Critical thinking and reflection are core components of all Australian university social work programs and are key skills for both students and graduates in conceptualising practice/field knowledge. This paper aims to explore the challenges international students face with critical thinking and reflection, and how the use of creative strategies…

Teaching the General Capability of Intercultural Understanding is an Australian government mandate, but an ongoing challenge for teachers, many of whom may have little or no experience dealing with the teaching of intercultural understanding and lack confidence to embed this focus in their classrooms. Hence, teacher preparation is a priority to…

Field education is the most challenging aspect of social work education and there are unprecedented challenges currently measuring good practice with quality outcomes. Thus, it's important to have competency-based key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess social work professional practice. This study is a national, mixed-methods Delphi research…

Teacher self-efficacy (TSE) is among the most-studied constructs in teacher education and resists change after the early stages of development, particularly during professional experience. This study investigates the sources of early-career TSE longitudinally, which few previous studies have done. Two phases of one-on-one interviews were completed…

This study investigates the perceptions of teaching and learning of teachers from Saudi Arabia who participated in a 12-month professional development programme based in Australia. Considering the design of the programme and the vast differences between the education systems and cultures of the two countries, this study examines Saudi teachers'…

Signing on to take part in Bush Blitz TeachLive (BBTL) is an easy decision for many teacher applicants. The opportunity to be a scientist's field-assistant and to beam the experience back to students in the classroom is an enticing one. Yet the reality of an expedition often far exceeds the initial expectation. This article describes the…

Fieldwork experiences can be particularly challenging for international, higher education students, as they face language and cultural difficulties, which can affect their academic progress and their fieldwork interactions with supervisors and clients. This review synthesised findings from 27 studies referring to higher education courses that…

Increasing demand for social work placements in a climate of decreasing availability has intensified the search for capacity-building models of field education. Rotation placements may be part of the solution, yet little is currently known about how rotations affect the experience of field education in the context of block placements. A study of…

When most people think "King Island," they think of a place synonymous with premium Australian dairy products. But hidden away from the lush, green pastures of grazing cows is an island teeming with invertebrate and plant species. You could probably eat some of those too, but that wasn't the intent of the Bush Blitzers who set off to…

Contemporary higher education is continually facing change and disruption across global and local educational communities. This has been exacerbated by the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, with graduates having to demonstrate discipline-specific knowledge along with adaptability to an ever-changing employment market. To address these needs,…

Universities around the world face a common challenge -- producing graduates with the necessary practical skills for employment. Cooperative education and work-integrated learning (WIL) make a valuable contribution to increasing graduate employability, however, there are differences in the level of cooperation from industry and government…

This article presents an evaluation research outcome that used a mixed method approach. The study evaluated a short-term, study tour unit that was offered as an elective, credit-bearing, work-integrated learning experience for second year undergraduate students at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. The unit of study offered…

This study reports the findings from a survey of 201 recent teacher education graduates from a university in the north-western United States of America regarding the factors that influenced their decision to take a teaching position in a rural or urban community following graduation. Results indicate that an in-depth rural practicum experience,…

International fieldschools to developing countries have become an important component of the university curriculum because they provide experiential learning and research skills, while also contributing a range of soft skills such as resilience, empathy, resourcefulness, critical thinking, and cross-cultural communication. Yet, with the increasing…

This paper applies a conceptual model for work-integrated learning (WIL) in a multidisciplinary sports degree program. Two examples of WIL in sport will be used to illustrate how the conceptual WIL model is being operationalized. The implications for practice are that curriculum design must recognize a highly flexible approach to the nature of…