Between the Devil and the Deep-blue Sea: Conceptualizing Victims Experiences of Policing in Domestic Violence in the Singaporean Context

In contextualising victims' experiences of policing in domestic violence situations in Singapore, two extreme but interrelated sets of responses have been observed. At one end of the continuum, criminal justice sanctions are strictly contingent upon victim willingness to initiate criminal proceedings against the perpetrator, and at the other, victims' rights, needs and preferences seem to be usurped by the justice system regardless of victims' choice. Neither of these positions takes victims' interests into account. Nor do they stem from an understanding of the sociocultural, economic and structural circumstances in which victims experienced violence, and continued to experience it, long after a police intervention. Data from the research revealed that criminalisation as an ideological and legally practical tool was not only rendered ineffective but irrelevant to the experiences of women in the Singaporean context.Two factors account for this phenomenon. First, the absence of support structures to achieve criminalisation and address victims' needs in the aftermath of criminalisation; second, the authoritative, paternalistic and patriarchal state impedes processes aimed at the empowerment of women victims.

School Leadership, Literacy and Social Justice : The Place of Local School Curriculum Planning and Reform

School reform is a matter of both redistributive social justice and recognitive social justice. Following Fraser (Justice interruptus: critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. Routledge, New York, 1997), we begin from a philosophical and political commitment to the more equitable redistribution of knowledge, credentials, competence, and capacity to children of low socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic minority and Indigenous communities whose access, achievement, and participation historically have “lagged” behind system norms and benchmarks set by middle class and dominant culture communities. At the same time, we argue that the recognition of these students and their communities’ lifeworlds, knowledges, and experiences in the curriculum, in classroom teaching, and learning is both a means and an end: a means toward improved achievement measured conventionally and a goal for reform and alteration of mainstream curriculum knowledge and what is made to count in the school as valued cultural knowledge and practice. The work that we report here was based on an ongoing 4-year project where a team of university teacher educators/researchers have partnered with school leadership and staff to build relationships within community. The purpose has been to study whether and how engagement with new digital arts and multimodal literacies could have effects on students “conventional” print literacy achievement and, secondly, to study whether and how the overall performance of a school could be generated through a focus on professional conversations and partnerships in curriculum and instruction – rather than the top-down implementation of a predetermined pedagogical scheme, package, or approach.

Teaching and assessing critical thinking : the interaction of student approaches to learning and teaching approaches

This study explored the relationship among student approaches to learning and teaching methods on critical thinking in two business units. Key findings included differences in critical thinking scores between student approaches to learning and some evidence of an interaction between student approaches to learning and critical thinking teach method (immersion vs. infusion). Possible explanations for the results are examined and implications for developing critical thinking skills across a degree discussed. What is apparent is that as Universities move towards program-wide level assessment of critical thinking, further work is required in terms of the design of critical thinking teaching interventions and assessment at the unit, school, and degree level. The session will discuss the challenges in developing critical thinking programs in individual units and at the Faculty level.

The Working After Cancer Study (WACS): a population-based study of middle-aged workers diagnosed with colorectal cancer and their return to work experiences

Background The number of middle-aged working individuals being diagnosed with cancer is increasing and so too will disruptions to their employment. The aim of the Working After Cancer Study is to examine the changes to work participation in the 12 months following a diagnosis of primary colorectal cancer. The study will identify barriers to work resumption, describe limitations on workforce participation, and evaluate the influence of these factors on health-related quality of life. Methods/Design An observational population-based study has been designed involving 260 adults newly-diagnosed with colorectal cancer between January 2010 and September 2011 and who were in paid employment at the time they were diagnosed. These cancer cases will be compared to a nationally representative comparison group of 520 adults with no history of cancer from the general population. Eligible cases will have a histologically confirmed diagnosis of colorectal cancer and will be identified through the Queensland Cancer Registry. Data on the comparison group will be drawn from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Data collection for the cancer group will occur at 6 and 12 months after diagnosis, with work questions also asked about the time of diagnosis, while retrospective data on the comparison group will be come from HILDA Waves 2009 and 2010. Using validated instruments administered via telephone and postal surveys, data will be collected on socio-demographic factors, work status and circumstances, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for both groups while the cases will have additional data collected on cancer treatment and symptoms, work productivity and cancer-related HRQoL. Primary outcomes include change in work participation at 12 months, time to work re-entry, work limitations and change in HRQoL status. Discussion This study will address the reasons for work cessation after cancer, the mechanisms people use to remain working and existing workplace support structures and the implications for individuals, families and workplaces. It may also provide key information for governments on productivity losses.

