Investigating homework as a social practice : a qualitative approach

This thesis examines the social practice of homework. It explores how homework is shaped by the discourses, policies and guidelines in circulation in a society at any given time with particular reference to one school district in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. This study investigates how contemporary homework reconstitutes the home as a pedagogical site where the power of the institution of schooling circulates regularly from school to home. It examines how the educational system shapes the organization of family life and how family experiences with homework may be different in different sites depending on the accessibility of various forms of cultural capital. This study employs a qualitative approach, incorporating multiple case studies, and is complemented by insights from institutional ethnography and critical discourse analysis. It draws on the theoretical concepts of Foucault including power and power relations, and governmentality and surveillance, as well as Bourdieu’s concepts of economic, social and cultural capital for analysis. It employs concepts from Bourdieu’s work as they have been expanded on by researchers including Reay (1998), Lareau (2000), and Griffith and Smith (2005). The studies of these researchers allowed for an examination of homework as it related to families and mothers’ work. Smith’s (1987; 1999) concepts of ruling relations, mothers’ unpaid labour, and the engine of inequality were also employed in the analysis. Family interviews with ten volunteer families, teacher focus group sessions with 15 teachers from six schools, homework artefacts, school newsletters, homework brochures, and publicly available assessment and evaluation policy documents from one school district were analyzed. From this analysis key themes emerged and the findings are documented throughout five data analysis chapters. This study shows a change in education in response to a system shaped by standards, accountability and testing. It documents an increased transference of educational responsibility from one educational stakeholder to another. This transference of responsibility shifts downward until it eventually reaches the family in the form of homework and educational activities. Texts in the form of brochures and newsletters, sent home from school, make available to parents specific subject positions that act as instruments of normalization. These subject positions promote a particular ‘ideal’ family that has access to certain types of cultural capital needed to meet the school’s expectations. However, the study shows that these resources are not equally available to all and some families struggle to obtain what is necessary to complete educational activities in the home. The increase in transference of educational work from the school to the home results in greater work for parents, particularly mothers. As well, consideration is given to mother’s role in homework and how, in turn, classroom instructional practices are sometimes dependent on the work completed at home with differential effects for children. This study confirms previous findings that it is mothers who assume the greatest role in the educational trajectory of their children. An important finding in this research is that it is not only middle-class mothers who dedicate extensive time working hard to ensure their children’s educational success; working-class mothers also make substantial contributions of time and resources to their children’s education. The assignments and educational activities distributed as homework require parents’ knowledge of technical school pedagogy to help their children. Much of the homework being sent home from schools is in the area of literacy, particularly reading, but requires parents to do more than read with children. A key finding is that the practices of parents are changing and being reconfigured by the expectations of schools in regard to reading. Parents are now being required to monitor and supervise children’s reading, as well as help children complete reading logs, written reading responses, and follow up questions. The reality of family life as discussed by the participants in this study does not match the ‘ideal’ as portrayed in the educational documents. Homework sessions often create frustrations and tensions between parents and children. Some of the greatest struggles for families were created by mathematical homework, homework for those enrolled in the French Immersion program, and the work required to complete Literature, Heritage and Science Fair projects. Even when institutionalized and objectified capital was readily available, many families still encountered struggles when trying to carry out the assigned educational tasks. This thesis argues that homework and education-related activities play out differently in different homes. Consideration of this significance may assist educators to better understand and appreciate the vast difference in families and the ways in which each family can contribute to their children’s educational trajectory.

Calculation of dose kernels for radiotherapy applications using the GEANT 4 Monte Carlo toolkit

