A socially just rationale for an Australian curriculum? : a critical thematic policy analysis of political speeches in education (2007-2010)

In late 2007, newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd placed education reform on centre stage as a key policy in the Labor Party's agenda for social reform in Australia. A major policy strategy within this 'Education Revolution' was the development of a national curriculum, the Australian Curriculum Within this political context, this study is an investigation into how social justice and equity have been used in political speeches to justify the need for, and the nature of, Australia's first official national curriculum. The aim is to provide understandings into what is said or not said; who is included or excluded, represented or misrepresented; for what purpose; and for whose benefit. The study investigates political speeches made by Education Ministers between 2008 and 201 0; that is, from the inception of the Australian Curriculum to the release of the Phase 1 F - 10 draft curriculum documents in English, mathematics, science and history. Curriculum development is defined here as an ongoing process of complex conversations. To contextualise the process of curriculum development within Australia, the thesis commences with an initial review of curriculum development in this nation over the past three decades. It then frames this review within contemporary curriculum theory; in particular it calls upon the work of William Pinar and the key notions of currere and reconceptualised curriculum. This contextualisation work is then used as a foundation to examine how social justice and equity have been represented in political speeches delivered by the respective Education Ministers Julia Gillard and Peter Garrett at key junctures of Australian Curriculum document releases. A critical thematic policy analysis is the approach used to examine selected official speech transcripts released by the ministerial media centre through the DEEWR website. This approach provides a way to enable insights and understandings of representations of social justice and equity issues in the policy agenda. Broader social implications are also discussed. The project develops an analytic framework that enables an investigation into the framing of social justice and equity issues such as inclusion, equality, quality education, sharing of resources and access to learning opportunities in political speeches aligned with the development of the Australian Curriculum Through this analysis, the study adopts a focus on constructions of educationally disadvantaged students and how the solutions of 'fixing' teachers and providing the 'right' curriculum are presented as resolutions to the perceived problem. In this way, it aims to work towards offering insights into political justifications for a national curriculum in Australia from a social justice perspective.

Community college faculty's teaching social networks and their implications for librarians

Collaboration between faculty and librarians is an important topic of discussion and research among academic librarians. These partnerships between faculty and librarians are vital for enabling students to become lifelong learners through their information literacy education. This research developed an understanding of academic collaborators by analyzing a community college faculty's teaching social networks. A teaching social network, an original term generated in this study, is comprised of communications that influence faculty when they design and deliver their courses. The communication may be formal (e.g., through scholarly journals and professional development activities) and informal (e.g., through personal communication) through their network elements. Examples of the elements of a teaching social network may be department faculty, administration, librarians, professional development, and students. This research asked 'What is the nature of faculty's teaching social networks and what are the implications for librarians?' This study moves forward the existing research on collaboration, information literacy, and social network analysis. It provides both faculty and librarians with added insight into their existing and potential relationships. This research was undertaken using mixed methods. Social network analysis was the quantitative data collection methodology and the interview method was the qualitative technique. For the social network analysis data, a survey was sent to full-time faculty at Las Positas College, a community college, in California. The survey gathered the data and described the teaching social networks for faculty with respect to their teaching methods and content taught. Semi-structured interviews were conducted following the survey with a sub-set of survey respondents to understand why specific elements were included in their teaching social networks and to learn of ways for librarians to become an integral part of the teaching social networks. The majority of the faculty respondents were moderately influenced by the elements of their network except the majority of the potentials were weakly influenced by the elements in their network in their content taught. The elements with the most influence on both teaching methods and content taught were students, department faculty, professional development, and former graduate professors and coursework. The elements with the least influence on both aspects were public or academic librarians, and social media. The most popular roles for the elements were conversations about teaching, sharing ideas, tips for teaching, insights into teaching, suggestions for ways of teaching, and how to engage students. Librarians' weakly influenced faculty in their teaching methods and their content taught. The motivating factors for collaboration with librarians were that students learned how to research, students' research projects improved, faculty saved time by having librarians provide the instruction to students, and faculty built strong working relationships with librarians. The challenges of collaborating with librarians were inadequate teaching techniques used when librarians taught research orientations and lack of time. Ways librarians can be more integral in faculty's teaching social networks included: more workshops for faculty, more proactive interaction with faculty, and more one-on-one training sessions for faculty. Some of the recommendations for the librarians from this study were develop a strong rapport with faculty, librarians should build their services in information literacy from the point of view of the faculty instead of from the librarian perspective, use staff development funding to attend conferences and workshops to improve their teaching, develop more training sessions for faculty, increase marketing efforts of the librarian's instructional services, and seek grant opportunities to increase funding for the library. In addition, librarians and faculty should review the definitions of information literacy and move from a skills based interpretation to a learning process.

