Search results

Although much has been written about international students in higher education in Australia, there is a paucity of research and discussion about international academics especially non-whites and their lived experience in the workplace. This paper represents the voices of two academics working in metropolitan universities in Melbourne. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness of how in spite of all the goodwill and highbrow research, the “corridors of academia” need to be examined in considering the politics of inclusion and internationalisation as the authors still need to address issues of colour as they exist in the academy.

The authors use narrative inquiry and reflection to tell the story as both phenomenon and method where the phenomenon is the story and inquiry is the narrative.

The findings suggest student and staff perceptions of difference are mostly theorised but not practiced within the academy.

The paper includes two voices, a limitation in itself, thus generalisations cannot be made to other academics or institutions. The authors recommend more professional development for staff and students alike to embrace issues of colour, culture and difference.

The authors draw attention to the need for academics to reflect on their behaviour within their own academic communities and be more aware of minority groups in academia.

By including and listening to issues facing minority groups (academics and students) can only improve the social cohesion of university worksites.

This is an original work carried out by both authors. It raises concerns that may also be experienced international staff and or students.

This research is situated at a metropolitan university in Melbourne (Australia) where the authors work in initial teacher education programs within the same faculty. The purpose of this study is to raise awareness that collegial, collaborative and “co-caring” environments can foster an improved sense of belonging, acceptance and inclusion in the academy. They also argue that communities of practice may foster an improved sense of belonging that enhances empowerment and harmony among all staff in academia in pandemic times and beyond.

The authors draw on case study methodology as a qualitative approach to understand and illuminate the phenomena under study. Case study methodology provides an in-depth understanding of their trifocal voices, as it allows them to voice their stories through collaborative autoethnography. The authors use self-narratives to unpack their sense of belonging in academic spaces. Collaborative autoethnography (CAE) enabled them to work together as a team of women and as a community of researchers.

The findings foreground the responsibilities of casual staff while concomitantly articulating the challenges faced by both permanent and casual staff to create a “sense of belonging” in the academy. The authors found that social connection engenders a sense of belonging and inclusion within a space that is often beset by neoliberal ideologies of competitiveness and individual achievement. They articulate their stress, pressure and uncertainty as permanent and as casual academics working supportively to develop and maintain identity in very difficult circumstances. They share how they developed professional relationships which bring unforeseen benefits and personal friendship at a time of especially restrictive practices.

The paper includes three voices, a limitation in itself, thus generalisations cannot be made to other academics or institutions. Employing CAE offers the possibility of delving more deeply into the emotional complexities inherent within this method for further research. They recommend a sense of “co-caring” as a form of pastoral care in the “induction program” for all academics including casual staff. While this may not “strategically” fit in with many because of power imbalances, the journey of co-caring and sharing and building friendships within the academy has a limited presence in the literature and calls for further investigation.

The authors draw attention to the need for higher education institutes to recognise the role permanent staff play when working with casual academics.

The authors draw attention to the need to be inclusive and collaborative as a way to improve the divide and strengthen connections between permanent and casual academics at university worksites. This is imperative given the shifting demographics within Australia and its workforce. They also highlight issues of race in the academy.

This is an original work carried out by the authors. It raises concerns about a sense of belonging in the academy, job certainty and the place of people of colour as these issues may also be experienced by other full-time and casual academics.

The pandemic presented many new challenges is all spheres of life including faith communities. Around the globe, lockdowns took pace at various stages with varying restrictions that included the closure of places of worship which significantly affected the way people serve God and gather as a community. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the wellbeing and resilience of members of Christian faith communities in Melbourne (Australia) who had experienced one of the longest lockdowns in the world.

The authors draw on online survey N = 106 collected between November 2021 and May 2021. Participants were over the age of 18 from Catholic, Anglican, Uniting Church, Baptist and Pentecostal/Evangelical faith communities. They employ thematic analysis to analyze, and code open-ended responses from four questions in relation to the research question: In what ways has your wellbeing been impacted during the pandemic?

Melbourne experienced one of the longest lockdown periods in the world between 2020 and 2021 when blended modes of worship forced people to congregate in new and different ways. The empirical insights of participants express their views in relation to celebrating faith and hope, connecting with community, pursuing leisure activities and pursuing leisure in relation to the PERMA model of wellbeing. The findings may resonate with other faith communities in Melbourne and around the globe. They may also lead to new and innovative ways of planning and envisioning modes of worship that may be helpful in a variety of faith contexts.

The research was limited by its sample size (N = 106) and its geographical restriction of Christian faith communities in the Melbourne metropolitan area. This means that broad generalizations cannot be made. Nevertheless, the findings may resonate with other faith communities in Australian and in other parts of the world.

In highlighting the impact COVID-19 had in Australia and ways people balanced their sense of faith and wellbeing, this study raises concerns about the lack of funding that supports mental health initiatives in faith settings and the wider community. The study recommends that faith community leaders and members use informal communication channels to foster hope building wellbeing and resilience, and that pastoral care networks be established in the wider community to promote leisure activities that nurtures social connection, builds faith and resilience.