Dose kernels may be used to calculate dose distributions in radiotherapy (as described by Ahnesjo et al., 1999). Their calculation requires use of Monte Carlo methods, usually by forcing interactions to occur at a point. The Geant4 Monte Carlo toolkit provides a capability to force interactions to occur in a particular volume. We have modified this capability and created a Geant4 application to calculate dose kernels in cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical scoring systems. The simulation considers monoenergetic photons incident at the origin of a 3 m x 3 x 9 3 m water volume. Photons interact via compton, photo-electric, pair production, and rayleigh scattering. By default, Geant4 models photon interactions by sampling a physical interaction length (PIL) for each process. The process returning the smallest PIL is then considered to occur. In order to force the interaction to occur within a given length, L_FIL, we scale each PIL according to the formula: PIL_forced = L_FIL 9 (1 - exp(-PIL/PILo)) where PILo is a constant. This ensures that the process occurs within L_FIL, whilst correctly modelling the relative probability of each process. Dose kernels were produced for an incident photon energy of 0.1, 1.0, and 10.0 MeV. In order to benchmark the code, dose kernels were also calculated using the EGSnrc Edknrc user code. Identical scoring systems were used; namely, the collapsed cone approach of the Edknrc code. Relative dose difference images were then produced. Preliminary results demonstrate the ability of the Geant4 application to reproduce the shape of the dose kernels; median relative dose differences of 12.6, 5.75, and 12.6 % were found for an incident photon energy of 0.1, 1.0, and 10.0 MeV respectively.

An accurate numerical scheme for the contraction of a bubble in a Hele-Shaw cell

We report on an accurate numerical scheme for the evolution of an inviscid bubble in radial Hele-Shaw flow, where the nonlinear boundary effects of surface tension and kinetic undercooling are included on the bubble-fluid interface. As well as demonstrating the onset of the Saffman-Taylor instability for growing bubbles, the numerical method is used to show the effect of the boundary conditions on the separation (pinch-off) of a contracting bubble into multiple bubbles, and the existence of multiple possible asymptotic bubble shapes in the extinction limit. The numerical scheme also allows for the accurate computation of bubbles which pinch off very close to the theoretical extinction time, raising the possibility of computing solutions for the evolution of bubbles with non-generic extinction behaviour.

International trends in early childhood education for sustainability

Early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) is an emerging field within education – a synthesis of early childhood education and education for sustainability. As a distinct field of educational inquiry and practice, it is less than 20 years old in Australia. My personal story is one that emerged from teaching Aboriginal children in an Indigenous community. These experiences made me question the marginalization of Indigenous peoples in Australian society, the colonizing impacts of education, gave me deeper understandings of human-environment interactions, and the effects of poverty and powerlessness on options for Indigenous people in Australia and elsewhere where people and their lands have been exploited. These experiences saw me return to university to undertake a degree in environmental studies to help me better understand the nexus between society, environment and economy. Hence my background in education for sustainability comes as much from the social sciences as from the biological/ecological sciences and shapes my orientation to my work in ECEFS...

Unmasking workshop ecology in applied performance

This practice-led research enquiry identifies, develops and illustrates workshop ecology in Applied Performance. It explores how Applied Performance forms are applied in and transformed through action in two distinct community-learning settings. The research is undertaken in two performance sites. The first, involving an executive leadership program addressing complex project management for Australia's Defence Materiel Organisation in Canberra, Australia. The second, a sexual health, HIV and AIDS education program to raise awareness and encourage the prevention of transmission of sexual diseases within Karkar Island, Papua New Guinea. The research strategies draw upon a mixed method approach involving practice-led research participant observation. The findings from each performance site show how the workshop ecology shapes and transforms performance forms as they are applied and influences the degree to which they are effective. It is anticipated that the findings from this research will assist Applied Performance practitioners to more carefully consider workshop ecology in the design and delivery of Applied Performances.

The water catchment : fast forward to the past

The Water Catchment: fast forward to the past comprises two parts: a creative piece and an exegesis. The methodology is Creative Practice as Research; a process of critical reflection, where I observe how researching the exegesis, in my case analysing how the social reality of an era in which an author writes affects their writing of the protagonist's journey, and how this in turn shapes how I write the hero's pathway in the creative piece. The genre in which the protagonist's journey is charted and represented is dystopian young adult fiction; hence my creative piece, The Water Catchment, is a novel manuscript for a dystopian young adult fantasy. It is a speculative novel set in a possible future and poses (and answers) the question: What might happen if water becomes the most powerful commodity on earth? There are two communities, called 'worlds' to create a barrier and difference where physical ones are not in evidence. A battle ensues over unfair conditions and access to water. In the end the protagonist, Caitlyn, takes over leadership heralding a new era of co-operation and water management between the two worlds. The exegesis examines how the hero's pathway, the journey towards knowledge and resolution, is best explored in young adult literature through dystopian narratives. I explore how the dystopian worlds of Ursula Le Guin's first and last books of The Earthsea Quartet are foundational, and lay this examination over an analysis of both the hero's pathway within and the social contexts outside of the novels. Dystopian narratives constitute a liberating space for the adolescent protagonist between the reliance on adults in childhood and the world of adults. In young adult literature such narratives provide fertile ground to explore those aspects informing an adolescent's future.

