Australian Case Study Research Articles

School Leader Identification: Perceptions of Australian Faith-Based Education System Employees

This article aims to contribute to the literature on school leadership identification. It adopts an Australian faith-based education system case study to explore classroom teacher and school-based administrator perceptions of both current and future school leadership identification practices. This research utilised a qualitative research design, adopting semi-structured interviews to collect employee perceptions. The respondents identify six areas of importance for school leadership identification. These include:1) defining what constitutes excellence at the classroom, school, and system levels of leadership; 2) formalising school leadership identification processes; 3) conversing with early career teachers around school leadership aspirations; 4) improving processes to communicate interest in school leadership roles; 5) heightened levels of communication between school principals and system administrators regarding high potential teacher leaders; and 6) providing school-based opportunities for school leadership development.

Exploring the Concept of Teacher Leadership through a Document Analysis in the Australian Context

This paper focuses on a document analysis for an Australian case study, which contributes to a larger international study on teacher leadership. The aim of this paper is to ascertain how teacher leadership is understood and conceptualised from an Australian documentary perspective spanning the national, state, regional, and local education administrative levels. A document analysis framework stipulated by the larger study identified the attributes of teacher leadership. Twenty-one documents were analysed and the attributes in relation to five considerations impacting teacher leadership are discussed. Results indicated differences of dominant attributes across each of the levels: however, accountability and advocacy are consistently represented. Accountability filters through all four levels. The system is beginning to advocate and acknowledge pathways to leadership. At the state level, teacher leadership is strengthened through professional and collaborative practices. However, this paper suggests this is not consistently evident at the regional and local levels due to a number of pertinent organisational issues.

Strengthening collaboration through collective impact: A rural Australian case study

ABSTRACT Increasing health inequalities and entrenched social problems demands systemic change that challenges the status quo of current programs and policies and enhances intersectorial collaboration between government, service providers, and communities. Collective Impact (CI) is one approach aimed to support local communities solve complex and systemic problems. A case study design is used to describe a rural Australian community’s approach to strengthening collaboration in an early stage CI. Data included in-depth interviews (N = 11), that were thematically analyzed to develop descriptive themes. Barriers to successful collaboration were complexity of change, system dynamics and a lack of community engagement. Successful collaboration was facilitated by inclusive and diverse relationships; innovation and adaption and a willingness to disrupt the system. Findings suggest that CI offers a promising approach to strengthening collaboration and understand how multiple and diverse partners work together in adaptive and emergent ways to bring about community-level change.

Intensive monitoring, the key to identifying cat predation as a major threat to native carnivore (Dasyurus geoffroii) reintroduction

Successful fauna reintroductions occur when the original causes of decline are addressed. When these causes are unclear, intensive post-release monitoring could help identify unknown threats and new management actions. We present an Australian case study involving a reintroduction of the threatened western quoll (Dasyurus geoffroii), a species whose decline was thought to have been caused primarily by predation from introduced foxes and habitat alteration. Intensive post-release monitoring occurred for 5 years after releasing 93 quolls into a semi-arid environment where foxes (Vulpes vulpes) were controlled but quolls had been absent for 130 years. Radiotracking and trapping results indicated that breeding occurred in all years after reintroduction, sufficient shelter sites were present and home ranges (245 ha for females, 2778 ha for males) were similar to other sites. Although cats (Felis catus) were previously considered a threat mainly to juveniles, they were a major threat to population establishment, responsible for the majority of adult quoll deaths recorded after each of three annual releases. Predation impacts were higher in smaller female quolls and quolls living in open habitats. Evidence for selective hunting was supported by the increasing male bias and declining population recorded during trapping. Monitoring results led to an intensification of cat control and suggested that feral cat predation was likely a significant contributor to the historical decline of the western quoll and previous reintroduction failures. This threat would not have been identified without intensive post-release monitoring. Quolls are still extant 7 years after release suggesting that reintroductions can be successful without identifying all causes of decline. Our intensive monitoring program and flexible management strategy were essential for understanding the factors influencing reintroduction success and implementing appropriate mitigation methods. Although logistically challenging and expensive, we urge other practitioners to conduct intensive post-release monitoring and flexible management for reintroductions of formerly widespread species where the original causes of decline are unclear.

