A national symposium hosted by the University of New England will examine ways of helping Australian primary industries to adopt innovative technologies more quickly and efficiently.

“Primary industry research hasn’t got a good record for having innovations adopted,” said the convener of the symposium, Dr Philip Thomas from UNE’s School of Business, Economics and Public Policy. “Rates of adopting innovation across Australia’s primary industries are (with a few exceptions) low. This is a fundamental challenge for both the research and the farming communities, and we don’t at present have a strategy to overcome it.”

Dr Thomas said that the aims of the symposium, on the 24^th and 25^th of November 2008, would be to identify impediments to the process of adopting innovation, to discuss solutions, and to outline a strategy to develop and implement those solutions.

The symposium will bring together researchers, farmers, and agricultural advisers and investors, as well as representatives of industry organisations, government and non-government agencies, and agribusiness. There will be more than 20 speakers from around Australia, and the Keynote Address will be given by John Bessant, Professor of Innovation Management in the Tanaka Business School at Imperial College London. Professor Bessant, a Fellow of the British Academy of Management, has lectured and consulted widely around the world, and is the author of 15 books and many articles on the adoption of innovation.

The Primary Industries Innovation Centre (a joint venture of UNE and the NSW Department of Primary Industries) is supporting the symposium, together with the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Sheep Industry Innovation, the CRC for Beef Genetic Technologies, Meat and Livestock Australia, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, and Australian Wool Innovation Ltd.

Titled “New Pathways to Adoption and Diffusion of Primary Industries Innovations”, the symposium will draw on a broad range of industry and research experience. “We’re trying to achieve a good balance between academic perspectives and real-life case studies,” Dr Thomas said. “We’ve engaged professionals who will provide insight into real-life innovation success, and also highlight the key factors causing failure to adopt innovation – and how these might be overcome in the future.”

The symposium will end with a workshop to establish a collaborative research strategy aimed at integrating and implementing ideas arising in the preceding sessions.

Selected papers presented at the symposium will be peer reviewed for publication in a special edition of the Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture. The deadline for the submission of abstracts (including poster abstracts) is the 30^th of September, and the deadline for registering attendance at the symposium is the 10^th of November.

A registration form will be available at www.une.edu.au/piic/ from tomorrow (Wednesday 3 September). It can also be obtained - with more information on the symposium - from Elizabeth Davies at the Primary Industries Innovation Centre, University of New England, Armidale (phone 02 6773 2745).

More than 90 students working towards postgraduate degrees through the University of New England came together at the University last week to share their research experiences.Many of the students were from overseas, and at least 15 of them travelled to Australia specifically for this event – the 3^rd Annual Postgraduate Research Conference within UNE’s Faculty of The Professions. The conference, which ran from Tuesday the 15^th to Friday the 18^th of July, was – like its two predecessors – titled “Bridging the Gap between Ideas and Doing Research”.

In welcoming the postgraduate researchers, Professor Victor Minichiello, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of The Professions, pointed out that many of them had attended at least one of the two previous “Bridging the Gap” conferences, and that the numbers attending had increased over the years. “This demonstrates the value and support the conference is providing to students,” Professor Minichiello said.

“The program is truly interdisciplinary and international,” he said, “with students travelling to UNE from South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, the United States, and other parts of the world. It’s inspiring to see the innovative research projects being carried out by these postgraduate students and to listen to their presentations.”

“Research training is one of the most rewarding activities of academic life,” said Professor Peter Flood, UNE’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), also speaking at the opening session. Professor Flood, too, referred to the growing number of research students in the Faculty.

The conference, convened by Associate Professor Rafat Hussain and Dr Terrence Hays from the Faculty of The Professions and organised by the Faculty’s Sue Whale, provides a friendly atmosphere for students to present their research and get feedback from academics and fellow students.

Carina Bossu (pictured here), a Brazilian student, is in the final months of her PhD program at UNE. She attended the inaugural “Bridging the Gap” conference in 2006, but was in Brazil at the time of last year’s conference. “It’s a great opportunity for postgraduate students to get to know each other and learn about each other’s research,” she said.

