Kids, counsellors and troubles-telling : morality-in-action in talk on an Australian children’s helpline

This chapter investigates one instance of ‘morality-in-action’, which transpires when children describe their troubles to the adult counsellors at Kids Help Line, an Australian national helpline that deals specifically with callers aged approximately 5-18 years. We focus, in particular, on how a young female caller who has forged a medical certificate in relation to a problem with school attendance, determines both what to report, and how this should be disclosed. Throughout the call, the moral implications of the troubles talk are delicately managed by both caller and counsellor. The call takes the form of an extended story (Labov & Waletzky, 1997) that includes a preface (‘I have some problems at school’), an orientation (“I was sick, went to the doctor, stayed home”), a complicating action (“I went back to school and photocopied my certificate from last time”), result (“I got caught”) and evaluation (“I don’t know why it happened”). As the account unfolds, we observe how both the student and counsellor seek to make sense of these actions. While this account is partly about deception, both the caller and counsellor delicately sidestep naming this action, precluding this implication. For example, the counsellor lets stand the caller’s main assessment of the trouble. He simply asks, “so what happened then,” when the caller reports that her forgery was discovered. The caller, from the very beginning of the call, seeks to find out why she could have done this, “you see I don’t know why it happened”. As the call unfolds, the counsellor follows the opening provided by the caller and they put forward motives for consideration. By agreeing that the motives are to be explored, the act takes on a character other than deception.

Measuring school-related stressors in adolescents

Some 1620 high school students responded to 68 items that measure adolescent stressors. Thirty-five of the items were based on J. P. Kohn and G. H. Frazer's Academic Stress Scale [1(1986) An Academic Stress Scale: Identification and Rated Importance of Academic Stressors, Psychological Reports, Vol. 59, pp. 415–426] developed in the United States, while the remaining 33 items were developed from P. Strutynski's [(1985) A Survey of Queensland Year 10, 11 and 12 Student Attitudes to Schools and Schooling, State Planning Committee, International Youth Year, Brisbane] lists of the most frequently named problems of 2336 Australian high school students. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to test and develop a measurement model developed from an extensive review of previous scales. The High School Stressors Scale emerged from the analytic process and measures nine school-related stressors. For researchers focusing on school-related problems and stressors among adolescents, the HSSS promises to be a very useful instrument. It has sound construct and predictive validity and adequate reliability, as demonstrated by the goodness-of-fit indices the squared multiple correlations.

Equity and quality in the early years of schooling

For most of the latter part of the twentieth century, the issues of quality and equity have been part of the agenda of compulsory schooling in Australia. However it is only more recently that the two have been brought together, which has drawn attention to the quest to create high quality and high equity schooling. The outcomes of this union have been the focus of analyses undertaken using data from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which show that several features of Nordic secondary schools have produced high quality and high equity schooling. This article concentrates on the early years of school and considers the role of curriculum and syllabus documents in creating high quality and high equity in the early years, including the non-compulsory prior-to-school year. It draws on recent research in education generally to identify issues of significance that are instructive in the quest to produce high quality and high equity schooling in the early years. These issues include equity of access, syllabus design and curriculum, and transition to school; but before they are considered, I discuss the context of moves to create high quality and high equity schooling.

Engaging with the promises of education : African refugee students in Australian secondary schools

The research reported in this paper investigated the engagement of students who arrived in Australian secondary schools as refugees from Africa. Enrolment of large cohorts of refugees from Africa is a relatively new phenomenon in the English-speaking West. The literature provides evidence that emotional engagement with the promises of schooling is strong for many of the young African refugees. Students envision successful professional careers as doctors, engineers, lawyers, and IT experts; they envision returning to their country as professionals able to help the people. The question investigated in this paper is: How does schooling in Australia impact on young African refugees’ education and career aspirations? Engagement is understood in Bourdieuian terms as dispositions to be and to become an educated person. This is a disposition which entails fundamental belief in the value of the stakes of schooling. The data analysed in the paper were produced in a study undertaken in the state of Queensland where 5000 of the 39 000 African refugees who have arrived in Australia since 2000 have settled. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with students and their parents and teachers after arrival in an intensive language school, and then after transition to a regular secondary school. The findings show both the durability and malleability of educational dispositions in conditions of dramatic social change occasioned by refugee experience. Engagement in the stakes of schooling is both built and eroded as students flee their homelands for countries of refuge. Previously unimaginable educational dreams are possible for some; but for others, long-held dreams become unattainable. The paper concludes with recommendations for better supporting young people through this re-shaping of self.