Beyond “Beyondness”

When the term “anti-aesthetic” emerged thirty years ago, it was presumed to stand in stark opposition to the “aesthetic.” Today the situation is less clear. While the seminars aim to move beyond this dichotomy, many of the participants doubt whether the anti-aesthetic still holds as an absolute distinction. Over the course of the conversations, other oppositions arise—such as art theory and criticism versus philosophical aesthetics, art history versus visual culture—but it is the debate over Modernism that most complicates moving beyond, to the next aesthetic paradigm.

Using images to communicate the hidden struggles of life on dialysis

Background: Nurse-patient communication in the hemodialysis context is unique given the amount of time spent together in a confined clinical room. Poor communication may lead to low quality nursing care and undesirable patient outcomes. Aim: To explore the use of images as a visual communication technique for nurses and patients in the hemodialysis context. Methods: Descriptive qualitative design. Fifty two cards containing specific photos, illustrations and words were used in conversations between patients (n = 9) and one of two nurse interviewers about being on hemodialysis. Interview transcripts were thematically analysed. Findings: An overall theme titled ‘revealing the hidden struggles of living on dialysis’ conceptually captured three sub-themes: (1) the increased importance of relationships; (2) the struggle with money; and (3) quality over quantity of life. The cards assisted in uncovering these often covert (to nurses) aspects of dialysis patients’ lives. Conclusion: Nurses may need to be aware of the dialysis patients’ hidden struggles which include the importance of relationships, financial issues and the importance of quality aspects such as travel. The use of images may assist in revealing the important issues for each patient struggling with the restrictive life that is imposed by dialysis.

Analysis of nonlinear sequences and streamciphers

Streamciphers are common cryptographic algorithms used to protect the confidentiality of frame-based communications like mobile phone conversations and Internet traffic. Streamciphers are ideal cryptographic algorithms to encrypt these types of traffic as they have the potential to encrypt them quickly and securely, and have low error propagation. The main objective of this thesis is to determine whether structural features of keystream generators affect the security provided by stream ciphers.These structural features pertain to the state-update and output functions used in keystream generators. Using linear sequences as keystream to encrypt messages is known to be insecure. Modern keystream generators use nonlinear sequences as keystream.The nonlinearity can be introduced through a keystream generator's state-update function, output function, or both. The first contribution of this thesis relates to nonlinear sequences produced by the well-known Trivium stream cipher. Trivium is one of the stream ciphers selected in a final portfolio resulting from a multi-year project in Europe called the ecrypt project. Trivium's structural simplicity makes it a popular cipher to cryptanalyse, but to date, there are no attacks in the public literature which are faster than exhaustive keysearch. Algebraic analyses are performed on the Trivium stream cipher, which uses a nonlinear state-update and linear output function to produce keystream. Two algebraic investigations are performed: an examination of the sliding property in the initialisation process and algebraic analyses of Trivium-like streamciphers using a combination of the algebraic techniques previously applied separately by Berbain et al. and Raddum. For certain iterations of Trivium's state-update function, we examine the sets of slid pairs, looking particularly to form chains of slid pairs. No chains exist for a small number of iterations.This has implications for the period of keystreams produced by Trivium. Secondly, using our combination of the methods of Berbain et al. and Raddum, we analysed Trivium-like ciphers and improved on previous on previous analysis with regards to forming systems of equations on these ciphers. Using these new systems of equations, we were able to successfully recover the initial state of Bivium-A.The attack complexity for Bivium-B and Trivium were, however, worse than exhaustive keysearch. We also show that the selection of stages which are used as input to the output function and the size of registers which are used in the construction of the system of equations affect the success of the attack. The second contribution of this thesis is the examination of state convergence. State convergence is an undesirable characteristic in keystream generators for stream ciphers, as it implies that the effective session key size of the stream cipher is smaller than the designers intended. We identify methods which can be used to detect state convergence. As a case study, theMixer streamcipher, which uses nonlinear state-update and output functions to produce keystream, is analysed. Mixer is found to suffer from state convergence as the state-update function used in its initialisation process is not one-to-one. A discussion of several other streamciphers which are known to suffer from state convergence is given. From our analysis of these stream ciphers, three mechanisms which can cause state convergence are identified.The effect state convergence can have on stream cipher cryptanalysis is examined. We show that state convergence can have a positive effect if the goal of the attacker is to recover the initial state of the keystream generator. The third contribution of this thesis is the examination of the distributions of bit patterns in the sequences produced by nonlinear filter generators (NLFGs) and linearly filtered nonlinear feedback shift registers. We show that the selection of stages used as input to a keystream generator's output function can affect the distribution of bit patterns in sequences produced by these keystreamgenerators, and that the effect differs for nonlinear filter generators and linearly filtered nonlinear feedback shift registers. In the case of NLFGs, the keystream sequences produced when the output functions take inputs from consecutive register stages are less uniform than sequences produced by NLFGs whose output functions take inputs from unevenly spaced register stages. The opposite is true for keystream sequences produced by linearly filtered nonlinear feedback shift registers.

