Theorizing change in the educational 'field' : re-readings of 'student participation' projects

There is a burgeoning literature on educational change – how to make it and how to understand its failures in order that the causes can be remedied next time. Much of this literature implies that when free and autonomous policy agents know what they are doing, they can shift institutional structures and habituated ways of doing and being. In this article we mobilize Bourdieu, who rejected this binary of structure and agency, in favour of the notion of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘capitals’, to theorize one case of change. We describe the shifting policy-scape in Australia in the latter part of the twentieth century which created some opportunities for students to act as educational leaders and participate in making decisions about their learning and schooling. We then develop a specific and situated theorization of change in a contested and hierarchical educational ‘field’. We argue that the continued press from the political field and the wider field of power to increase levels of mass schooling produced a ‘principal opposition’ in the schooling field between democratization and hierarchization. This opposition, we propose, is now in policies, institutional changes and
the varying actions of educators, making the field not only contested but also unstable: this produces further spaces and opportunities for both hierarchic and democratic changes.

(Queer) Deleuzean readings of desire in Australian young adult fiction

This thesis analyses the representation of adolescent girls' friendships in Australian young adult fiction. Through Deleuzean philosophy, the relationships between girls are read as spaces of empowering and unbounded passions which defy binarised distinctions and categorisations. The analysis of these fictional relationships disentangles desire from psychoanalytic lack and uncovers its productivity.

Parallel readings

The story of the nineteenth-century Western encounter with Buddhism demonstrates more about these first Western interpreters and their socio-historical context then about Buddhism. In parallel, this thesis also demonstrates, from the perspective of Buddhism, how the mind works to bring an object, like Buddhism, into consciousness.

Automatic grain texture analysis using integral transforms

Tonewood for musical instruments is quarter-sawn and frequently quality-graded based on visual appearance, mechanical and acoustic properties. The assessment uses simple human (subjective) observation, and two ‘‘experts’’ can rate the same sample differently. This paper describes the application of integral transforms (Fourier and Radon) for automatic (objective) assessment of the visual appearance of 10 Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) sample images. This work considers surface classification on the basis of grain orientation, count, spacing, and evenness or uniformity.

Integral approach and numerical improvement to calculate carbon concentration profiles in carburising

The carbon diffusion in steel, where the carbon diffusivity varies with the carbon content, was solved with the integral methods under the third boundary condition. The variation of carbon diffusivity in steel with the carbon content was described with two different functions, linear dependence and exponential dependence. The integral approximation for both cases was improved with the numerical computation to more accurately predict the carbon profiles. The integral solution is more accurate than the formulation based on the assumption of a constant diffusivity or those based on the assumption of a constant diffusivity and/or constant carbon content at part surface. It is also more easily used in practice than the numerical method to describe the carburising process and predict the carbon content at steel surface and carbon profiles in treated layer.

The integral child

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A fuzzy decision support method for customer preferences analysis based on Choquet integral

The explosion of the Web 2:0 platforms, with massive volume of user generated data, has presented many new opportunities as well as challenges for organizations in understanding consumer's behavior to support for business planning process. Feature based sentiment mining has been an emerging area in providing tools for automated opinion discovery and summarization to help business managers with achieving such goals. However, the current feature based sentiment mining systems were only able to provide some forms of sentiments summary with respect to product features, but impossible to provide insight into the decision making process of consumers. In this paper, we will present a relatively new decision support method based on Choquet Integral aggregation function, Shapley value and Interaction Index which is able to address such requirements of business managers. Using a study case of Hotel industry, we will demonstrate how this technique can be applied to effectively model the user's preference of (hotel) features. The presented method has potential to extend the practical capability of sentiment mining area, while, research findings and analysis are useful in helping business managers to define new target customers and to plan more effective marketing strategies.