Lorraine Ling

Children of a parent with a mental illness: perspectives on need

Abstract Being a child of a parent who has a mental illness involves considerable risk to the child’s secure attachment and long-term mental health. Parental mental health concerns place children at a significantly greater risk of lower social, psychological and physical health than children in families not affected by mental illness. In this paper, previous research is extended by examining the needs of these children from the perspectives of children, parents and mental health and welfare professionals. The study involved qualitative and quantitative data collection from focus groups with children and parents, and a comparison of quantitative findings with mental health professionals. Similar responses from the children and parents included problems with major episodes (e.g. parent hospitalisation), issues regarding coping and the importance of sibling support. Parents also identified a number of different issues (e.g. external support) compared with children (e.g. the importance of friendships). A final component of the research undertook a quantitative comparison of seven core ‘things that might help’ children in the circumstance of their parent being hospitalised. The findings showed differences between parents and mental professionals but most significantly with children. The findings overall are discussed in relation to the needs of children whose parent has a mental illness and recommendations are made regarding policy and service provision.

The Professional Development of Teachers in Australia

SUMMARYIn this paper the authors outline the concept of professional development as it pertains in the Australian context of education. Various models of and approaches to professional development of teachers are discussed, ranging from short sessions and courses to more extended models. The model adopted in Victoria, Australia through the Victorian Professional Development Network is addressed and an outline of the way modules of professional development may articulate into formal award bearing university courses is discussed. Following a major research study carried out in New South Wales by one of the authors, a new model for professional development is posited. This model portrays professional development as a dynamic and interactive process between three central elements in the professional development equation.

Administration for Innovation in Higher Education.

The paper commences from the premise that the major paradigms of administration are not appropriate to higher education. Structural approaches place too great an emphasis on the organization and its mission, subjectivist approaches fail to acknowledge the constraints and enablements of structure and the role of continuity and radical change approaches fail to provide a positive basis for administration. The paper outlines an approach to educational administration which addresses these difficulties. It is based on structuration theory together with cooperative learning theory and group work. The paper reports an investigation of an attempt to apply this approach to the administration of a program of teaching awards in an Australian university. It reports some success and some limitations.

Induction: Making the Leap

This article provides a critical examination of a variety of approaches to induction focusing especially upon Australia and other Pacific Rim countries. The question of the purposes induction serves for graduate teachers, experienced teachers and education systems is addressed in terms of whether it is a technical exercise which preserves the existing teacher culture, or whether it is a means to critically approach teaching as a profession and to bring about change and renewal. In an era where the local and the global intersect to bring about glocalisation, it is suggested here that new approaches to induction are required which do more than preserve the status quo or which are narrowly about understanding and official knowledge of the existing systems. A ‘radical centre’ model is proposed which blends elements of the Old Democratic Left and the New Right to provide the basis for a new approach to teacher induction.

A)broad teacher education

In this article, the implications of international students undertaking teacher education in Australian universities are discussed as an example of global teacher education and its consequences for teacher educators and students. Increasing numbers of international students come to Australia to qualify as teachers and this has consequences for the practices of teacher educators and also for the behaviors of the international teacher education students. We contend that the practice of undertaking teacher education in another country produces future teachers who are cosmopolitans who value diversity and embrace change and uncertainty, rather than producing fundamentalists who adhere rigidly to tradition and ritual truths. Druckers (1993) concept of living simultaneously in global and local worlds forms a central element in the theoretical framework. Studying teacher education in global settings is seen as having positive outcomes and practical consequences at a number of levels.

Teacher education in the global financial crisis (GFC) – where has the shoe pinched?

The world of teacher education has, like most other sections of public spending, been affected by the recent financial crises in a number of ways. This special issue seeks to inform our thinking about the concrete actions and consequences taking place within education systems in Europe and beyond. ‘Change’ has been a leitmotif of teacher preparation and development over recent decades. The impact of the often swinging financial cutbacks are yet another, if particularly severe episode, in this movement. One of the original laudable purposes for the myriad changes introduced into teacher education programmes over the last decades was the intention to improve the education of teachers in training, and the development of serving teachers through the introduction or strengthening of the provision of continuous professional development (CPD). This resulted in changes at policy, curriculum and delivery levels. To some extent, this objective has been achieved, giving teachers more school-based experience and a right to professional development (PD) – as demonstrated, for example, in Ireland and Scotland. However, this general move toward improvement has not been universal, as can be seen in the former Soviet States. Moreover, there is evidence of threats to achieved progress, with the potential to reverse gains and halve future planned developments. Ironically, the result may be exactly the opposite outcome from what was envisaged as necessary to improve teaching and learning prior to present budget restrictions. This potential disjunction between education policy on the one hand, and the economic reality of education on the other, has had perverse effects of both positive and negative varieties across the countries represented here. The successful and prolonged period of domination of neo-liberalism as the driving ideology across the various jurisdictions covered in this special issue has allowed for some clear commonalities to be discerned across the systems discussed. These link directly with the values of neo-liberalism and include a reliance on the market to drive the system, more privatisation of the education system, higher student fees, increased testing regimes with resultant ranking and sorting at various levels of the system, outcomesbased approaches, and increased regulation and accountability.

Australian teacher education: inside-out, outside-in, backwards and forwards?

Abstract Teacher Education in Australia seems to be in a dynamic and constant cycle of review and change. Policy governing teacher education has also been eminently changeable and dynamic. To some extent this stems from three year terms for governments where a short term and expedient political view is taken. There has also been ongoing centre-periphery tension between the Commonwealth government and the State governments regarding regulation and accreditation of teacher education programmes with there now being regulatory bodies at both national (Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership – AITSL) and state levels. Despite all of this, teacher education is still the butt of ongoing criticism and investigation and is now more highly regulated than ever. Since teacher education occurs within a university context, with the exception of that which is offered through some private providers or some Technical and Further Education (TAFE) providers, it is also at the whim of government funding policies impacting universities generally.

Denouement: Teacher Education and the Persistence of Memory.

Salvador Dali’s famous 1931 work ‘The Persistence of Memory’ is said to have been painted following an hallucinatory episode or dreamlike state which Dali deliberately induced in order for him to attempt to link with his own subconscious world, and then to record the kinds of images that the dream world conjures up. The painting is likened to an assault on rationality and thus in the world of art, such images belong to the movement of surrealism. The past 40 years of teacher education have similarities with Dali’s ‘Persistence of Memory’. Livingston and Flores (2017) in their analysis of the papers submitted to this journal, EJTE, over the past 40 years since the inception of the journal, have unearthed some recurrent themes that have persisted regarding teacher education, sometimes in a kind of surreal

Universities as learning networks

Abstract In this article the authors report on an investigation of the types of professional development university academics perceive to be of most value in the current context of universities. In the current context academics are required to undertake a range of tasks that hitherto may not have been seen as the role of academics. These include marketing and generating enterprise income, as well as teaching, undertaking research and performing administrative duties. The conduct of professional development for academics may then relate to roles broader than the traditional ones that focused on research and teaching