Working their way to school completion: a snapshot of School-based Apprenticeships and Traineeships for young Australians

This paper highlights troubling patterns within the Australian School-based Apprenticeships and Traineeships (SBATs) by analysing statistical data of 21,000 of 15–19 year old apprenticeship/traineeship learners engaged in Vocational Education and Training in School (VETiS). It confirms the alignment of social groups to certain qualification fields and levels and provides a compelling picture of the learner profile of SBAT including the type of occupations and qualifications being undertaken at school level. In a complex policy environment, where VET in Schools has been assigned the important task of preparing ‘workforce job-ready’ students for the ‘high skill and high earning roles our economy demands’, we argue that the SBAT pathway is not yet adequate to meet these high expectations. It is not an effective apprenticeship pathway as it potentially ‘locks-in’ already disadvantaged young people to precarious pathways, and reinforces the nature of an already highly gender-segregated Australian labour market. The paper helps to focus attention on endemic weaknesses in the Australian VET system that serve to entrench disadvantage in Australian society.     

Child extrafamilial sexual abuse: predicting parent and child functioning

Objective: This study evaluated the emotional and behavioral adjustment of parents and children within 3 months and 1 year after the discovery of child extrafamilial sexual abuse.Method: Ninety-two case parents (63 mothers, 29 fathers) and 56 children were compared to a nonclinical comparison group of 136 parents (74 mothers, 62 fathers) and 75 children. Parent adjustment was assessed using self-report measures while child functioning was assessed using a combination of child-, parent- and teacher-report measures.Results: Mothers, fathers and sexually abused children experienced clinically significant effects both initially and at 12 months post-disclosure. Children’s perceptions of self-blame and guilt for the abuse and the extent of traumatization predicted their self-reported symtomatology at 3 months and 1 year post-disclosure. Child age and gender also significantly contributed to the prediction of many of the child outcome measures. No abuse-related variable was related to any child self-report measure. Mothers’ satisfaction in the parenting role, perceived support and intrusive symptoms predicted their initial emotional functioning. Avoidant symptoms, child’s internalizing behavior and mothers’ initial emotional functioning were significant predictors of longer-term emotional functioning.Conclusions: Results emphasize the need to address children’s abuse-related attributions and underscore the need to expand our focus beyond the child victims to the traumatized families.     

Searching for innovation knowledge: insight into KIBS companies

The paper analyses the activity of research for “innovation knowledge”—here defined as knowledge that can lead to the introduction of service innovations—by Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) companies. It proposes a classification of the possible search approaches adopted by those companies based on two dimensions: the pro-activity of search efforts and the source primarily used. Such classification is then discussed on the basis of the findings of a multiple case-study investigation involving 15 Italian and Polish KIBS companies. The study confirms that KIBS firms follow various approaches to acquire knowledge for innovation: some companies adopt a passive behaviour (i.e. innovative ideas come as a kind of side effect of their daily business activities), while others an active one (namely, they actively search for new ideas originating from various sources); some rely more on internal resources (employees, in-house R&D, internal documents, etc.), while others on external sources (clients, suppliers, service providers, universities, etc.). The results of the study have implications both for research and management that are discussed in the conclusions.