Vote with your feet : hyperlocal polling for urban screens

Vote with Your Feet is a hyperlocal polling tool for urban screens that lets users express their opinion on current affairs. Similar to vox populi interviews on TV, it is meant to reflect the mindset of the community and its diversity. It shows one Yes/No question at a time and lets the user vote by stepping with their foot on one of two physical buttons. By not only displaying the local but also national results (taken from newspaper polls or TV news), it creates a sense of place and can spark offline conversations as well as making people think about their own opinion. As a tangible media installation that bridges physical and digital urban layers, the project empowers citizens and facilitates a bottom-up approach in terms of stimulating opinions and decision making (rather than broadcasting or automating). In a second iteration of the design, we want to encourage users to submit their own questions.

Effects of mobile phone distraction on drivers’ reaction times

Distraction resulting from mobile phone use whilst driving has been shown to increase the reaction times of drivers, thereby increasing the likelihood of a crash. This study compares the effects of mobile phone conversations on reaction times of drivers responding to traffic events that occur at different points in a driver’s field of view. The CARRS-Q Advanced Driving Simulator was used to test a group of young drivers on various simulated driving tasks including a traffic event that occurred within the driver’s central vision—a lead vehicle braking suddenly—and an event that occurred within the driver’s peripheral—a pedestrian entering a zebra crossing from a footpath. Thirty-two licensed drivers drove the simulator in three phone conditions: baseline (no phone conversation), and while engaged in hands-free and handheld phone conversations. The drivers were aged between 21 to 26 years and split evenly by gender. Differences in reaction times for an event in a driver’s central vision were not statistically significant across phone conditions, probably due to a lower speed selection by the distracted drivers. In contrast, the reaction times to detect an event that originated in a distracted driver’s peripheral vision were more than 50% longer compared to the baseline condition. A further statistical analysis revealed that deterioration of reaction times to an event in the peripheral vision was greatest for distracted drivers holding a provisional licence. Many critical events originate in a driver’s periphery, including vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians emerging from side streets. A reduction in the ability to detect these events while distracted presents a significant safety concern that must be addressed.

