Rob Macklin

Professional identity development: a review of the higher education literature

This study examined the extant higher education literature on the development of professional identities. Through a systematic review approach 20 articles were identified that discussed in some way professional identity development in higher education journals. These articles drew on varied theories, pedagogies and learning strategies; however, most did not make a strong connection to professional identities. Further research is needed to better understand the tensions between personal and professional values, structural and power influences, discipline versus generic education, and the role of workplace learning on professional identities.

New management practices and enterprise training in Australia

The widespread implementation of new management practices (NMPs) in industrialised countries has had a significant impact on employee training. Examines five NMPs: the learning organisation; total quality management; lean production/high performance work organisations; teamworking; and business process re‐engineering. Focuses on the relationship between organisational change and training at the enterprise level. The research identified important findings in six key areas: small business; the use of the vocational education and training system; the importance of the individual; the nature of training; the importance of behavioural skills; and organisational change. The study confirmed that workplace change is a major driver of improved training provision in enterprises. It showed unambiguously that most NMPs are associated with higher levels of training. The integration of training with business strategy was found to be the most important factor in driving training across a wide range of training activities and appears to lead to an across the board boost to enterprise training in all its forms.

Advancing Qualitative Research Using Qualitative Data Analysis Software QDAS? Reviewing Potential Versus Practice in Published Studies using ATLAS.ti and NVivo, 1994-2013

Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) programs are well-established research tools, but little is known about how researchers use them. This article reports the results of a content analysis of 763 empirical articles, published in the Scopus database between 1994 and 2013, which explored how researchers use the ATLAS.ti™ and NVivo™ QDAS programs.* The analysis specifically investigated who is using these tools (in terms of subject discipline and author country of origin), and how they are being used to support research (in terms of type of data, type of study, and phase of the research process that QDAS were used to support). The study found that the number of articles reporting QDAS is increasing each year, and that the majority of studies using ATLAS.ti™ and NVivo™ were published in health sciences journals by authors from the United Kingdom, United States, Netherlands, Canada, and Australia. Researchers used QDAS to support a variety of research designs and most commonly used the programs to support analyses of data gathered through interviews, focus groups, documents, field notes, and open-ended survey questions. Although QDAS can support multiple phases of the research process, the study found the vast majority of researchers are using it for data management and analysis, with fewer using it for data collection/creation or to visually display their methods and findings. This article concludes with some discussion of the extent to which QDAS users appear to have leveraged the potential of these programs to support new approaches to research.

Organisational change and the management of training in Australian enterprises

This article presents the findings from a study of the impact of the introduction of new management practices on the organisation of training in Australian enterprises. The study investigated the impact of five common new management practices: teamworking, total quality management, lean production, business process re-engineering and the learning organisation, as well as a number of other organisational factors. The incidences of these practices were modelled against eight measures of the organisation of training in enterprises. The results confirm that organisational change, as represented by the five new management practices, has had a significant impact on the organisation of training. However, the most significant impact on the way training is organised appears to be on the extent to which training and human resource policy are integrated with business strategy.

Perceptions of executive search and advertised recruitment attributes and service quality

This paper reviews the results of an exploratory study designed to examine the perceptions of a random selection of Australian human resource professionals regarding the attributes required of and the quality of service provided by executive search firms (ESFs) and advertised recruitment agencies (ARAs). A total of 109 useable responses were entered and a four‐factor solution was derived employing three factor extraction techniques (principal components analysis (PCA), principal axis factoring (PFA) and maximum likelihood (ML)) for both ESFs and ARAs. Some marginal differences between ESFs and ARAs were identified with respect to required attributes. More importantly the quality of service provided by both ESFs and ARAs was found to be below that required on all factorial attributes and on most individual attributes. Quality differences were found to be significant on all but one factor, and on most individual attributes. In short, the clients of both ESFs and ARAs did not believe the service they received met their requirements. Whilst results should be read with caution due to a relatively low response rate, factorial results do hold up across three factorial extraction techniques and a number of significant results (p<0.001) were derived on paired‐sample t‐tests associated with comparisons of attribute importance and service levels provided. Findings are discussed and the implications for professional practice and future research reviewed.

Researcher reflexivity: exploring the impacts of CAQDAS use

Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) programs are established tools for qualitative research. Making informed decisions when using them requires researchers to understand how they affect research practices and outcomes. In this article we consider the impact of CAQDAS on researcher reflexivity. Reviewing three decades of literature, we identify specific ‘reflexive moments’ experienced by CAQDAS users, the contexts in which they occur, the issues they raise, and the reflexive awareness they generate. The ways in which CAQDAS can enhance or undermine researcher reflexivity are also reported. By doing so, we aim to help researchers and especially research students (and their supervisors) understand the relationship between CAQDAS and reflexivity and the reflexive moments they may encounter when using such software.

Phronesis, Aporia, and Qualitative Research

Qualitative researchers sometimes adopt an interpretive orientation, thereby promoting a form of professional practice not underpinned by positivist reasoning processes but by practical rationality. In this chapter, we contend that what we call ‘interpretive’ qualitative research does not stand the test of standard conceptions of scientific reason. However, we also contend that the test of such conceptions of scientific reasoning is not an appropriate test for interpretively oriented qualitative research.

The discourse of QDAS: reporting practices of ATLAS.ti and NVivo users with implications for best practices

Abstract We still know relatively little about how researchers use qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) such as ATLAS.ti and NVivo. We conducted a discourse analysis of 763 empirical articles published from 1994 to 2013 that explored the language used by researchers when reporting QDAS use. We found that most researchers provided few details of their QDAS use beyond naming the program, but the detailed accounts provided by some authors provided valuable insights into the ways that QDAS programs can be used to support data analysis and the reporting of research outcomes. We conclude with suggestions for best practices in reporting QDAS use. We encourage researchers to provide more detail about their program usage, e.g. by choosing active rather than passive voice to avoid attributing agency to the software, defining specialized QDAS terminology to prevent confusion, and avoiding unsubstantiated claims of a relationship between QDAS use and improved quality.

Work integrated learning initiatives: live case studies as a mainstream WIL assessment

ABSTRACT Industry demands highly skilled, work ready and adaptable graduates who can solve complex problems. Work integrated learning (WIL) offers educators an authentic assessment that approximates future performance requirements. Often this would include workplace placements or internships for a selected number of students. In this paper, we evaluate the ‘live case study’ assessment as an example of an alternative embedded approach to WIL. We address a lack of simple and specific criteria for assessing WIL and assess the live case approach against these criteria. We find that the live case approach is an effective form of WIL, offering large numbers of students an authentic learning experience. We recommend this approach to universities seeking to offer large cohorts of students a workplace learning experience that is less time and resource dependent than internships, and effective for international and distance students.