Aboriginal women yarning about experiences as undergraduate nursing students in Western Australian universities

The inequities and poor health outcomes experience by Aboriginal people in Western Australia are well documented. It has been suggested that such issues could be better addressed if more Aboriginal nurses are employed, as there appears to be a link between improved health outcomes and the inclusion of Aboriginal health professionals in practice. In recent years the number Aboriginal nursing students undertaking tertiary studies has increased, but their completion rates could be improved. Aboriginal nursing students continue to struggle to achieve success. The aim of this study was to investigate factors that enabled (supported) or inhibited (prevented) the progress of Aboriginal women through their undergraduate nursing program in Western Australian universities. In order to provide a view of their experiences, it was appropriate for this qualitative study to use a narrative inquiry approach and an Aboriginal framework. This study used a purposeful sample of Aboriginal nursing students in their final year and new graduates from an undergraduate-nursing program undertaken in Western Australia. The data was collected through the use of yarning, which is a form of data collection that is a culturally appropriate way to build trust and learn about Aboriginal peoples stories. Yarning is considered culturally safe and is recognised as a way for Aboriginal people to interact (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010). Yarning with the participants was done by using the telephone or through face-to-face contact. Narrative analysis using an Aboriginal framework was undertaken, with simultaneous attention being paid to temporality, sociality and place, in the context of the story. In addition a journal was kept during the collection and analysis of data with entries being scrutinised for pattern identification and emerging trends. The stories of the participants revealed that there were commonalties between stories including: the importance of support particularly in the first year of study; a sense of belonging and community on campus; a meeting place on campus for Aboriginal students including ‘a go to person’; the importance of self-motivation; resilience and role models at university and in the participants’ personal life. This study is significant in that it has the potential to inform universities and policy makers of ways to increase the retention of Aboriginal students

“I Need That Week Off!”: An Experiential Exercise on Conflict and Negotiation

This article presents an experiential exercise designed to provide students with an opportunity to develop their knowledge of ways in which conflict may be managed (using the framework proposed by Thomas, 1976) and types of negotiation. Students form pairs and are presented with a scenario in which they have both requested the same week of vacation to attend events. Unfortunately, they are informed that they are unable to take the time off simultaneously. Participants are asked to discuss among themselves, using assigned modes of managing conflict, to determine how the time will be allocated. The target audience is composed of undergraduate students, who may be enrolled in any number of classes related to organizational behavior. To examine perceptions of the exercise, data were collected from a sample of 140 participants. Among the findings, 92.9% of respondents reported that they would recommend that instructors use the exercise in a similar course

A Conceptual Model of Impacts of Environmental Change on Human Well-Being

Human well-being is dependent on goods and services provided by well-functioning ecosystems. Changes in ecosystem status and integrity can therefore impact directly and indirectly on human well-being. However, neither current measures of ecosystem health nor methods to value ecosystem services incorporate methods to assess impacts of changes in ecosystem health on human well-being. Assessment of these impacts is potentially useful in improving the sustainability of coastal management decision making. This paper presents a conceptual model developed to identify the potential links between ecosystem condition and human well-being. Based on existing literature, it is hypothesised that changes in coastal ecosystem condition may affect aspects of social and community relations through affecting people's sense of place, degree of involvement in the community and the extent to which they undertake recreation in the coastal environment. Changes in these aspects of social relations can have flow-on impacts on social capital, social networks, levels of trust and physical and mental health. Changes in ecosystem condition may also have more direct impacts on human health, through bacterial contamination of recreational waters, the presence of toxicants in seafood, or through the presence of toxic algal blooms in recreational waters. Regional economic production is also affected by changes in coastal ecosystems, through changes in the production of fishing, aquaculture and tourism industries. The conceptual model provides a basis for the development of a dynamic systems model to assess the impacts of changes in ecosystem health on human well-being. This information is necessary to ensure that decisions regarding the use of natural ecosystems are well-informed and therefore appropriate

Don\u27t Worry Mom, I\u27m at the Library: Making Connections with Undergraduate Students

For the past three years Western Libraries has introduced our services, collections and facilities to students via a welcome tent erected during orientation week. A great deal of planning goes into creating interactive and meaningful orientation displays that will capture attention and educate students about the role of the academic library as a physical and a virtual space