Emilio Morales, from Chile, is nearing the end of his first year of PhD research into the feasibility of quality-related beef branding in Australian supermarkets. He said he had received useful feedback on his own research, and valuable information on the research process in general.

Andrew Close, an Australian working at the International School of Geneva in Switzerland, was in Armidale for the conference and to meet – for the first time – the supervisor of his Doctor of Education project, Dr David Paterson. “It’s fascinating to see the process of research in real life,” he said, “and to get to know other people in a similar situation.”

Among the keynote speakers at the conference were two distinguished visitors to UNE: Professor Brian Paltridge from the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, and Mr Bill Lawrence AM, Deputy Chief Executive of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Professor Paltridge, the author of several books on academic writing, spoke about the factors that variably influence the style and structure of each postgraduate thesis, while the title of Mr Lawrence’s address was “A Research Framework for Safety and Quality in Health Care – the Challenge of Putting Policy into Practice”.

THE PHOTOGRAPH of above shows (left to right) Andrew Close, Carina Bossu and Emilio Morales.

This project uses video to capture exemplary pedagogical practice related to Interactive Whiteboard use in rural and remote classrooms. The end product will be the production of a DVD for use in PD sessions related to the use of ICT to enhance learning.

Since November 2007 the project team has visited a number of schools in the far west of NSW, recording five videos to date, each approximately 50 minutes in length. The sessions were followed up by interviews of both teachers and students, also recorded on video.

The questions asked of teachers and students centred on the impact of IWB technology on pedagogy, the teachers’ and students’ attitudes about the levels and types of support available in the school context for IWB use. For example:

What did teacher/students see as the value of using interactive whiteboards in lesson preparation, designs and delivery (how was it different from what had been experienced before)?

What beliefs do they hold about this technology and its relationship to the enhancement of learning and teaching?

What contextual factors constrain or enhance the use of the technology in teaching and learning?

What learning outcomes and Quality teaching elements are supported by the use of interactive electronic whiteboards in various Key Learning Areas?

The quality of the demonstration IWB lessons was very high, and the videos captured fine examples of teacher and student use. In addition to the video stream of the teaching sessions, the researchers also took field notes. Planning is underway to visit more schools and capture further sessions across the year levels and KLAs. In addition, the project team has captured ‘talking head’ footage from researchers at the University of Technology, Sydney who have conducted research on pedagogy and IWBs in six schools over the last two years. Their commentary will be interspersed with this project’s footage of sessions gathered in rural and regional schools.

Indigenous conceptions of giftedness and appropriate educational responses to the cognitive and affective needs of gifted Indigenous children are not well understood, particularly in isolated rural communities. This project explored conceptions of giftedness held by Indigenous parents, teachers and other community members, and the ways in which gifted and talented children might be identified within their communities. The project was also sensitive to the openness of community members to ongoing dialogue and possible collaboration in further gifted and talented education projects.

Description

Groote Island and Bikerton Island are certainly among the most isolated educational contexts in Australia. Three of the schools are community schools for three Indigenous language groups. This project combined the delivery of professional learning with speculative research. Professional training and development in gifted education was delivered to teachers of Alyangula Area School, Angurugu Community Education Centre, Umbakumba School on Groote Eylandt, and Milyakburra School on Bikerton Island. Community workshops were also provided for parents in each of the four communities.

Research was conducted into the education of gifted and talented students and Indigenous conceptions of giftedness and appropriate educational responses. This involved observation of children involved in classroom activities, discussions with teachers, school executive teachers, and Aboriginal Education Assistants, and sighting of school documentation and teaching programmes.

Benefits to Rural and Regional Education

The project uncovered a real willingness on the part of teachers and Indigenous community members for ongoing dialogue and collaboration with SiMERR. Indeed, gaining a commitment from the Indigenous communities for continued cooperation was a very significant outcome in itself. The initial visit also revealed a number of promising avenues for further investigation, including the limiting effects of bureaucratic and network barriers to ICT use, the need for greater access to reading materials and the importance of role modelling in shaping attitudes towards academic giftedness, especially among young male students. These observations will form the basis of potential projects to be proposed during a follow up visit.

