Indigenous knowledge and climate change : the Wathaurong and Gadubanud narrative for the Great Ocean Road region

For more than forty thousand years Aboriginal people of Australia have been confronted with major climate, ecological and geological changes as well as annual seasonal variations. Many of these changes have been captured in the cultural traditions of Maar (the people) of the south-west Victorian coast and the knowledge has been transferred from generation to generation through Dreaming stories. Many Dreaming stories recount the forming of the coastal landscape and Sea Country. Weather patterns and climate change were gauged by the occurrence of natural events such as the tidal changes, sea level rise, landscape changes, behaviour of animals, and the availability of food sources. Can this ancient knowledge provide answers for adaptation and resilience to a rapid changing climate? Drawing upon recent literature on coastal climate change in the Great Ocean Road Region (GORCC, 2012), literature review of indigenous environmental planning (Kooyang Sea Country Plan, 2004), and investigation of settlement patterns of the Wathaurong and Gadubanud people, this paper reviews the changes in the landscape due to climate change and explores traditional knowledge as input to a potential design based adaptation model for coastal settlements of the Great Ocean Road Region.

The first time

Based on interview data from twelve beginning teachers describing their experiences in their first year of teaching; for PhD titled ’Firsts: Performing Ways First Year Teachers Experience Identity Transformation’.

Firsts: performing ways first year teachers experience identity transformation

This thesis reports on research showing the survival discourse of beginning teaching has shifted from sink or swim metaphors to describe surviving transition shock and classroom management concerns to surviving contract employment. Beginning teachers are neither sinking nor swimming in this liminal state. Rather, it is as though they are on a lifeboat where they cannot feel like a ‘real’ teacher until they can operate with certainty.

Interrogating the experiences of beginning teachers, and the transformation of their identity in their first year (1yr) of teaching, the thesis explores research participants’ firsts as epiphanic or revelatory moments of identity transformation. Participants were followed for three years from upon completion of their teacher education, through their first year of teaching, up to the beginning of their third year in the profession. The major finding was that while contemporary understandings of professional identity highlight the transformative nature of the phenomenon,  contract employment had the most impact on these teachers’ identity transformation.

Teachers’ perceptions of their own professional identity affect their efficacy and professional development as well as their ability and willingness to cope with educational change (Beijaard, Verloop & Vermunt 2000). It has been reported by the Australian Education Union (AEU) and in the Victorian media in recent years that up to 50% of beginning teachers are leaving the profession within their first five years. The reasons given for this level of
attrition include workload, pay, and behaviour management, among the top concerns of beginning teachers. These categories have positioned beginning teachers in a survival discourse for many years, yet there is more to beginning teachers’ intentions to leave than their struggles to survive in the classroom. More recently in Victoria what it means to ‘survive’ has shifted to surviving the pervasive contractual nature of beginning teachers’
employment conditions.

This qualitative study seeks to question what remains concealed with regard to beginning teachers’ experiences through an investigation of the differences between and within individuals, allowing categories of description to emerge from the data rather than pre-determining categories of investigation. Data was collected from twelve participants through individual semi-structured interviews and written communication. A theatre-based research approach to representing the participants’ experiences was employed, culminating in a performance titled ‘The First Time’. The processes of scripting, rehearsing, and performing, were utilised to analyse and represent the data to expert audiences. In an aim to uncover questions that have been buried by answers, the research is oriented as a
phenomenographic inquiry. This mode of inquiry seeks to describe, analyse, and understand (Marton 1981) the qualitatively different experiences 1yr teachers undergo in their identity formation and transformation.

The results of this research reveal the destabilising effect of short-term contracts so prevalent in the current context; that status and belonging are central to 1yr teachers’ identity work. Status and belonging are positioned within survival, liminal, and hegemonic discourses; and expressed through artefacts as symbols of belonging. The low status ascribed to contractual work has a clear impact on beginning teachers’ commitment to the profession.

