Designing an innovative approach to engage students in learning science : the evolving case of hybridized writing

Innovations are usually attributed to ideas generated in the minds of individuals. As we reflect upon the evolving design of an online project to engage students in learning science through hybridized writing activities we propose a more distributed view of the process of innovative design. That is, our experience suggests ideas are generated in the activity of interacting with human and material resources that expand and constrain possibilities. This project is innovative in that it is a new educational response to the problem of disengagement of students in science, and has proven to be effective in changing classroom practice and improving students’ scientific literacy. In this chapter, we identify the antecedents and trace the evolution of the project. This account illuminates the innovative design process, presents a summary of the evidence for the effectiveness of the project, and identifies future directions for further development and research. Keywords: Science learning, hybridized writing, case study, innovative approach

Gay men, social media and self-presentation : managing identities in Gaydar, Facebook and beyond

This study analyses young gay men's identity management in social networking sites Gaydar and Facebook. It examines the expanded opportunities for identity management made available through the convergence of these spaces, as well as new privacy and safety concerns. Findings from this study are discussed in terms of their significance for gay men's digital culture, the approach to gay men's mental health taken by GLBT organisations and support groups, and within broader concerns around social networking sites and digital inequality.

Australian adolescent perceptions of parental support: Can it predict self-esteem among high and low SES groups?

Aims Physical activity has been shown to increase adolescent self-esteem. The aim of this investigation was to assess adolescent perceptions of parental support for physical activity endeavours, and its relationship with self-esteem among high and low SES groups. Methods Perceptions of parental support, and Rosenberg’s self-esteem (1965) were derived from the Children’s Physical Activity Correlates questionnaire, with scores ranging from 1 (lowest) to 4 (highest). Independent sample t-tests were conducted and Levene’s test indicated homogenous group variance, while Pearson’s r was employed to assess relationships between perceptions of parental support, and self-esteem. Results Overall, 111 (89%) and 64 (55%) high and low SES participants had complete data and were included in the analysis. The high SES differed for self-esteem (M = 3.39, SE = .05) from the low SES group (M = 2.75, SE = .08), t (173) = 6.82, p < .05, with a medium effect size (ES) r = .46. The high SES group scored higher for perceptions of parental support (M = 2.95, SE = .06) than the low SES group (M = 2.71, SE = .07), t (173) = 2.58, p < .05, with a low ES r = .04. Self-esteem was significantly correlated with parental support in both high (r = .34) and low (r = .47) SES groups. Conclusion Results indicate that perceptions of parental support may be a stronger indicator of self-esteem for low, than for high SES adolescents. Future physical activity strategies to promote self-esteem should involve parents as active facilitators.

Criminal desistance : life opportunities and hermeneutic circles of self-definition

The emic perspective of criminal desistance (ex-offenders’ personal explanations of how they gave up crime) is largely ignored by criminology. This thesis attempts to address this absence of the storyteller’s perspective by inviting desisters to participate in the exploration and interpretation of their individual desistance journeys. Significant attention is drawn to the importance of philosophical self-enquiry to personal change. This detailed journey through the desistance stories of five ex-offenders has produced an emphatic re-statement of the need for the non-judgemental listener as the beginning point of cathartic healing in damaged lives.

An investigation of factors influencing diabetes self-management among adults with type 2 diabetes in Vietnam

