Search results

Leaders emerge from some very unlikely situations. They come in all ages, sizes, shapes, and from both genders. In this paper we discuss the relationship between the theoretic and practical applications evidenced by the Institute for Community Leadership’s (ICL) efforts to prepare people for civic leadership. We present background information about ICL including the Institute’s purposes and goals, an examination of its past achievements, current activities, and future projections, and we conclude with a discussion of “conditions for success in collaborative public ventures” (Hackman & Johnson, 2009, p. 293) as it relates to the Institute’s efforts to prepare people for community leadership.

Adolescent mental health is a global concern. There is an urgent need for creative, multimedia interventions reflecting adolescent culture to promote mental health literacy and well-being. This study aims to assess the impact of a film-based intervention on adolescent mental health literacy, well-being and resilience.

A pretest-posttest intervention with a multi-methods evaluation was used. A convenience sample of ten schools facilitated students aged 15–17 years to engage in an online intervention (film, post-film discussion, well-being Webinar). Participants completed surveys on well-being, resilience, stigma, mental health knowledge and help-seeking. Five teachers who facilitated the intervention participated in post-implementation interviews or provided a written submission. Analysis included paired-t-test and effect size calculation and thematic analysis.

Matched pretest-posttest data were available on 101 participants. There were significant increases in well-being, personal resilience and help-seeking attitudes for personal/emotional problems, and suicidal ideation. Participants’ free-text comments suggested the intervention was well-received, encouraging them to speak more openly about mental health. Teachers similarly endorsed the intervention, especially the focus on resilience.

Intinn shows promise in improving adolescents’ mental health literacy and well-being. Film-based interventions may encourage adolescents to seek professional help for their mental health, thus facilitating early intervention.

While one-third of Australians live outside major cities, there are ongoing challenges in providing accessible, sustainable, and appropriate primary health care services in rural and remote communities. The purpose of this paper is to explore a partnership approach to understanding and addressing complex primary health workforce issues in the western region of New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

The authors describe how a collaboration of five organisations worked together to engage a broader group of stakeholders and secure commitment and resources for a regional approach to address workforce challenges in Western NSW. A literature review and formal interviews with stakeholders gathered knowledge, identified issues and informed the overarching approach, including the development of the Western NSW Partnership Model and Primary Health Workforce Planning Framework. A stakeholder forum tested the proposed approach and gained endorsement for a collaborative priority action plan.

The Western NSW Partnership Model successfully engaged regional stakeholders and guided the development of a collaborative approach to building a sustainable primary health workforce for the future.

Given the scarcity of literature about effective partnerships approaches to address rural health workforce challenges, this paper contributes to an understanding of how to build sustainable partnerships to positively impact on the rural health workforce. This approach is replicable and potentially valuable elsewhere in NSW, other parts of Australia and internationally.

The aim of this paper is to define pracademia and conceptualise it in relation to educational contexts. This paper contributes to and stimulates a continuing and evolving conversation around pracademia and its relevance, role and possibilities.

This paper is a conceptual exploration. It draws upon existing and emerging pieces of literature, the use of metaphor as a meaning-making tool, and the positionalities of the authors, to develop the concept of pracademia.

The authors posit that pracademics who simultaneously straddle the worlds of practice, policy, and academia embody new possibilities as boundary spanners in the field of education for knowledge mobilization, networks, community membership, and responding to systemic challenges. However, being a pracademic requires the constant reconciling of the demands of multi-membership and ultimately, pracademics must establish sufficient legitimacy to be respected in two or more currently distinct worlds.

This paper has implications for knowledge mobilization, networks, boundary spanners, leadership, professional learning, and connecting practice, policy, and research. While the authors are in the field of education, this exploration of pracademia is relevant not only to the field of education but also to other fields in which there is a clear need to connect practice/policy with scholarship.

This paper provides a new definition of pracademia and argues that pracademia identifies an important yet relatively unknown space with many possibilities in the field of education.