Professor Allyson Holbrook

Oral defence is recognised as an important part of doctoral examination and candidate development. Unlike the UK and New Zealand, the Australian examination process does not normally include an end-of-process viva. This paper appraises the views of 20 supervisors and 13 Deans or Directors of Graduate Research from 11 Australian universities as they contemplate the advantages and disadvantages of adding an oral defence component to the Australian process. The majority preferred a ¿pre-completion seminar¿ prior to thesis submission, rather than a viva after thesis submission. Such a seminar is believed to offer the candidate greater opportunity to reflect on their findings and integrate feedback into the final product. The findings are discussed in light of formative assessment and learner agency.

There has been substantial research on doctoral supervision and examination, yet rarely a focus on what happens at the end-stage of the process when examiner feedback is received and addressed. This article reports survey findings (n = 262) from a study investigating supervisor perceptions about Australian end-stage doctoral examination processes. In general, supervisors believed that existing university processes were satisfactory, with the caveat that, at times, there was undue variability between examiners, or difficult-to-reconcile committee decisions about the outcome. Supervisors generally identified that revisions and the preparation of the response-to-examiner report was a ¿shared responsibility¿. While supervisors strongly agreed that graduates achieve doctoral level in terms of substantive knowledge, they were less sanguine about their research autonomy. This impression was compounded if candidate input into the decisions about examiner comments was undervalued or if there was no direct avenue of response by the candidate.

Though the positive association between a connection to the natural environment and well-being is well established, few studies have examined this association in children, and none have explored whether this relationship remains when accounting for other factors that affect well-being, such as social supports, attention, and empathic skills. The current study aims to address this gap. Data are drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study (NSW-CDS) and comprise a representative sample of 26,848 children who completed a self-report survey of mental health and well-being when aged approximately 11 years. Multiple regression analysis indicated that, after adjusting for covariates (i.e., social supports, empathy, attention, socioeconomic status, and sex), connection to nature was positively, albeit weakly, associated with two indicators of well-being: self-satisfaction and prosocial behavior. Social supports had the strongest relationship with self-satisfaction, while empathy had the strongest relationship with prosocial behavior. Based on our findings, and that of previous research, we suggest that developing a connection to nature can slightly improve well-being and may complement or augment other well-being and education-based programs. Future research should examine whether the relationship between connection to nature and well-being is influenced by proximity to green spaces, experiences of nature, and age.

Purpose The Middle Childhood Survey (MCS) was designed as a computerised self-report assessment of children's mental health and well-being at approximately 11 years of age, conducted with a population cohort of 87 026 children being studied longitudinally within the New South Wales (NSW) Child Development Study. Participants School Principals provided written consent for teachers to administer the MCS in class to year 6 students at 829 NSW schools (35.0% of eligible schools). Parent or child opt-outs from participation were received for 4.3% of children, and MCS data obtained from 27 808 children (mean age 11.5 years, SD 0.5; 49.5% female), representing 85.9% of students at participating schools. Findings to date Demographic characteristics of participating schools and children are representative of the NSW population. Children completed items measuring Social Integration, Prosocial Behaviour, Peer Relationship Problems, Supportive Relationships (at Home, School and in the Community), Empathy, Emotional Symptoms, Conduct Problems, Aggression, Attention, Inhibitory Control, Hyperactivity-Inattention, Total Difficulties (internalising and externalising psychopathology), Perceptual Sensitivity, Psychotic-Like Experiences, Personality, Self-esteem, Daytime Sleepiness and Connection to Nature. Distributions of responses on each item and construct demarcate competencies and vulnerabilities within the population: most children report mental health and well-being, but the population distribution spanned the full range of possible scores on every construct. Future plans Multiagency, intergenerational linkage of the MCS data with health, education, child protection, justice and early childhood development records took place late in 2016. Linked data were used to elucidate patterns of risk and protection across early and middle child development, and these data will provide a foundation for future record linkages in the cohort that will track mental and physical health, social and educational/occupational outcomes into adolescence and early adulthood.

One of the principal roles of a PhD examiner is to judge ¿both the potential of the researcher and the quality of the research¿ (Holbrook, Bourke, Fairbairn, & Lovat, 2014, p. 986). While examiners may be guided by criteria supplied by universities, the descriptors they are provided with can often be open to interpretation. Interpreting an examiner's report can present a challenge to students and their supervisors, exacerbated by the often ambiguous use of language in the reports. This article examines the discourses of evaluation and instruction in 142 PhD examiners¿ reports on theses submitted at an Australasian university. The paper draws on systemic functional linguistics, in particular transitivity (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), in order to examine the reports. The study revealed that examiners can adopt up to 10 ¿roles¿ in their reports, each of which can be co-present in a single report. The inability to differentiate between these roles, we argue, is potentially frustrating for the audience of the reports (candidates, supervisors, departmental heads, etc.), particularly when interpreting whether a comment in the text represents an evaluation, an instruction, or an aside. By revealing these multiple, yet co-present, roles in examiners¿ reports and their associated linguistic realisations, we hope to raise examiners¿ awareness of the implications of the language they use when writing their reports as well as draw thesis supervisor and institutional attention to the ambiguities inherent in this underexplored genre.

