Counselling clients with acquired hearing impairment: towards improved understanding and communication

This article seeks to bring to the attention of counsellors and counselling psychologists specific knowledge and awareness in working with clients with adult onset hearing loss. The need for improved awareness of the needs of these clients is argued, the experience of hearing loss explored, and psychological issues at the core of the disability discussed. Practical matters about communication that need consideration in the counselling setting are examined. It is presented from the vantage point of an experienced counselling psychologist who is herself hearing impaired.     

Information Needs of a Young Nation: Rebuilding Library Services in Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

Timor-Leste is an emerging young nation that has many ambitious plans for its people. After a long period of conflict major projects focus on rebuilding the country, including education. Libraries are regarded as an essential part of the young nation's intellectual capital development. The authors will focus on the opportunities and challenges that face the country's national university, Universidade Nacionál Timór Lorosa’e Timor-Leste (UNTL), in the redevelopment of its library and services.     

Team modes and power: supervision of doctoral students

Currently, team supervision in doctoral studies is widely practised across Australian universities. The interpretation of ‘team’ is broad and there is evidence of experimentation with supervisory models. This paper elaborates upon a taxonomy of team modes and power forms based on a recent qualitative study across universities in a number of states and territories in Australia. Team modes, described as de facto dyad, segmented and collaborative are defined, explained and presented in diagrammatic forms. Team modes are understood as being fluid, oscillating along a continuum according to particular contextual factors such as thesis stage and personal/professional circumstances of team members. Operating parallel to team modes are forms of power, defined as ‘power to’, ‘power over’ and ‘power with’. The article concludes that to maximise collaborative knowledge making within team supervision it is necessary to background social status. As the performance of social status is diminished the focus of the team endeavour is the creative exchange of ideas, creating ‘power with’. The intention of this article is to provide more information to supervisors and doctoral students on team structure so that the needs of all parties might be met more reliably and productively during the intense and sustained period of thesis production.     

The Dearing Inquiry as Process – Delegated Thinking and the Limits of Expert Advice

The Dearing Inquiry into Higher Education is assessed in terms of its contribution to a style of policy-making which has lain dormant for two decades. The paper questions the effectiveness of national inquiries in general, and asks whether there is a case for anticipating further inquiries as proposed by the Dearing report. The Inquiry itself is examined as part of a critique of state-sponsored delegated thinking, in which the state delegates but does not abdicate its policy-making function. Tensions between academic experts and the elite policy-making community are also analysed. The paper concludes that inquiries have less to do with inquiry, and more to do with the legitimation of state policy options. A way is cleared for a further paper which explores the alternatives for higher education.     

Delivering distance training to rural health care professionals

This article reports on a project that delivers distance training to rural health care professionals. Traveling to provide training on information-seeking skills to rural health professionals is time consuming and costly. In addition to face-to-face training, the University of South Alabama Biomedical Library's SAMNet project seeks to deliver multimedia training to rural health care professionals. The project uses information technology to package training courses combining PowerPoint slides and video instructions. This article describes the rationale, training module design and development, and the information technology and software used in the project. Multimedia packaged distance training courses provide a practical alternative to on-site training for rural health care professionals. It enables librarians to provide training without traveling long distance, thus saving time and money. Additionally, rural health care professionals may access the modules at a time convenient to them and proceed at a pace suitable to their learning style.     

The relationship between game-based performance indicators and developmental level in junior Australian football: Implications for coaching

Identifying performance differences between juniors at different stages of a talent pathway may assist with the development of prospective talent. This study investigated the relationship between game-based performance indicators and developmental level in junior Australian football (AF). Players were categorised into 2 groups according to developmental level; U16 and U18. Physical and technical skill performance indicators were collated for all U16 (n = 200) and U18 (n = 244) participants of their respective 2014 national championships. Data were acquired from all 28 games (12 U16, 16 U18); resulting in 1360 player observations (568 U16, 792 U18). Microtechnology and a commercial provider facilitated the quantification of 15 performance indicators. Generalised estimating equations (GEEs) modelled the extent to which these performance indicators were associated with developmental level. The GEE model revealed that “contested marks” and “contested possessions” had the strongest association with the U16 level, while “total marks” and “clearances” had the strongest association with the U18 level. The remaining performance indicators were not developmentally discriminant. These results indicate that there are distinctive features of gameplay more associated with the U16 and U18 levels in AF. Coaches may wish to consider these results when constructing training drills designed to minimise developmental gaps.     

The medical matters wiki: building a library Web site 2.0

New and innovative information technologies drive the ever-evolving library profession. From clay tablet to parchment scroll to manufactured paper to computer screen pixel, information storage, retrieval, and delivery methods continue to evolve, and each advance irrevocably affects the way libraries, and librarians, work. The Internet has forever altered information and library science, both in theory and practice, but even within this context the progression continues. Though ambiguously defined, Web 2.0 offers a new outlook and new software, presenting librarians with potentially invaluable new tools and methods. This paper discusses the creation, implementation, and maintenance of a Web 2.0 technology, the wiki, as a resource tool for an academic biomedical library.     

Professors' Perspectives on Their Teaching: A New Construct and Developmental Model

Building carefully on the college teaching and adult development literatures, this paper presents a model that describes the perspective of professors at various developmental positions with regard to their work as teachers. The model comprises five, interrelated positions: (a) three stable periods—Egocentrism (teacher-centeredness), Aliocentrism (learner-centeredness), and Systemocentrism (teacher/learner-centeredness); and (b) two transitional periods—one between each of the two potential movements from one stable period to the next. The model integrates the constructs of previous typologies, adds a significant new construct, and arranges the total array of perspectival constructs in a typical developmental sequence.