Imagining neighbourhood-based community : an autoethnography

This research is an autoethnographic investigation of consumption experiences, public and quasi-public spaces, and their relationship to community within an inner city neighbourhood. The research specifically focuses on the gentrifying inner city, where class-based processes of change can have implications for people’s abilities to remain within, or feel connected to place. However, the thesis draws on broader theories of the throwntogetherness of the contemporary city (e.g., Amin and Thrift, 2002; Massey 2005) to argue that the city is a space where place-based meanings cannot be seen to be fixed, and are instead better understood as events of place – based on ever shifting interrelations between the trajectories of people and things. This perspective argues the experience of belonging to community is not just born of a social encounter, but also draws on the physical and symbolic elements of the context in which it is situated. The thesis particularly explores the ways people construct identifications within this shifting urban environment. As such, consumption practices and spaces offer one important lens through which to explore the interplay of the physical, social and symbolic. Consumer research tells us that consumption practices can facilitate experiences in which identity-defining meaning can be generated and shared. Consumption spaces can also support different kinds of collective identification – as anchoring realms for specific cultural groups or exposure realms that enable individuals to share in the identification practices of others with limited risk (Aubert-Gamet & Cova, 1999). Furthermore, the consumption-based lifestyles that gentrifying inner city neighbourhoods both support and encourage can also mean that consumption practices may be a key reason that people are moving through public space. That is, consumption practices and spaces may provide a purpose for which – and spatial frame against which – our everyday interactions and connections with people and objects are undertaken within such neighbourhoods. The purpose of this investigation then was to delve into the subjectivities at the heart of identifying with places, using the lens of our consumption-based experiences within them. The enquiry describes individual and collective identifications and emotional connections, and explores how these arise within and through our experiences within public and quasi-public spaces. It then theorises these ‘imaginings’ as representative of an experience of community. To do so, it draws on theories of imagination and its relation to community. Theories of imagined community remind us that both the values and identities of community are held together by projections that create relational links out of objects and shared practices (e.g., Benedict Anderson, 2006; Urry, 2000). Drawing on broader theories of the processes of the imagination, this thesis suggests that an interplay between reflexivity and fantasy – which are products of the critical and the fascinated consciousness – plays a role in this imagining of community (e.g., Brann, 1991; Ricoeur, 1994). This thesis therefore seeks to explore how these processes of imagining are implicated within the construction of an experience of belonging to neighbourhood-based community through consumption practices and the public and quasi-public spaces that frame them. The key question of this thesis is how do an individual’s consumption practices work to construct an imagined presence of neighbourhood-based community? Given the focus on public and quasi-public spaces and our experiences within them, the research also asked how do experiences in the public and quasi-public spaces that frame these practices contribute to the construction of this imagined presence? This investigation of imagining community through consumption practices is based on my own experiences of moving to, and attempting to construct community connections within, an inner city neighbourhood in Melbourne, Australia. To do so, I adopted autoethnographic methodology. This is because autoethnography provides the methodological tools through which one can explore and make visible the subjectivities inherent within the lived experiences of interest to the thesis (Ellis, 2004). I describe imagining community through consumption as an extension of a placebased self. This self is manifest through personal identification in consumption spaces that operate as anchoring realms for specific cultural groups, as well as through a broader imagining of spaces, people, and practices as connected through experiences within realms of exposure. However, this is a process that oscillates through cycles of identification; these anchor one within place personally, but also disrupt those attachments. This instability can force one to question the orientation and motives of these imaginings, and reframe them according to different spaces and reference groups in ways that can also work to construct a more anonymous and, conversely, more achievable collective identification. All the while, the ‘I’ at the heart of this identification is in an ongoing process of negotiation, and similarly, the imagined community is never