Labyrinthine literacies : navigating cultural agency in the arrival and requiem for a beast

The OED reminds us as surely as Ovid that a labyrinth is a “structure consisting of a number of intercommunicating passages arranged in bewildering complexity, through which it is it difficult or impossible to find one’s way without guidance”. Both Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006) and Matt Ottley’s Requiem for a Beast: A Work for Image, Word and Music (2007) mark a kind of labyrinthine watershed in Australian children’s literature. Deploying complex, intercommunicating logics of story and literacy, these books make high demands of their reader but also offer guidance for the successful navigation of their stories; for their protagonists as surely as for readers. That the shared logic of navigation in each book is literacy as privileged form of meaning-making is not surprising in the sense that within “a culture deeply invested in myths of individualism and self-sufficiency, it is easy to see why literacy is glorified as an attribute of individual control and achievement” (Williams and Zenger 166). The extent to which these books might be read as exemplifying desired norms of contemporary Australian culture seems to be affirmed by the fact of Tan and Ottley winning the Australian “Picture Book of the Year” prize awarded by the Children’s Book Council of Australia in 2007 and 2008 respectively. However, taking its cue from Ottley’s explicit intertextual use of the myth of Theseus and from Tan’s visual rhetoric of lostness and displacement, this paper reads these texts’ engagement with tropes of “literacy” in order to consider the ways in which norms of gender and culture seemingly circulated within these texts might be undermined by constructions of “nation” itself as a labyrinth that can only partly be negotiated by a literate subject. In doing so, I argue that these picture books, to varying degrees, reveal a perpetuation of the “literacy myth” (Graff 12) as a discourse of safety and agency but simultaneously bear traces of Ariadne’s story, wherein literacy alone is insufficient for safe navigation of the labyrinth of culture.

That's what governments do : exploring fundamental barriers to public–philanthropic interaction : the example of indigenous well-being

Decades of intervention have made variable impact on the inequality between indigenous and non-indigenous well-being across the world. Unacceptable differences in life expectancy alone mark indigenous need as an area where greater understanding of public and private funding approaches and their interaction may deliver real benefits. Both the public and the third sector have been active in trying to address the disadvantage experienced by Australia’s indigenous people. The interaction between the indigenous cause philanthropy system and the wider geopolitical landscape in Australia is revealing barriers and insights that may apply in other challenging policy terrain. The research reported here draws upon two empirical studies aimed at understanding the issues facing philanthropy in Australia,including the impact of government agency both independently and as it contrasts with philanthropy. The two different cultures are evident and two levers (greater system flexibility and closer engagement) are suggested as important in moving forward the philanthropy/government relationship in this area.

Ingroup and role identity influences on the initiation and maintenance of students' voluntary attendance at peer study sessions for statistics

Background: Although class attendance is linked to academic performance, questions remain about what determines students’ decisions to attend or miss class. Aims: In addition to the constructs of a common decision-making model, the theory of planned behaviour, the present study examined the influence of student role identity and university student (in-group) identification for predicting both the initiation and maintenance of students’ attendance at voluntary peer-assisted study sessions in a statistics subject. Sample: University students enrolled in a statistics subject were invited to complete a questionnaire at two time points across the academic semester. A total of 79 university students completed questionnaires at the first data collection point, with 46 students completing the questionnaire at the second data collection point. Method: Twice during the semester, students’ attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, student role identity, in-group identification, and intention to attend study sessions were assessed via on-line questionnaires. Objective measures of class attendance records for each half-semester (or ‘term’) were obtained. Results: Across both terms, students’ attitudes predicted their attendance intentions, with intentions predicting class attendance. Earlier in the semester, in addition to perceived behavioural control, both student role identity and in-group identification predicted students’ attendance intentions, with only role identity influencing intentions later in the semester. Conclusions: These findings highlight the possible chronology that different identity influences have in determining students’ initial and maintained attendance at voluntary sessions designed to facilitate their learning.

