as mediators of the stories. Our stories emphasise the ontological politics of engaging with and representing the relational, the messy, the spontaneous, the unpredictable, the non-human and bodily experiences. These stories demonstrate how writing is performative and how it is integral to the production of knowledge. © 2015 New Zealand Geographical Society.
‘Doing diversity’ in a social work context: reflecting on the use of critical reflection in social work education in an Australian University
- Authors: Patil, Tejaswini , Mummery, Jane
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Social Work Education Vol. 39, no. 7 (2020), p. 893-906
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- Description: There is abundant literature that teaches social work graduates to be culturally competent and critically reflective on issues of cultural diversity. However, it is evident that many competency based approaches do not effectively address issues of privilege, power and diversity. Such approaches can fail to challenge entrenched and/or unconscious biases concerning other cultures. This paper argues we need to move away from over-prioritizing the teaching and use of competency based models for dealing with diversity in disciplines such as Social Work. Using Sara Ahmed’s work on diversity and critical reflection, we present the findings from a survey of social work students. The positive news is that students’ reflections in critical essays and their responses to the learnings they achieved from a unit on race, suggested they were becoming more aware of how privilege and power worked in everyday interactions as well as professional interactions. The other side of the coin was their understanding of the social, political and ethical grounding of values was limited. Students tended to focus more on declaring their allegiance to social work values of ‘honesty, integrity or social justice’ to the point they were mere declarations or saying which become substitutes for actions. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
“Learner voice”: Who speaks? Who listens?
- Authors: Angus, Lawrence , Golding, Barry , Lavender, Peter , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: ECER 2012, The Need for Educational Research to Champion Freedom, Education and Development for All
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- Description: The paper will report on an ongoing research project being conducted by the authors, on behalf of the Australian National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC), in which we are required to conduct “a review and analysis of effective models and underpinning principles for gathering and responding to feedback from learners, particularly disadvantaged learners”. The term “learner voice” is used throughout the NVEAC documentation to describe engagement with students of vocational education and training. But the “voice” that has unashamedly dominated the policy discourse in vocational and adult education and training in recent decades has been that of business and industry. Recently, however, particularly in England during the final term of the New Labour administration, and increasingly is some Scandinavian and European countries, a renewed emphasis on policies of social inclusion has introduced the notion of “learner voice” into policy considerations. Especially important are the voices of learners who are perceived to be disadvantaged or marginalised. In Australia, too, discourses of both inclusion and human capital have led to policies of involving students, their interests and their views in some way in the education project. The engagement of students with the tertiary education sector and institutions has come to be regarded as a way of promoting students’ learning by making their education and training more relevant to, and inclusive of, their “needs” while simultaneously contributing to the more efficient utilisation of human capital in an increasingly competitive national economy. Such inclusiveness, therefore, is promoted as facilitating the twin virtues of equity and efficiency, and is seen by some as having the potential to empower learners and transform their learning experience, and also to transform and expand Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Adult and Community Education (ACE). The paper will critically examine the dynamics of the vet policy framework and the range current practice in relation to learner voice. It will particularly emphasise contradictions in both practice and policy in relation to who speaks and with what authority, and who listens to what effect.