Is language a barrier for quality care in hospitals? A case series from an Emergency Department of a teaching hospital in Brisbane

Aim: The aim of this pilot study is to describe the use of an Emergency Department (ED) at a large metropolitan teaching hospital by patients who speak English or other languages at home. Methods: All data were retrieved from the Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) of this tertiary teaching hospital in Brisbane. Patients were divided into two groups based on the language spoken at home: patients who speak English only at home (SEO) and patients who do not speak English only or speak other language at home (NSEO). Modes of arrival, length of ED stay and the proportion of hospital admission were compared among the two groups of patients by using SPSS V18 software. Results: A total of 69,494 patients visited this hospital ED in 2009 with 67,727 (97.5%) being in the SEO group and 1,281 (1.80%) in the NSEO group. The proportion of ambulance utilisation in arrival mode was significantly higher among SEO 23,172 (34.2%) than NSEO 397 (31.0%), p <0.05. The NSEO patients had longer length of stay in the ED (M = 337.21, SD = 285.9) compared to SEO patients (M= 290.9, SD = 266.8), with 46.3 minutes (95%CI 62.1, 30.5, p <0.001) difference. The admission to the hospital among NSEO was 402 (31.9%) higher than SEO 17,652 (26.6%), p <0.001. Conclusion: The lower utilisation rates of ambulance services, longer length of ED stay and higher hospital admission rates in NSEO patients compared to SEO patients are consistent with other international studies and may be due to the language barriers.

Victimization experiences of adolescents in Malaysia

Purpose There has been little community-based research regarding multiple-type victimization experiences of young people in Asia, and none in Malaysia. This study aimed to estimate prevalence, explore gender differences, as well as describe typical perpetrators and family and social risk factors among Malaysian adolescents. Methods A cross-sectional survey of 1,870 students was conducted in 20 randomly selected secondary schools in Selangor state (mean age: 16 years; 58.8% female). The questionnaire included items on individual, family, and social background and different types of victimization experiences in childhood. Results Emotional and physical types of victimization were most common. A significant proportion of adolescents (22.1%) were exposed to more than one type, with 3% reporting all four types. Compared with females, males reported more physical, emotional, and sexual victimization. The excess of sexual victimization among boys was due to higher exposure to noncontact events, whereas prevalence of forced intercourse was equal for both genders (3.0%). Although adult male perpetrators predominate, female adults and peers of both genders also contribute substantially. Low quality of parent–child relationships and poor school and neighborhood environments had the strongest associations with victimization. Family structure (parental divorce, presence of step-parent or single parent, or household size), parental drug use, and rural/urban location were not influential in this sample. Conclusion This study extends the analysis of multiple-type victimization to a Malaysian population. Although some personal, familial, and social factors correlate with those found in western nations, there are cross-cultural differences, especially with regard to the nature of sexual violence based on gender and the influence of family structure.

Analysing and improving a recruitment process : a teaching case for developing business process improvement capabilities

The demand for Business Process Management (BPM) is rapidly rising and with that, the need for capable BPM professionals is also rising. Yet, only a very few structured BPM training/ education programs are available, across universities and professional trainers globally. The ‘lack of appropriate teaching resources’ has been identified as a critical issue for BPM educators in prior studies. Case-based teaching can be an effective means of educating future BPM professionals. A main reason is that cases create an authentic learning environment where the complexities and challenges of the ‘real world’ can be presented in a narrative enabling the students to develop crucial skills such as problem solving, analysis and creativity-within-constraints, and to apply the tools and techniques within a richer and real (or proxy to real) context. However, so far well documented BPM teaching cases are scarce. This article aims to contribute to address this gap by providing a comprehensive teaching case and teaching notes that facilitates the education of selected process improvement phases, namely identification, modelling, analysis, and improvement. The article is divided into three main parts: (i) Introductory teaching notes, (ii) The case narrative, and (iii) Student activities from the case and teaching notes.

Preparing to teach : perceptions of graduate entry teacher education students

International reviews of teaching and teacher education have highlighted the importance of quality teachers in improving the outcomes of students. Teachers may enter the teaching profession through a variety of pathways. Currently in Australia, one pathway is through graduate entry teacher education programs in which people who already hold university degrees outside of education can undertake one-year formal teacher preparation programs. It may be argued that graduate entry teachers value add to the teaching profession as they bring with them a range of careers and wealth of experiences often beyond those of teachers who enter the profession through traditional four-year Bachelor of Education programs. This paper reports on a study that investigated the preparedness to teach of a group of graduate entry teacher education students as they prepared to exit from university and enter the teaching profession. The study concluded that this group of graduating teachers perceived that the field experience components in their formal teacher education programs contributed most to their beginning professional learning. The study revealed also that this group of graduating teachers sought further professional learning opportunities in the canonical skills of teaching. These findings may be used to inform the design of future teacher education programs.

Meaningful musical engagement : the potential impact of generative music systems on learning experiences

In order to create music, the student must establish a relationship with the musical materials. In this thesis, I examine the capacity of a generative music system called jam2jam to offer individuals a virtual musical play-space to explore. I outline the development of an iteration of software development named jam2jam blue and the evolution of a games-like user interface in the research design that jointly revealed the nature of this musical exploration. The findings suggest that the jam2jam blue interface provided an expressive gestural instrument to jam and experience musicmaking. By using the computer as an instrument, participants in this study were given access to meaningful musical experiences in both solo and ensemble situations and the researcher is allowed a view of their development of a relationship with the musical materials from the perspective of the individual participants. Through an iterative software development methodology, pedagogy and experience design were created simultaneously. The research reveals the potential for the jam2jam software to be used as a reflective tool for feedback and assessment purposes. The power of access to ensemble music making is realised though the participants’ virtual experiences which are brought into their physical space by sharing their experience with others. It is suggested that this interaction creates an environment conducive to self-initiated learning in which music is the language of interaction. The research concludes that the development of a relationship between the explorer and the musical materials is subject to the collaborative nature of the interaction through which the music is experienced.