Contextualising the teaching and learning of measurement in Torres Strait Islander schools

This paper reports on a mathematics project conducted with six Torres Strait Islander schools and communities by the research team at the YuMi Deadly Centre at QUT. Data collected is from a small focus group of six teachers and two teacher aides. We investigated how measurement is taught and learned by students, their teachers and teacher aides in the community schools. A key focus of the project was that the teaching and learning of measurement be contextualised to the students’ culture, community and home languages. A significant finding from the project was that the teachers had differing levels of knowledge and understanding about how to contextualise measurement to support student learning. For example, an Indigenous teacher identified that mathematics and the environment are relational, that is, they are not discrete and in isolation from one another, rather they mesh together, thus affording the articulation and interchange among and between mathematics and Torres Strait Islander culture.

Creating successful cultural Brokers : the pros and cons of a community of practice approach in arts management education

Arts managers play a critical role in creating a strong, sustainable arts and cultural sector. They operate as brokers, creating programs, and, more critically, coordinating the relationships between artists, audiences, communities, governments and sponsors required to make these programs a success. Based on study of model developed for a subject in the Master of Creative Industries (Creative Production & Arts Management) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), this paper examines the pros and cons of a “community of practice” approach in training arts management students to act as cultural brokers. It provides data on the effectiveness of a range of activities – including Position Papers, Case Studies, Masterclasses, and offline and online conversations – that can be used facilitate the peer-to-peer engagement by which students work together to build their cultural brokering skills in a community of practice. The data demonstrates that, whilst students appreciate this approach, educators must provide enough access to voices of authority – that is, to arts professionals – to establish a well-functioning community of practice, and ensure that more expert students do not become frustrated when they are unwittingly and unwillingly thrust into this role by less expert classmates. This is especially important in arts management, where classes are always diverse, due to the fact that most dedicated programs in Australia, as in the US, UK and Europe, are taught via small-scale programs at graduate level which accept applicants from a wide variety of arts and non-arts backgrounds.

Fashion, the body and technology : tracing early 20th century techno-utopian ideas, aesthetics and impulses in 21st century wearable technology

‘Wearable technology’, or the use of specialist technology in garments, is promoted by the electronics industry as the next frontier of fashion. However the story of wearable technology’s relationship with fashion begins neither with the development of miniaturised computers in the 1970s nor with sophisticated ‘smart textiles’ of the twenty-first century, despite what much of the rhetoric suggests. This study examines wearable technology against a longer history of fashion, highlighted by the influential techno-sartorial experiments of a group of early twentieth century avant-gardes including Italian Futurists Giacomo Balla and F.T. Marinetti, Russian Constructivists Varvara Stepanova and Liubov Popova, and Paris-based Cubist, Sonia Delaunay. Through the interdisciplinary framework of fashion studies, the thesis provides a fuller picture of wearable technology framed by the idea of utopia. Using comparative analysis, and applying the theoretical formulations of Fredric Jameson, Louis Marin and Michael Carter, the thesis traces the appearance of three techno-utopian themes from their origins in the machine age experiments of Balla, Marinetti, Stepanova, Popova and Delaunay to their twenty-first century reappearance in a dozen wearable technology projects. By exploring the central thesis that contemporary wearable technology resurrects the techno-utopian ideas and expressions of the early twentieth century, the study concludes that the abiding utopian impetus to embed technology in the aesthetics (prints, silhouettes, and fabrication) and functionality of fashion is to unify subject, society and environment under a totalising technological order.

The developmental and acute phases of insulin-induced laminitis involve minimal metalloproteinase activity

Metalloproteinases have been implicated in the pathogenesis of equine laminitis and other inflammatory conditions, through their role in the degradation and remodelling of the extracellular matrix environment. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their inhibitors are present in normal equine lamellae, with increased secretion and activation of some metalloproteinases reported in horses with laminitis associated with systemic inflammation. It is unknown whether these enzymes are involved in insulin-induced laminitis, which occurs without overt systemic inflammation. In this study, gene expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, MT1-MMP, ADAMTS-4 and TIMP-3 was determined in the lamellar tissue of normal control horses (n = 4) and horses that developed laminitis after 48 h of induced hyperinsulinaemia (n = 4), using quantitative Real Time-Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT-PCR). Protein concentrations of MMP-2 and MMP-9 were also examined using gelatin zymography in horses subject to prolonged hyperinsulinaemia for 6 h (n = 4), 12 h (n = 4), 24 h (n = 4) and 48 h (n = 4), and in normal control horses (n = 4). The only change in gene expression observed was an upregulation of MMP-9 (p < 0.05) in horses that developed insulin-induced laminitis (48 h). Zymographical analysis showed an increase (p < 0.05) in pro MMP-9 during the acute phase of laminitis (48 h), whereas pro MMP-2 was present in similar concentration in the tissue of all horses. Thus, MMP-2, MT1-MMP, TIMP-3 and ADAMTS-4 do not appear to play a significant role in the pathogenesis of insulin-induced laminitis. The increased expression of MMP-9 may be associated with the infiltration of inflammatory leukocytes, or may be a direct result of hyperinsulinaemia. The exact role of MMP-9 in basement membrane degradation in laminitis is uncertain as it appears to be present largely in the inactive form.