Ethnic differences in body composition and anthropometric characteristics in Australian Caucasian and urban Indigenous children

The objective was to compare ethnic differences in anthropometry, including size, proportions and fat distribution, and body composition in a cohort of seventy Caucasian (forty-four boys, twenty-six girls) and seventy-four urban Indigenous (thirty-six boys, thirty-eight girls) children (aged 9–15 years). Anthropometric measures (stature, body mass, eight skinfolds, thirteen girths, six bone lengths and five bone breadths) and body composition assessment using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry were conducted. Body composition variables including total body fat percentage and percentage abdominal fat were determined and together with anthropometric indices, including BMI (kg/m2), abdominal:height ratio (AHtR) and sum of skinfolds, ethnic differences were compared for each sex. After adjustment for age, Indigenous girls showed significantly (P < 0·05) greater trunk circumferences and proportion of overweight and obesity than their Caucasian counterparts. In addition, Indigenous children had a significantly greater proportion (P < 0·05) of trunk fat. The best model for total and android fat prediction included sum of skinfolds and age in both sexes (>93 % of variation). Ethnicity was only important in girls where abdominal circumference and AHtR were included and Indigenous girls showed significantly (P < 0·05) smaller total/android fat deposition than Caucasian girls at the given abdominal circumference or AHtR values. Differences in anthropometric and fat distribution patterns in Caucasian and Indigenous children may justify the need for more appropriate screening criteria for obesity in Australian children relevant to ethnic origin.

Aligning school reform and teacher education reform in the middle years : an Australian case study

This paper discusses the development of a new Bachelor of Education (Middle Years of Schooling) at The University of Queensland, Australia. The middle years of schooling have increasingly been the focus of education reform initiatives in Australia, but this has not been accompanied by significant increases in the number of teacher education institutions offering specialised middle schooling-level teacher preparation programmes. Considering the rapidly changing social and economic context and the emergent state of middle schooling in Australia, the programme represented a conceptual and practical opportunity and challenge for The University of Queensland team. Working collaboratively, the team sought to design a teacher education preservice programme that was both responsive and generative: that is, responsive to local school contexts and to current education research and reform at national and international levels; and generative of cutting-edge theories and practices associated with middle schooling, teachers' work, and teacher education. This paper focuses on one component of the Middle Years of Schooling Teacher Education programme at The University of Queensland; namely, the practicum. We first present the underlying principles of the practicum programme and then examine "dilemmas" that emerged early in the practicum. These issues and tensions were associated with the ideals of "middle years" philosophy and the pragmatics of school reform associated with that approach. Within this context, we explore what it means to be both responsive and generative, and describe how we as teacher educators negotiated the extremes these terms implied.

What is the relationship between social governance and schooling?

The most frequently told story charting the rise of mass schooling should be fairly familiar to most of us. This story normally centres around the post-enlightenment social changes of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and details how society slowly became more caring and more humane, and how we all decided that rather than simply being fodder for the mills, all children – including those from the working-classes - had the right to an education. The more civilised we became, the more we pushed back the school leaving age, until we eventually developed schools which clearly reflected the values and ambitions of the wider community. After all, are school not simply microcosms of society at large? In addition to this, the form that modern schooling takes is regarded as an unproblematic part of the same story. Of course we should organise our learning in the way we do, with the emphasis on formalised learning spaces, graded curricula, timetables of activities, various forms of assessment, and a clear hierarchy of authority. These features of the contemporary education merely reflect the fact that this is self-evidently the best system available. After all, how else could education possibly be organised?

