Learning to engage with human rights in heritage

Cultural heritage should not be seen merely as a technical matter or from a narrow visitor management point of view but rather as cultural practice—a form of cultural politics dominated by ruling regimes and social groups in which decisions are made about the future of and access to scarce resources. Several scholars have sought to push this approach further by arguing that heritage studies should take on the protection of human rights as a core consideration in the processes of identifying, inscribing, conserving and interpreting cultural heritage. This paper builds on these previous works to explore what the shift to a rights-based management approach in the World Heritage system might mean for various stakeholders in the heritage protection enterprise as they learn to meet this challenge and to find ways to support people’s right to access, enjoy and maintain cultural heritage. Reaffirming the need to maintain a strong relationship between theory and praxis, the paper draws into the discussion heritage practitioners, decision makers in governments and government agencies, scholars and educators. Of these, the principal emphasis in this paper is on educators who are seen to have a fundamentally important role in developing a critical understanding of the cultural heritage concept, how heritage is created, used and misused and how conservation approaches and programs sit within the broader context of community attitudes and aspirations and governmental responsibilities. A distinction is made between teachers in universities and trainers offering short courses more focused on specific employer needs. The paper focuses on World Heritage but refers to both tangible and intangible aspects. It shows how current moves to establish a rights-based approach to the management of World Heritage sites connects with moves elsewhere in global governance, most notably in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

I would’ve been so overwhelmed...: the importance of TAFE in supporting success for low SES students in HE

The Federal Government Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program includes a renewed push to redress the persistent under-representation of students from low socio-economic status backgrounds in higher education in Australia. The discipline of Social Work at Deakin University has been successful in attracting a wide range of students into the Bachelor program and is committed to giving students the best chance of success. This paper presents findings from qualitative research aimed at building two-way bridges between The Gordon (formerly The Gordon Institute of TAFE) and Deakin University to widen access and to support and retain students. The research presented here illuminates the experiences of students who commenced university following studies at TAFE, as well as the multiple, complex and intersecting factors impacting on this particular cohort’s educational opportunity. Our findings suggest that the TAFE pathway functions as an equity mechanism in our particular study site. Further, findings regarding students’ support needs underpin our argument that universities must do more to meet their responsibilities towards students.

WORK

Steph Hutchison's solo WORK is fuelled by an interest in pushing the body to its physical limit. A hybrid performance, interweaving dance, circus arts, improvisation, sports and theatre, WORK is inspired by the physical journey of Julie Moss. In 1982, Julie Moss competed in her first Ironman without ever completing the total distance before. What began as a lark became a struggle for survival and a test of human will. Each time she felt like quitting, she thought it was her 'ego trying to self-sabotage,' but her real self was 'that voice that said; "just keep moving forward. There is no limit." Hutchison explores the notion of dance as extreme sport and emphatically engages her body in rigorous physical practices. Her attention is to muscularity and the performance of effort, work and labour, to the point of physical exhaustion. Using circus apparatus such as tissu, rope and acrobatic mats, Steph pushes to and beyond the limits of her physical ability during the performance. In preparation for the show, she puts herself through intense bootcamp style training, classical and contemporary dance training and teaches herself new acrobatic tricks. Her aim is to push herself past exhaustion to another level.