Low-Risk Spacecraft-Inspection CubeSat

Our objective is to design a small, semi-autonomous inspection satellite to observe the exterior of a host spacecraft, such as the International Space Station (ISS) or large space-based telescope, with minimal risk to the host vehicle and its crew. As NASA learned in the Columbia tragedy, the lack of external inspection capability can lead to catastrophic results. In less extreme cases, the ability to inspect any high-value spacecraft could provide early warning for impending failures or maintenance, and could reduce requirements for time-costly robot-arm operations and/or high-risk Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA). In the extreme environment of space, two of the primary risks to vehicles are orbital-debris/micrometeorite impact and leakage of pressurized resources (gases and coolant). Although the value of spacecraft inspection is well-established, virtually no current spacecraft (including ISS) possess inspection capability. We believe that recent efforts in small-sat proximity operations, combined with advances in attitude control, propulsion, and navigation, sensors, and actuators on the cube-satellite scale now make it possible to create a safe and practical inspection satellite. The UC Davis team is currently defining the operations concept, mission objectives, safety requirements, and technology hurdles involved in the development of a disposable external inspection capability. The first priority for the design of an inspection-sat is the minimization of added risk due to collision. For net risk-reduction, it is essential that the added risk of collision between inspector and host is smaller than the risk mitigated by inspection. To achieve this, in addition to redundant and fail-safe navigation and control strategies, inspector momentum must be kept small to the point of posing an insignificant risk of damage in the case of collision. Low mass enabled by current subsystem technologies, along with low-velocity inspection-paths are required to minimize inspector kinetic energy. By making the design disposable, it does not return to the host. This ensures a safe distance can be maintained at all times during and after the inspection task. Furthermore, no docking or capture mechanisms are needed; therefore modifications to the host are not required. Our design includes human-augmented control of trajectory, relative velocity, attitude, and inspection tasks via real-time video telemetry to onboard operators. Efficiency will be increased by using a control scheme with predetermined optimized paths as well as adaptive navigation methods. Relative orbital motion will be used to minimize propellant usage. Automatic and manual abort commands will also be included so that a safe escape vector is available if a failure occurs. Spatial navigation of the inspector relative to the host spacecraft will be based on computer vision techniques applied to the known external geometry of the host. Lidar/radar subsystems will enhance the relative state vector and provide backup separation sensing. Inspection-Sat control actuation will be achieved through a dynamically-optimized combination of reaction control wheels and cold gas thrusters. A precursor to the computer navigation algorithm has already entered into testing phases. The current UC Davis efforts shall lay out the mission objectives, concept of operations, high-level requirements, and system architecture

Effects of Coastal Recreation on Social Aspects of Human Well-being

Coastal ecosystems are under increasing pressures from a wide variety of human impacts. As the coastal zone provides many goods and services essential to the well-being of people, there is potential for changes in the condition of coastal ecosystems to have reciprocal impacts on the human population. Based on existing literature, it was hypothesised that changes in coastal ecosystem condition could affect aspects of social and community relations through affecting residents' coastal recreational activities, sense of place, social interactions and networks, health and overall quality of life. These relationships were investigated in the Pumicestone catchment in south-east Queensland with the aim of identifying the interactions between coastal condition and human well-being. Information on key variables was collected by surveying catchment residents, and data were analysed using path analysis. The results indicate that the recreation in coastal areas can impact on the well-being of coastal residents. Understanding the positive relationship between ecosystems and human well-being can potentially reduce the apparent conflict between environmental improvement and human interests, thus improving management of local ecosystems

Assessing the Social and Economic Impacts of Changes in Coastal Systems

Humans have wide ranging impacts on many of the world's ecosystems. Understanding the contribution of ecosystems to human well-being is an important part of improving management of these systems. Current methods to value ecosystems rely on economic techniques that do not adequately reflect contributions of ecosystems to all aspects of human well-being and do not incorporate objectives such as ecological sustainability or fairness. It is proposed therefore that a dynamic model demonstrating the contributions of ecosystems to specific aspects of well-being, such as health, economic production, employment, recreation and social interaction, would be a useful tool in informing and improving environmental management and decision making. This model would be valuable as it could include multiple objectives, be used to make quantitative predictions of impacts, and could be used in parallel with existing valuation and decision making techniques. The need for this type of model, and an outline of the model proposed are presented in this paper

A laboratory study of the moderating effect of task importance on the relationship between transformational and transactional leadership styles and outcomes

This study investigated task importance as a moderator of the relationship between four transformational and transactional leadership styles (charisma, intellectual stimulation, contingent reward, and no leadership) and six outcomes (performance quantity and quality, satisfaction with the leader, perceived leader effectiveness, task interest/enjoyment, and extra effort). The sample for this study was composed of 102 undergraduate students (45 males, 57 females). Each participant viewed one of four videos, created for this study, in which a leader (as portrayed by an actress) displayed the characteristics of one of the leadership styles noted above. Task importance was manipulated by providing participants with handouts designed to convey either high or low task importance. Participants completed an in-basket exercise adapted from Howell and Frost (1989). The findings showed a significant main effect of the leadership condition for three outcomes--performance quantity, task interest/enjoyment, and extra effort. The interaction effect was marginally significant for two outcomes--performance quality and satisfaction with the leader. Contrary to expectations, contingent reward leadership emerged as the best predictor of the outcomes--while the effect of contingent reward leadership was not significant for all outcomes in this study, a pattern emerged whereby participants in the contingent reward leadership condition reported highest scores for five of the six outcomes investigated in this study. The study's contributions and limitations, along with directions for future research, are discussed

The complexities of learning to teach: Advancing the debates

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