http://hdl.handle.net/10453/52692 2026-04-12T07:31:25Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/193259 Title: How do public servants frame and practise empathy? Authors: Mussagulova, A; Padilla, J; Asquith, A Abstract: This article examines how public servants use empathy in their work by distinguishing between empathy as a frame or a way of defining phenomena, and empathy as a practice or a concrete way through which care, understanding, and responsiveness are enacted. Drawing on survey data from the public service of New South Wales, Australia, the study identifies five categories of empathetic practice: helping clients, improving communication, facilitating teamwork, decision-making, and program design. Our findings show that while empathy is often framed by public servants as a feeling or an emotional state, it is also used in practice as a cognitive and political tool, enabling public servants to frame problems, engage with lived experience, and challenge dominant assumptions embedded in policy settings. This article contributes to our understanding of empathy as a distinct practice in public servants’ work which can inform the design of institutional settings that enable empathy in public service. Points for practitioners: Empathy can be a strategic skill, not just a soft skill. It can help public servants interpret evidence, understand diverse perspectives, and make decisions that lead to better outcomes for clients. Empathy should be supported across a variety of roles, not just at the frontline. Public service leaders should create space for empathetic engagement in policy and organisational processes. Lived experience should inform policy design and advice. Practising empathy means going beyond consultation to meaningfully incorporate the experiences of people affected by policy in program design. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/190192 Title: Medical students' critical engagement with publications related to strategies addressing health disparities with Indigenous Peoples in Australia: critically iterative and iteratively critical Authors: Purohit, H; Lalwani, N-I; Love, G; Ma, A-M; Urquhart, L; Smallwood, R; Croker, A Abstract: Higher education’s contributions to societal transitions can be limited by the inadvertent perpetuation of embedded practices that can be hard to see and taken for granted. Such practices can delegitimise other forms of knowledge and learning, potentially hindering societal transitions. Healthcare’s preferencing objective ways of knowing, including accessing peer-reviewed literature via biomedical search engines, is one such embedded practice. This practice potentially influences medical students’ understandings of Indigenous Peoples health disparities. Extending our collaboration beyond a two-year student research project, our research team of four medical students and three supervisors reconvened. We explored the question: In relation to shaping higher education’s contributions to societal transitions, what is the nature of fostering medical students’ engagement with publications addressing health disparities with Indigenous Peoples in Australia? Based in the interpretive paradigm and informed by philosophical hermeneutics, we present our findings encapsulating themes of positional, interactive and precarious using three stories: students’ research insights; supervisors’ hindsight insights; and collective team’s insights for shaping societal transitions. Being iterative was critical to our deeper understandings. We invite others to join us in revisiting embedded practices in an iterative manner and being open to individual and collaborative critical reflexivity for further opportunities for higher education to contribute to societal transitions. 2025-08-18T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/189711 Title: Creating "a Safe Place to Go": Yarning With Health Workers About Stroke Recovery Care for Aboriginal Stroke Survivors-A Qualitative Study. Authors: Janssen, H; Owen, S; Thompson, A; Newberry-Dupe, J; Ciccone, N; Smallwood, R; Neville Sampson, U; Brandy, V; Miller, J; Trindall, AA; Peake, R; Usher, K; Levi, C; Yarning up After Stroke Collaborative Group, Abstract: Stroke affects Aboriginal people at disproportionate rates compared to other populations in Australia. Aboriginal peoples are less likely to receive a timely stroke diagnosis, or timely culturally responsive treatment, as there are very few stroke resources and recovery plans that have been developed by Aboriginal peoples for Aboriginal peoples. Understanding how to develop and implement culturally responsive stroke care requires research approaches that are informed by and with Aboriginal people. A qualitative Indigenous research methodology including "yarning" was undertaken to understand the experiences of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal health workers from nine health services providing stroke rehabilitation and recovery support to Aboriginal people living within the participating communities. Data were analyzed using an inductive approach driven by an Indigenous research approach. Yarns revealed three themes: (i) the role of culturally safe health environments to support stroke survivors, their family, and health workers; and how (ii) complicated, under-resourced systems impede the capacity to support stroke survivors; and (iii) collaborative and adaptive practices prevent people "falling through the cracks." This study highlights the need to scrutinize the cultural safety of health care, current health systems, workforce, and culture and how these influence the capacity of health workers to provide care that is responsive to the individual needs of Aboriginal stroke survivors and their families. These learnings will inform the co-design of a culturally responsive stroke recovery care strategy to improve the recovery experience and health and well-being of Aboriginal people and their families living with stroke. 2025-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/189303 Title: Moving from guideline to measure to findings: The Australian Evaluation Society and the Learn Evaluation Assessment Portal Authors: Gullickson, AM; Siddiqi, T; Lloyd, D; Stephens, A; Argyrous, G; Wildschut, L Abstract: In 2013, the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) launched the Evaluators’ Professional Learning Competency Framework. In 2020, the AES (now Australian Evaluation Society) partnered with learnevaluation.org to develop an online self-assessment for the AES community. The AES Competencies were explicitly designed to support professional learning, not as any kind of assessment instrument. Therefore, work was needed to update the competencies into a measurable format. The authors report the history of the competencies, developments made before and after pilot testing them in the online Learn Evaluation Assessment Portal (LEAP), and the findings from the data collected over two and a half years of using the LEAP. The AES Competencies Framework remains one of the few competency sets with explicit knowledge and skill statements related to the logic of evaluation. 2024-12-01T00:00:00Z