Offsite construction skills evolution: an Australian case study

Purpose The construction industry is currently responding to pressures of industrialisation happening across all sectors. Consequently, offsite construction (OSC) has become a vehicle to achieve industrialisation. This requires changes in traditional construction processes resulting in possible changes in construction skill requirements. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to identify and review prevailing OSC practices and skills in the Australian construction industry. This study aims to critically analyse the existing skill profile classifications through a single case study and identify the need for an OSC specific skill classification. Design/methodology/approach This study follows a case study design, with an in-depth analysis of a single construction project. Only one case study was studied because scientifically, one example was enough to prove that the prevailing skill classifications do not represent OSC skills in a modern context. Data was retrospectively collected through semi-structured interviews of project stakeholders representing design, manufacture and assembly. Content analysis was conducted to analyse the collected data and produce findings. Findings This study identifies the inadequacy of the existing classification system, unavailability and the need of OSC specific skill categorisation. It highlights new skills that enter OSC; building information modelling engineer, three-dimensional draftsperson, OSC project manager and project coordinator, which are not identified in the available Australian skill classifications. These, together with existing skills need to be carved in to create a new skill classification. Originality/value This study is the first of its kind where a comprehensive OSC project is evaluated as a case study to determine OSC skill classification requirements in Australia.

Co-Optimizing Virtual Power Plant Services Under Uncertainty: A Robust Scheduling and Receding Horizon Dispatch Approach

Market and network integration of distributed energy resources can be facilitated by their coordination within a virtual power plant (VPP). However, VPP operation subject to network limits and different market and physical uncertainties is a challenging task. This paper introduces a framework that co-optimizes the VPP provision of multiple market (e.g., energy, reserve), system (e.g., fast frequency response, inertia, upstream reactive power), and local network (e.g., voltage support) services with the aim of maximizing its revenue. To ensure problem tractability, while accommodating the uncertain nature of market prices, local demand, and renewable output and while operating within local network constraints, the framework is broken down into three sequentially coordinated optimization problems. Specifically, a scenario-based robust optimization for day-ahead resource scheduling, with linearized power flows, and two receding horizon optimizations for close-to-real-time dispatch, with a more accurate second-order cone relaxation of the power flows. The results from a real Australian case study demonstrate how the framework enables effective deployment of VPP flexibility to maximize its multi-service value stack, within an uncertain operating environment, and within technical limits.

Reading for pleasure: exploring reading culture in an Australian early years classroom

AbstractResearch indicates a powerful correlation between students' reading enjoyment, motivation and achievement. This Australian case study investigates how reading for pleasure (RfP) approaches are demonstrated in the teaching of reading in a Stage 1 (6‐year‐old to 7‐year‐old students) classroom. The methodology was designed to mirror aspects of Cremin's 2014 UK‐based study, Teachers As Readers. Engaging an interpretivist paradigm, the case was analysed through three distinct but intersecting lenses, knowledge, affect and material, to develop a rich and multifaceted insight into the social world of the classroom. The study found that while the teacher's pedagogic practices for teaching reading incorporated many indicators of a RfP approach, this stemmed from personal ideologies rather than explicit knowledge of a RfP pedagogical framework. Hence, while the study indicates the positive impacts of RfP approaches on this classroom's reading culture, the efficacy of this pedagogy could be potentially limited if an explicit understanding of the theoretical framework does not underpin teachers' actions.

Teaching Journalists About Violence Against Women Best Reportage Practices: An Australian Case Study

ABSTRACT Media reporting of violence against women (VAW) has the potential to contribute to improving the community’s understanding and response to this social problem. However, journalists are not immune to gender biases and myths concerning VAW. Both can affect how the subject is framed. We look at an Australian training programme implemented to improve VAW news reporting practices such as including social context, family violence experts and help-seeking information for survivors, challenging myths and avoiding perpetrator exoneration and victim-blaming. We compare journalists’ reporting before and after training and also compare the trained reporters’ content with a matched comparison sample written by untrained journalists to see if training translates into best practice reporting. We conclude that reportage practices have improved overall in recent years and that the training model, in which participants were selected to take part, appears to be effective in improving some key elements of best practice reporting, but some areas of concern remain. We recommend more targeted programmes with curriculum additions to better address some reporting deficiencies we identify.

