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Full Text, Thesis (Professional Doctorate), Doctor of Education (EdD), School of Cognition, Language and Special Education, This qualitative study set out to explore the perceptions of leadership in an Australian higher education institution in relation to the introduction of an equity agenda related to sexuality and gender identity. The topic had professional and personal importance for me, both in my role as an equity practitioner occupying a relatively senior role in an Australian university, and as a woman who identifies as lesbian. There is a relatively small body of literature focussing upon leadership in higher education in Australia, still less about matters of equity, and a paucity of quality research related to sexuality and gender identity in this context. This study contributes to these three areas. The purpose of the research was to explore the way staff of a university involved in the initiation and implementation of a specific sexuality-equity agenda identified the leader or leaders of the agenda and perceptions of how that leadership behaviour was expressed. A secondary aspect of the research was to investigate the process by which change was implemented by these leaders in a controversial area of equity and social justice. The research used the introduction of a sexuality equity agenda as a frame through which leadership behaviours could be explored with a view to informing this area of equity practice in the higher education context. The research used a case study approach, the case study university being selected on the basis of its identifiably good practice in the area. Staff who had been closely involved with the introduction and implementation of the sexuality equity agenda were invited to participate in the research and self-selected to do so. Participants represented academic and general staff across the University at different levels of seniority, and identified variously as heterosexual, gay or lesbian. The sexuality equity agenda was implemented in a wider context of considerable public debate about issues of sexuality. The state in which the case study univer

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Griffith Business School, This thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of research higher degree supervision and thereby its enhancement. My study departs from the current emphasis on issues of practice to offer a set of scholarly understandings embedded in the beliefs that supervisors and candidates hold about supervision and closely related academic mailers. It is aligned with the movement over the past two decades towards concentrating on understanding why teachers and students behave in particular ways, rather than describing what they do and how they do it. I draw on the literature of research higher degree (RI-ID) supervision, the conceptual framework of beliefs research and Gadamer's concept of the hermeneutic circle to argue that supervision is best understood as a plexus of closely related educational beliefs about research, teaching, learning and supervision. Research from this perspective acknowledges supervisions plural, multifunctional character and its holistic nature. The beliefs construct recognises the powerful effect that individualsibeliefs and attitudes have on the way they define educational tasks, make related decisions and prefer to act. Thirty-four participants from one engineering faculty were interviewed about their beliefs about the four components of the supervision plexus. Entire transcripts were coded, using a three-phase, inductive method of analysis incorporating constant-comparative techniques and conceptual field principles, to reveal individuals integrated thinking about the whole process of supervision. This method ensures that the findings remain embedded in the data and retain the richness of individual experience. I identified four different core tendencies to the plexus, based on two bipolar frames - controlling/guiding and task-focussed/person-focussed kinds of beliefs. The result is four global orientations to supervision: controlling/task-focussed, controlling/person-focussed, guiding/task-focussed and guiding/person-focussed. Subcategories a

Full Text, Thesis (PhD Doctorate), Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Centre for Learning Research, While there is abundant literature about Australian rural women including references to those who have had or wish to have some form of tertiary education, little attention is given to those who are the subject of the present study, graduate rural women, in this case of the state of New South Wales, Australia. The significance of the research emerged from its focus on the experiences of such women, with the purpose of the study being to present an exploration of their previously unrecorded perceptions of themselves as graduates occupying a place in their rural communities - to articulate the impact and import of graduate status for rural women. As understanding the articulations rather than explaining the data was deemed to be more appropriate to the exploration, a qualitative-interpretivist approach was adopted, recognising that a grounded constructivist epistemology would assist in viewing the experiences through the eyes of the participants. Data were collected in the form of written narrative - correspondence via e-mail - which allowed both the participants and myself to revisit and reflect upon each other's comments. The graduate women's comments were wide-ranging, from matters of concern to all country people, to those which were particularly relevant to graduate rural women, such as the perceived value of their own expertise and their experiences in taking up either professional or other roles in the rural context. The depth of thought, the powers of perception, the identification of lines of reasoning, the development of interwoven themes in rural life, and the manner of expression through the articulation of common occurrences, revealed far more than was originally envisaged. From the resultant collation of data it was possible to identify, examine and associate important perceptions which permeated the lives of graduate rural women. An exploration of the term rural and being a rural person in that environment was an important pre-cursor to interpreting sub