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In Australia, market‐oriented studies involving overseas students have not kept pace with the regional economic development that has freed prospective students from relying on aid money and contributed towards the commercialisation of international education. A sample of 336 Asian and Pacific Island students from a range of faculties at the University of Wollongong reported their perceptions of prejudice in the local and university communities, their attitudes towards the quality of service provided by the university, and their intentions to recommend Australia on returning home. Compared to aid‐funded students (N = 57), the self‐financing majority were more likely to discern prejudice and inferior service, but ratings on these two factors, for both groups, sharply differentiated those who later intended to recommend Australia from those who did not. Today’s business ethos suggests that techniques from managerial psychology could be applied to improve the quality of delivery of our higher educational services, thereby preventing further erosion of international social capital.

To enhance their innovation and reputation, many organizations introduce programs that are intended to attract, retain and support diverse communities. Yet, these programs are often unsuccessful, partly because explicit references to diversity tend to evoke defensive reactions in employees from the dominant culture. To circumvent this problem, the purpose of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that individuals tend to be more receptive to diversity whenever they experience meaning in life. Furthermore, four workplace characteristics – informational justice, a manageable workload, equality in status and a compelling vision of the future – should foster this meaning in life.

To assess these possibilities, 177 employees completed a survey that assessed workplace practices, meaning in life and openness to diversity.

The results showed that informational justice, a manageable workload and a compelling vision were positively associated with openness to other cultures, constituencies and perspectives, and these relationships were partly or wholly mediated by meaning in life.

These findings imply that leaders might be able to foster an openness to diversity, but without explicit references to this diversity, circumventing the likelihood of defensive reactions. Specifically, a program that simultaneously encourages transparent communication, diminishes workload and clarifies the vision or aspirations of the future may represent an inexpensive but powerful means to foster an openness to diversity.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the perceptions that undergraduate students formed and provides further insight into the relationship between perceived teaching quality (with its descriptors) and student motivation.

The paper reports the findings from a survey of student perceptions of quality teaching and its interaction with various motivational orientations that students exhibit in higher education. The proposed hypotheses and conceptual model were tested using regression and correlation analyses, as well as analysis of variance from a survey of 271 undergraduate students in programs at two different universities.

The findings document the explanatory role of various motivations in students' perceptions of teaching quality: correlation analysis found intrinsic motivation to be positively correlated with the perceived teaching quality, while extrinsic motivation was found to be moderately correlated, suggesting that motivational orientation dimensions are influential in students' assessments of their teaching experience in school. Intrinsic motivation with its possible states and factor loadings showed strong positive impact on the teaching quality and students' evaluation, even after accounting for the reputation (general opinion) of the educational institution (or program). Thus, we cannot ignore the value‐added nature of various motivational orientations and their influence upon the perceptions of students. Surprisingly, few differences in perception based on gender, age, and country of birth (ethnicity) were found. Young students (less than 25‐year old) and Canadian‐ and American‐born students exhibited significant negative reactions (difference) to perceived teaching quality; in contrast, female students exhibited positive reactions towards it.

The results presented here will assist researchers, professors, and higher‐education administrators by capitalizing on students' existing intrinsic motivation and understanding the relationship between student perceptions of teaching quality and their degree of motivation to further expand and implement a better quality‐assurance educational system. A viable strategy to enhance and further motivate students extrinsically and intrinsically in their learning will significantly enhance their perceptions.

The article explores for the first time the link between students' motivational orientations and their perceptions about teaching quality.

The more recent history of the National Health Service, especially the Hospital Service, has been in the nature of a lumbering from one crisis to another. From the moment of its inception it has proved far more costly than estimated and over‐administered, but in the early years, it had great promise and was efficient at ward level, which continued until more recent times. As costs increased and administration grew and grew, much of it serving no useful purpose, there appeared to be a need for reorganisation. In 1974, a three‐tier structure was introduced by the establishment of new area health authorities, the primary object of which was to facilitate — and cheapen — decision making; to give the district bodies and personnel easier access to “management”. It coincided with reorganisation of Local Government, which included the transfer of all the personal health services and abolition of the office of medical officer of health. At the time and in looking back, there was very little need for this and reviewing the progress and advances made in local government, medical officers of health who had advocated the transfer, mainly for reasons of their own status, would have achieved this and more by remainining in the local government service; the majority of health visitors appear to have reached the same conclusion. They constitute a profession within themselves and in truth do not have all that much in common with day‐to‐day nursing. The basic training and nursing qualification is most essential, however. It has been said that a person is only as good a health visitor as she is a nurse.

Human performance, particularly that of the warfighter, has been the subject of a large amount of research during the past few decades. For example, in the Medline database of medical and psychological research, 1,061 papers had been published on the topic of “military performance” as of October 2003. Because warfighters are often pushed to physiological and mental extremes, a study of their performance provides a unique glimpse of the interplay of a wide variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on the functioning of the human brain and body. Unfortunately, it has proven very difficult to build performance models that can adequately incorporate the myriad of physiological, medical, social, and cognitive factors that influence behavior in extreme conditions. The chief purpose of this chapter is to provide a neurobiological (neurochemical) framework for building and integrating warfighter performance models in the physiological, medical, social, and cognitive areas. This framework should be relevant to all other professionals who routinely operate in extreme environments. The secondary purpose of this chapter is to recommend various performance metrics that can be linked to specific neurochemical states and can accordingly strengthen and extend the scope of the neurochemical model.

Each of the four objectives can be applied within the military training environment. Military training often requires that soldiers achieve specific levels of performance or proficiency in each phase of training. For example, training courses impose entrance and graduation criteria, and awards are given for excellence in military performance. Frequently, training devices, training media, and training evaluators or observers also directly support the need to diagnose performance strengths and weaknesses. Training measures may be used as indices of performance, and to indicate the need for additional or remedial training.