Cosmoscapes and the promotion of uncosmopolitan values

Globality generates increasingly diffuse networks of human and non-human innovators, carriers and icons of exotic, polyethnic cosmopolitan difference; and this diffusion is increasingly hard to ignore or police (Latour 1993). In fact, such global networks of material-symbolic exchange can frequently have the unintended consequence of promoting status systems and cultural relationships founded on uncosmopolitan values such as cultural appropriation and status-based social exclusion. Moreover, this materialsymbolic engagement with cosmopolitan difference could also be rather mundane, engaged in routinely without any great reflexive consciousness or capacity to destabilise current relations of cultural power, or interpreted unproblematically as just one component of a person’s social environment. Indeed, Beck’s (2006) argument is that cosmopolitanism, in an age of global risk, is being forced upon us unwillingly, so there should be no surprise if it is a bitter pill for some to swallow. Within these emergent cosmopolitan networks, which we call ‘cosmoscapes’, there is no certainty about the development of ethical or behavioural stances consistent with claims foundational to the current literature on cosmopolitanism. Reviewing historical and contemporary studies of globality and its dynamic generative capacity, this paper considers such literatures in the context of studies of cultural consumption and social status. When one positions these diverse bodies of literature against one another, it becomes clear that the possibility of widespread cosmopolitan cultural formations is largely unpromising.

Reempowering ourselves: Australian Aboriginal women

The arrival of the colonists, the invasion of Aboriginal lands and the subsequent colonization of Australia had a disastrous effect on Aboriginal women, including on-going dispossession and disempowerment. Aboriginal women’s lives and gendered realities were forever changed in most communities. The system of colonization deprived Aboriginal women of land and personal autonomy and restricted the economic, political, social, spiritual and ceremonial domains that had existed prior to colonization. It also involved the implementation of overriding patriarchal systems. This is why Aboriginal women may find understanding within the women’s movement and why feminism might offer them a source of analysis. There are some connections in the various forms of social oppression, which give women connection and a sharing on some issues. However, imperialism and colonialism are also part of the women’s movement and feminism. This essay demonstrates why attempts to engage with feminism and to be included in women-centred activities might result in the denial and sidelining of Aboriginal sovereignty and further oppression and marginalisation of Aboriginal women. Moreover, strategies employed by non-Indigenous feminists can result in the maintenance of white women’s values and privileges within the dominant patriarchal white society. By engaging in these strategies feminists can also act in direct opposition to Aboriginal sovereignty and Aboriginal women. This essay states clearly that women who do not express positions or opinions in outright support of these activities still benefit from their position by proxy and contribute to the cultural dominance of non-Indigenous women. I argue that Aboriginal women need to define what empowerment might mean to themselves, and I suggest re-empowerment as an act of Aboriginal women’s healing and resistance to the on-going processes and impacts of colonization.

Prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus strains in an Australian cohort, 1989-2003 : evidence for the low prevalence of the toxic shock toxin and Panton-Valentine leukocidin genes

The purpose of this paper is to determine the prevalence of the toxic shock toxin gene (tst) and to enumerate the circulating strains of methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) in Australian isolates collected over two decades. The aim was to subtype these strains using the binary genes pvl, cna, sdrE, pUB110 and pT181. Isolates were assayed using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for mecA, nuc, 16 S rRNA, eight single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and for five binary genes. Two realtime PCR assays were developed for tst. The 90 MRSA isolates belonged to CC239 (39 in 1989, 38 in 1996 and ten in 2003), CC1 (two in 2003) and CC22 (one in 2003). The majority of the 210 MSSA isolates belonged to CC1 (26), CC5 (24) and CC78 (23). Only 18 isolates were tst-positive and only 15 were pvl-positive. Nine MSSA isolates belonged to five binary types of ST93, including two pvlpositive types. The proportion of tst-positive and pvl-positive isolates was low and no significant increase was demonstrated. Dominant MSSA clonal complexes were similar to those seen elsewhere, with the exception of CC78. CC239 MRSA (AUS-2/3) was the predominant MRSA but decreased significantly in prevalence, while CC22 (EMRSA-15) and CC1 (WA-1) emerged. Genetically diverse ST93 MSSA predated the emergence of ST93- MRSA (the Queensland clone).