An exploratory study to examine the phenomenon and practice of ambulance ramping at hospitals within the Queensland Health Southern Districts and the Queensland Ambulance Service

Background: Ambulance Ramping, defined anecdotally as a practice where patients brought to emergency departments by ambulance experience delays to admission, has become more frequent in Australian emergency departments over the last few years. Previous research has shown a link between emergency department overcrowding, ambulance diversion and adverse outcomes for patients. However, there is very little research about Ambulance Ramping. The literature has no consistent definition of Ambulance Ramping, no description of how it is managed, and limited research on the effects it has on patient and service delivery outcomes...

The Impact of Indigenous status on adult sentencing : a review of the statistical research literature.

The gross overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in prison populations suggests that sentencing may be a discriminatory process. Using findings from recent (1991–2011) multivariate statistical sentencing analyses from the United States, Canada, and Australia, we review the 3 key hypotheses advanced as plausible explanations for baseline sentencing discrepancies between Indigenous and non-Indigenous adult criminal defendants: (a) differential involvement, (b) negative discrimination, and (c) positive discrimination. Overall, the prior research shows strong support for the differential involvement thesis and some support for the discrimination theses (positive and negative). We argue that where discrimination is found, it may be explained by the lack of a more complete set of control variables in researchers’ multivariate models and/or differing political and social contexts.

Embedding graphic organisers in the teaching and learning of family and consumer sciences (home economics) in Kuwait

Educational reforms currently being enacted in Kuwaiti Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) in response to contemporary demands for increased student-centred teaching and learning are challenging for FCS teachers due to their limited experience with student-centred learning tools such as Graphic Organisers (GOs). To adopt these reforms, Kuwaiti teachers require a better understanding of and competency in promoting cognitive learning processes that will maximise student-centred learning approaches. This study followed the experiences of four Grade 6 FCS Kuwaiti teachers as they undertook a Professional Development (PD) program specifically designed to advance their understanding of the use of GOs and then as they implemented what they had learned in their Grade 6 FCS classroom. The PD program developed for this study was informed by Nasseh.s competency PD model as well as Piaget and Ausubel.s cognitive theories. This model enabled an assessment and evaluation of the development of the teachers. competencies as an outcome of the PD program in terms of the adoption of GOs, in particular, and their capacity to use GOs to engage students in personalised, in-depth, learning through critical thinking and understanding. The research revealed that the PD program was influential in reforming the teachers. learning, understanding of and competency in, cognitive and visual theories of learning, so that they facilitated student-centred teaching and learning processes that enabled students to adopt and adapt GOs in constructivist learning. The implementation of five GOs - Flow Chart, Concept Maps, K-W-L Chart, Fishbone Diagram and Venn Diagram - as learning tools in classrooms was investigated to find if changes in pedagogical approach for supporting conceptual learning through cognitive information processing would reduce the cognitive work load of students and produce better learning approaches. The study as evidenced by the participant teachers. responses and classroom observations, showed a marked increase in student interest, participation, critical thought, problem solving skills, as a result of using GOs, compared to using traditional teaching and learning methods. A theoretical model was developed from the study based on the premise that teachers. knowledge of the subject, pedagogy and student learning precede the implementation of student-centred learning reform, that it plays an important role in the implementation of student-centred learning and that it brings about a change in teaching practice. The model affirmed that observed change in teaching-practice included aspects of teachers. beliefs, as well as confidence and effect on workplace and on student learning, including engagement, understanding, critical thinking and problem solving. The model assumed that change in teaching practice is inseparable from teachers. lifelong PD needs related to knowledge, understanding, skills and competency. These findings produced a set of preliminary guidelines for establishing student-centred constructivist strategies in Kuwaiti education while retaining Kuwait.s cultural uniqueness.

