Lorelle J. Burton

• PhD
• Professor at University of Southern Queensland

There exists little quantitative data on longitudinal life outcomes, such as employment and wellbeing, for marginalized students who reconnect with learning via flexible learning. This article reports on longitudinal associations between satisfying psychological wellbeing at school and quality of life after school. Forty-one past students of a flex...

Community-engaged research takes place at a complex social site that has both a history and a future as well as encompassing the project activities of the researchers and community members. We argue that a crucial methodological aspect of undertaking such research is the development of trust relationships between researchers and community. We propo...

We use ideas from futurist Sohail Inayatullah and others to unpack the layers of a values-driven evaluation, and the potential role for such an evaluation strategy to support Aboriginal people in Australia to gain acknowledgement of the past and to support a desired future. Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) is used as a way of understandi...

The current chapter focuses on the Work-Integrated Learning program (WIL) in the Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Ipswich campus. Specifically, the chapter examines how the WIL program helps to develop employability skills in undergraduate psychology students. The WIL curriculum, which is embedded in...

Cambridge Core - Psychology: General Interest - Abnormal Psychology in Context - by Nadine Pelling

Waiting is one of the most common phenomena in ethnographic and other community-based research. Nevertheless, it remains under-explored in academic writing about the theoretical and methodological aspects of fieldwork. While waiting time often allows new data or information to emerge, we argue that such times have a significance independent of know...

The experience of disadvantage by Australians involves a complex interaction of factors including poor physical or mental health, financial difficulties, unemployment, inadequate housing, and refugee status. Many Australians experience social exclusion as a result of disadvantage, including limited access to education. The Clemente Toowoomba progra...

A key feature of late capitalism continues to be a complex reworking of previous approaches to the relationship between the state and business. This significant shift in the interplay between the public and private sectors has generated such developments as the privatisation of many services formerly provided by government and the growth of not-for...

METRO Care is a Toowoomba-based not-for-profit organisation and is the community care expression of METRO Church Toowoomba which is in south-west Queensland in Australia. METRO Care partners with the local community offering innovative and targeted outreach programme that complement existing services. This chapter presents a discussion on the METRO...

Toowoomba Clubhouse is a community-based mental health service in the Darling Downs region of Queensland, Australia. It was founded on the evidence-based Fountain House model for psychosocial rehabilitation and currently operates within the recovery model framework. Social connection, one of the elements of the recovery model, is recognised in exis...

The Men of Business (MOB) ‘Pay it Forward’ programme was established on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, in 2009, by a group of local business owners with the aim of introducing a healthy lifestyle and attitude to marginalised male youth aged 13–17 years. For eight weeks, high school student participants attended weekly one-hour physical work...

Given the global crises confronting the world today, it is important to interrogate the notion of “the modern state” and to evaluate its effectiveness in providing security and services for its populations, including the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. This book investigates the modern state’s capacity to serve its constituents by examining the...

An appealing, understandable and engaging resource, Psychology Research Methods, 1st Edition offers students a clear, concise look at psychological science, experimental methods, correlational research, statistics and more. This product also includes an emphasis on research ethics; how the APA’s most recent code of ethics is applied to research, an...

The Elements of Applied Psychological Practice in Australia is a comprehensive and applied review of material required for basic psychological practice in Australia. This book is the first of its kind to offer a one-step resource to success in the Australian National Psychology Examination. Nadine Pelling and Lorelle Burton have provided you with e...

Keeping up with our social networks online helps us get what we want in the short term, but could be worse for our accumulation of “social capital” in the longer term, our research shows. One explanation for this is that the benefits from increased online social connectivity are outweighed by the loss of face-to-face social interactions.

Based on the premise that the Internet has the potential to generate trust, this study estimates the effects of the Internet and real GDP per capita on the creation of social capital (measured by trust) for Australia for the period 1985–2013. We use ARDL bounds testing approach (Pesaran et al., 2001) to estimate the short- and long-run relationship...

This study estimates the effects of the Internet and economic growth on the accumulation of social capital (measured by trust) using panel data for 19 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries for the period 1985-2012 A cross sectional dependence (CD) test is performed. Having found the cross sectional dependence, a cros...

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) using an Australian adolescent sample (n = 135). The MLQ is made up of two, five-item subscales – Presence (how meaningful one considers his/her life to be) and Search (a desire to discover more or new meaning in one’s life). A convenience sample of 135 high...

This study estimates the short- and long-run effects of social capital and internet usage on economic growth using annual time series macro-data for Australia for the period of 1985-2013. Dickey-Fuller generalized least squares unit root and Zivot and Andrew structural break tests are conducted to assess the stationarity of all the series. Hansen-G...

The present study aims to illustrate an encompassing approach to the evaluation of personality factor structure replicability based on novel exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) methods. This approach comprises formal tests of measurement invariance applied to the flexible ESEM framework and overcomes the limitations of congruence measur...

