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The purpose of this paper is to identify the position of creativity within Australian public relations courses and explore how academics embed what is often identified by industry as a core skill for future and current practitioners.

The study consists of semi-structured interviews with 15 public relations academics to examine their views on the value and delivery of creativity in the public relations curriculum.

The findings of this exploratory study indicate creativity is addressed implicitly by educators who rely on personal and internalised knowledge rather than the application of a specific theory or body of knowledge pertaining to creativity. In addition, it identifies a series of challenges educators face including students' lack of confidence when required to be creative and a lack of clarity on how to successfully evaluate creativity in assessment tasks.

Creativity has been identified as a vital future workplace skill and highlighted as an important capability in global best practice frameworks for public relations professionals. However, the successes and barriers experienced by educators who are responsible for building and evaluating students’ creative abilities have yet to be specifically explored. In response, this study considers educators' perceptions of their practice with regard to this prominent professional attribute and applies this knowledge to argue for theory-led pedagogies, particularly the use of models that emphasise the social nature of creativity, to demystify creativity and enhance students' work readiness as future practitioners.

The development of teaching public relations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an important topic to uncover because it is related to and to some extent parallel with the development of the UAE and its vital sectors. The purpose of the study is determine the circumstances of the emergence of teaching public relations in the UAE, to investigate public relations education offered in the UAE universities, to discuss the development of public relations education including challenges and opportunities.

The authors conducted 12 semistructured interviews with public relations educators in the UAE universities to understand the importance, development and current status of public relations and education.

The finding indicates a lot of developments took place in the establishment of public relations programs and its professionalization within a short time span, but more empirical research is needed to address the issues that have been brought up in the study.

The current research looked at the undergraduate public relations programs, but the status of graduate programs in communication and public relations needs to be investigated. More research in academic field is needed to discuss how the development of the public relations education influenced the public relations practice in UAE.

There is not much research done specifically on the public relations education in the UAE. The study sheds light on understanding the perspective of public relations educators on public relations programs and provides insights on how public relations education can be integrated to the local context without losing the global perspective.

In the context of debates about the performance of Higher Education (HE) in which quantitative measures proliferate, this chapter reports the top line observations of an initial exploration of the preparedness for practice of recent graduates of a Public Relations (PR) course at a post-1992 United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education Institution (HEI). Preparedness for practice is chosen as a conceptual lens (as preparedness for the uncertainty of practice) because HEIs frequently promise it. Using a Bourdieusian framework, preparedness is considered in relation to habitus-field match and HE performance as capital-added in habitus transformation. The chapter offers a complementary way of considering the dynamic between educator and recent graduate agency and how that might be applied when studying course and student performance, designing curricula and developing appropriate ‘signature pedagogies’, especially for those HE actors tasked with delivering against the ‘promise’ of graduate preparedness. In considering preparedness for practice as a performative function of HE, the chapter is located in wider societal debates about the ‘worth’ of HE and offers insight for educators of future PR practitioners.

Public relations (PR) education has not kept pace with the rapid globalisation that has occurred since 1992. The existing PR body of knowledge, and PR curricula around the world, have a US bias. In order to prepare PR students in various parts of the world to become effective multicultural professionals it is essential for experiences and perspectives from other continents to be integrated into PR education. The complexities of societal factors such as culture, political systems and media systems make Asia a challenging place to conduct strategic PR. It is time for educators to integrate experiences from other continents into the PR body of knowledge, thereby building PR curricula that contribute to training truly multicultural PR professionals.

This study examines the role of values, social causes, PR ethics and sustainability in public relations (PR) curricula in a European country. PR students are asked about the value of learning imponderabilia versus technical skills needed in the PR industry.

The method used for this study is a quantitative online survey among PR students from six public universities with established PR programs. The study is another part of a long-term project about PR education, students' job prospects, the usefulness of PR studies at work and the role of values and technical skills in PR curricula.

This study shows that the PR students believe that their profession should include broader social issues, like equality, ethics, activism and ESG (ecological, social and governance). Most students report that their curricula cover ethics, sustainability and social responsibility and that these subjects would be useful in their future careers.

Even though the study was conducted in one European country, it may be interesting to scholars and practitioners elsewhere and may be adopted and replicated.

Identifying PR students' needs, expectations and attitudes towards the PR industry and understanding the worldviews of new graduates, with their commitment to social causes and activism, should be helpful to their teachers and instructors, future employers or clients in terms of faster and more efficient onboarding.

A better understanding of the current requirements for graduates of PR studies should help them find enough opportunities in the job market and improve the organizational communication of their future employers.