complete. That is, imagining community is a negotiation, with people and spaces – but mostly with the different identifications of the self. This thesis has been undertaken by publication, and thus the process of imagining community is explored and described through four papers. Of these, the first two focus on specific types of consumption spaces – a bar and a shopping centre – and consider the ways that anchoring and exposure within these spaces support the process of imagining community. The third paper examines the ways that the public and quasi-public spaces that make up the broader neighbourhood context are themselves throwntogether as a realm of exposure, and considers the ways this shapes my imaginings of this neighbourhood as community. The final paper develops a theory of imagined community, as a process of comparison and contrast with imagined others, to provide a summative conceptualisation of the first three papers. The first paper, chapter five, explores this process of comparison and contrast in relation to authenticity, which in itself is a subjective assessment of identity. This chapter was written as a direct response to the recent work of Zukin (2010), and draws on theories of authenticity as applied to personal and collective identification practices by consumer researchers Arnould and Price (2000). In this chapter, I describe how my assessments of the authenticity of my anchoring experiences within one specific consumption space, a neighbourhood bar, are evaluated in comparison to my observations of and affective reactions to the social practices of another group of residents in a different consumption space, the local shopping centre. Chapter five also provides an overview of the key sites and experiences that are considered in more detail in the following two chapters. In chapter six, I again draw on my experiences within the bar introduced in chapter five, this time to explore the process of developing a regular identity within a specific consumption space. Addressing the popular theory of the cafe or bar as third place (Oldenburg, 1999), this paper considers the purpose of developing anchored relationships with people within specific consumption spaces, and explores the different ways this may be achieved in an urban context where the mobilities and lifestyle practices of residents complicate the idea of a consumption space as an anchoring or third place. In doing so, this chapter also considers the manner in which this type of regular identification may be seen to be the beginning of the process of imagining community. In chapter seven, I consider the ways the broader public spaces of the neighbourhood work cumulatively to expose different aspects of its identity by following my everyday movements through the neighbourhood’s shopping centre and main street. Drawing on the theories of Urry (2000), Massey (2005), and Amin (2007, 2008), this chapter describes how these spaces operate as exposure realms, enabling the expression of different senses of the neighbourhood’s spaces, times, cultures, and identities through their physical, social, and symbolic elements. Yet they also enable them to be united: through habitual pathways, group practices of appropriation of space, and memory traces that construct connections between objects and experiences. This chapter describes this as a process of exposure to these different elements. Our imagination begins to expand the scope of the frames onto which it projects an imagined presence; it searches for patterns within the physical, social, and symbolic environment and draws connections between people and practices across spaces. As the final paper, chapter eight, deduces, it is in making these connections that one constructs the objects and shared practices of imagined community. This chapter describes this as an imagining of neighbourhood as a place-based extension of the self, and then explores the ways in which I drew on physical, social, and symbolic elements in an attempt to construct a fit between the neighbourhood’s offerings and my desires for place-based identity definition. This was as a cumulative but fragmented process, in which positive and negative experiences of interaction and identification with people and things were searched for their potential to operate as the objects and shared practices of imagined community. This chapter describes these connections as constructed through interplay between reflexivity and fantasy, as the imagination seeks balance between desires for experiences of belonging, and the complexities of constructing them within the throwntogether context of the contemporary city. The conclusion of the thesis describes the process of imagining community as a reflexive fantasy, that is, as a product of both the critical and fascinated consciousness (Ricoeur, 1994). It suggests that the fascinated consciousness imbues experiences with hope and desire, which the reflexive imagining can turn to disappointment and shame as it critically reflects on the reality of those fascinated projections. At the same time, the reflexive imagination also searches the practices of others for affirmation of those projections, effectively seeking to prove the reality of the fantasy of the imagined community.

