Placement interviews at the interface of cultural diversity and standardised requirements
- Koeck, Clara-Maria, Ottmann, Goetz
- Authors: Koeck, Clara-Maria , Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Advances in social work and welfare education Vol. 20, no. 1 (2018), p. 108-121
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- Description: Field education placements permit social work students to gain practical experience employing the knowledge and skills they acquired in the classroom. Access to field education placements is dependent upon placement interviews during which candidates have to display their professional and personal suitability. Placement interviews are challenging for all students. For international students, they are particularly challenging as they represent a litmus test as to whether they have achieved a sufficient degree of cultural adaptation. To date, little attention has been paid to the way placement interviews are experienced by international students. This article addresses this gap. The article is based on a qualitative study involving semi-structured, in-depth interviews with five international students focusing on the way placement interviews were experienced, how students felt prepared for them, and the degree to which language proficiency, cultural difference, social connectedness, discrimination, and Australian workplace culture represented a challenge. The findings suggest that international students need be to better informed about opportunities associated with field placement and the often implicit requirements and expectations associated with it. The authors argue that they would benefit from targeted educational resources ranging from English language tuition to interview role play.
- Authors: Koeck, Clara-Maria , Ottmann, Goetz
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Advances in social work and welfare education Vol. 20, no. 1 (2018), p. 108-121
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Field education placements permit social work students to gain practical experience employing the knowledge and skills they acquired in the classroom. Access to field education placements is dependent upon placement interviews during which candidates have to display their professional and personal suitability. Placement interviews are challenging for all students. For international students, they are particularly challenging as they represent a litmus test as to whether they have achieved a sufficient degree of cultural adaptation. To date, little attention has been paid to the way placement interviews are experienced by international students. This article addresses this gap. The article is based on a qualitative study involving semi-structured, in-depth interviews with five international students focusing on the way placement interviews were experienced, how students felt prepared for them, and the degree to which language proficiency, cultural difference, social connectedness, discrimination, and Australian workplace culture represented a challenge. The findings suggest that international students need be to better informed about opportunities associated with field placement and the often implicit requirements and expectations associated with it. The authors argue that they would benefit from targeted educational resources ranging from English language tuition to interview role play.
In and out of place: Civilizational interaction and the making of Australia in Oceania and Asia
- Authors: Smith, Jeremy
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Comparative civilizations review Vol. , no. 80 (2019), p. 37-49
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- Description: The making of Euro-Australia occurred against the backdrop of two dimensions of its historical constitution. First, it occurred on the back of Britain's entry into the Oceanian world and its intercivilizational encounters with Pacific cultures. The second dimension was the appropriation of the land of a complex and internally diverse Aboriginal civilization and suppression of its social world view. This was vital to a lasting sense of ambivalence in Australian identity and in the relations of the Commonwealth of Australia with island states in the Pacific. After Federation (1901), Australia became more independent in the context of devolution of the Commonwealth. Engagement in the Pacific War heralded a turn from allegiance to Britain to alliance with the United States. A new orientation to the Asia-Pacific was not a chosen course, but one compelled by geo-political conditions and a growing dynamism in this multicivilizational world region. From the 1970s to the end of the twentieth century, engagement in Asia accelerated with the onset of a policy regime of multiculturalism and a process of neo-liberal modernization. This essay argues that Euro-Australia emerged out of complex intercivilizational interactions entailing colonialism, diverse migratory and cultural flows, and the creation of a homogenizing collective memory. I contend that Australian modernity, due in part to its suppression of its indigenous civilization and accompanying denial of that suppression, has borne considerable cultural and political ambivalence about its place in the region - an ambivalence which structures its economic and political relations with neighbouring countries. In this essay, I focus on Pacific relations. I compare developments and turns in Australian foreign policy with patterns of cultural engagement since the 1970s. Towards the end, I raise the Australian regime of refugee detention in relation to climate refugees. The essay concludes with notes on the merits of civilizational analysis in understanding the Oceanian constellation and its potential futures and points for further research on Australia in a multi-civilizational context.
- Authors: Smith, Jeremy
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Comparative civilizations review Vol. , no. 80 (2019), p. 37-49
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: The making of Euro-Australia occurred against the backdrop of two dimensions of its historical constitution. First, it occurred on the back of Britain's entry into the Oceanian world and its intercivilizational encounters with Pacific cultures. The second dimension was the appropriation of the land of a complex and internally diverse Aboriginal civilization and suppression of its social world view. This was vital to a lasting sense of ambivalence in Australian identity and in the relations of the Commonwealth of Australia with island states in the Pacific. After Federation (1901), Australia became more independent in the context of devolution of the Commonwealth. Engagement in the Pacific War heralded a turn from allegiance to Britain to alliance with the United States. A new orientation to the Asia-Pacific was not a chosen course, but one compelled by geo-political conditions and a growing dynamism in this multicivilizational world region. From the 1970s to the end of the twentieth century, engagement in Asia accelerated with the onset of a policy regime of multiculturalism and a process of neo-liberal modernization. This essay argues that Euro-Australia emerged out of complex intercivilizational interactions entailing colonialism, diverse migratory and cultural flows, and the creation of a homogenizing collective memory. I contend that Australian modernity, due in part to its suppression of its indigenous civilization and accompanying denial of that suppression, has borne considerable cultural and political ambivalence about its place in the region - an ambivalence which structures its economic and political relations with neighbouring countries. In this essay, I focus on Pacific relations. I compare developments and turns in Australian foreign policy with patterns of cultural engagement since the 1970s. Towards the end, I raise the Australian regime of refugee detention in relation to climate refugees. The essay concludes with notes on the merits of civilizational analysis in understanding the Oceanian constellation and its potential futures and points for further research on Australia in a multi-civilizational context.
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