Touching the void: arts education research in Australia

This article is an overview of arts education research in Australia. The authors argue that there is an urgent need for key arts organisations to form strategic partnerships with arts educators to provide stronger research in the area of arts education. This research base would enhance the ability of policymakers, arts administrators and arts educators to argue for a stronger presence for arts education in schools. Many arts educators and researchers believe that engagement with the arts has value beyond the specific arts subjects themselves. International studies have indicated that important cognitive and social processes and capabilities are developed in arts-enriched experiences, which can be particularly significant for students who are at risk, disengaged and/or underachieving. While this realisation has stimulated action in other countries such as China, Singapore and Japan, arts education researchers in Australia currently make do with small-scale and often ad hoc research in an attempt to argue their case. The conclusions and recommendations of this article call for a series of strategic partnerships to touch or even fill the current void in arts education research in Australia.     

Funding of medical research in Australia by the National Health & Medical Research Council

Australia invests a smaller percentage of its GDP, and a smaller percentage of total health expenditure, on medical and health research, than nations with which it often compares itself: some 16% of total national R&D expenditure is in the medical and health area (ASTEC). The National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC) is an independent statutory body, with Principal Committees in medical and health research, health care, public health, and ethics. The Council is widely representative, meets in public, and is formally reviewed triennially. Its Medical Research Committee (MRC) advises on the distribution of $106 M for research projects, programs, units, and major institutes. Features of MRC's allocative procedures are emphasis on investigator-initiated proposals, extensive review, interviews, reporting in full, and blind determination of funding cut-offs. An extensive training and career support system is maintained, but no NH&MRC funded posts are tenured. There are extensive guidelines on Conflict of Interest, Good Scientific Practice, and Human and Animal Ethics.     

Distance education research priorities for Australia: A study of the opinions of distance educators and practitioners

The advantages of undertaking research in distance education are numerous. They include those which impact on national development, educational practice, professional practice in distance education, policy and management, and the constant review of research needs and methodology.

Research in distance education has suffered from a number of problems which include lack of co‐ordination and focus, and the involvement of comparatively few researchers. This is perhaps why there have been calls of late from some quarters such as the Australian Research Council to prioritise educational research agenda in Australia. Future development in distance education would require a coordinated effort in establishing research priorities in Australia to effectively drive distance education theory and practice. One of the criteria in setting research priorities should be that derived from distance educators and practitioners of distance education. This paper reports on the Australian data collated from an investigation carried out as part of a worldwide study of the opinions of distance educators and practitioners regarding: (1) the availability of research information; (2) the areas in which research efforts should be concentrated; and (3) the order of priority to be given to such research areas in distance education. Using a five‐part questionnaire (with a Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of .89), the results suggest the need for a conceited effort to embark on vigorous research in almost all areas of distance education. The distance educators and practitioners have also prioritised the areas of research and have ranked the difficulties they face doing research in distance education. The results are discussed and their implications for distance education practice and further research indicated.     

Re-examining the relationship between education and adult mental health in the UK: A research note

Previous studies using variation in education arising from compulsory schooling laws have found no causal effects of education on mental health in the UK. We re-examine the relationship between education and mental health in the UK by taking a different approach: sibling fixed-effects with controls for polygenic scores (summary measures of genetic predisposition) for educational attainment and adult depressive symptoms. We find that higher educational attainment is associated with better adult mental health, that sibling controls reduce these associations by ∼40–70% but important associations remain and find evidence for non-monotonic effects. We also find suggestive evidence that education partially “rescues” genetic predictors of poor mental health.     

History of education research in Australia: some current trends and possible directions for the future

The history of education as a distinct field has been the focus of study, research and writing in Australia for over a century. It achieved maturity with the establishment of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society in 1970 and the subsequent establishment of the Society’s journal, History of Education Review. Since then, Australian scholars have been major contributors to the field, with certain individuals being key players on the world stage. Taking cognisance of this background, this paper considers current trends and directions for the future. It does so by focusing on three areas: scholarship on topics relating specifically to Australia; the use of new methods; and Australian-based scholars contributing to scholarship where the focus is beyond their immediate geographical boundaries.     

FEFC Funding: research on 12 colleges

Abstract

This article is based upon the research undertaken by Dan Taubman of NATFHE, Tom Leney and Norman Lucas of the Post‐16 Education Centre, Institute of Education, University of London. The research focuses on the impact of the FEFC funding on colleges’ curricula, teaching and internal management. The full report of the findings was presented to a NATFHE conference in January 1998 entitled Learning Funding: the impact of FEFC funding, evidence from twelve FE colleges (Leney et al., 1998). This article summarises the main findings of the research — the full version and report of the conference can be purchased from NATFHE or the Post‐16 Education Centre.     

Clienteles for distance education in Australia

We present data from an array of sources on the characteristics of external (distance education) students in Australian higher education in comparison with internal full‐time and part‐time students. Profiles of the three populations are drawn up in terms of age, gender, marital status, home location, social background, education and employment history, field of study, and level of course. Also examined are students’ reasons for studying externally, the relationship between employment and study and various effects of education on employment, attitudes and life‐style.     