(Re)imagining the world : children's literature's response to changing times

(Re)Imagining the world: Children’s Literature’s Response to Changing Times considers how writers of fiction for children imagine ‘the world’, not one universal world, but different worlds: imaginary, strange, familiar, even monstrous worlds. The chapters in this collection discuss how fiction for children engages with some of the changes brought about by new technologies, information literacy, consumerism, migration, politics, different family structures, cosmopolitanism, and new and old monsters. They also invite us to think about how memory shapes our understanding of the past, and how fiction engages our emotions, our capacity to empathize, our desire to discover, and what the future may hold. The contributors bring different perspectives from education, postcolonial studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, childhood studies, postmodernism, and the social sciences. With a wide coverage of texts from different countries, and scholarly and lively discussions, this collection is itself a testament to the power of the human imagination and the significance of children’s literature in the education of young people.

Development of optimal designs of insulated rail joints

Proper functioning of Insulated Rail Joints (IRJs) is essential for the safe operation of the railway signalling systems and broken rail identification circuitries. The Conventional IRJ (CIRJ) resembles structural butt joints consisting of two pieces of rails connected together through two joint bars on either side of their web and the assembly is held together through pre-tensioned bolts. As the IRJs should maintain electrical insulation between the two rails, a gap between the rail ends must be retained at all times and all metal contacting surfaces should be electrically isolated from each other using non-conductive material. At the gap, the rail ends lose longitudinal continuity and hence the vertical sections of the rail ends are often severely damaged, especially at the railhead, due to the passage of wheels compared to other continuously welded rail sections. Fundamentally, the reason for the severe damage can be related to the singularities of the wheel-rail contact pressure and the railhead stress. No new generation designs that have emerged in the market to date have focussed on this fundamental; they only have provided attention to either the higher strength materials or the thickness of the sections of various components of the IRJs. In this thesis a novel method of shape optimisation of the railhead is developed to eliminate the pressure and stress singularities through changes to the original sharp corner shaped railhead into an arc profile in the longitudinal direction. The optimal shape of the longitudinal railhead profile has been determined using three nongradient methods in search of accuracy and efficiency: (1) Grid Search Method; (2) Genetic Algorithm Method and (3) Hybrid Genetic Algorithm Method. All these methods have been coupled with a parametric finite element formulation for the evaluation of the objective function for each iteration or generation depending on the search algorithm employed. The optimal shape derived from these optimisation methods is termed as Stress Minimised Railhead (SMRH) in this thesis. This optimal SMRH design has exhibited significantly reduced stress concentration that remains well below the yield strength of the head hardened rail steels and has shifted the stress concentration location away from the critical zone of the railhead end. The reduction in the magnitude and the relocation of the stress concentration in the SMRH design has been validated through a full scale wheel – railhead interaction test rig; Railhead strains under the loaded wheels have been recorded using a non-contact digital image correlation method. Experimental study has confirmed the accuracy of the numerical predications. Although the SMRH shaped IRJs eliminate stress singularities, they can still fail due to joint bar or bolt hole cracking; therefore, another conceptual design, termed as Embedded IRJ (EIRJ) in this thesis, with no joint bars and pre-tensioned bolts has been developed using a multi-objective optimisation formulation based on the coupled genetic algorithm – parametric finite element method. To achieve the required structural stiffness for the safe passage of the loaded wheels, the rails were embedded into the concrete of the post tensioned sleepers; the optimal solutions for the design of the EIRJ is shown to simplify the design through the elimination of the complex interactions and failure modes of the various structural components of the CIRJ. The practical applicability of the optimal shapes SMRH and EIRJ is demonstrated through two illustrative examples, termed as improved designs (IMD1 & IMD2) in this thesis; IMD1 is a combination of the CIRJ and the SMRH designs, whilst IMD2 is a combination of the EIRJ and SMRH designs. These two improved designs have been simulated for two key operating (speed and wagon load) and design (wheel diameter) parameters that affect the wheel-rail contact; the effect of these parameters has been found to be negligible to the performance of the two improved designs and the improved designs are in turn found far superior to the current designs of the CIRJs in terms of stress singularities and deformation under the passage of the loaded wheels. Therefore, these improved designs are expected to provide longer service life in relation to the CIRJs.