From ecological creativity to an ecology of well-being: 'flows & catchments' as a case study of NVivo

This paper’s research question concerns how the ecological creativity of the Volcanic Plains region of Western Victoria may be transformed into an ecology of well-being of benefit to the local community. Drawing on the philosophies of Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze, we argue that community well-being results from the richness of connections and relationships made within a place. The case study for our investigation is ‘Flows & Catchments’, which is an ongoing, collaborative, creative-arts research project auspiced by Deakin University. Its modus operandi is Practice-Based Research (PBR), and its aim is to promote community well-being in Western Victoria. However, while the whole metier of the creative arts is to make the novel connections and relationships that should bring about community wellbeing, the various artists of ‘Flows & Catchments’ have proved slightly reluctant to make connections outside of their individual or small-group sub-projects. In this way, ecological creativity has not reached its full potential as an ecology of well-being because the rich connections and relationships essential to this well-being have not yet been fully realised. This paper explores the potential of using the NVivo qualitative analysis software package to bring together the creative-arts sub-projects of ‘Flows & Catchments’, as a way of fostering an ecology of well-being out of a currently dispersed ecological creativity.

Community languages, linguistic isolation and social exclusion in the Australian context

The detrimental impacts of social exclusion to health and well-being are well-known and are of increasing concern around the world. For many of the population sub-groups who are most at risk of social exclusion, linguistic isolation—the inability to use and understand the majority language—is a major barrier to full participation in the life of the community as well as to full integration into the society in which its members live. This paper, using data obtained from community-based research in Melbourne, Australia, will discuss the problem of linguistic isolation in the context of Australian multicultural policy and use of languages other than English among members of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. The experience of members of two specific CALD communities, speakers of Arabic and speakers of Indonesian, will be discussed to illustrate the impacts of linguistic isolation on health and well-being and to elucidate the relationship between CALD status and social exclusion in these communities.

Group and team processes in organisations

During recent decades, organisations have shifted towards team-based structures to enhance organisational performance, and research has shifted to investigate these new work structures. This chapter explores team and group process research in organisations. The initial focus of this chapter is to define groups and teams. Types of teams and team development theory will also be briefly discussed. Several theories of group dynamics will then be presented. The input-process-output framework, which explains the relationships between variables in team research, will provide structure to the ensuing discussion of team-related variables, such as individual and team-level characteristics, team and group processes and team performance. A frequent goal of group and team-based research is to understand how to improve team effectiveness and thus performance. Team performance is therefore included in this framework as an important outcome variable. This framework is then extended and a contemporary way of categorising team-based research in organisations is presented. In addition, the potentially important role of moderating variables in team research will also be discussed.

Integration of technical equipment in a project driven learning environment

Purpose: This paper describes the integration of technical equipment in a project driven learning environment in the School of Engineering in the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Built Environment at Deakin University, Geelong, Australia. Technical or laboratory equipment is a critical factor when designing learning environments and more so in a project driven learning environment. Important Findings: Deakin University has strong partnerships with industry and the community and with its cloud and located based learning policy has extremely flexible learning environments tailored to the needs of the students, with all the programs being offered in on-campus mode as well as off-campus mode. The off-campus study mode has made it even more important to have flexibility in the usage and access of the technical equipment in the laboratories. Conclusion: The School of Engineering at Deakin University Australia has developed a project-oriented design based learning environment which allows students to learn through design activities while being driven by the deliverables and outputs of a project. The technical equipment is required to be able to be used for traditional laboratory experiments in order to achieve fundamental knowledge requirements as well as project oriented knowledge and practice.

Dancing habitus: the formation of a group (dance)

This article discusses how six individual dancers came to belong, stylistically, to a group, in a project that did not aim explicitly to create or bring about that belonging. The studio-based research project tested the creation of a group improvised dance through practising over a significant period of time with ‘scores’ or verbal propositions, usually relating to physical, bodily or movement notions such as tangling and untangling or being subject to gravity. This article looks at one question within the research: namely, whether the dancing individuals came, over time, to belong to a group, and if so, what enabled that belonging and what made the dance a group dance? The project did not centre on an objective to direct the creation of a ‘groupness’ or stylistic consistency but, rather, it supported the investigation of how this ‘groupness’ might come about.

Writing “nhill” : the short story as still life

This chapter explores the philosophical, literary and practice-based elements that contributed to the writing by the author of a short story ('Nhill') and reflects upon how, as an example of creative-writing practice, the story contributes to Humanities-based research into issues of time, settlement, Aboriginality and post-coloniality. It works with theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva and Norman Bryson, as well as engaging with various painterly examples of Still Life. The possibility of a productive syncretism between Literature and Painting is proposed and extended.

