Cinders in snow? Indigenous teacher identities in formation

The identity work engaged in by Indigenous teachers1 in school settings is highlighted in a study of Australian Indigenous teachers. The construction of identity in home and community relationships intersects with and can counteract the take up of a preferred identity in the workplace. In this paper we analyse data from interviews with Indigenous teachers, exploring the interplay between culture and identity. We foreground the binary nature of racial assignment in schools, demonstrate how this offers contradictory constructions of identity for Indigenous teachers, and note the effects of history, culture and location in the process of forming a teaching 'self'.

Multi-wavelets from B-spline super-functions with approximation order

Approximation order is an important feature of all wavelets. It implies that polynomials up to degree p−1 are in the space spanned by the scaling function(s). In the scalar case, the scalar sum rules determine the approximation order or the left eigenvectors of the infinite down-sampled convolution matrix H determine the combinations of scaling functions required to produce the desired polynomial. For multi-wavelets the condition for approximation order is similar to the conditions in the scalar case. Generalized left eigenvectors of the matrix H_f; a finite portion of H determines the combinations of scaling functions that produce the desired superfunction from which polynomials of desired degree can be reproduced. The superfunctions in this work are taken to be B-splines. However, any refinable function can serve as the superfunction. The condition of approximation order is derived and new, symmetric, compactly supported and orthogonal multi-wavelets with approximation orders one, two, three and four are constructed.

Troubling identities : teacher education students' constructions of class and ethnicity

This paper reports on a research project that explored how student teachers understand ethnic and classed difference as it relates to themselves and their students. Discourses of schooling can shape students ethnic and classed identities, frequently positioning non-mainstream students as 'other' and marginalizing them. Significant numbers of our teacher education students have limited experience of diverse educational settings, having mainly attended white middle-class schools as students and as student teachers. Working with diverse student populations productively depends on teachers recognising and valuing difference. The ways in which they engage with students whose ethnic and classed identities are different from their own is important in creating learning environments that build on and engage with diversity.

In a preliminary stage of the research we asked eight third-year teacher education students to explore their own ethnic and classed identities. The complexities of identity are foregrounded in both the assumptions we made in selecting particular students for the project and in the ways they did (not) think about themselves as having ethnic or classed identities.

In this paper we draw on these findings to interrogate how categories of identity are fluid, shifting and ongoing processes of negotiation: troubling and complex. We also consider the implications for teacher education.

Making sense of difference? Teaching identities in postmodern contexts

How do teachers make sense of ethnic and classed differences? Frequently students from non-mainstream cultures and of lower socio-economic status are constructed in the literature and through practice as ‘deficit’ and consequently become marginalised. A range of short-term, ‘quick fix’ policy and curriculum approaches have aimed to address the ‘problems’ of those ‘othered’ from the mainstream due to their perceived difference. These have had little effect on improving educational results for students of specific ethnic and/or class backgrounds whose outcomes remain below the national average.

Poststructural theories offer opportunities to think about how teachers are positioned within discourses of identity. Our research (and others’) suggests the need for teachers to interrogate their assumptions about class and culture and how these are played out in their pedagogical relationships with students.

In this paper we report on a small research project that investigates the professional practices and personal beliefs of teachers. Empirical data from this study will build knowledge about how difference is constructed and diversity is ‘taken up’ by teachers as they engage with secondary students who have Language Backgrounds Other Than English and who are economically disadvantaged.

The construction of new teacher identities and new collaborative partnerships

There are many different versions of partnerships between teachers and academics and both authors have themselves been involved in various collaborations with classroom teachers. This paper is concerned with the construction of teacher identity within such collaborative partnerships. We will focus on the problematic nature of some of these partnerships by examining the discourses that construct teachers as 'resistant', or 'unwilling' in accounts of collaborative work that was not necessarily successful. In particular we will ask: Why are the relationships seen to be problematic? In whose terms are they problematic? This critique of existing discourses within accounts of collaborative partnerships will allow a rethinking of the relations between teachers and academics. In the conclusion to this paper we will attempt to answer the question: What are the features of particular relationships that can produce shifts in discourses so that teachers are 'truly' located and positioned as collaborative partners?