There is an expectation that all researchers will act ethically and responsibly in the conduct of research involving humans and animals. While research ethics is mentioned in quality indicators and codes of responsible researcher conduct, it appears to have little profile in doctoral assessment. There seems to be an implicit assumption that ethical competence has been achieved by the end of doctoral candidacy and that there is no need for candidates to report on the ethical dimensions of their study nor for examiners to assess this integral aspect of researcher development. In the context of ensuring that institutions are fulfilling their responsibility of producing ethically sensitive and competent researchers, it is salient to investigate whether doctoral thesis examiners make comment about ethical issues in their reports. This study analysed an archive of examiner reports to identify the frequency, magnitude and nature of examiner comment about ethics. Although comment was rare (5% of reports) examiners provided: prescriptive instruction on ethical review processes; formative instruction on the design, conduct, and reporting of research projects; and positive or negative judgments about a candidate's ethical competence, the latter often aligned with meeting, or not meeting, 'doctoral standards'. The scarcity of ethics in examination criteria and examiner reports implies a silence that needs to be addressed to ensure graduating candidates are prepared to conduct ethical and responsible research.

In recent years, there have been increasing calls for an overall transformation of the nature of engineering Ph.D. programs and the way theses are assessed. There exists a need to understand the examination process to ensure the best quality outcome for candidates in engineering. The work we present in this paper uses data collected between 2003 and 2010 for a total of 1220 Australian Ph.D. theses by analysing examiner reports. Our analysis indicates that Ph.D. theses in engineering, N = 106, differ considerably from those in other fields in areas such as gender of candidates and examiners and the examiners¿ geographical location. We also found that assessment areas such as significance and contribution of the thesis, publications arising from the thesis, breadth, depth and recency of the literature review and communication and editorial correctness are areas in which the proportion of text of engineering examiners' comments differs significantly from other fields.

Purpose: The initial aim of this multiagency, multigenerational record linkage study is to identify childhood profiles of developmental vulnerability and resilience, and to identify the determinants of these profiles. The eventual aim is to identify risk and protective factors for later childhood-onset and adolescent-onset mental health problems, and other adverse social outcomes, using subsequent waves of record linkage. The research will assist in informing the development of public policy and intervention guidelines to help prevent or mitigate adverse longterm health and social outcomes. Participants: The study comprises a population cohort of 87 026 children in the Australian State of New South Wales (NSW). The cohort was defined by entry into the first year of full-time schooling in NSW in 2009, at which time class teachers completed the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) on each child (with 99.7% coverage in NSW). The AEDC data have been linked to the children's birth, health, school and child protection records for the period from birth to school entry, and to the health and criminal records of their parents, as well as mortality databases. Findings to date: Descriptive data summarising sex, geographic and socioeconomic distributions, and linkage rates for the various administrative databases are presented. Child data are summarised, and the mental health and criminal records data of the children's parents are provided. Future plans: In 2015, at age 11 years, a self-report mental health survey was administered to the cohort in collaboration with government, independent and Catholic primary school sectors. A second record linkage, spanning birth to age 11 years, will be undertaken to link this survey data with the aforementioned administrative databases. This will enable a further identification of putative risk and protective factors for adverse mental health and other outcomes in adolescence, which can then be tested in subsequent record linkages.

Despite their high stakes nature, examiners' reports on doctoral theses are a relatively unexplored genre. Very little work has been done, further, on how evaluative language constructs meanings in the reports. To better understand the evaluative language used in the reports, this study analyses the examination criteria established by a university in New Zealand and draws on the appraisal framework to examine 142 examiners' reports from that institution. We explore the examiners' reports through the generalised systems of attitude and engagement and extend the framework by suggesting more delicate options within appreciation and judgement and introduce two new concepts, covert judgement and embedded judgement. While it is primarily the thesis that is appreciated in the reports, in line with the university's examination criteria, it is often the case that the candidate is also judged and the examiner is affected.

The examination of research theses has only relatively recently attracted research interest that has focused on what examiners do and how consistent they are. The research questions in this study address firstly whether PhD and research masters theses were treated by examiners as qualitatively different on 12 indicators of importance across the areas: contribution of the thesis, the literature review, approach and methodology, analyses and results and presentation. Secondly what was the examiner assessment of quality of a recently examined thesis on the same indicators and, finally, how well the indicators were reflected in a holistic assessment of thesis quality. The work reported here draws on the responses of 353 PhD and 74 research masters thesis examiners. Findings showed the examiners generally rated the relative importance of the indicators very similarly at both degree levels. Further the order of importance across indicators was essentially the same for the two levels of thesis. Anticipated differences did emerge with the examiners giving higher quality gradings for all contribution indicators for PhD as compared with research masters theses. The 12 specific quality indicators, individually and collectively were strongly related to the holistic assessment of thesis quality, particularly at the PhD level. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.