Whilst the pandemic has provided new openings for members of faith communities to engage with God, the scriptures, each other and leisure, it remains “a balancing act of keeping the faith and maintaining wellbeing”. Such a balancing act may positively enliven a sense of wellbeing and resilience as people continue to navigate the uncertainty inherent in a milieu beginning to be named as “post-Covid”.

This is an original work carried out by the authors. It raises concerns about the lack of funding that supports mental health initiatives in faith settings and the wider community. While much research, news and social media discussed the pandemic's impact on communities, there is an urgent need for ongoing research that encourages, supports and connects people to faith and to leisure activities in order to promote a continued sense of wellbeing as communities begin to transition to a “post-Covid” world. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about the impact COVID-19 had in Australia and ways people balanced their sense of faith and wellbeing.

Coordination of group activity is rarely more important than in a singing group that has no designated conductor. This paper aims to explore the group dynamics in an 11-man singing group whose members, all over 60, have without exception occupied senior leadership positions in their working careers. The study arose because responses to a wider research study revealed interesting perceptions of leadership issues in the group.

All the members participated in semi-structured interviews and interpretative phenomenological analysis of the responses was used to process the responses. This enabled the identification of practices that support the group’s success and illustrated how this group of practiced “leaders” respond to a (relatively) conductorless situation.

It was confirmed that the group exhibits several characteristics of self-managed teams and string quartets. All members felt empowered to take a lead, although their backgrounds might have predisposed them to take such initiatives anyway. But the long-serving female accompanist is, by virtue inter alia of her superior musicianship, which appears to overcome any gender bias, in many respects the de facto leader. In performance, the singers synchronize their singing in response to cues from each other, but this could work better if given more specific attention.

Whereas conducted choirs have been extensively studied, such a self-managed group of amateur singers, all of whom are accustomed to leading in their working careers, has apparently not been studied. This study sheds some light on techniques for overcoming the challenges of creating quality performance in such a group and insights for similar groups, not necessarily musical, are identified.

Research shows peer health education programs on university campuses can support students in pursuing sustainable health-related behavior changes. However, few programs deliver peer health education through a nondiet, weight-inclusive framework. Research shows that health educators who challenge the status quo of diet culture and weight-focused health interventions may face unique challenges when sharing this perspective with others. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of peer educators who provided critical health education by introducing a nondiet, weight-inclusive approach to health.

Five health coaches from a university health coaching program at a mid-sized southwestern university participated in a semi-structured interview. The data were analyzed through interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Peer educators faced numerous challenges when introducing nondiet, weight-inclusive approaches such as lacking credibility as a peer to challenge weight-centric messages, feeling conflicted about honoring clients’ autonomy when clients are resistant to a weight-inclusive approach and feeling uncomfortable when discussing client vulnerabilities. Peer educators also identified several strategies that helped them navigate these challenges such as being intentional with social media, using motivational interviewing to unpack clients’ concerns about weight, and seeking group supervision.

Given the reality that health coaches will face challenges sharing weight-inclusive health approaches, educators and supervisors should explicitly incorporate strategies and training methods to help peer health coaches prepare for and cope with such challenges. More research is also needed to examine effective ways to introduce weight-inclusive approaches to college students.

Music has been an integral part of humanity’s culture for millennia. Like many other artifacts of culture, songs have: expressed a range of feelings, informed listeners of historical and political issues, and provoked social awareness and change at every level of sophistication. In nearly all corners of the globe, music is woven deeply into the fabric of life and significantly affects and reflects the contexts in which it is written and shared. Our almost universal passion for music, bolstered by its importance as an artifact of culture and history, has not resulted in the integration of musical forms and texts in our classrooms in any systematic or conspicuous way. In that context, we propose a framework for integrating music in the social studies classroom. Our example comes from two individuals who lived very different lives, yet experienced some tragic parallels confronting fascism at various points in history. The music and writing these individuals left behind enable us to explore best practices in social studies and literacy in particularly engaging ways.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether there is historical support for the proposal of Smith, Montagno and Kuzmenko that the specific cultures associated with transformational and/or servant leadership would be more or less applicable, based on context. Moreover, its purpose is also to demonstrate that a historical approach can be used effectively to examine such constructs.

The paper presents a historical examination of the military retreats of Xenophon, a transformational leader, and Chief Joseph, a servant leader, during very similar contextual crises.

Given similar contexts, the historical record offers support for the proposal of Smith et al.

First, the retreats of Xenophon and Chief Joseph were separated by many hundreds of years and miles. Also inherent with this type of methodology is simple disagreement among readers. Although this author finds great similarity in the retreats of Xenophon and Chief Joseph, there are certainly differences that could be scrutinized as well. Moreover, others might be dissatisfied with the selection of Xenophon and Joseph to represent the leadership styles presented, or with the conclusions regarding their effectiveness. Such debate should be encouraged and could provide additional avenues for future research. Further, the current study considered leader effectiveness only as it related to the achievement of the organizational goal(s). It could be that Joseph's cohorts were more satisfied, committed, etc. than were the followers of Xenophon. This line of inquiry should also be pursued.

This research suggests that transformational leader behavior is likely to be more appropriate during times of significant organizational change.

This is the first study that has examined the speculation of Smith et al. and the first to demonstrate that a historical approach can add to one's understanding of such constructs.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.