Fractional polynomials and model selection in generalized estimating equations analysis, with an application to a longitudinal epidemiologic study in Australia

In epidemiologic studies, researchers often need to establish a nonlinear exposure-response relation between a continuous risk factor and a health outcome. Furthermore, periodic interviews are often conducted to take repeated measurements from an individual. The authors proposed to use fractional polynomial models to jointly analyze the effects of 2 continuous risk factors on a health outcome. This method was applied to an analysis of the effects of age and cumulative fluoride exposure on forced vital capacity in a longitudinal study of lung function carried out among aluminum workers in Australia (1995-2003). Generalized estimating equations and the quasi-likelihood under the independence model criterion were used. The authors found that the second-degree fractional polynomial models for age and fluoride fitted the data best. The best model for age was robust across different models for fluoride, and the best model for fluoride was also robust. No evidence was found to suggest that the effects of smoking and cumulative fluoride exposure on change in forced vital capacity over time were significant. The trend 1 model, which included the unexposed persons in the analysis of trend in forced vital capacity over tertiles of fluoride exposure, did not fit the data well, and caution should be exercised when this method is used.

Preparing leaders to work with emotions in culturally diverse educational communities

Purpose – This paper argues that because leadership is a relational practice and leaders are gendered and racialised, in socially diverse schools and societies, leader preparation around difference is potentially emotionally confronting to leaders' professional and personal identities.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on critical race and feminist theoretical perspectives to undertake a review and analysis of current approaches to professional development.

Findings – The paper concludes that because there is significant agreement now that leadership is considered to be emotional management work, then leadership learning, if it seeks to change practice, is also emotionally laden. The paper concludes that to develop more reflexive leaders, professional learning should begin with scrutiny of the self as gendered and racialised to consider what that means for “the Other” in terms of leadership in culturally diverse communities and schools.

Research limitations/implications – The paper is context specific, largely drawing on Australian data with reference to indigeneity. This is consistent with its theoretical position that leadership is relational and situated.

Practical implications – The paper identifies possible strategies that could be undertaken in professional learning forums that address issues of difference.

Originality/value – While there are significant issues around professional learning to develop pedagogical practices that address student diversity, there is less theorising around leadership diversity and what that might mean in terms of professional development of leaders.

Performing masculinity and leadership : male academics' work practices and identities

In this thesis, a folio comprising a major dissertation and three elective tasks, issues including masculinity(ies), identities, leadership and academics’ work practices are considered against a backdrop of change in the higher education sector. Narrative research methods are applied throughout the folio. The first elective, a discussion and commentary arising from an interview with an experienced practitioner in gender education, amounts to a feasibility study for the dissertation, whereas the second elective experiments with the use of computer mediated communication as a means of interviewing a small number of male academics about their inclusive teaching practices. Primarily curiosity-driven research, the conclusion is drawn that computer mediated communication, if used at all, ought provide a complementary, not primary means of data collection. The third elective conveys the life story of an Asian-Australian academic who expresses different masculinities according to the social settings in which he finds himself. The conclusion is made that there is neither a single colored masculinity nor a single working class masculinity. The milieux of race and class need to be considered together. The research described in the major dissertation was undertaken with a group of eleven male academics from a number of rural and metropolitan universities – men who were thought by their colleagues and peers to practice collaborative approaches to leadership. Whereas the majority of the men practised what could be described as transformational approaches to leadership, a small number exploited the process of collaboration mainly for their own protection. Very few of the men engaged in discourses of gender. One of the principal conclusions reached in the paper is that there are ramifications for future leadership training that universities offer so that it becomes more relevant and socially inclusive. Another main conclusion relates to the intimidation reported by some of the men in the study, and that there are implications for universities in the way they protect their employees from such incidents. A third significant conclusion is that there is some way to go before gender is integrated into the discourse of male academics. Until this can occur, limited opportunities exist for alliances to be formed between most male academics and feminist academics for the advancement of socially just workplaces.

Social identities and law students' writing

This paper argues that social identities, discursively speaking, consist of ‘positions’ that are individuated by distinctive linguistic features. These include distinctive patterns of representation indicated by clause structure and type, a set of priorities for attending to what is important indicated by thematic structure, and an orientation to the represented world and to self as indicated by modality, propositional attitudes and tense. A social identity comprises an array of these often contradictory ‘positions’ associated with a social or professional role. A person’s identity is constituted dynamically by the way they ‘reconcile’ the various positions that make up the social identity, and also, as Archer and Ivanic argue, by the way they reconcile a social with a personal or autobiographical identity. It is argued that this process of reconciliation gives clues about identity formation in the traces it leaves in grammatical texture.