Always “tasty”, regardless: Art, chocolate and Indigenous Australians

This paper examines race and colour through the metaphor of chocolate. The authors use the metaphor of chocolate to question why some Aboriginal people are chosen ahead of others, with the choosing done by non-Indigenous people, perhaps on the basis of who is most likely to be “soft-centred”, agreeable, and pliable. The authors discuss the development of the Hot Chocolate art exhibition in Adelaide in 2012, with a particular focus on the works of Pamela CroftWarcon. The exhibition combined chocolate (the food), lyrics from Hot Chocolate (the band), and chocolate (the metaphor for skin colour) to encourage visitors to question their assumptions about representations of Aboriginal people in Australia.

Joseph Maiden and the national and transnational circulation of Wattle Acacia spp

During the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth century wattle was circulated by botanists, botanical institutions, interested individuals, commercial seedsmen and government authorities. Wattle bark was used in the production of leather and was the subject of debate regarding its commercial development and conservation in Australia. It was also trialled in many other locations including America, New Zealand, Hawaii and Russia. In the process, South Africa became a major producer of wattle bark for a global market. At the same time wattle was also promoted as a symbol of Australian nationalism. This paper considers this movement of wattles, wattle material and wattle information by examining the career of one active agent in these botanical transfers: Joseph Maiden. In doing so it demonstrates that these seemingly different uses of the wattle overlap transnational and national spheres.

A common ‘outlawness’ : criminalisation of Muslim minorities in the UK and Australia

Since mass immigration recruitments of the post-war period, ‘othered’ immigrants to both the UK and Australia have faced ‘mainstream’ cultural expectations to assimilate, and various forms of state management of their integration. Perceived failure or refusal to integrate has historically been constructed as deviant, though in certain policy phases this tendency has been mitigated by cultural pluralism and official multiculturalism. At critical times, hegemonic racialisation of immigrant minorities has entailed their criminalisation, especially that of their young men. In the UK following the ‘Rushdie Affair’ of 1989, and in both Britain and Australia following these states’ involvement in the 1990-91 Gulf War, the ‘Muslim Other’ was increasingly targeted in cycles of racialised moral panic. This has intensified dramatically since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing ‘War on Terror’. The young men of Muslim immigrant communities in both these nations have, over the subsequent period, been the subject of heightened popular and state Islamophobia in relation to: perceived ‘ethnic gangs’; alleged deviant, predatory masculinity including so-called ‘ethnic gang rape’; and paranoia about Islamist ‘radicalisation’ and its supposed bolstering of terrorism. In this context, the earlier, more genuinely social-democratic and egalitarian, aspects of state approaches to ‘integration’ have been supplanted, briefly glossed by a rhetoric of ‘social inclusion’, by reversion to increasingly oppressive assimilationist and socially controlling forms of integrationism. This article presents some preliminary findings from fieldwork in Greater Manchester over 2012, showing how mainly British-born Muslims of immigrant background have experienced these processes.

Retailer-driven agricultural restructuring - Australia, the UK and Norway in comparison

In recent decades, the governance of food safety, food quality, on-farm environmental management and animal welfare has been shifting from the realm of 'the government' to that of the private sector. Corporate entities, especially the large supermarkets, have responded to neoliberal forms of governance and the resultant 'hollowed-out' state by instituting private standards for food, backed by processes of certification and policed through systems of third party auditing. Today's food regime is one in which supermarkets impose 'private standards' along the food supply chain to ensure compliance with a range of food safety goals-often above and beyond those prescribed by government. By examining regulatory governance in Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom we highlight emerging trajectories of food governance. We argue that the imposition of the new private forms of monitoring and compliance continue the project of agricultural restructuring that began with government support for structural adjustment schemes in agriculture and that these are most evident in the UK and Australia where neoliberalism is an entrenched philosophy. However, despite Norway's identity as a social democracy, we also identify neoliberal 'creep' into the system of food governance. Small-scale producers in all three nations are finding themselves increasingly subject to governance through private, market-based mechanisms that, to varying degrees, are dominated by major supermarket chains. The result is agricultural restructuring not through the traditional avenues of elected governments, but via non-elected market operatives.