Designing and using historical vignettes in science teaching : a personal account

Historical vignettes are interesting short stories which encapsulate a brief period of scientific history. They can be useful tools for teaching the nature of science, demonstrating the practices of science and making science fun. Historical vignettes illustrate the role of people and social processes in science. In this paper I describe my experience with writing and presenting an historical vignette during a Biology unit. Included is a copy of the vignette and I have identified some possible improvements that might lead to better outcomes. This may be helpful for other teachers who wish to try this strategy for themselves.

Thinking feeling

In “Thinking Feeling” a camera zooms in and around an animated constellation of words. There are ten words, each repeated one hundred times. The individual words independently pulse and orbit an invisible nucleus. The slow movements of the words and camera are reinforced by an airy, synthesised soundtrack. Over time, various phrasal combinations form and dissolve on screen. A bit like forcing oneself to sleep, “Thinking Feeling” picks at that fine line between controlling and letting go of thoughts. It creates small mantric loops that slip in and out of focus, playing with the liminal zones between the conscious and unconscious, between language and sensation, between gripping and releasing, and between calm and irritation.

Re-thinking how we plan to address technically complex problems : drawing on planning theory to guide practice in revision of land use plans in coastal high hazard zones

Queensland's new State Planning Policy for Coastal Protection, released in March and approved in April 2011 as part of the Queensland Coastal Plan, stipulates that local governments prepare and implement adaptation strategies for built up areas projected to be subject to coastal hazards between present day and 2100. Urban localities within the delineated coastal high hazard zone (as determined by models incorporating a 0.8 meter rise in sea level and a 10% increase in the maximum cyclone activity) will be required to re-evaluate their plans to accommodate growth, revising land use plans to minimise impacts of anticipated erosion and flooding on developed areas and infrastructure. While implementation of such strategies would aid in avoidance or minimisation of risk exposure, communities are likely to face significant challenges in such implementation, especially as development in Queensland is so intensely focussed upon its coasts with these new policies directing development away from highly desirable waterfront land. This paper examines models of planning theory to understand how we plan when faced with technically complex problems towards formulation of a framework for evaluating and improving practice.

Investigative thinking and creativity : an empirical study of police detectives in Norway

This paper makes distinctions among four investigative thinking styles of detectives: method style, challenge style, skill style, and risk style. Based on previous research, this study empirically tested, to what extent there are cumulative relationships among these thinking styles. Furthermore, this research studied relationships between investigative thinking styles and creativity in police investigations. Significant relationships were found between the extent of the challenge and risk styles and the extent of creativity.

Risk-informed thinking in airports: the application of business continuity management in airport infrastructure

Airports worldwide represent key forms of critical infrastructure in addition to serving as nodes in the international aviation network. While the continued operation of airports is critical to the functioning of reliable air passenger and freight transportation, these infrastructure systems face a number of sources of disturbance that threaten their operational viability. Recent examples of high magnitude events include the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption (Folattau and Schofield 2010), the failure of multiple systems at the opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 (Brady and Davies 2010) and the Glasgow airport 2007 terrorist attack (Crichton 2008). While these newsworthy events do occur, a multitude of lower-level more common disturbances also have the potential to cause significant discontinuity to airport operations. Regional airports face a unique set of challenges, particularly in a nation like Australia where they serve to link otherwise remote and isolated communities to metropolitan hubs (Wheeler 2005), often without the resources and political attention received by larger capital city airports. This paper discusses conceptual relationships between Business Continuity Management (BCM) and High Reliability Theory, and proposes BCM as an appropriate risk-based management process to ensure continued airport operation in the face of uncertainty. In addition, it argues that that correctly implemented BCM can lead to highly reliable organisations. This is framed within the broader context of critical infrastructures and the need for adequate crisis management approaches suited to their unique requirements (Boin and McConnell 2007).

Abduction : the writing of a historical novel

This is a practice-led project consisting of a historical novel Abduction and related exegesis. The novel is a third person intimate narrative set in the mid-nineteenth century and is based on actual events and persons caught up in, or furthering, the mass dispossession of small farmers in Scotland known as the ‘Clearances’. The narrative focuses on the situation in the Outer Hebrides and northern Scotland. It is based on documented facts leading up to a controversial trial in 1850 that arose because a twenty year old woman of the period (the central protagonist, Jess Mackenzie) eloped with a young farmer to escape her parent’s pressure to marry a rival suitor, himself a powerful lawyer and ‘factor’ at the centre of many of the Clearances. The young woman’s independent ideas were ahead of her time, and the decisions she made under great pressure were crucial in some dramatic events that unfolded in Scotland and later in the colony of Victoria, to which she and her new husband emigrated soon after the trial. The exegesis is composed of two unequal parts. It briefly considers the development of the literary historical fiction genre in the nineteenth century with Walter Scott in particular, a genre found useful in representing women’s issues of the Victorian era by Victorian and contemporary authors. The exegesis also briefly considers the appropriateness of the fiction genre (as opposed to creative nonfiction) in creating the lived experience in a fact-based work. The major part of the exegesis is a detailed, reflective analysis of the problem-solving process involved in writing the novel, structured by reference to Kate Grenville’s Searching for the Secret River – a work of metawriting that explains her creative process in researching and writing historical fiction based on fact.