This paper examines the socio-economic impact of mineral and agricultural resource extraction on local communities and explores policy options for addressing them. An emphasis on the marketization of services together with tight fiscal control has reinforced decline in many country communities in Australia and elsewhere. However, the introduction b...

'Developing graduate employability through partnerships with industry and professional associations' was a priority project funded by the Australian Government Office for Learning & Teaching from 2014 to 2015. Its aims were to identify the key issues and challenges that influence graduate employability across a variety of disciplines, to identify t...

To better understand how to plan for an ageing demographic that resides in ever-changing community typologies. Semi-structured in-depth interviews. Community settings in rural and regional towns in Queensland. Twenty-two people aged over 65 years living in regional and rural Australia. Qualitative study of social connectedness. Thematic qualitative...

Supplemental Appendix A for Perera, McIlveen, Burton, & Corser (2015)

Supplemental Appendix B for Perera, McIlveen, Burton, & Corser (2015)

Two interrelated myths arise from the way practitioners in higher education respond to an increased emphasis on technological delivery. One myth stems from the view that tertiary education students are digital natives who have universal and uniform digital experiences. This myth presumes that the technological experiences of these students are homo...

This chapter examines empirical data to address the rhetoric of the digital native as a competent and digitally literate learner. The chapter also questions the reality of the notion that a digital delivery platform is easy to navigate and facilitates positive learning experiences. Data from surveys of students studying both on-campus and via di...

One of the main aims of higher education is for students to develop their analytical and critical thinking in order for graduates to function as competent professionals (e.g., Burton, Westen, and Kowalski 2012). The importance of this supposed generic skill is reflected in the ubiquitous inclusion of critical thinking as a graduate capability in un...

Engineering design is widely considered to be one of the pivotal elements of engineering education. However, design remains a subject that engineering students find the most difficult to grasp. This difficulty stems from the differences in the traditional engineering science-based courses, and the creative skills required for design courses. The tr...

The study focuses on psychological predictors of academic major satisfaction. According to the career construction theory (Savickas, 2005), vocational personality and career adaptability should generate career satisfaction. In this study, vocational personality was operationalised as Big Five conscientiousness, and career adaptability was operation...

Transition to higher education is challenging, and first year students need support to facilitate a positive experience. Key issues include positive transition; problem solving perceptions; and support from peers. This study examined relationships among student transition, problem-solving ability, and academic success. Student transition was measur...

Peer mentoring, presented as an inclusive teaching approach, embedded in the curriculum, has been successfully implemented to support first year student learning. Developing sustainable and scalable models for large first year cohorts, however, provides a challenge. The Transition in, Transition out model is a sustainable peer mentoring model suppo...

Higher education globally is operating in a highly volatile context, a consequence of the rapid globalisation and intense technological change characteristic of the early 21st century. These forces challenge assumptions about work, productivity, and international demand for knowledge, skills and resources, igniting needs for highly competent and ed...

First- and final-year undergraduate students have unique transition issues. To support both the transition of first-year students into the program, and the transition of third-year students out of the program and into the workforce or further study, a face-to-face peer mentoring program was embedded into the first-year psychology curricula at RMIT...

This article examines the effectiveness of a mentoring programme supporting the transition of first year psychology students. The programme, in which third year students worked with small groups of first year students within tutorials, was developed to enhance five aspects associated with student success (capability, connectedness, resourcefulness,...

The purpose of this study was to test the international transferability and structural validity of the Career Futures Inventory (CFI) in a sample of Australian university students (N = 1,566). Exploratory factor analysis of the data from a random half-split of the sample supported a three-factor solution equivalent to the original CFI subscales, Ca...

This chapter will explain the SALT fellowship project. It will outline how the project was conducted, including how the SALT platform was developed and piloted. The chapter will augment understandings already developed about the efficacy of two of the five pedagogical principles: Engagement and Scholarship.

In 2005, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) announced its vision to be Australia's leading transnational university. With the term 'transnational' open to interpretation, the incumbent Pro Vice-Chancellor (Regional Engagement and Social Justice) initiated a project team to define a transnational pedagogy for USQ. The transnational project...

Chapter Four documents the qualitative results obtained from the student survey. The qualitative component of the survey included 15 questions asking students to specifically identify courses that had contributed to their understanding of each of the five principles–Sustainability, Engagement, Scholarship, Flexibility, and Contextual Learning–and t...

This chapter is the third of three chapters analysing student perceptions collected in the Best Practice Learning and Teaching Survey (see Chapters Three and Four). It specifically investigates the Contextual Learning principle. Contextual Learning, according to the transnational project (TP) team, refers to the importance of recognising and valuin...

Chapter Six provides both the quantitative and qualitative results staff results from the Best Practice in Learning and Teaching (BPLT) research project for academic staff. In the quantitative section of the survey, academics were asked to provide their ratings on all five teaching principles in terms of importance in teaching, frequency of use, an...

