TEACH Journal

Everest. Sherpas. The world’s only nonquadrilateral

flag. The country? Nepal, of course.

The nine Avondale College of Higher Education

students who visited June 17 - July 15 learned

much more about this landlocked nation,

though. Rough roads ran beside raging rapids.

Patriarchy and entrenched poverty. The caste

system, the influence of climate change both

impacting a vulnerable but proud people fighting

for a better life.

The trip served as the practical component of one of

our international poverty and development studies

units. We’d previously completed other units in the

course and prepared extensively throughout first

semester for the trip. During our month in Nepal, we

traversed 19 of its 75 districts to visit 15 villages, all

beneficiaries of Adventist Development and Relief

Agency (ADRA) projects.

The purpose of this study was to examine the acceptability to students, parents and teachers of a school-based intervention that incentivised students using prizes to be more physically active (the B-Active program). Three hundred and eighty-five children (54% boys, 46% girls) in Years 3 – 6 from five schools participated in the study. Six parents and three teachers were also interviewed about their perception of the B-Active program. Overall, the students enjoyed the B-Active program but the level of acceptability was lower for the parents and teachers. This study indicates that to increase acceptability, parents need to be well informed and engaged and teachers need to be well supported so as to not add to their administrative responsibilities.

Email has extended its reach beyond the traditional workplace into the non-work hours of employees, disrupting the work-life balance. What was once ‘anywhere any time’ has become ‘everywhere all the time’ (Mazmanian, Orlikowski, & Yates, 2013).

This study examines the effects of email intrusion on work-life balance from the perspective of a Christian faith-based organisation, which has the additional dimension of espousing a ‘healthy’ balance between work and life. A survey of 500 employees of such an organisation, attracting 208 respondents, found that nearly all employees owned mobile devices that enable them to access work email outside work time,and that they frequently use these devices when not at work to access work emails.

The employees perceived that anytime work emails have provided them with increased flexibility, but at the same time generated greater and frequently unrealistic expectations of them, by parents, students and to a minor degree school administrators. These employees also often felt that these anytime emails led them to working longer hours, generated a sense of being overloaded, contrary to the espoused values of a work and life balance and the importance of family.

For these employees the solution to the anytime work email intrusion and resulting stress is not some external control. To most of these employees external control would be much too restrictive and teaching was perceived to be and has always been more than just an 8.30am to 3.30pm responsibility.

In this brief article I seek not to canvass or decry

the latest theories of management, but to draw

together the strands of what seem to me, after 44

years, to be the essence of practical leadership.