Spatial Random Forest (S-RF): A random forest approach for spatially interpolating missing land-cover data with multiple classes

ABSTRACT Land-cover maps are important tools for monitoring large-scale environmental change and can be regularly updated using free satellite imagery data. A key challenge with constructing these maps is missing data in the satellite images on which they are based. To address this challenge, we created a Spatial Random Forest (S-RF) model that can accurately interpolate missing data in satellite images based on a modest training set of observed data in the image of interest. We demonstrate that this approach can be effective with only a minimal number of spatial covariates, namely latitude and longitude. The motivation for only using latitude and longitude in our model is that these covariates are available for all images whether the data are observed or missing due to cloud cover. The S-RF model can flexibly partition these covariates to provide accurate estimates, with easy incorporation of additional covariates to improve estimation if available. The effectiveness of our approach has been previously demonstrated for prediction of two land-cover classes in an Australian case study. In this paper, we extend the method to more than two classes. We demonstrate the performance of the S-RF method at interpolating multiple land-cover classes, using a case study drawn from South America. The results show that the method is best at predicting three land-cover classes, compared with 5 or 10 classes, and that other information is needed to improve performance as the number of classes grows, particularly if the classes are unbalanced. We explore two issues through a sensitivity analysis: the influence of the amount of missing data in the image and the influence of the amount of training data for model development and performance. The results show that the amount of missing data due to cloud cover is influential on model performance for multiple classes. We also found that increasing the amount of training data beyond 100,000 observations had minimal impact on model accuracy. Hence, a relatively small amount of observed data is required for training the model, which is beneficial for computation time.

Enacting Smart Pedagogy in Higher Education Contexts: Sensemaking through Collaborative Biography

Scholars and practitioners argue that information and communication technology (ICT) provides flexibility of time and place and softens boundaries between students’ learning lives. The fluid movement between formal and informal learning contexts afforded by digital technology has prompted a re-definition of higher education learning environments to harness its potential. Further, technology can cater to diverse learners and promote lifelong learning in ways that the traditional didactic settings characteristic of tertiary contexts cannot. Scholars and practitioners have labelled this new teaching and learning landscape as smart pedagogy. This article engages with this scholarship by analysing a specific Australian case study in which ICT reforms have been deliberately implemented to adhere to smart pedagogies. Using collective biographies as a methodological tool, this inquiry provides insights into sensemaking experiences of a group of university academics whilst implementing ICT reforms anchored on Smart Pedagogy.

Populism and Charity Donations: An Australian Case Study

The reasons why people donate to charities have been extensively researched, but how this behavior relates to political values is less well understood. We also know little about how the rise of populist values among the electorate will influence charitable giving in the future. Using a national election survey conducted in Australia in mid-2019, this article examines the influence of populist values on charity donations. The results show that populist values are strong predictors of charitable giving and that those who hold these values are significantly less likely to donate. Among those who do choose to donate, the choice of charity is also strongly influenced by populist values. These results demonstrate that the increasing importance of populist values among the public will have significant implications for the future level and direction of charity donations.

Benefits of Home Energy Storage Utilization: An Australian Case Study of Demand Charge Practices in Residential Sector

There are ongoing industrial practices on promoting demand charge tariffs, a kind of tariff charging the customer's peak power demand over a billing cycle, in the residential sector. This article provides a comprehensive investigation of the benefits of utilizing home Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) to reduce the demand charge penalty risk for residential customers. This article firstly proposes a dynamic programming-based control scheme for residential BESSs; the control scheme determines the optimal charging/discharging decisions of the BESS over a billing cycle, aiming to minimize the customer's home energy cost subjected to a certain tariff structure (time-of-use, demand charge, or the combination of the two). This article then conducts a comprehensive evaluation on cost-saving and load re-shaping effects the BESS can bring to residential customers in presence of demand charge tariffs, based on real Australian network tariffs and 8,000+ residents' energy consumption data collected by the Australian “Smart Grid, Smart City” project. The work in this article is expected to provide useful references to the practice of demand charge tariffs in the residential sector.