The ethical demands of settler colonial theory

This article explores the strengths and limitations of settler colonial theory (SCT) as a tool for non-Indigenous scholars seeking to disturb rather than re-enact colonial privilege. Based on an examination of recent Australian academic debates on settler colonialism and the Northern Territory intervention, we argue that SCT is useful in dehistoricizing colonialism, usually presented as an unfortunate but already transcended national past, and in revealing the intimate connections between settler emotions, knowledges, institutions and policies. Most importantly, it makes settler investments visible to settlers, in terms we understand and find hard to escape. However, as others have noted, SCT seems unable to transcend itself, in the sense that it posits a structural inevitability to the settler colonial relationship. We suggest that this structuralism can be mobilized by settler scholars in ways that delegitimize Indigenous resistance and reinforce violent colonial relationships. But while settlers come to stay and to erase Indigenous political existence, this does not mean that these intentions will be realized or must remain fixed. Non-Indigenous scholars should challenge the politically convenient conflation of settler desires and reality, and of the political present and the future. This article highlights these issues in order to begin to unlock the transformative potential of SCT, engaging settler scholars as political actors and arguing that this approach has the potential to facilitate conversations and alliances with Indigenous people. It is precisely by using the strengths of SCT that we can challenge its limitations; the theory itself places ethical demands on us as settlers, including the demand that we actively refuse its potential to re-empower our own academic voices and to marginalize Indigenous resistance.

The role of conflict in determining consensus on quality in Wikipedia articles

This paper presents research that investigated the role of conflict in the editorial process of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The study used a grounded approach to analyzing 147 conversations about quality from the archived history of the Wikipedia article 'Australia'. It found that conflict in Wikipedia is a generative friction, regulated by references to policy as part of a coordinated effort within the community to improve the quality of articles.

Communication models of institutional online communities : the role of the ABC cultural intermediary

The co-creation of cultural artefacts has been democratised given the recent technological affordances of information and communication technologies. Web 2.0 technologies have enabled greater possibilities of citizen inclusion within the media conversations of their nations. For example, the Australian audience has more opportunities to collaboratively produce and tell their story to a broader audience via the public service media (PSM) facilitated platforms of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). However, providing open collaborative production for the audience gives rise to the problem, how might the PSM manage the interests of all the stakeholders and align those interests with its legislated Charter? This paper considers this problem through the ABC’s user-created content participatory platform, ABC Pool and highlights the cultural intermediary as the role responsible for managing these tensions. This paper also suggests cultural intermediation is a useful framework for other media organisations engaging in co-creative activities with their audiences.

Communication models of institutional online communities : the role of the ABC cultural intermediary

The co-creation of cultural artefacts has been democratised given the recent technological affordances of information and communication technologies. Web 2.0 technologies have enabled greater possibilities of citizen inclusion within the media conversations of their nations. For example, the Australian audience has more opportunities to collaboratively produce and tell their story to a broader audience via the public service media (PSM) facilitated platforms of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). However, providing open collaborative production for the audience gives rise to the problem, how might the PSM manage the interests of all the stakeholders and align those interests with its legislated Charter? This paper considers this problem through the ABC’s user-created content participatory platform, ABC Pool and highlights the cultural intermediary as the role responsible for managing these tensions. This paper also suggests cultural intermediation is a useful framework for other media organisations engaging in co-creative activities with their audiences.

Re-imagining youth justice

Persistent high levels of recidivism among young offenders (Luke and Lind 2002; Weatherburn et al. 2012) and the over‐representation of Indigenous young people (Cunneen and White 2011; Snowball 2008; Tauri 2012) have long been features of youth justice in Australia. Other problems – such as the increased rates of young people committing sex offences (Dwyer 2011; O’Brien 2010), increasing numbers of young people criminalised for new offences such as ‘sexting’ (Lee and McGovern 2013), and increasing numbers of young female offenders being drawn into youth justice systems (Carrington 2006; Carrington and Pereira 2009) – have emerged more recently. In this paper, we draw on the concept of ‘imaginary penalities’ (Carlen 2010) to argue these chronic problems are partly informed by ‘imaginary’ understandings of how and why young people (re)offend; reflect ‘imaginary’ understandings of what works to address young people’s (re)offending; and reflect ‘imaginary’ ideals about the primary purposes of the youth justice system. We acknowledge up front that answers to these questions require a great deal of new empirical research. This paper is only a beginning that sets out exactly what such an ambitious project might look like.

