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How individual experiential backgrounds are related to the development of employability among university students
Get PDFUniversity students have different backgrounds and varied experiences. This diversity has frequently been examined with regard to performance in Higher Education. However, much less attention has been paid to its significance concerning employability. The investigation of this potential relationship is the focus of this study. In this research, 429 students at a German university were assessed on the strength of their employability, which here is defined as a multi-factorial construct. The Career Resources Questionnaire (CRQ) was used (Hirschi et al., 2019) which is a comprehensive instrument that analyses the self-assessed strength of twelve essential career resources amongst respondents. The results were then related to several individual preconditions: existing or non-existing commitment to voluntary work, sporting activity or sporting inactivity and being a first-generation student (FGS) or a continuing-generation student (CGS). These characteristics were chosen, because they are commonly represented in the student population. In addition, some socio-economic implications are discussed. Significant differences were found between the participant groups. Some results correspond with the findings of existing studies, others lead to new explanatory approaches. Based on the overall findings, recommendations for career counselling as well as for seminars in career orientation are given. For example, students' experiences outside the university environment can be used in career counselling to strengthen perceived employability or a supportive approach to first-generation students can lead to the development of career-related strengths
Discipline predicts Work Integrated Learning (WIL) practice in Science courses
Get PDFAustralian mathematics and science students have low participation in WIL, posing implications for student employability. To better understand this problem we examined the industry-placement and coursework-incorporated WIL offered across the Faculty of Science at a large research-intensive university. The aim of the study was to provide an evidenced discussion of the types and amounts of WIL that different disciplines offer their students. A matrix was used to measure the inclusion of WIL activities in 265 courses (units of study) across all undergraduate programs in a Faculty of Science. The results, which show comparisons between disciplines, year levels, and class sizes. Indicate that a high proportion of courses incorporate WIL, but that some disciplines are significantly more likely to incorporate WIL than others. This study provides important insights into how science students in different disciplines and in different levels of their degree are prepared for the workplace. As we consider how to address graduate employability through integrating WIL in university STEM coursework, this study provides evidence-based justification to initiate reflection about pedagogy
Opening Doors in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Get PDFThis paper considers the opportunities for effective humanitarian collaboration in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). It brings together perspectives from three individuals with extensive lived experience working in the DPRK. Collectively, these authors have worked in various sectors of international humanitarian aid and other areas of engagement such as emergency response and preparedness, education, social enterprise and tourism. The paper draws from these experiences to present lessons on overcoming obstacles and harnessing opportunities in the DPRK
The Paradox of Citizenship in American Politics: Ideals and Reality
Get PDFThe Paradox of Citizenship in American Politics: Ideals and Reality, by Mehnaaz Momen, London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 265 pp. $130.63 hardback. ISBN: 978-3-319-61529-5
Reviewed by Peter Kivisto, Augustana College and St. Petersburg State University
Rereading Diaspora: Reverberating Voices and Diasporic Listening in Italo-Australian Digital Storytelling
Get PDFThe contemporary diasporic experience is fragmented and contradictory, and the notion of ‘home’ increasingly blurry. In response to these moving circumstances, many diaspora and multiculturalism studies’ scholars have turned to the everyday, focussing on the local particularities of the diasporic experience. Using the Italo-Australian digital storytelling collection Racconti: La Voce del Popolo, this paper argues that, while crucial, the everyday experience of diaspora always needs to be read in relation to broader, dislocated contexts. Indeed, to draw on Grant Farred (2009), the experience of diaspora must be read both in relation to—but always ‘out of’—context. Reading diaspora in this way helps reveal aspects of diasporic life that have the potential to productively disrupt dominant assimilationist discourses of multiculturalism that continue to dominate. This kind of re-reading is pertinent in colonial nations like Australia, whose multiculturalism rhetoric continues to echo normative whiteness
Historical Narratives of Sinophobia – Are these echoed in contemporary Australian debates about Chineseness?