Background: In diabetes care, health care professionals need to provide support for their patients. In order to provide good diabetes self-management support for adults with type 2 diabetes in Vietnam, it is important that health care professionals in Vietnam understand the factors influencing diabetes self-management among these people. However, knowledge about factors influencing diabetes self-management among adults with type 2 diabetes in Vietnam is limited. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate factors influencing diabetes self-management among adults with type 2 diabetes in Vietnam. Methodology: A cross-sectional survey with convenience sampling was conducted on 198 adults with type 2 diabetes in VietnamData collection was administeted via interview. Descriptive statistics, simple correlation statistics and structural equation modelling statistics were used for data analysis. Results: Adults with type 2 diabetes in Vietnam had limited diabetes knowledge (Median = 6.0). The majority of the study participants (72.7%) believed that performing diabetes self-management activities was very important or extremely important for controlling their blood glucose levels and for preventing complications from diabetes; about half usually received support from their family and friends’ (48.5%), and around two thirds rarely received support from their health care providers (68.2%). Many of the participants (41.4%) had limited confidence to perform diabetes management activities. The practices of diabetes self-management were limited among the study population (Mean = 96.7, SD = 19.4). Diabetes knowledge (β = 0.17, p < .001), belief in treatment effectiveness (β = 0.13, p < .01), family and friends’ support (β = 0.13, p < .001), health care providers’ support (β = 0.27, p < .001) and diabetes management self-efficacy (β = 0.43, p < .001) directly influenced their diabetes self-management. Diabetes knowledge, and family and friends’ support also indirectly influenced diabetes self-management among these people through their belief in treatment effectiveness and their diabetes management self-efficacy (p < .05). Conclusion: Findings in this study indicated that health care professionals should provide diabetes self-management support for adults with type 2 diabetes in Vietnam in the future. The adapted theory-based model of factors influencing diabetes self-management among adults with type 2 diabetes in Vietnam found in this study could be a useful framework to develop this supporting program.

Self-reported likelihood of speeding : the effects of attitudes, personality, and perceived legitimacy of enforcement

The positive relationship between speed and crash risk and severity is robust and well-established. While excessive speeding is typically regarded by the public as a common contributing factor in road crashes, speeding remains a common traffic infringement and an arguably socially acceptable behaviour, particularly at low levels over the speed limit. This suggests that other factors potentially contribute to this disparity between crash perceptions and actual behaviours. Previous work has described associations between perceptions of the legitimacy of speed enforcement, attitudes, and how they relate to the likelihood of speeding. This study sought to more closely examine the nature of the relationships between these variables. In total, 293 Queensland drivers participated in a study that examined how demographics, personality variables, attitudes, and perceptions of the legitimacy of enforcement contributed to drivers’ self-reported likelihood of speeding. Results suggested that positive attitudes towards speeding had the greatest impact on likelihood of speeding behaviours. Being younger and higher levels of the personality trait of extraversion were also associated with greater levels of self-reported likelihood of speeding. Attitudes were found to mediate the relationship between perceived legitimacy of speed enforcement and self-reported likelihood of speeding. A subgroup analysis of participants with positive and negative attitudes towards speeding revealed that a differential set of variables were predictive of self-reported likelihood of speeding for the two subgroups. This highlights the potential importance of attitudes in understanding the influence of perceptions of legitimacy of speed enforcement on speeding behaviour, and the need for targeted rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach to changing attitudes and ultimately behaviour. The findings of the current study help to further understand why some drivers continue to speed.

Using participatory action research for heart self care amongst indigenous patients

This paper describes the initial phases of the Fluid Watchers Pacific Rim project: a participatory action research project that involves developing and trialling an iPad app to provide monitoring and self-care for Indigenous Australians with heart failure. The development phase involved working with health experts, an IT team and Indigenous heart-failure patients through three cycles of development and critical reflection. This was followed by a small pilot study to examine the app’s effectiveness. In this paper, the researchers explain why IT-supported health education can be successful in decreasing re-hospitalisation and improving self-management skills. They describe the steps they took to ensure community participation and ownership of the project and present the findings of their pilot study. This pilot project suggests that an iPad app may be a practical and successful way to provide health-care support for Indigenous Australian heart-failure patients.