This chapter considers key theoretical perspectives underpinning the journey: Transnational education, best practice learning and teaching, and institutional pedagogy. USQ initially prioritised transnational education as its institutional vision in 2005, but by 2007, notions of flexibility and sustainability had taken its place. Transnational educa...

This chapter documents research examining students' perspectives on how well courses embedded the five principles described in chapter 2: sustainability, engagement, scholarship, flexibility, and contextual learning. To do this, the current research team, a subgroup of the original transnational project (TP) team described in chapter 1, explored th...

In this chapter, we specifically interpret academics’ understandings of two key principles, Sustainability and Flexibility. Academics’ responses to the staff survey (Chapter Four) and focus group data from a sample of on-campus international academics (see Chapter Seven) were used to inform the current analysis of these two principles. The chapter...

This chapter provides a theoretical review of the concepts embedded in each of the five principles. The review examines the understandings that the TP team had attributed to the principles. The chapter also explores how these theoretical perspectives informed the research team in developing an online survey to measure student and staff perceptions...

This paper describes the processes of development of an online educational tool to facilitate equity and access for the diversity of students entering the largely digital context that is higher education today. The Associate Deans (Learning and Teaching) across the five faculties at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) responded to the issue...

Associate deans (Learning and Teaching) face a number of challenges in successfully retaining and progressing students in their faculties. The first challenge involves identifying strategies to assist students to actively engage with their studies. This challenge escalates if the primary mode of delivery involves distance learning. The second chall...

This paper aims to explore the factors that impact on rural and remote students’ participation in higher education at university. The findings indicated that the students were familiar only with university scholarships, tertiary preparation program, and head start. Before admission, most students required information on pathways to university, admi...

Psychological literacy for the 21st century posits both real and virtual resource options for 'applied' psychology at the interface of psychology education and graduate attributetargeted student learning outcomes. Psychological literacy encapsulates the common graduate attributes or capabilities that students should acquire while undertaking a majo...

Ongoing structural reform and evolution in the higher education sector continue to pose complex challenges for educators, including those who teach introductory psychology courses. One such challenge is helping students to overcome the first-year hurdle and develop the core attributes required for success at tertiary level. Psychology educators are...

For international teachers the experience of ‘crossing over’ and moving from one higher education context to another for employment can be confronting. Not only does this transition often involve a physical location change but as part of a growing borderless workforce many international academic staff still need to cross borders in terms of having...

The aim of this longitudinal research was to identify the key predictors of academic success for 66 on-campus students enrolled in first-year engineering programs at USQ in 2004. In this paper, the relationships between cognitive abilities, personality, and previous educational experience, and academic success are examined. Other variables measured...

Internationalisation of higher education embodies a pedagogy that is expected to have a grounding in scholarship, in both domestic and overseas environments. The pedagogy has to incorporate a scholarship that includes knowledge about teaching and learning underpinned by the subject discipline and interdisciplinary awareness and relevance to the sub...

In 2005 the authors began a longitudinal research project to explore the factors that influence student success in the Master of Engineering Practice program which was offered for the first time in Semester 2, 2004. This distance education program enables experienced Engineering Technologists to use their workplace learning to gain a qualification...

There is considerable interest in how students study and what skills best facilitate their academic performance. This paper reports on some of the key outcomes of a large individual differences study of student learning profiles at a regional Australian university. It examines how students’ conceptions of knowledge, approaches to learning, and pers...

In 2005, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) declared its vision to be Australia’s leading transnational educator. To define and develop USQ’s ‘transnational pedagogy’, the then Pro Vice-Chancellor (Regional Engagement and Social Justice) initiated a consultative project team from across the university community, consisting of Excellence in...

Presently, there is much interest in how students study and what skills best facilitate their academic performance. The aim of this study was to examine how students' conceptions of knowledge, approaches to learning, and personality relate to academic success. An online survey was completed by 198 first-year tertiary students, including 116 off-cam...

The first aim of this study was to examine the relationships between the big five personality traits and approaches to learning in a sample of first-year psychology distance students. Approaches to learning are the intentions a student has when faced with a learning task. A deep approach reflects an intention to understand the material, a strategic...

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of age in influencing the relationships among general self-efficacy, proactive attitude, and proactive coping in unemployed people. The sample consisted of 55 male and 49 female unemployed Australians participating in Job Search Training courses. They completed the General Self-Efficacy (...

Th is paper describes the results of the fi rst stage of a longitudinal research project being undertaken at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) to identify the key predictors of academic success. By identifying the individual and sociocultural factors that infl uence how individual students perform, educators are in a better position to ma...

In recent years changes in secondary school curricula and subject selection policies have meant that engineering schools in Australia have had to accommodate an increasingly diverse commencing student cohort. Because students have followed different pathways prior to enrolling in their program, there is a conside rable variation in their knowledge,...