Effects of acute alkalosis and acidosis on performance

Ingestion of agents that modify blood buffering action may affect high-intensity performance. Here we present a meta-analysis of the effects of acute ingestion of three such agents - sodium bicarbonate, sodium citrate and ammonium chloride - on performance and related physiological variables (blood bicarbonate, pH and lactate). A literature search yielded 59 useable studies with 188 observations of performance effects. To perform the mixed- model meta-analysis, all performance effects were converted into a percentage change in mean power and were weighted using standard errors derived from exact p-values, confidence limits (CLs) or estimated errors of measurement. The fixed effects in the meta-analytic model included the number of performance-test bouts (linear), test duration (log linear), blinding (yes/no), competitive status (athiete/nonathlete) and sex (male/female). Dose expressed as buffering mmoL/kg/body mass (BM) was included as a strictly proportional linear effect interacted with all effects except blinding. Probabilistic inferences were derived with reference to thresholds for small and moderate effects on performance of 0.5% and 1.5%, respectively. Publication bias was reduced by excluding study estimates with a standard error >2.7%. The remaining 38 studies and 137 estimates for sodium bicarbonate produced a possibly mod- erate performance enhancement of 1.7% (90% CL ± 2.0%) with a typical dose of 3.5mmoL/kg/BM (-0.3g/kgIBM) in a single 1-minute sprint, following blinded consumption by male athletes. In the 16 studies and 45 estimates for sodium citrate, a typical dose of l.SmmoL/kgIBM (-0.5gIkgJBM) had an unclear effect on performance of 0.0% (±1.3%), while the five studies and six estimates for ammonium chloride produced a possibly moderate impairment of 1.6% (±1.9%) with a typical dose of 5.5mmoL/kgIBM (-0.3glkg/BM). Study and subject characteristics had the following modifying small effects on the enhancement of performance with sodium bicarbonate: an increase of 0.5% (±0.6%) with a 1 mmoL/kg/BM increase in dose; an increase of 0.6% (±0.4%) with five extra sprint bouts; a reduction of 0.6% (±0.9%) for each 10-fold increase in test duration (e.g. 1-10 minutes); reductions of 1.1% (± 1 .1%) with nonathletes and 0.7% (±1.4%) with females. Unexplained variation in effects between research settings was typically ± 1.2%. The only noteworthy effects involving physiological variables were a small correlation between performance and pre-exercise increase in blood bicarbonate with sodium bi- carbonate ingestion, and a very large correlation between the increase in blood bicarbonate and time between sodium citrate ingestion and exercise. The approximate equal and opposite effects of sodium bicarbonate and am- monium chloride are consistent with direct performance effects of pH, but sodium citrate appears to have some additional metabolic inhibitory effect. Important future research includes studies of sodium citrate ingestion several hours before exercise and quantification of gastrointestinal symptoms with sodium bicarbonate and citrate. Although individual responses may vary, we recommend ingestion of 0.3-0.5 glkg/BM sodium bicarbonate to improve mean power by 1.7% (±2.0%) in high-intensity races of short duration. ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR

Corporate social responsibility in professional team sport organisations : towards a theory of decision-making

Research question: 

Drivers of teaching effectiveness : views from accounting educator exemplars in Australia

This paper summarizes the views, obtained via a survey instrument created by the authors and reported in studies by Stout and Wygal, of 22 accounting educator teaching exemplars from Australia. Each of these individuals has been cited for teaching excellence through receipt of one or more formal teaching awards. The paper responds to calls in Australia for increased attention to the dimensions of teaching effectiveness and to initiatives in the United States calling for a broader sharing of information among members of the academy regarding the characteristics of teaching effectiveness. Little direct evidence from the field of accounting education is available to date regarding such characteristics or antecedents of teaching effectiveness in the student learning environment. Our research therefore extends in a fundamental way the work of Stice and Stocks and Stout and Wygal. Specifically, perceptions from a sample of award-winning non-US faculties regarding the ‘drivers of teaching effectiveness’ in accounting education are recorded and analyzed. In decreasing order of perceived importance, drivers of teaching effectiveness are: having a student focus; commitment to teaching (as a profession); high levels of preparation/organization; the ability to link subject matter to the practice environment; and, instructor skills and attributes. This paper adds to our understanding of the drivers of teaching effectiveness and begins the process of creating a worldwide knowledge base in accounting education. The paper should be of interest to accounting faculty members interested in improving their teaching effectiveness and/or mentoring junior faculty members.