Towards a model for student selection in clinical psychology

Background Selection of candidates for clinical psychology programmes is arguably the most important decision made in determining the clinical psychology workforce. However, there are few models to inform the development of selection tools to support selection procedures. The study, using a factor analytic structure, has operationalised the model predicting applicants' capabilities. Method Eighty-eight clinical applicants for entry into a postgraduate clinical psychology programme were assessed on a series of tasks measuring eight capabilities: guided reflection, communication skills, ethical decision making, writing, conceptual reasoning, empathy, and awareness of mind and self-observation. Results Factor analysis revealed three capabilities: labelled “awareness” accounting for 35.71% of variance; “reflection” accounting for 20.56%; and “reasoning” accounting for 18.24% of variance. Fourth year grade point average (GPA) did not correlate with performance on any of the selection capabilities other than a weak correlation with performance on the ethics capability. Conclusions Eight selection capabilities are identified for the selection of candidates independent of GPA. While the model is tentative, it is hoped that the findings will stimulate the development and validation of assessment procedures with good predictive validity which will benefit the training of clinical psychologists and, ultimately, effective service delivery.

Harnessing SD and CSR within corporate self-regulation of weak economies : a meta-regulation approach

The semantic of the terms “sustainable development” and “corporate social responsibility” have changed over time to a point where these concepts have become two interrelated processes for ensuring the far-reaching development of society. Their convergence has given dimension to the environmental and corporate regulation mechanisms in strong economies. This article deals with the question of how the ethos of this convergence could be incorporated into the self-regulation of businesses in weak economies where nonlegal drivers are either inadequate or inefficient. It proposes that the policies for this incorporation should be based on the precepts of meta-regulation that have the potential to hold force majeure, economic incentives, and assistance-related strategies to reach an objective from the perspective of weak economies.

Why do Indigenous Australians drink and drive? A qualitative exploration of self-reported influences on drink driving behaviours of Indigenous peoples from remote communities

Drink driving contributes towards high injury rates for Indigenous populations in Canada and Australia, particularly in more isolated regions. At present there is limited research on the cultural and psychosocial factors that underpin Indigenous peoples’ drink driving. This study is part of a broader project aiming to inform a culturally sensitive program. Qualitative interviews with 29 convicted Indigenous drink drivers (aged 20-51 years) from a remote region of Queensland, Australia were used to explore their cognitions about, and underlying motivation for, drink driving as well as the factors that might facilitate or impede it. Although a number of themes were identified, this paper will focus on the first theme, respondents’ self-perceived rationale for their behaviour. Two subthemes were identified: ‘being the hero’ referred to situations where respondents were motivated by a bravado mentality to drive after drinking despite having, on some occasions, the opportunity to avoid this (e.g. another person offering to drive); and ‘family obligations’ which referred to situations where respondents described pressure from members of their extended families to drive after drinking. The underlying responsibility for transporting family members appeared to be difficult to avoid and related to cultural values. Findings indicate the social and individual characteristics for younger drink drivers are similar to mainstream populations. However, the reinforcers for Indigenous drink drivers may be different for this population, consistent with findings on other Indigenous populations outside Australia. Specific programs should contain a family-centred approach and explore the kinship value system to build strategies around these strong relationships.

The remediation of the personal photograph and the politics of self-representation in digital storytelling

Over the past couple of decades, the cultural field formerly known as ‘domestic’, and later ‘personal’ photography has been remediated and transformed as part of the social web, with its convergence of personal expression, interpersonal communication, and online social networks (most recently via platforms like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter). Meanwhile, the Digital Storytelling movement (involving the workshop-based production of short autobiographical videos) from its beginnings in the mid 1990s relied heavily on the narrative power of the personal photograph, often sourced from family albums, and later from online archives. This paper addresses the new issues arising for the politics of self-representation and personal photography in the era of social media, focusing particularly on the consequences of online image-sharing. It discusses in detail the practices of selection, curation, manipulation and editing of personal photographic images among a group of activist-oriented queer digital storytellers who have in common a stated desire to share their personal stories in pursuit of social change, and whose stories often aim to address both intimate and antagonistic publics.

