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Is the incorporation of new educational technologies into the teaching/learning process the key to an effective and appropriate education in the twenty‐first century, or is it a knee‐jerk reaction to external pressures that is unlikely to be of lasting benefit to students? This paper explores some of the ways in which technology is changing what, where, when, how, with whom and even why we learn. In situating these changes within a broader context of recent developments in social and workplace practices, the paper argues that engaging with new technologies is essential for educators, not simply in the interests of enhancing and making more relevant the educational experiences of students, but also of revisiting long held assumptions concerning best practice in teaching and learning.

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 purpose of this paper is to explore the biodiversity reporting practices and trends of the top 50 Australian mining companies before and after the United Nations (UN) declared the period 2011-2020 as the “Decade on Biodiversity”.

Using content analysis and interviews, this study compares the extent and type of biodiversity disclosures made by the Australian Stock Exchange’s top 50 metals and mining companies both before and after the UN’s “Decade on Biodiversity” declaration in 2010.

A significant increase in the amount of biodiversity reporting is observed between the 2010 fiscal year preceding the UN’s declaration and the 2012 and 2013 fiscal years following the declaration. The findings reveal, however, that the extent of biodiversity reporting is quite variable, with some companies showing substantial increases in their biodiversity reporting and others showing modest or no increases. In particular, the larger companies in the sample showed a statistically significant increase in their disclosures on biodiversity in 2013 compared with 2010, while the increase in biodiversity disclosures by smaller companies was not significant. While interviewees spoke about their companies being more open and transparent, the biodiversity information that is being reported would not enable external parties to assess the company’s biodiversity performance.

To minimise an organisation’s use of biodiversity reporting as an impression management tool, it is suggested that biodiversity reporting should be more impact based and organisations should provide a report of their activities and their direct and tangible impacts on short-term and long-term biodiversity in and around their operating sites. A possible limitation of the present study pertains to its focus on companies’ voluntary disclosures made in their annual reports and sustainability reports, as opposed to other possible formal or even informal disclosure mediums.

Australia is one of 17 mega-diverse wildlife countries in the world. Finding ways to support the country’s biodiversity framework and strategy are crucial to this continued status. Due to the mining industry’s significant impact on Australia’s biodiversity, a strong need exists for biodiversity reporting by this industry. Furthermore, this reporting should be provided on a site-by-site basis. At present, the reporting aggregation typically conducted by mining companies produces obscure information that is neither useful for stakeholders who are impacted by the mining companies’ activities nor for policymakers who are vested with responsibility for protecting and sustaining the world’s biodiversity.

This study examines the biodiversity reporting and discourse practices of mining companies in Australia and develops a 50-item biodiversity reporting index to measure the biodiversity reporting practices.

The purpose of this paper is to review the growing emphasis on quantifiable performance measures such as social return on investment (SROI) in third sector organisations – specifically, social enterprise – through a legitimacy theory lens. It then examines what social enterprises value (i.e. consider important) in terms of performance evaluation, using a case study approach.

Case studies involving interviews, documentary analysis, and observation, of three social enterprises at different life-cycle stages with different funding structures, were constructed to consider “what measures matter” from a practitioner's perspective.

Findings highlight a priority on quality outcomes and impacts in primarily qualitative terms to evaluate performance. Further, there is a noticeable lack of emphasis on financial measures other than basic access to financial resources to continue pursuing social goals.

The practical challenges faced by social enterprises – many of which are small to medium sized – in evaluating performance and by implication organisational legitimacy are contrasted with measures such as SROI which are resource intensive and have inherent methodological limitations. Hence, findings suggest the limited and valuable resources of social enterprises would be better allocated towards documenting the actual outcomes and impacts as a first step, in order to evaluate social and financial performance in terms appropriate to each objective, in order to demonstrate organisational legitimacy.

Findings distinguish between processes which may hold symbolic legitimacy for select stakeholder groups, and processes which hold substantive, cognitive legitimacy for stakeholders more broadly, in the under-researched context of social enterprise.

This chapter focuses on women's descriptions of their own violence in nineteenth-century Ireland, as revealed in prisoner petitions held in the National Archives of Ireland. It uses the case files of women imprisoned or sentenced to death for violent crimes such as infanticide, manslaughter, murder, wounding and assault. This chapter takes an empirical approach and considers the ways that women explained and rationalised their violent acts. An analysis of the petitions offers an insight into women's views of their own violence, gendered attitudes at the time, and women's sense of the factors that might lead to a commutation of sentence. The accuracy or truthfulness of the petitions is not important in this study; instead, the chapter explores the self-image that women wanted to portray and the tactics that they opted to use to seek a reduction in their sentences. As shown in this chapter, most women emphasised their passivity: they typically claimed to be innocent, coerced or provoked into violence.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with orientation to library facilities and services, instruction in the use of information resources, and research and computer skills that are related to retrieving and using information. This is the fourteenth review to be published in Reference Services Review and lists items in English published in 1987. A few items are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship of undergraduate university students’ course experience (learning community (LC), clear goals and standards, student support, study-family affect (SF affect) and autonomy) to their well-being, as measured by psychological engagement (dedication, absorption and vigour) and burnout (exhaustion and disengagement/cynicism).

First-year psychology students (n=128) were surveyed using previously validated measures of their well-being and experiences at university.

Belonging to a LC (where students were encouraged to develop fluidity with the subject matter and share insights) was positively related to students’ psychological engagement. By contrast, the provision of ready access to course materials did not predict student engagement. Knowledge of goals and standards predicted that students would find course work energising (vigour). Respondents reported that SF affect (where participation at university enhances family life) was related to their engagement at university. In addition, mature age students (over the age of 25 years) reported higher levels of engagement in their study than did younger students.

The dominant predictor of student well-being (LC) was redolent of two important psychological human needs (affiliation and mastery). The central nature of this variable to student well-being is therefore currently undifferentiated and calls for the application of more finely tuned instruments to predict student well-being.

The current research applied measures from the widely validated Course Experience Questionnaire (Ramsden, 1991) as predictors of students’ psychological engagement and burnout. It highlights the value of personal relationships and community in university students’ mastery of difficult course material.