This paper uses a simulated letter of advice to a client written by a group of first year law students to explore the discursive construction of social or professional identity. This letter is poorly written and full of grammatical mistakes and infelicities. It is argued that the mistakes provide a linguistic trace of the students’ struggle to reconcile the conflicting roles and positions they occupy as authors of the letter. In particular the students’ problems result from a struggle to reconcile their multiple positions as: students writing for assessment by a tutor about a legal problem, as a simulated firm of solicitors advising to a client, and as potential litigators anticipating the future course of events in their simulated moot court appearance.

Miners, diggers, ferals and show-men : school–community projects that affirm and unsettle identities and place?

Many contemporary sociologists suggest that a feature of modern life is that the practices and identities associated with 'place' are eroded. The local no longer matters in everyday life as it once did. Some national governments are persuaded of the possibility of an urban dystopia of Orwellian dimensions, and have found a response in theories and rhetorics of social capital, citizenship and communitarianism. They have instituted strategies to address an imaginary of harmonious local communities. In this paper I examine one such government intervention and show how four schools in Tasmania, Australia, took up the invitation to strengthen ties with their local communities. The projects reveal that the local still exists and matters, but they also hint at other possibilities. I argue that by working with a 'place-based' curriculum to assist young people in building local networks and engaging productively with their local neighbourhoods, schools might provide important resources for identity-building and learning.

Severed heads and compliant bodies? a speculation about principal identities

When I had to reapply for my own position as principal I felt as if I was facing the prospect of losing a part of myself. Conversations with other women colleagues confirmed that I was not alone in this response. Taking this as my cue, I explore the notion of principal “identification” practices—that is the continuing process of forming a “principal identity”—through personal narrative, a Cartesian metaphor and emerging research evidence. In particular, I focus on how conditions of entrepreneurial governance change a continuing policy commitment to heroic leadership, and how principal and school identities are conflated through accountability regimes, marketing requirements and work intensification. I propose that a study of changing principal identities might fruitfully add to critical leadership and management scholarship, complementing the emergent corpus on emotions in leadership.

Syzygies of the polynomial invariants of the Riemann tensor

This thesis introduces a novel way of writing polynomial invariants as network graphs, and applies this diagrammatic notation scheme, in conjunction with graph theory, to derive algorithms for constructing relationships (syzygies) between different invariants. These algorithms give rise to a constructive solution of a longstanding classical problem in invariant theory.

Risk and the regulation of youth(ful) identities in an age of manufactured uncertainty

Examines the benefits and dangers of allowing experts to intervene in the lives of youth, and their families, on the basis of assessing them as being at-risk.  Highlights the dangers of expert promises to prevent risk by intervening in people's lives on the basis of what is perceived to be normal or good.

Implications for ID practice of instructional designers' cultural identities.

Are there social and political purposes for design that are culturally based? A growing body of research is concerned with the design of culturally-appropriate learning resources and environments, but the emphasis of this panel is on the instructional designer as the agent of the design. Colloquially put, if we design for ourselves, we should understand the sociocultural influences on us and how they inform our practices. We should also develop respect for, and learn from, how various global cultures address similar design problems differently. This panel includes instructional design scholars and practitioners from a range of geopolitical regions, who will share culturally-based narratives and metaphors of ID, and invite participants to do the same.

Understanding exercise uptake and adherence for people with chronic conditions : a new model demonstrating the importance of exercise identity, benefits of attending and support

Understanding the factors influencing uptake and adherence to exercise for people with chronic conditions from different ages, genders and ethnicities is important for planning exercise services. This paper presents evidence supporting a new model of exercise uptake and adherence applicable to people with chronic conditions from diverse socio-demographic backgrounds. The study is based on 130 semistructured interviews with people with chronic conditions, including both those who did and those who did not attend exercise services, and supporters of those who attended. Analysis followed the guidelines of ‘framework analysis’. Results show that three factors were particularly important in influencing adherence behavior: (i) exercise identity, (ii) support and (iii) perceived benefits of attending. Social and cultural identities impacted on willingness to exercise, importance of exercise and perceived appropriateness of exercising. Having at least one supporter providing different types of support was associated with high levels of attendance. Those people who valued the social and psychological benefits of attending were more likely to be high attenders. The new model illustrates interaction between these three factors and discusses how these can be taken into account when planning exercise services for people with chronic conditions drawn from diverse socio-demographic groups.