Lattice-free models of cell invasion : discrete simulations and travelling waves

Invasion waves of cells play an important role in development, disease and repair. Standard discrete models of such processes typically involve simulating cell motility, cell proliferation and cell-to-cell crowding effects in a lattice-based framework. The continuum-limit description is often given by a reaction–diffusion equation that is related to the Fisher–Kolmogorov equation. One of the limitations of a standard lattice-based approach is that real cells move and proliferate in continuous space and are not restricted to a predefined lattice structure. We present a lattice-free model of cell motility and proliferation, with cell-to-cell crowding effects, and we use the model to replicate invasion wave-type behaviour. The continuum-limit description of the discrete model is a reaction–diffusion equation with a proliferation term that is different from lattice-based models. Comparing lattice based and lattice-free simulations indicates that both models lead to invasion fronts that are similar at the leading edge, where the cell density is low. Conversely, the two models make different predictions in the high density region of the domain, well behind the leading edge. We analyse the continuum-limit description of the lattice based and lattice-free models to show that both give rise to invasion wave type solutions that move with the same speed but have very different shapes. We explore the significance of these differences by calibrating the parameters in the standard Fisher–Kolmogorov equation using data from the lattice-free model. We conclude that estimating parameters using this kind of standard procedure can produce misleading results.

Gradual training of cascaded shape regression for facial landmark localization and pose estimation

Facial landmarks play an important role in face recognition. They serve different steps of the recognition such as pose estimation, face alignment, and local feature extraction. Recently, cascaded shape regression has been proposed to accurately locate facial landmarks. A large number of weak regressors are cascaded in a sequence to fit face shapes to the correct landmark locations. In this paper, we propose to improve the method by applying gradual training. With this training, the regressors are not directly aimed to the true locations. The sequence instead is divided into successive parts each of which is aimed to intermediate targets between the initial and the true locations. We also investigate the incorporation of pose information in the cascaded model. The aim is to find out whether the model can be directly used to estimate head pose. Experiments on the Annotated Facial Landmarks in the Wild database have shown that the proposed method is able to improve the localization and give accurate estimates of pose.

The Cairns abortion trial : deviance, stigma and the spoiled identity

In 2010 a couple in Cairns were charged, and later found not guilty, of illegally obtaining a medical abortion through the use of medication imported from overseas. The court case reignited the contentious debate surrounding the illegality and social acceptance of abortion in Queensland, Australia. Based on a critical discourse analysis of 150 online news media articles covering the Cairns trial, this paper argues that the media shapes perceptions of deviance and stigma in relation to abortion through the use of language. In this case, the Cairns couple were positioned as deviant for pursuing abortion on the basis that they were rejecting the social norm of motherhood. This paper identifies three key themes evident in the articles analysed which contribute to shaping the construction of deviance – the humanising of the foetus, the stereotyping of the traditional female role of mother, and the demonising of women who choose abortion. This paper argues that the use of specific language in media coverage of abortion has the power to disrespect and invalidate the experiences, rights, and health of women who choose to terminate pregnancies.

Reimagining learning spaces : A research report for the Queensland Council for Social Science Innovation