Interdisciplinarity vs disciplinarity : developing knowledge for problem solving in middle years of schooling

Interdisciplinary studies are fundamental to the signature practices for the middle years of schooling. Middle years researchers claim that interdisciplinarity in teaching appropriately meets the needs of early adolescents by tying concepts together, providing frameworks for the relevance of knowledge, and demonstrating the linking of disparate information for solution of novel problems. Cognitive research is not wholeheartedly supportive of this position. Learning theorists assert that application of knowledge in novel situations for the solution of problems is actually dependent on deep discipline based understandings. The present research contrasts the capabilities of early adolescent students from discipline based and interdisciplinary based curriculum schooling contexts to successfully solve multifaceted real world problems. This will inform the development of effective management of middle years of schooling curriculum.

The meaning of cancer for Australian Aboriginal women : changing the focus of cancer nursing

Aim: The purpose of the study was to explore why Aboriginal women participate in cancer screening programs but appear reluctant to following-up results, or accept medical advice about treatment. Methods: Interpretive ethnography, a qualitative methodology, was used to explore Aboriginal women’s perception of cancer, and the cultural context in which meaning was constructed and influenced treatment decision. Data collection, which occurred over two years, involved fieldwork, participant-observation, face-to-face interviews and focus groups, in two rural Aboriginal communities. Forty eight interviews were recorded from a cross section of the communities, including cancer survivors and patients, family members, health care providers and other women from the community. Results: Key findings were that Aboriginal women’s had a fearful and fatalistic attitude toward cancer, doubted the efficacy of treatment and carried an enduring ambivalence toward the authority of whiteman’s medicine. The women faced a dilemma of wanting access to cancer treatment options but feared entering hospital or clinics not attuned to their cultural needs. Conclusion: The findings highlight the need for a culture-centred approach that decentres the authority of conventional services and instead gives prominence to Aboriginal cultural values as a focal point in cancer control. It should be the responsibility of cancer nurses and others to engage with their local Aboriginal communities to build relationships that foster an exchange of learning about cultural differences that make a difference to how cancer control is practiced.

The legal framework of the Australian health system

This chapter is about the role of law in the creation and operation of Australian health systems. Accordingly, this chapter discusses how law regulates the way in which health services in Australia are funded, organised, regulated, managed, operated and governed. (The question of how health professionals are regulated is discussed in Chapter 15.) Although the focus of much of health law is on legal mechanisms for the resolution of disputes or disagreements between the state, health providers, professionals, patients and families and friends, and through dispute resolutions processes setting standards for practice, these are only some of the “jobs” that health law performs. In health systems where the state undertakes a significant role in regulating, funding, managing and providing health services, health law also performs an important constitutive function. Health law declares the values upon which the health system is based, shapes social processes to achieve public ends and provides a structure for the complex interactions that occur within a modern health system. Health law regulates decision-makers in health systems by establishing who has the power to participate in decisions and in what circumstances, establishing processes through which decisions are made and creating mechanisms for decision-makers to be held publicly accountable. It is this broader constitutive function of health law that is a primary focus of much of this chapter — how and why governments use their legislative powers to structure and shape the health system.

Teachers’ conceptions of essential knowledge for integrated social education : a middle years of schooling perspective from Australia

Integrated social education in Australia is a divisive educational issue. The last decade has been marked by a controversial integrated social studies curriculum called Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) where history, geography and environmental studies were integrated with civics and citizenship. The introduction of a compulsory K-10 Australian Curriculum from 2011, however, marks the return to history and geography and the abandonment of SOSE. Curriculum reform aside, what do teachers think is essential knowledge for middle years social education? The paper reports on a phenomenographical exploration of thirty-one middle school teachers’ conceptions of essential knowledge for SOSE. Framed by Shulman’s (1986, 1987) theoretical framework of the knowledge base for teaching, the research identified seven qualitatively different ways of understanding essential knowledge for integrated social education. The study indicates a practice-based theorization of integrated social education that justifies attention to disciplinary process and teacher identity in middle school social education.