Placement Educators’ Experiences and Perspectives of Supervising International Social Work Students in Australia

International social work students in Australia have reported difficulties in finding quality placement opportunities and dealing with issues such as language and cultural barriers. While placement issues have been mostly investigated from a student perspective, this study explores the experiences and perspectives of placement educators towards supervising international social work students. It draws on an online survey of 83 placement educators working for an Australian university. The majority of placement educators reported that they supervised international students differently to domestic students. These differences were negatively framed as challenges involving students’ language competence, their understanding of cultural norms, and knowledge of Australian welfare systems. This framing implies that cultural and linguistic differences between international students and placement educators are viewed in terms of student deficiency rather than as a positive opportunity for mutual learning and professional development.     

The professionalization of the 'shoe clerk'

Summary.  The address reviews the professionalization of statisticians working in the regulated world of drug development. The need for statisticians to continue to push the boundaries of their professional environment is stressed. It is argued that to maintain the strength and influence of the profession it is neither desirable, nor necessary, to define in a statutory sense access to the profession.     

How to test hypotheses if you must

Drug development is not the only industrial‐scientific enterprise subject to government regulations. In some fields of ecology and environmental sciences, the application of statistical methods is also regulated by ordinance. Over the past 20years, ecologists and environmental scientists have argued against an unthinking application of null hypothesis significance tests. More recently, Canadian ecologists have suggested a new approach to significance testing, taking account of the costs of both type I and type II errors. In this paper, we investigate the implications of this for testing in drug development and demonstrate that its adoption leads directly to the likelihood principle and Bayesian approaches. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Idle thoughts of a ‘well‐calibrated’ Bayesian in clinical drug development

The use of Bayesian approaches in the regulated world of pharmaceutical drug development has not been without its difficulties or its critics. The recent Food and Drug Administration regulatory guidance on the use of Bayesian approaches in device submissions has mandated an investigation into the operating characteristics of Bayesian approaches and has suggested how to make adjustments in order that the proposed approaches are in a sense calibrated. In this paper, I present examples of frequentist calibration of Bayesian procedures and argue that we need not necessarily aim for perfect calibration but should be allowed to use procedures, which are well‐calibrated, a position supported by the guidance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do statisticians count? A personal view

The number of statisticians working in the pharmaceutical industry has risen 50‐fold since the formation of PSI in 1977. It would be comforting to think that the influence of statisticians within their companies has increased in a parallel fashion, however I do not believe that to be the case. In this paper I look at barriers which prevent statisticians contributing as much as they should and look at potentials solutions. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.