Summer session faculty salaries: A research note

This brief research note addresses the issue of summer session faculty salaries. Specifically, it demonstrates that for 77 reporting institutions, only 15 indicated that they paid the standard 2/9ths, or 22.2%, of the previous academic year's salary for full-time summer session teaching. The percentages paid for full-time summer session faculty ranged from 11% to 34%, with an average rate of 17.4%.     

The distribution of misbehavior: A research note

The numbers of disciplinary referrals to the principal's office for 202 boys and 202 girls from a middle-class, suburban junior high school were obtained from student records and fitted to a highly skewed negative binomial distribution. The fitted and observed distributions do not significantly differ by Chi-square test (p <.05) nor in a cross-validation sample of 219 boys and 212 girls in another school. Exemplifying the high positive skew of the distribution, 54% of the boys in one school had no referrals; 20%, one; 9%, two; and one boy, 15.     

Some lessons for educational researchers: Repositioning research in education and education in research

This paper is a reflection on the current policy moment in educational research in Australia in the context of globalisation. Set against a consideration of the emergent structure of feeling, the paper draws on three case studies of research to draw out some lessons for educational researchers and the research community. The argument is put that the dangerous ‘we’ of AARE needs to support increased funding for education and for educational research and, for the latter, to support a range of funding sources, types of research, methodologies and dissemination approaches. Increasingly there are pressures upon such eclecticism because of governmental attempts to ‘instrumentalise’ relationships between educational research and practitioner needs as perceived by governments. While such research is necessary, there is also a need within a democratic polity for research framed by agendas set by researchers that critiques government-directed developments. The paper argues there is a complex relationship amongst researchers and educational policy and pedagogical practitioners and as such the concept of ‘impact’ as applied to educational research requires substantial theorising. Contemporary research policy has tended to inhibit the dissemination of academic research to educational practitioners, while educational policy has tended, inappropriately in the argument of the paper, to construct teachers as the mere recipients of policy and research done elsewhere.     

Authority and ethics: A case for estrangement in educational research and research education

This article focuses attention on an underexamined issue in the literature on educational research ethics: how ethical authority is established in educational research. We address this from a perspective that disrupts naturalised approaches to ethics, arguing that rather than seeking ‘rights’ or ‘wrongs’, researchers are always tasked with constructing ethical stances. Attention can then be placed on the array of embodied and objectified resources that might be recruited in establishing these. Through an engagement with published academic accounts of ethical reflection and decision-making, the article explores the ways that educational researchers achieve or sometimes question their ethical security in respect of their research activity. The analysis we present draws out the referential strategies that constitute ethical subjectivity and maps the diversity of anchoring points that might be recruited in this action. We also draw attention to the process of recontextualisation that is inevitable when one activity (or aspect of an activity) regards another, introducing necessary incoherence into ethical practice. The case we present celebrates rather than seeking to conceal or repair such disruption.     

Technical secondary education in Togo and Cameroon — research note

This paper presents an evaluation of technical secondary education in Togo and Cameroon from the labor market perspective using tracer study data. Individuals face great difficulties in finding a job following training and the most common strategy used to avoid unemployment is to secure work in the informal sector. However, informal sector jobs provide low earnings and there appears to be a large discrepancy between an individual's expected earnings and actual earnings. One solution is to stimulate, and to enhance the role of, informal training through apprentice training centers.     

Open for learning: Tertiary education for off-campus students in Australia

This paper examines the challenge faced by Australian Universities and Colleges of Advanced Education following publication of the Report of the Committee on Open University to the Universities Commission in 1974. It starts by looking at current provision of external studies and goes on to examine some of the implications of the distinctions characteristically drawn between credit and non-credit studies at tertiary level. The importance to some students of independence as a learning mode is considered, and an experiment in community education is described. The paper continues by emphasising the challenge to tertiary institutions to develop a national network for off-campus studies.

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Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht die den australischen Universitäten und Colleges of Advanced Education gestellten Aufgaben nach Herausgabe des Berichts der Kommission über die Open University, 1974. Zunächst wird die gegenwärtige Versorgung mit externen Studienmöglichkeiten untersucht, und dann werden einige der traditionellerweise im Tertiärbereich existierenden Unterscheidungen zwischen credit und non-credit-Studenten durchleuchtet. Die Bedeutung unabhängiger Arbeitsweisen als solcher für einige Studenten wird diskutiert, und ein Experiment in gemeinschaftsorientierter Bildung wird beschrieben. Der Artikel betont schliesslich, wie wichtig es für die Institutionen im Tertiärbereich sei, ein nationales Netz von Fernstudiengängen zu schaffen.

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Résumé Ce document examine le défi auquel les Universités Australiennes et Collèges d'Education Avancée ont à faire face, suite à la publication du Rapport du Comité sur l'Université Ouverte à la Commission des Universités en 1974. Il débute en considérant l'approvisionnement courant des études externes et poursuit en examinant quelques-unes des implications découlant des distinctions faites d'une manière caractéristique entre les études notées et non-notées au niveau tertiaire. L'importance de l'indépendance, pour certains étudiants, comme un mode d'apprentissage y est examinée et, une expérience dans l'éducation de la communauté y est décrite. Ce document poursuit en accentuant le défi vis-à-vis des institutions tertiaires de sorte à développer un réseau national pour des études hors du campus.