The purpose of the Reimagining Learning Spaces project was to conduct an empirical study that would result in findings to inform the design and use of physical school facilities and examine the ways in which these constructions influence pedagogy. The study focused on newly-established school libraries in Queensland, many of which had been established with funding from the Federal Government’s Building the Education Revolution economic stimulus program. To explore the field, the study sought multiple perspectives that included those of school students as well as teacher-librarians and other key school staff, addressing the following focus question: - How does the physical environment of school libraries influence pedagogic practices and learning outcomes? Further research questions that guided the inquiry included: - What are the implications for teacher-librarians when transitioning into a new library learning space? - How do members of the school community (principals, teachers, teacher-librarians and students) experience the creation of a new school library learning space? - How do school students imagine the design and use of engaging library learning spaces? An extensive review explored Australian and international literature based on the research questions, focused on the following major areas: • School library renewal: trends in reimagining the place of libraries in virtual and real space • School libraries as learning spaces: the expanded role of school libraries in whole-school pedagogical support. • The role of teacher-librarians in new times • Built environments and the implications for learning • Learners and learning in newly established spaces • Learning space design: perspectives, research and principles • Pedagogical principles and voices of experience • Transitions to newly created learning spaces Approach Using an innovative qualitative research design, Reimagining Learning Spaces investigated learner and teacher perspectives across three intersecting domains exploring: - Imagined spaces: learners’ imaginative concepts of learning within engaging learning environments; - Emerging spaces: experiences of teacher-librarians in the transition into new spaces for learning, and - Established spaces: learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of ways in which the physical environment influences and shapes pedagogy. Seven schools that had recently benefitted from the BER program became the research sites at which data were collected from teacher-librarians, teachers, school leaders and students. With this range of participants, an appropriately diverse set of data collection tools was developed, including video interviews, drawings, and focus groups. Evocative narrative case studies (Simons 2009) were developed from the data, representing the voices of users of learning spaces. Key findings The study’s findings are presented in this report and complemented by an array of visual materials on the project web site http:// The report includes: • a set of seven cases studies that reveal nuanced experiences of designing and creating school libraries, based on the narrative of key stakeholders (teacher-librarians, teachers, students and principals) • thematic discussion of student imaginings of their ideal school library, based on drawings and narrative of students at the seven case study schools • critical analysis of the case study and student imaginings, focusing on implications for (re)designing school learning spaces and pedagogy, and responding to the study’s overarching research question - .17 recommendations to support: designing, transitioning and reimagining pedagogy; leadership; and policy development

Metal hexaborides with Sc, Ti or Mn

Comparison of well-determined single crystal data for stoichiometric, or near-stoichiometric, metal hexaborides con-firm previously identified lattice parameter trends using powder diffraction. Trends for both divalent and trivalent forms suggest that potential new forms for synthesis include Sc and Mn hexaborides. Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations for KB6, CaB6, YB6, LaB6, boron octahedral clusters and Sc and Mn forms, show that the shapes of bonding orbitals are defined by the boron framework. Inclusion of metal into the boron framework induces a reduction in energy ranging from 1 eV to 6 eV increasing with ionic charge. For metals with d1 character, such a shift in energy brings a doubly degenerate band section along the G-M reciprocal space direction within the conduction bands tangential to the Fermi surface. ScB6 band structure and density of states calculations show directional and gap characteristics similar to those of YB6 and LaB6. These calculations for ScB6 suggest it may be possible to realize superconductivity in this compound if synthesized.

A simple method for fabricating 3-D multilayered composite scaffolds

One limitation of electrospinning stems from the charge build-up that occurs during processing, preventing further fibre deposition and limiting the scaffold overall thickness and hence their end-use in tissue engineering applications targeting large tissue defect repair. To overcome this, we have developed a technique in which thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) and electrospinning are combined. Thick three-dimensional, multilayered composite scaffolds were produced by simply stacking individual polycaprolactone (PCL) microfibrous electrospun discs into a cylindrical holder that was filled with a 3% poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) solution in dimethylsulfoxide (a good solvent for PLGA but a poor one for PCL). The construct was quenched in liquid nitrogen and the solvent removed by leaching out in cold water. This technique enables the fabrication of scaffolds composed principally of electrospun membranes that have no limit to their thickness. The mechanical properties of these scaffolds were assessed under both quasi-static and dynamic conditions. The multilayered composite scaffolds had similar compressive properties to 5% PCL scaffolds fabricated solely by the TIPS methodology. However, tensile tests demonstrated that the multilayered construct outperformed a scaffold made purely by TIPS, highlighting the contribution of the electrospun component of the composite scaffold to enhancing the overall mechanical property slate. Cell studies revealed cell infiltration principally from the scaffold edges under static seeding conditions. This fabrication methodology permits the rapid construction of thick, strong scaffolds from a range of biodegradable polymers often used in tissue engineering, and will be particularly useful when large dimension electrospun scaffolds are required.