Against Rehabilitation; For Reparitive Justice

The difficulties of re-imagining the possible relationships between crime and justice in capitalist societies, and imagining the possible meanings of democracy in societies characterised by gross inequalities of knowledge, and exclusion of the majority from political decisions are well known. One such difficulty stems from the impossible necessity of maintaining stances of both constant reform and constant critique (see Carlen, 2012). Confronted with economic and cultural inequalities which routinely deny ideals of justice and democracy, there can be a temptation to suppress (or bracket-off) troubling knowledge of criminal justice's and democracy's maligned underbellies and instead talk 'as if' criminal justice's ideal play of governance is always and already realised in its rhetoric. In some senses, this 'as if' talk is aspirational and it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise if more just conceptions of criminal justice and more democratic forms of democracy are to be conceived. However, when, as often happens, aspirational criminal justice concepts become routinised and acted upon as if they can be realised without fundamental social change, they become penal imaginaries, part of a taken-for-granted ideological baggage which, because it is taken-for-granted, obstructs critique (see Carlen, 2008). One such penal imaginary is the concept of rehabilitation, a concept which has a long history of justifying almost every kind of non-lethal response to lawbreaking and which is currently being reborn yet again in theories of criminal desistance and anti-prison campaigns as well as in the more invidious rehabilitation industry with its sales of programmes for cognitive reform.

Storylines of institutional responses to climate change as a transformative stressor : the case of regional planning in South East Queensland, Australia

Institutional responses to climate change stresses through planning will require new and amended forms of governance. Institutional framing of change imperatives can significantly condition associated governance responses. This paper builds on scholarly conversations concerning the conceptual role of ‘storylines’ in shaping institutional responses to climate change through governance. It draws on conceptual perspectives of climate change as a ‘transformative stressor’, which can compel institutional transformation within planning. The concepts of storylines and transformative stressors are conceptually linked. The conceptual approach is applied to an empirical enquiry focused on the regional planning regime of South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia. This paper reports and examines three institutional storylines of responding to climate change through planning governance in SEQ. It concludes that the manifestation of climate change as a transformative stressor in SEQ prompted institutional transformation, leading to a dominant storyline focused on climate adaptation as an important facet of regional planning governance.

The human cost of change : tales from the campus about personal change fatigue, resistance, and resilience

For the last decade, one question has haunted me: what helps people to cope with large-scale organisational change in their workplace? This study explores the construct of personal change resilience, and its potential for identifying solutions to the problems of change fatigue and change resistance. The thesis has emerged from the fields of change management, leadership, training, mentoring, evaluation, management and trust within the context of higher education in Australia at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this thesis I present a theoretical model of the factors to consider in increasing peoples’ personal change resilience as they navigate large-scale organisational change at work, thereby closing a gap in the literature on the construct of change resilience. The model presented is based on both the literature in the realms of business and education, and on the findings of the research. In this thesis, an autoethnographic case study of two Australian university projects is presented as one narrative, resulting in a methodological step forward in the use of multiple research participants’ stories in the development of a single narrative. The findings describe the experiences of workers in higher education and emphasise the importance of considerate management in the achievement of positive experiences of organisational change. This research makes a significant contribution to new knowledge in three ways. First, it closes a gap in the literature in the realm of change management around personal change resilience as a solution to the problem of change fatigue by presenting models of both change failure and personal change resilience. Second, it is methodologically innovative in the use of personae to tell the stories of multiple participants in one coherent tale presented as a work of ethnographic fiction seen through an autoethnographic lens. By doing so, it develops a methodology for giving a voice to those to whom change is done in the workplace. Third, it provides a perspective on organisational change management from the view of the actual workers affected by change, thereby adding to the literature that currently exists, which is based on the views of those with responsibility for leading or managing change rather than those it affects. This thesis is intended as a practical starting point for conversations by actual change managers in higher education, and it is written in such a way as to help them see how theory can be applied in real life, and how empowering and enabling the actual working staff members, and engaging with them in a considerate way before, during and even after the change process, can help to make them resilient enough to cope with the change, rather than leaving them burned out or disengaged and no longer a well-functioning member of the institution. This thesis shows how considerately managed large-scale organisational change can result in positive outcomes for both the organisation and the individuals who work in it.