Measuring PR students' opinions on their educational experience, the role of professional skills and socially conscious, ethically oriented classes can contribute to better formulation of PR curricula and may be useful for the PR industry and academia in other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether public relations (PR) students feel ready and adequately prepared for their future jobs and how they cope with the reputational and ethical issues of the public relations industry, also during the pandemic.

Survey research among public relations students in Poland was conducted twice, in 2019 and 2021, to explore their opinions on the applicability of public relations studies, career prospects for PR students in the industry and their approach to perennial reputational problems of PR. The 2021 survey also looked into challenges for the public relations education created by the pandemic, including lack of students' direct interactions with teachers and prevalence of online instruction methods.

The study shows that most public relations students feel confident about their career choices and appreciate their level of preparedness at PR schools for real-life assignments in the public relations industry. In addition, students are aware of the ethical and reputational issues of their chosen trade, and they tend to advocate for the field among friends and families and even rectify widespread misconceptions about PR. The role of public relations during the COVID-19 pandemic – according to respondents – has grown significantly, thus creating new, exciting opportunities for public relations professionals, though not necessarily for PR students or graduates.

This paper contributes to research on public relations education, its effectiveness, widely discussed reputational and ethical issues plaguing the field, relationships of educators and students with the PR industry and the role of PR students as advocates for their trade.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how lecturers in public relations (PR) in Ghana are preparing students to be effective practitioners. The study also aims to extend understanding of PR education to an emerging democracy in response to calls for examining how future practitioners are shaped in different contexts.

The paper adopted a qualitative open-ended key informant in-depth interview approach with 12 purposively sampled PR lectures in accredited higher education institutions in Ghana.

PR education in Ghana is shaped by the local socio-political and economic context and influenced by western approaches. The opportunity to teach PR at the diploma level (prior to a bachelor’s level) provides another layer of PR training. Extensive use of social media in Ghana suggests that more focus should be placed on teaching about the strategic use of these technologies in industry. In the face of real challenges, under-resourced lecturers find ways to appropriate and provide students with skills needed for industry.

The use of a qualitative data gathering method suggests that this study should be considered an introduction into PR education in Ghana, which requires further investigation with generalizable samples.

This study profiles PR education in Ghana. It also responds to calls to examine the preparation of future practitioners in different context beyond the western world.

What are the academic experiences of senior professors in the field of public relations (PR) at the Brazilian universities? This chapter proposes the advance of knowledge on the theoretical framework of contemporary liberal feminism by refining the previous theoretical and methodological publications. This theoretical lens prevails in earlier works, with empirical studies grounded in industry and corporate environments – mainly done by researchers from the United Kingdom, North America and Scandinavia, while PR feminist postmodernism appears in European literature – all scarce in Brazil and Global South (Latin America and African nations). Moreover, studies applying female or male PR scholars in university settings are rare in national and international literature. Hence, we gathered data and analysed narratives from seven senior female PR professors from Brazil, using an interpretative qualitative approach. Thus, this chapter about the female PR academic experiences and everyday practices highlights the starting point for an onto-epistemological discussion to understand the liberal feminist educational-based context in a Latin American country. Henceforth, two conceptual-practical dimensions – feminist PR competence and feminist PR performance – along with three methodological recommendations are presented for enhancing the contemporary liberal feminism theme as a robust research domain in PR and Strategic Communication agenda.

While personal learning networks (PLNs) are not new (Warlick, 2009), social media technologies are now enabling us “to fashion new kinds of networks that extend far beyond our immediate location and face-to-face connections, and to grow our networks based not on explicit decisions, but through the ideas of other nodes (people and resources), whose ideas intersect with ours” (Warlick, 2010, para. 5). What is new then, and what is changing the nature of PLNs, is the rapid growth of information and the emergence of new technologies capable of filtering that information and connecting us to others we can interact with and learn from (Siemens, 2008). In this chapter, we discuss the steps involved in building, growing, and maintaining online connections made possible entirely through new technologies. We argue that in the context of higher education, PLNs should be viewed as an informal alternative to the more formal professional development programs that are commonplace in K-12 education.

The paper aims to analyse the published work of Ireland's pre-eminent public relations (PR) educator, across a number of literary genres in which he has written. More broadly, it considers the writing life of academics.

This paper examines Carty's writings about his own history, Irish history, the development of church-state relations in Ireland and PR. It seeks to make connections between Carty's subjects and his writing styles.

Through detailed analysis of a number of key texts, the paper explores the writing styles used by Carty to discern the nature of his distinctive “voice(s)”.

There is considerable research into a handful of (mostly American) “great men” in PR' history and development. But every nation has its own PR pioneers about whom little is known outside that country and who deserve to be more widely recognised.

This paper hopes to stimulate future work by other colleagues in other nations, reflecting on the contribution of their own PR educators and practitioners.