Griffith Research Online

Goal Explore the research that has already been conducted on the barriers, challenges, and mindsets of cancer customers’ return-to-work

Rationale We need to know what has already been conducted out there to conduct meaningful and valuable research

The Voice of Queenslanders with Disability report 2024 provides insights gathered from Queenslanders with disability, family/carers and organisational representatives who engaged with the research survey. Queenslanders shared authentically and transparently with us about what is going well and what is challenging across many aspects of their lives.

This is the second year to collect stories across all seven outcome areas of Queensland’s Disability Plan 2022-2027: Together, a Better Queensland and Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021-2031, diverse and sometimes divergent perspectives were shared.

While hundreds of people shared their perspectives, there is no single ‘voice of disability’ in Queensland and it is important to recognise that while this report presents key findings, it does not represent all disability experiences throughout the state.

Civic duty has been perceived as a key determinant of turnout. That is, while dutiful citizens turn out in large numbers, those who conceive of voting as a choice do less so. The strong correlation between civic duty and turnout might be due to reverse causation, however. Specifically, individuals might adapt their sense of duty according to previous voting behavior. In this article, we leverage Belgium’s compulsory voting system and the age-based discontinuity for the right to vote, and estimate the effects of being treated with participation on civic duty. We do not find “treated” citizens to be more likely to report civic duty than their “non-treated” counterparts. This finding holds across a series of robustness tests, and suggests that civic duty is exogenous to the vote.

Despite a significant body of literature espousing the transformative impacts of Australian Indigenous Studies curriculum upon students, there remains a limited body of work related to how these students experience and learn within this complex environment. This is particularly notable for research aligned with Mezirow’s transformative learning theory. Reporting on a qualitative study, this paper offers a perspective into students’ transformative experiences within a tertiary first-year Indigenous Studies health course. Thirteen non-Indigenous students were interviewed about their learning experiences within this context. Explicitly framed by Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, thematic analysis findings suggest students consistently experience precursor steps to transformative learning including disorienting dilemmas, self-examination with guilt or shame, critical reflection on assumptions, exploration of new roles, and trying on new roles. The manifestation of these steps highlights the ways in which students experience learning in this space, and a range of elements influencing this – from students’ own positioning and approaches to learning, to the nature of the curricular and pedagogical approaches. This study offers nuanced insight into the complexity of students’ transformative learning experiences, suggesting students hold a range of contradictory perspectives at any one time. If curricular models are to be effective for the broader student body, we propose that (1) the complex intersection of students’ identity development, need for group belonging, learning approach, limitations in existing knowledge and capacity for complex thought requires further consideration in this context, and (2) greater institutional investment is necessary in both the development of educators in this space, and educational opportunities beyond first-year, lest we risk reinforcing extant beliefs and paradigms held by non-Indigenous Australians about Indigenous Australians, and a continuation of the health disparities these curricular offerings are designed to alleviate.

While more is becoming understood about the effects of Indigenous Studies health curricula on student preparedness and attitudes toward working in Indigenous health contexts, less is known about how tutors in this space interpret student experiences and contribute to the development of preparedness. Reporting on a qualitative study, this article provides insight into tutors’ perceptions of tertiary first year health students’ transformative experiences in an Indigenous Studies health course. Twelve Indigenous and non-Indigenous tutors were interviewed about their teaching experiences within this context. Framed by Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, thematic analysis findings suggest tutors observe several precursor steps to transformative learning including disorienting dilemmas, critical reflection on assumptions, exploration of new roles, and trying on new roles. The content of these themes extends our understanding of how these precursor steps manifest, and the elements related to this. Findings also suggest tutors vary in their identification, interpretation and response to many of these pedagogical entry points. Within this learning context, the concept of teacher/student relationship is suggested as playing a meaningful role in the positioning and efficacy of tutors. This impacts tutors' understanding of transformative learning, the social construction of students, consequent interpretations of student experiences, and means of facilitating cognitive and affective learning. We propose a reconceptualisation of thinking around teaching in this space, with a focus on both further development of educator capabilities and student curricular opportunities to promote transformative learning appropriate to the stated goals of the Australian Indigenous Studies learning and teaching context. The findings indicate that institutional investment in the development of educators in this space remains vitally important.