A framework to determine if Australia's suburbs have ever been sustainable

Australia is a suburban society. It has been since Europeans came. Unlike many other urban societies at the time, there was no existing hard infrastructure to provide the essential needs of human urban life - clean water, food, shelter and waste management. These had to be met by individual residents in the emerging cities and towns until infrastructure could be provided to local communities by Government. This reality led to Governor Phillip establishing the block size in Sydney as being large enough to provide food and treat waste within its boundaries. The block dimensions were a major influence on Australia’s urban form for the next two centuries and with social developments not only led to low density urban form, but also fostered a strong connection with the backyard and a societal love of gardening at home. Despite a push to densification in the past two decades, low density suburban form is physical and cultural and is likely to be dominant for the foreseeable future. Gardening at home is also likely to continue to be a favourite pass time. While some Australian research has started to explore the role of backyards and gardening in increasing urban sustainability, little work has been done on to what extent the suburban block has and can meet the core needs of people. Even less has been done on determining the impact of suburbs on underlying ecosystem services that provide these core needs. This paper provides a brief history of backyards in suburban Australia, a conceptual framework for assessing the sustainability of Australian suburbs over time and a description of the major ecosystem types in what is now urban Geelong at the time of European settlement. It provides the foundation for future sustainability assessments of the residential block in various periods of suburban development in Geelong.

An adaptive approach to information discovery in multi-dimensional wireless sensor networks

Multidimensional WSNs are deployed in complex environments to sense and collect data relating to multiple attributes (multidimensional data). Such networks present unique challenges to data dissemination, data storage and in-network query processing (information discovery). In this paper, we investigate efficient strategies for information discovery in large-scale multidimensional WSNs and propose the Adaptive MultiDimensional Multi-Resolution Architecture (A-MDMRA) that efficiently combines “push” and “pull” strategies for information discovery and adapts to variations in the frequencies of events and queries in the network to construct optimal routing structures. We present simulation results showing the optimal routing structure depends on the frequency of events and query occurrence in the network. It also balances push and pull operations in large scale networks enabling significant QoS improvements and energy savings.

Digital immigrant teachers learning for the information age

This study investigated how experienced teachers learned Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) during their professional development. With the introduction of ICT, experienced teachers encountered change becoming virtually displaced persons – digital immigrants; new settlers – endeavouring to obtain digital citizenship in order to survive in the information age. In the process, these teachers moved from learning how to push buttons, to applying software, and finally to changing their practice. They learned collectively and individually, in communities and networks, like immigrants and adult learners: by doing, experimenting and reflecting on ICT. Unfortunately, for these teachers-as-pedagogues, their focus on pedagogical theory during the action research they conducted, was not fully investigated or embraced during the year-long study. This study used a participant observation qualitative methodology to follow teachers in their university classroom. Interviews were conducted and documentation collected and verified by the teacher educator. The application of Kolb‘s, Gardner‘s, and Vygotsky‘s work allowed for the observation of these teachers within their sociocultural contexts. Kolb‘s work helped to understand their learning processes and Gardner‘s work indicated the learning abilities that these teachers valued in the new ICT environment. Meanwhile Vygotsky‘s work – and in particular three concepts, uchit, perezhivanija, and mislenija – presented a richer and more informed basis to understand immigration and change. Finally, this research proposes that teachers learn ICT through what is termed a hyperuchit model, consisting of developments; action; interaction; and reflection. The recommendation is that future teacher university ICT professional learning incorporates this hyperuchit model

Experienced teachers and multiple intelligences

In the world of the Information Age, digital natives (students) are being taught by digital immigrants (experienced teachers). These digital immigrants prefer to employ a number of abilities or multiple intelligences (Gardner 1983) to learn about software that can be beneficial to their students. As experienced teachers with limited ICT exposure, they are interested in: learning how to push buttons (P), thinking how to apply software to their practice (A) and are willing to change their practice using ICT (C). This paper discusses a study of experienced teachers with limited ICT exposure and their preferred way of learning, as they PAC for the information age.

Doctoral work as boundary-riding and boundary-breaking

This chapter considers the tension between candidates being ‘disciplined in the discipline of the discipline’ and producing significant original knowledge to earn their doctorate. That is, learning about the disciplinary boundaries within which their doctorates are conducted, and learning how to ‘push’ those boundaries with sufficient originality in order to be ‘doctored’. For the purposes of this chapter, ‘doctoral work’ embraces all those forms of work and their workers that contribute to doctoral process. Supervisors (advisers) and candidates (students) are the obvious workers, but then there are those whose work it is to support doctoral work; in particular, administrators, counsellors, postgraduate students’ associations, and those ‘scholarly friends’ the librarians.