Seeing the outer suburbs : addressing the urban bias in creative place thinking

Seeing the outer suburbs: addressing the urban bias in creative place thinking, Regional Studies. This paper draws upon quantitative and qualitative research into Australian cities to question the assumption that creative industries workers inherently seek to cluster in inner-urban areas. It challenges this foundational assumption by combining a critical application of the location quotient analysis of major Australian cities with qualitative research drawn from interviews with creative workers based in suburban Melbourne and Brisbane. The findings provide analyses as to why many creative industries workers prefer to locate themselves in outer suburban places. There is also discussion of the implications of these findings for future work on the cultural geography and policies of creative industries.

Design and design thinking in business and management education and development

Design and design thinking have been identified as making valuable contributions to business and management and the numbers of higher education programs that teach design thinking to business students, managers and executives are growing. However multiple definitions of design thinking and the range of perspectives have created some confusion about potential pathways. This paper examines notions of design and design thinking and uses these definitions to identify themes in higher educational programs. We present the findings from an initial exploratory investigation of design and design thinking in higher education business programs and define four distinct educational approaches around human centred innovation, integrative thinking, design management and design as strategy. Potential directions for management education programs are presented.

Multiple perspectives of design thinking in business education

Business education leaders have expressed interest in learning more about design and design thinking and their contributions to better problem framing, problem solving and to generating new solutions. Many business schools have engaged in educational programs with students from multiple disciplines, applying design thinking to business problems around workplace issues. This paper investigates a range of educational programs that teach design thinking to students in business education, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels around the world. We identify four patterns of program delivery that are emerging: human-centered design, integrative thinking, design management and design as strategy and discuss contributions from each. We expect that these four patterns of program delivery will continue and predict an increasing focus on programs around design as strategy in the near future.

Social implications of radical technology adoption within the livestock industry - a design investigation: Innovating disruptive technologies in traditional marketplaces

This thesis presents a design investigation into how traditional technology-orientated markets can use design led innovation (DLI) strategies in order to achieve better market penetration of disruptive products. In a review of the Australian livestock industry, considering historical information and present-day trends, a lack of socio-cultural consideration was identified in the design and implementation of products and systems, previously been taken to market. Hence the adoption of these novel products has been documented as extremely slow. Classical diffusion models have typically been used in order to implement these products. However, this thesis poses that it is through the strategic intent of design led innovation, where heavily technology-orientated markets (such as the Australian livestock industry), can achieve better final adoption rates. By considering a range of external factors (business models, technology and user needs), rather than focusing design efforts solely on the technology, it is argued that using DLI approach will lead to disruptive innovations being made easier to adopt in the Australian livestock industry. This thesis therefore explored two research questions: 1. What are the social inhibitors to the adoption of a new technology in the Australian livestock industry? 2. Can design be used to gain a significant feedback response to the proposed innovation? In order to answer these questions, this thesis used a design led innovation approach to investigate the livestock industry, centring on how design can be used early on in the development of disruptive products being taken to market. This thesis used a three stage data collection programme, combining methods of design thinking, co-design and participatory design. The first study found four key themes to the social barriers of technology adoption; Social attitudes to innovation, Market monitoring, Attitude to 3D imaging and Online processes. These themes were built upon through a design thinking/co-design approach to create three ‘future scenarios’ to be tested in participant workshops. The analysis of the data collection found four key socio-cultural barriers that inhibited the adoption of a disruptive innovation in the Australian livestock industry. These were found to be a lack of Education, a Culture of Innovation, a Lack of Engagement and Communication barriers. This thesis recommends five key areas to be focused upon in the subsequent design of a new product in the Australian livestock industry. These recommendations are made to business and design managers looking to introduce disruptive innovations in this industry. Moreover, the thesis presents three design implications relating to stakeholder attitudes, practical constraints and technological restrictions of innovations within the industry.

Re-thinking context and reflexive mediation in the teaching of writing

This paper calls for a renewed focus on the teaching of writing. It proposes a conceptual model, based on a social realist perspective, which takes account of the ways in which teachers reflexively mediate personal, professional and political considerations in enacting their writing pedagogies. This model extends understanding of the factors contextualising the teaching of writing. It also provides a useful guide for research into the teaching of writing and a prompt for reflexivity in professional development.