Creative entrepreneurship education for graduate employability in the creative arts

The higher education sector in Australia is under increasing pressure to prove quality and efficacy of education provision, including graduate outcomes. One of the central tasks of higher education has become to prepare nascent professionals as far as possible for initial employment and future working lives beyond this (Boden & Nedeva, 2010). Tertiary educators in the creative arts face significant and distinctive challenges in demonstrating graduate employability, and creative graduates consistently have the poorest outcomes of any subject grouping. In part, this is because the national graduate destinations survey (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2012) does not cater to the distinctive ‘portfolio’ nature of creative careers, or take account of the fact that creative careers can take concerted effort over several years to establish (e.g., McCowan & Wyganowska, 2010). However, it is worth asking whether we as tertiary arts educators are doing enough to prepare creative arts students for the world of work, particularly given that the majority of them will be self-employed to some degree (Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2011, Throsby & Zednik, 2010), and will be challenged to build their own careers without recourse to the support of HR departments or intra-firm promotion schemes. It has been demonstrated empirically that career management and creative enterprise skills are among the most important graduate capabilities in determining early creative career success (Bridgstock, 2011), although these skills do not appear in the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards for the Creative and Performing Arts (2010). This paper explores the nature and development of enterprise capabilities for creative arts students (as distinct from students of the business school), examines best practice in the field internationally, and proposes a theoretically-driven creative arts-specific enterprise curriculum model which commences in first year, for demonstrable impact on student enterprise behaviours (such as grant seeking, professional networking and intention to start an enterprise) and employability.

Preferential invasion by Plasmodium merozoites and the self-regulation of parasite burden

The preferential invasion of particular red blood cell (RBC) age classes may offer a mechanism by which certain species of Plasmodia regulate their population growth. Asexual reproduction of the parasite within RBCs exponentially increases the number of circulating parasites; limiting this explosion in parasite density may be key to providing sufficient time for the parasite to reproduce, and for the host to develop a specific immune response. It is critical that the role of preferential invasion in infection is properly understood to model the within-host dynamics of different Plasmodia species. We develop a simulation model to show that limiting the range of RBC age classes available for invasion is a credible mechanism for restricting parasite density, one which is equally as important as the maximum parasite replication rate and the duration of the erythrocytic cycle. Different species of Plasmodia that regularly infect humans exhibit different preferences for RBC invasion, with all species except P. falciparum appearing to exhibit a combination of characteristics which are able to selfregulate parasite density.

Writing the visible page : a multimodal approach to graphic devices in literary fiction

This practice-led project has two outcomes: a collection of short stories titled 'Corkscrew Section', and an exegesis. The short stories combine written narrative with visual elements such as images and typographic devices, while the exegesis analyses the function of these graphic devices within adult literary fiction. My creative writing explores a variety of genres and literary styles, but almost all of the stories are concerned with fusing verbal and visual modes of communication. The exegesis adopts the interpretive paradigm of multimodal stylistics, which aims to analyse graphic devices with the same level of detail as linguistic analysis. Within this framework, the exegesis compares and extends previous studies to develop a systematic method for analysing how the interactions between language, images and typography create meaning within multimodal literature.

Student self-assessment of performance : a useful learning tool for students and instructors?

Assurance of Learning is a focus for many Business Schools to meet AACSB requirements. Prior research has examined student self-assessment as a measure of learning in this context, but we propose instead that this is a useful ‘learning tool’ for students and instructors that can help improve student performance and curricula. We examined self-assessment in a third year undergraduate e-marketing course and found a positive, though weak relationship between student self-assessment and instructor ratings on intended learning goals and criteria for a written assignment. Students who self-assessed tended to perform better in the assessment item and course than those who did not self-assess. But less competent students were more inaccurate in their self-assessment, suggesting a need to enhance understanding of marking criteria and performance standards within this group. Implications for educators are discussed.