This project provides professional development support for science teachers wishing to integrate components of the NSW junior science syllabus more effectively into their teaching. The recently introduced syllabus requires student learning to be facilitated through reference to relevant, real world ‘contexts’ that highlight and illustrate the application of knowledge and skills. However, evidence suggests that this requirement has had little impact on the way science is taught in NSW high schools.

Knowing how teachers identify meaningful and relevant contexts to develop existing knowledge should provide valuable contributions to discussions about how to engage students in learning about science.

Five rural and regional high schools are involved in the project, with two science teachers from each school preparing and trialling units of work for students in Years 7 and 8. So far, the teachers have attended two all-day workshops at UNE, supplemented by visits by the principal researcher to their schools.

Two guiding questions have been used to inform the design of the units:

1. How do the selected learning experiences promote scientific literacy?

2. How are the learning experiences linked to specific real-world contexts and/or syllabus outcomes?

The project is enabling teachers to evaluate their units in terms of the extent to which chosen learning experiences promote scientific literacy, and how contexts are being applied to engage students. It also lays a foundation for structuring assessment for further learning.

Interviews and unit evaluations are being used to gather feedback from teachers and students throughout the project. As they reflect on their involvement in the project, teachers are being asked to consider six areas related to the use of contexts:

• guidelines contained within the syllabus;

• the extent of resources;

• impact on student learning;

• opportunities for professional development;

• pedagogy; and

• the scope of applying a contexts approach to teaching and learning.

The project should be completed by July 2008.

This project implements teacher professional development linked with student enrichment days for gifted students in rural and regional educational settings. In this way, both teachers and students are able to acquire new skills, build on existing ones and share their newfound skills and strategies within their own educational contexts so others can benefit from the program. The project is a collaboration between SiMERR NSW, the School of Education, UNE Gifted and Talented coordinators, TalentEd, community volunteers and teachers and students from rural NSW schools. MAC1 Armidale also sponsored the event by loaning 50 laptops, an education facilitator and support staff.

The first of the planned Enrichment Days was held late last year. It included professional learning for middle school teachers on developing skills in using ICT software to create animations. Selected Gifted and Talented students from fifth to eighth grade level came to UNE for two days to learn about animation, including stop-motion, traditional drawn animation and pixilation. The 60 students, some from as far as Walgett, formed groups and applied what they had learned during the program to create their own short animated films using computer software, digital cameras, and their own props with some outstanding results. The program allowed rural and regional students and teachers to be creative problem solvers in a collaborative context and to use a variety of computer software and other materials to support their creations in an enjoyable and authentic learning environment. ICT skills were developed and students from isolated communities had the opportunity to work with like-minded peers. Students and teachers were given copies of their finished animations, all of which were placed on UNE’s TalentEd website (http://scs.une.edu.au/TalentEd/anim/index.html).

Parents were given information to help maximize their child’s opportunities in the area of creative animation and design. They also took part in a forum to discuss their children’s needs in relation to gifted and talented education. Members of the Advisory Committee were very helpful and assisted in the planning and implementation of the event and provided suggestions for future planning. The survey evaluation data are currently being analyzed and the outcomes will be used to plan the next enrichment day and to write a paper. A further goal is to investigate options for future funding so the project becomes sustainable.

The funding provided by SiMERR NSW supported schools’ travel costs and enabled the most creative groups to be commended for the most imaginative storylines and productive use of the technology. A second Enrichment Day is planned for June 2008.

Michael Eburn is a Senior Lecturer in the School. His areas of research interest are
(1) the law relating to the emergency services; and
(2) emergency management, and criminal law.
Michael’s current research is looking at Australia’s legal preparedness to cope with a catastrophic disaster that would require Australia to receive international disaster assistance. This builds on his work on emergency management generally and will focus on the role of the Commonwealth government in emergency management. This research has taken him to Geneva to meet with representatives from the UN, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee of NGOs involved in disaster response.
His research is attracting interest from around the emergency services community. He was recently invited to attend the workshop to develop National Research Priorities on Climate Change and Emergency Management and has been invited to give presentations to Emergency Management Australia, the Office of the Victorian Emergency Services Commissioner, the NSW State Emergency Service and the Bureau of Meteorology.
A key outcome of his current research will be to develop law reform proposals to facilitate a national disaster response in the event of a catastrophic disaster such as the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. The proposals will ensure Australia adopts an ‘all hazards’ approach to disasters and bring the national response to natural disasters into line with the response to terrorist related incidents.