The ‘politics of scale’ and the local: How ‘hyper-localism’ and ‘temporal passivity’ affect adaptation

Adaptation to climate change is increasingly advocated as we approach a 1.5 °C future. Policy-makers emphasise that the required transformation begins with local action. Yet, there is a gap in understanding why local action can remain largely locked-in to maladaptive cycles, with variable on-ground evidence of transformative change. Using ‘the politics of scale,’ we interrogated ‘the local’ using ethnographic interviews. We found that although local actors are engaged in various ways, ‘doing’ environmental work at a very local scale, their practices are constrained, reinforced by cultural, political, and economic arguments. We conceptualise ‘hyper-localism’ and ‘temporal passivity’ as emergent conditions that mask connectivity to wider social and ecological networks leading to transformative possibilities. We argue that global climate change discourses reinforce these internal conditions by failing to acknowledge the complexity associated with the ‘politics of scale’. The local scale of change is not necessarily more manageable, or its actions likely to create a shared vision. Adaptation is reduced to performative tasks rather than connected processes, impacting the scope and effectiveness of change on-ground. Further, in this Australian case study, we see how local ‘doing’ is still subject to the cross-scale impacts of diminishing nation-state government resourcing reflecting the far-reaching consequences of small-government austerity models, and the foisting of responsibility for adaptation to the least powerful and least resourced sectors of civic society. We conclude with the idea that if local adaptation is to lead to transformative outcomes that connect to a global transcendence to affect climate direction, systems of governance need to be linked to strategic visions that deliberately engage with the ‘politics of scale’, and to affirm more complex processes in engaging with the fluidity of a purposeful global-local nexus.

Researching a whole school approach to school connectedness

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a participatory action research project that investigated how a resource called the Index for Inclusion was used by a secondary school community to improve school connectedness at a whole school level. The researchers worked with the Australian case study school over one year to engage in review, development, and change. This paper reports on the procedure of working with the School Connectedness Committee through the five phases of the participatory action research. Data are organised under the theme of ‘building community’ with the sub-themes of ‘positive relationships with staff’ and ‘student leadership’. The findings from this case study indicate that the implementation of the five phases of the Index for Inclusion can support a whole school approach to build a sense of community that supports young people to be more connected to their school.

Synchronous Generator Governor Response: Performance Implications Under High Share of Inverter-Based Renewable Energy Sources

Inverter-based generation sources' significant uptake has seen most power system operators place a strong focus on unlocking their capability to respond to frequency excursions. Consequently, the effective utilization of conventional generation assets to improve frequency regulation in power systems has received less focus. This letter highlights two crucial aspects (governor deadbands and governor inactivity) pertinent to conventional generation assets, which must be considered by the system operator when operating power systems with a high share of inverter-based sources. Poor governor control is shown to significantly impact frequency regulation, thus undermining power system operation and performance, in an Australian case study. Furthermore, a high share of governor inactivity causes power system instability owing to degradation in governor response. For power systems with a high share of inverter-based sources, implementation of properly chosen governor deadbands and mandatory governor response is recommended to improve system frequency regulation.

Is It Still Worth Challenging the Status Quo? A Design Process Article With an Example Application to Australian Jockey’s Safety Vests

Horse racing is a highly dangerous activity that imposes the compulsory wearing of jockeys’ safety vests. Although “design thinking” has gained popularity in many fields (e.g., business, health, information technology, education), product innovation is still not used widely in the design of some of the personal protective equipment available to jockeys. This article discusses about an Australian design case study on jockeys’ safety vests that used a qualitative research approach along with user experience design principles, which led to consider a revision of this framework to accommodate design dependencies in terms of a suggested dependency-based user experience design framework. Hence, this article calls for further research in this field.

