Kylie Shaw

Student Experience of Final-Year Undergraduate Research Projects: An Exploration of "Research Preparedness".

During this past decade the level of interest in building research capacity has intensified in Australia and internationally, with a particular emphasis on the development of postgraduate research students, but also extending to undergraduate research experience. This study investigated the student experience across a diverse range of fourth-year undergraduate research programs in one Australian university, and explored how this prepared students for further research study. A construct of ‘research preparedness’ was developed from several factors, including research self-efficacy, motivation, research environment and orientation towards research. Overall, students were motivated to complete their research, and were confident in their ability to carry out the tasks involved in the research process regardless of the program they were undertaking. On the whole, students enrolled in a one-year research program had the strongest intent to continue on to further research studies, and were more likely to show evidence of research preparedness.

The response of pre-service teachers to a compulsory research project

This paper draws on 159 survey responses of fourth year Education students as they embark on a research project based in their internship school. The project explores predisposition to research and the level of preparedness to undertake a research project. The students who met most frequently with their supervisor and showed higher research self-efficacy were also most likely to want to undertake postgraduate study and reacted positively to good personal support and a feeling of belonging to a research “community”. Many felt they were “unconnected” to a learning community, and specifically to their supervisor. They were generally positive about their ability to do the tasks, such as finding and writing up literature, even though they were concerned about managing the overall commitment. Despite this they were optimistic about completion. Only 5% were sure they would undertake postgraduate study in the future, and 65% were sure they would not do so. In an environment where there is commitment to promoting research skills consistent with the needs of a knowledge society and drawing on evidence to inform practice, the findings not only raise the question of how best to support and give meaning to early research endeavours of preservice teachers, but also highlights the challenge of achieving this against a high level of disinterest in further tertiary study.

PhD candidate expectations: exploring mismatch with experience

This paper identifies the nature of initial expectations of PhD candidates, the prevalence and type of mismatch between expectations and experience, and to what extent mismatch is reflected in satisfaction with candidature. The data were drawn from telephone interviews with a sub-sample of 104 PhD candidates from an initial online national survey of 1,374 candidates at Australian universities. Based on the interviews, eight categories of initial expectations coalesced into three dimensions: the doctoral ‘Task’, the ‘University’ (including supervision), and ‘Personal’ factors. The relationships between candidates’ initial expectations and subsequent experience were examined, with specific reference to mismatches that were positive, neutral, or negative (most being negative). Where there was mismatch, this was primarily in relation to what was involved in the ‘Task’ and the associated emotions. The negative mismatch codes were consistently related to candidate satisfaction with supervision, with department/university provision, and with their own preparation for the degree. Further analyses of experience indicated that negative mismatch caused candidates to question, not necessarily productively, their preparation, purpose, fit, and persona.

Supporting innovation in teaching: what are the key contextual factors?

New curriculum frameworks commonly refer to new technologies and 21st century learning, requiring teachers to change their practices. This paper investigates the school and teacher level factors that are most strongly related to innovative teacher practices (ITPs). A sample of Australian secondary teachers (n = 683) completed online surveys about current practices and beliefs. The teacher responses enabled the calculation of an ITP index for each teacher which was used as the response variable in a multilevel regression with various explanatory variables: at the teacher level, characteristics (e.g., age, gender) and experiences (e.g., amount of professional development), at the school level, size, region, and other characteristics developed from school leader responses. Several factors were found to be related to ITP including teacher age, the frequency of use of extended learning activities and teacher collaboration. These findings have the potential to inform school leaders about how best to foster teacher change and innovation.

The global and the local: taking account of context in the push for the technologization of education

Education in Australia, it could be argued, has undergone a “digital turn” (Buchanan, 2011). That is to say, digital technologies are no longer simply something that students learn “about,” but are now something that they increasingly learn “with.” It is a common expectation that digital competencies are embedded in all areas of teaching across all years of education. The push for the increased use of technology in education can be understood as a product of the globalization of education, evident not only in the Australian education system, but in education systems worldwide. Within this global context, the nature of research into educational technology is also undergoing a shift and an expansion in focus. Selwyn highlights the need for researchers in this area to be “looking beyond learning” (2010, p. 65). He calls for a critical research approach, one that incorporates a richer account of the contexts in which educational technologies are employed; one that examines wider political, social, and cultural contexts of the use of digital technologies, and one that queries the implications for social justice and democracy.

An Examination of the Technology of Specialised Soft Skill Sets Deployed in Business Sectors from Four Different Regions of the Globe

Our central objective in this paper is twofold: first, to examine the scholarly literature on the technological importance of soft skills in Business, and second, to review the major research studies on the views of employers and the industries they serve regarding the specific character and combination sets of key soft skills best suited for business professionals located in four distinct and economically vibrant major business regions of the world. The key findings have been distilled from the literature and analysed to identify patterns of congruence, with the aim of cataloguing reasonably discrete combinatory sets of soft skills ideally suited to the specific business priorities which characterise these four different regions. The concluding section of the paper will consider the extent to which these distinct skill sets can be pedagogically developed in such a way that they become deeply embedded as foundational in the creation of an international business school curriculum, featuring five discrete sets of soft skills, each of which is ideally constructed for one of the four different regions.