In a forthcoming publication in Contemporary Accounting Research, recently appointed Professor of Accounting, Brian Gibson, and his coauthor Gavin Cassar, an accounting professor at Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, have identified a clear association between accounting activities and forecasting ability. In the study, titled Budgets, Financial Reports and Manager Forecast Accuracy, the authors examined a group of about 4,000 Australian firms, each with less than 200 employees. Data was available that indicated the presence of budgets and internal accounting reports, and, as the data was longitudinal, it was also possible to access revenue forecasts that could be matched with subsequent actual revenues.

While the association has been taken as a self evident truth for some time, this is one of the first studies to validate the improvement in decision making (represented by forecast accuracy) that comes from accounting activity. The results indicate the budget role might not be as critical as is often argued as the impact of budgeting alone was trivial, improving forecast accuracy by less than 2%. Internal reporting, however, made a real difference, improving accuracy by about 8.5% and used together, the two techniques improved forecast accuracy by about 12%. These findings are consistent with the notion that budgeting in itself may be of limited value because budgeting without internal reporting represents a meaningless formal control system.

Collectively these results suggest that an initial emphasis on developing a budgetary or planning system in firms is misguided. The emphasis needs to be on an internal accounting system that is then integrated with budgetary activities to provide an integrated control environment to enhance decision making.

Dr Fredy Valenzuela is a Marketing Lecturer in the School. His area of research is marketing and in particular, topics related to service recovery, customer satisfaction management and relationship marketing. In his PhD thesis he evaluated service recovery in Chile in order to explore ways in which banks within that cultural context can improve their recovery performance. A secondary aim was to determine the influence of positive and negative switching barriers on service recovery evaluation so that marketing managers can design strategies to retain and develop valuable relationships with their customers. Overall, the results contributed a unique finding to the area of service recovery, and extend existing theory on switching barriers by showing the complexity and interrelated nature of the dimensions of importance to customers who experience service failure in the banking industry in Chile. His work has been published in several international refereed journals, such as the Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Contemporary Management Research and Journal of Services Research, among others. He has also participated in a number of international conferences in Puerto Rico, México, Germany, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and Chile. In the International Conference on Business and Information held in Hong Kong, 2005 he received the best paper award. He is also the International Co-chair-Australia for the International Conference on Business and Information and member of the Editorial Committee of the journal Contemporary Management Research.

Lou Conway has recently completed her PhD on regional development governance as part of an ARC Linkage grant within the School of Business, Economics and Public Policy. Her examiners congratulated her on ‘making a substantive contribution in the interpretation of regional development by those engaged in governing and the internal and external political dynamics of regional governance’.

In describing one of the key findings of her research, Lou used a metaphorical quilt to portray the complexities and tensions in the way in which the board members describe their role. What she found is that board members struggle to identify what regional development means amidst competing regional development discourses and government priorities often seen by board members, to be designed by those outside of the region. While board members are generally not content with either the ‘hands off’ approach of current government policy or government priorities; they are loath to evoke public criticism of the system and be seen to ‘bite the hand’ that could feed their community with funding, or risk other benefits of membership. Board members describe a politicised appointment process, which is not transparent and confounds both accountability and legitimacy for the governance of the agency and indeed the agency itself. Board members are adamant that they see state government firmly steering the course for regional development, and attending to the needs of large scale capital rather than the specific needs of regional areas. This research highlights the uncertainty which surrounds board members as they struggle to make sense of their governance role when the role of the agency and the board itself is obfuscated and has important implications for the current review of regional development governance that is being chaired by Richard Torbay.