Mine completion criteria defined by best-practice: A global meta-analysis and Western Australian case studies

In many mining-intensive areas around the world, knowledge-sharing among companies is critical to advance best-practices in mine rehabilitation and closure. The academic literature documents innovative, best-practices options, yet these are often not accessible to field practitioners. Published mine closure plans provide relevant examples of standards accepted by regulators, however, regulations vary with jurisdiction and can change over time, limiting the utility of these plans. There is, therefore, a need for greater transparency and accessibility of practical knowledge to inform the definition of achievable completion criteria. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of best-practices for the purpose of defining mine completion criteria. The methods comprise: i) a qualitative meta-analysis of the global peer-reviewed literature; and ii) three in-depth case studies in Western Australia. The research identifies ten key best-practices that could be potentially applied by mining proponents to guide the definition of successful completion criteria. These include: multiple references, monitoring and corrective actions, science-informed completion criteria, holistic rehabilitation, dynamic targets, leading indicators, integration of rehabilitation with mine operations, innovation-guided completion criteria, specific objectives and indicators and risk-based completion criteria. These best-practices are further examined through recent mine rehabilitation and closure programs of mid-to-large mining operators in Western Australia. Our findings provide the first comprehensive review of best-practices towards the definition of mine completion criteria, which are relevant to industries requiring rehabilitation of disturbed lands across Australian and international jurisdictions.

What Contributes to Gendered Work Time Inequality? An Australian Case Study

Women’s employment equality remains compromised by wage and work hour gaps, despite decades of policy action. Shorter work hours are a key to persisting disadvantage because they lock women out of high paying, good quality jobs. Such hour gaps are observed across all countries, and this paper quantifies the reasons behind them. We applied the Oaxaca decomposition method to a sample of employed adults from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA). The method can show how the work hour gap would change if (a) women had the same sort of jobs (industry, occupation, work conditions, contract type) as men have and (b) if men lowered their work hours and/or increased their domestic unpaid work. We find that men’s allocation of time in and out of the home and the jobs women typically work in are central to explaining unequal paid hours. Women’s hours would increase (all else being equal) if they worked in the same industries and had the same job security as men have, accounting for 74% of the explained work hour difference. Women’s hours would also increase if they did the same (lower) domestic work as men, or if men worked the same (shorter) hours women typically do (33.4% of the explained gap). Our study, using Australian data, underscores the need to prioritize men’s time use (shorter paid hours, longer unpaid hours) alongside improvement in jobs and work conditions to progress gender equality in employment.

Teaching Journalists About Violence Against Women Best Reportage Practices: An Australian Case Study

Media reporting of violence against women (VAW) has the potential to contribute to improving the community’s understanding and response. However, journalists are not immune to gender biases and myths concerning VAW. Both can affect how the subject is framed. We look at an Australian training program implemented to improve VAW news reporting practices such as including social context, family violence experts and help information for survivors, challenging myths and avoiding perpetrator exoneration and victim blaming. We compare journalists’ reporting before and after training and also compare the trained reporters’ content with a matched comparison sample written by untrained journalists to see if training translates into best practice reporting. We conclude that reportage practices have improved overall in recent years and that the training model, in which participants were selected to take part, appears to be effective in improving some key elements of best practice reporting, but some areas of concern remain. We recommend more targeted programs with curriculum additions to better address some reporting deficiencies we identify.

The Effects of Technological Changes on Material Circularity

Towards realising circular economy, there has been an emphasis on decoupling economic growth from natural resources consumption. However, increasing product consumption has led to product technology changes that require different types of resources. Despite the use of different product life cycle studies to assist in improving the material usage and decision-making throughout the product life cycle, it is unclear how product development can improve material circularity. This work highlights the implication of product technological changes on material circularity using a complex product, such as a vehicle, through the Australian car door case study and the US new vehicle technologies. The Material Circularity Indicator is used to assess the material circularity for both case studies. This work shows that the transition to newer product design and vehicle technology has led to the reduction of material circularity and the increasing amount of virgin materials required and unrecoverable waste. In contrast, vehicle lightweighting improves the material circularity scores through reduced virgin materials due to the decreased vehicle mass.