An emergency response to literacy : NAPLAN on MySchool

This article considers the ‘unintended consequences’ of the publication of the NAPLAN results on the ‘MySchool’ website, and what that has meant for leadership teams, teachers, students and parents in many schools. This article is written from the data cited in the VATE submission to the Australian Federal Senate Inquiry into ‘unintended consequences’ of NAPLAN, but does not represent the official position of the association – it represents my own views and the views of some of the membership who responded to the survey. This said, most of the data we collected was extremely negative towards NAPLAN, and there were fewer than five of the 88 respondents who had positive things to say about NAPLAN. Obviously teachers who felt the effects more strongly were more motivated to participate, but even accounting for this, the data collected showed a significant number of teachers and schools who were experiencing extremely negative impacts from the testing and publication regime. In this article I have theorised that one of the consequences of this has been to push some schools into acting in an emergency mode, triaging their literacy curriculum in an attempt to perform better in NAPLAN.

Bridging the copyright and licensing knowledge gap

Objectives: The purpose of this project was to examine the copyright and licensing knowledge gap of academic staff to identify their current understanding of, and attitudes towards, copyright, licensing and the open access movement in relation to the content they use, create, and share in their teaching and research practice. The motivation behind this study was to gather information to assist the Library in creating and providing effective information resources and training for academic staff.

Methods: An anonymous online survey was distributed to Faculty of Health academic staff at Deakin University. Seventy individuals in the Faculty of Health completed the survey.

Results: The results suggested that most of the academics have used content created by others in their teaching materials, but they are not confident about complying with copyright or licensing conditions whilst doing so. Most had not posted any of their own content online, but would generally be willing for it to be used by others, with attribution. Around half had never posted their published articles in an institutional or discipline repository, but again, would be willing for them to be used for educational purposes. Most academics have never shared their research data online, and some were very unwilling to do so - despite current pushes to broaden access to research data sets. Finally, most had never applied a Creative Commons licence to a piece of work, and over half were unaware of what rights they had retained under publishing agreements for their work. It was strongly indicated that an informational website would be very helpful in providing guidance around topics of copyright, licensing and sharing.

Conclusions: Results were largely consistent with other similar studies conducted around these topics. There is a clear role for librarians to continue providing such training and resources as the push for Open Access resources, publishing, and data only gains momentum.

A block-aware hybrid data dissemination with hotspot elimination in wireless sensor network

As a significant milestone in the data dissemination of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the comb-needle (CN) model was developed to dynamically balance the sensor data pushing and pulling during hybrid data dissemination. Unfortunately, the hybrid push-pull data dissemination strategy may overload some sensor nodes and form the hotspots that consume energy significantly. This usually leads to the collapse of the network at a very early stage. In the past decade, although many energy-aware dynamic data dissemination methods have been proposed to alleviate the hotspots issue, the block characteristic of sensor nodes has been overlooked and how to offload traffic from hot blocks with low energy through long-distance hybrid dissemination remains an open problem. In this paper, we developed a block-aware data dissemination model to balance the inter-block energy and eliminate the spreading of intra-block hotspots. Through the clustering mechanism based on geography and energy, "similar" large-scale sensor nodes can be efficiently grouped into specific blocks to form the global block information (GBI). Based on GBI, the long-distance block-cross hybrid algorithms are further developed by effectively aggregating inter-block and intra-block data disseminations. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the capability and the efficiency of the proposed approach. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Harmonisation and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods

After many years of negotiation, the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (“CISG”) came into force in 1988. Today, 62 states have adopted the CISG. Together these countries account for over two-thirds of all world trade.2 On this basis alone, the CISG is an outstanding success in the legal harmonisation of the law governing the international sale of goods. However, the CISG has its critics and much comment has been made on the failure of the CISG to achieve its goal of promoting international trade through a body of uniform rules.The primary motivation driving the push for a harmonised law on the international sale of goods is economic: a harmonised law makes it easier and more efficient for the business person to sell and buy goods across state borders. However, the engine driving the push for harmonisation is political and cultural; and the task of creating the harmonised law belongs to the diplomat.3 A study of the CISG demonstrates that the political and cultural demands on the diplomat also act as shackles that restrain the achievement of a harmonised law.This paper will consider the CISG and discuss the constraints on treaty making as a mechanism for legal harmonisation. Part one discusses the constraints faced when creating a uniform text.Part two discusses the problems with the text of the CISG that result from the negotiation process. Finally, part three discusses the constraints faced in maintaining the uniformity of the CISG.

Working with policy and regulatory factors to implement universal design in the built environment: the Australian experience

Built environments that are usable by all provide opportunities for engagement in meaningful occupations. However, enabling them in day to day design processes and practice is problematic for relevant professions. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain greater understanding of the policy and regulatory influences that promote or hinder the uptake of universal design in built environments, to inform better future design. Focus groups or telephone interviews were undertaken with 28 key building industry and disability stakeholders in Australia. Four themes were identified: the difficulties of definition; the push or pull of regulations and policy; the role of formal standards; and, shifting the focus of design thinking. The findings highlight the complexity of working within policy and regulatory contexts when implementing universal design. Occupational therapists working with colleagues from other professions must be aware of these influences, and develop the skills to work with them for successful practice.

Climate change as an unexpected co-factor promoting coral eating seastar (Acanthaster planci) outbreaks

Coral reefs face a crisis due to local and global anthropogenic stressors. A large proportion of the ~50% coral loss on the Great Barrier Reef has been attributed to outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns-seastar (COTS). A widely assumed cause of primary COTS outbreaks is increased larval survivorship due to higher food availability, linked with anthropogenic runoff . Our experiment using a range of algal food concentrations at three temperatures representing present day average and predicted future increases, demonstrated a strong influence of food concentration on development is modulated by temperature. A 2°C increase in temperature led to a 4.2–4.9 times (at Day 10) or 1.2–1.8 times (Day 17) increase in late development larvae. A model indicated that food was the main driver, but that temperature was an important modulator of development. For instance, at 5000 cells ml−1 food, a 2°C increase may shorten developmental time by 30% and may increase the probability of survival by 240%. The main contribution of temperature is to ‘push’ well-fed larvae faster to settlement. We conclude that warmer sea temperature is an important co-factor promoting COTS outbreaks.

A qualitative exploration of body image experiences of women progressing through pregnancy

BACKGROUND: Pregnancy provides an interesting challenge to body image theories in that the natural physiological changes push women further from the socioculturally prescribed thin ideal which these theories hinge upon. The impact that these significant physiological changes have on the woman's body image during pregnancy may depend on the extent to which they retain or revise the ideal. However, little is known about body image experiences during pregnancy. AIM: To provide a comprehensive exploration of the body image experiences of pregnant women. METHODS: Individual structured interviews were conducted with 19 currently pregnant women. Transcriptions were analysed using a thematic content analysis approach. FINDINGS: Themes extracted from the qualitative data included: (1) women's body image experiences during pregnancy were complex and changing, and shaped by the salience of specific body parts, the women's expectations for future changes to their body within the perinatal period, the functionality of the body, and their experience of maternity clothing, (2) women were able to negotiate the changes to their bodies as they recognised the functionality of the pregnant body, (3) women were surprised by the public nature of the pregnant body, (4) partner support and positive feedback about the pregnant body was highly valued, and (5) the importance of open communication around weight and body image in antenatal healthcare. DISCUSSION: Our findings highlight the need for the adaptation and expansion of existing body image theories to be used as a framework for women's experiences of pregnancy.