Get PDFHistorically, Australianness has been defined in contradistinction to its location – a British bastion in the Asia-Pacific region.A fear of being swamped by the Chinese – the ‘yellow peril’ – prompted federation, and a restrictive migration policy aimed at making Australia white. Thus, sinophobia has been significant in the national imaginary. This paper discusses how contemporary representations of Chineseness may be echoing this historic narrative of fear about being overrun. This is explored in the context of China’s shifting global significance and Australia’s growing economic relationship with China
Editorial: Languages in Early Childhood Education
Get PDFIn the context of ever-changing global movement of peoples in and between countries, linguistic diversity, and diversity in modes of communication and expression have become increasingly vibrant and visible (D’warte & Slaughter, 2021). These changes have also been reflected in research scholarship into languages acquisition where monolingual-centric assumptions have been disrupted by heteroglossic perspectives that view the linguistic repertoire of any individual, including the very young child, as complex – shaped by the “linguistic, cognitive, social and emotional” characteristics of the individual (Seltzer & García, 2020, p. 2). In orienting this to the classroom, Cummins & Early (2011) argue that the relationship between language and identity cannot be untwined but that indeed, a critical precondition for learning involves recognising and engaging with the cultural and linguistic knowledges and learning experiences of students
From Eden to Suburbia: Perspectives on the Natural World in Children’s Literature
Get PDFBooks with a focus on the natural world are written for young readers with a variety of purposes, but broadly speaking constitute a spectrum measured by the degree of emphasis and/or explicitness falling on information or advocacy. At any point along the spectrum, therefore, the positionality of children, whether as participant characters and/or as implied audience, is a key concern of text. Children are apt to be thought of as nature-associated, both because they seem more overtly to display organic embeddedness than do adults, and because they are commonly attributed with an affinity with nature-associated, indigenous peoples pursuing traditional lifestyles. Historically, moreover, the child body has been deemed 'irrational', lacking in discipline and uncontrolled, and hence it is constructed as being much closer to nature. By seeking to invert, or at least evade, the culture-nature hierarchy of Western rationality, nature writing has the potential, through form and function, to valorize the situating of (or the 'already situatedness' of) those bodies within pro-environment discourses. But because the natural world has been coded very differently in the past, other possibilities still exist. As Richard T. Twine reminds us, the intersection between the mastery of nature and nature-associated peoples takes place in organically embedded bodies (Twine 2001, p.32)
‘They Don’t Know Us, What We Are’: An Analysis of Two Young Adult Texts with Arab-Western Protagonists
Get PDFSince 9/11, when Arabs in the West found themselves under suspicion, the way Arabs could be portrayed in Young Adult fiction has become complicated. This paper will look at two examples of this fiction to explore the difficult position characters in these texts now find themselves in. The short story 'Alone and All Together' (Geha 2002) is written by an Arab-American author. In it, Labibeh and her sister must negotiate their relationship with America both by maintaining their Arab identification in the days after 9/11 whilst at the same time proving that they are real and loyal Americans. Similarly, in the Young Adult novel 'Does My Head Look Big in This?' (Abdel-Fattah 2005) authored by a self-proclaimed 'Australian-born-Muslim-Palestinian- Egyptian-choc-o-holic' writer, a young Muslim girl must contend with racism and misunderstanding at her private school in Melbourne when she decides to wear the hijab. As in the first text, she too must prove her status as a 'normal' Western girl while at the same time proudly maintaining her commitment to Islam. This delicate balance does not come easily for any of these characters, nor is it without sacrifice as the protagonists negotiate their cultural identities in acceptable ways
Influences of Translated Children’s Texts upon Chinese Children’s Literature
Get PDFThe year 1898 witnessed the beginning of western children's works being translated into Chinese by Chinese people. Some of 'Aesop's Fables' were translated and published in a newspaper entitled Wuxi Baihua Bao. In the same year, Daniel Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe' was also translated and published in China. The following years saw more and more western children's works translated into Chinese (see Li 2004). Yet it was not until the year 1922 that the Chinese writer YE Shengtao (1894-1988) created and published the first collection of fairy tales entitled 'The Scarecrow' in China. This marked the beginning of Chinese children's literature. This paper adopts the methodology of the Influence Study from Comparative Literature Studies to investigate the influences of translated western children's works upon created Chinese children's literature. To be specific, the method of chronology and doxologie are singled out