Listening to different voices

The paper reports on a larger study carried out in the island state of Tasmania, Australia, between 1996 1998. The research reviewed the impact of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities Policy (ISDP 1995) within the government school system between 1996-1998.

This Qualitative study interprets and critically analyses the stories of five key informants - a parent, two teachers (a support teacher and a class teacher), a policy maker and a university academic - during the early period of the implementation of the IDSP (1995). The visual and literary 'data stories' produced through the study narrate inclusive schooling in the Tasmanian context as a 'detective story' of the special education knowledge tradition, originating from the policy makers' reality rather than from the transformative experience of developing pedagogical models and processes in classrooms and communities.

The paper presents an argument for a poststructuralist approach to research and policy writing/reading that questions traditionalist theorising in the special education field and populist slogans of 'inclusion'.

Peers and pragmatics : listening to ESL students in a mainstream Australian school

This paper discusses a listening initiative aimed at assisting newly arrived ESL adolescents to meet the sociolinguistic challenges they faced in an Australian school. Proponents of a mainstream approach to ESL learning maintain that immersing students into age appropriate classrooms with native speakers provides superior opportunities for ESL students to those of a language school. Listening to native speaking peers is viewed as a way to accelerate sociolinguistic learning. Yet the school where this study took place acknowledged that many of the ESL students were quickly marginalized rather than supported within the school environment, and their academic success was erratic. A listening based initiative was introduced to raise awareness of pragmatics, the knowledge of meaning in context. Observed instances of communication analysed in this paper typify those likely to isolate ESL adolescents in their early years of mainstream secondary school. Furthermore, the positive impact of the outlined peer listening intervention on social inclusion as a precursor of significant language development is demonstrated. This case study has curriculum and welfare implications relevant to schools offering ESL students mainstream education.

Dancing and listening : Odissi across cultures

This paper discusses issues that arose for me when I interviewed an Odissi dancer about her learning this Indian dance form, travelling as she did from Australia to Orissa to spend several months of each year over an 11-year period to live with her guru, the late Sanjukta Panigrahi. The issues I discuss are the problems associated with making a text from a live encounter, and the choice of perspectives used in analysing that text. Drawing on discussions by ethnographers, anthropologists and others about the role of poetics in intercultural research, and on my own dance experience, I reflect on my ‘positioning’ in the various stages of the research. I go on to propose that the live, the temporal and what is remembered in the body are important, potentially poetic modalities of knowledge, which can easily be elided in academically validated ways of thinking and doing.

Fitting soft center-near design multifocal lenses

The recent launch of the Air Optix Aqua Multifocal lens (Ciba Vision) means that there are three silicone hydrogel (SiHy) multifocal lenses available. The benefits of SiHy materials have been well documented (Dumbleton, 2006), but until recently they weren't available in multifocal designs. With an aging population, it's likely that a large number of contact lens wearers are approaching presbyopia, which will result in a dramatic increase in demand for multifocal lenses.

Using social network analysis to identify key child care center staff for obesity prevention interventions: a pilot study

Introduction. Interest has grown in how systems thinking could be used in obesity prevention. Relationships between key actors, represented by social networks, are an important focus for considering intervention in systems. Method. Two long day care centers were selected in which previous obesity prevention programs had been implemented. Measures showed ways in which physical activity and dietary policy are conversations and actions transacted through social networks (interrelationships) within centers, via an eight item closed-ended social network questionnaire. Questionnaire data were collected from (17/20; response rate 85%) long day care center staff. Social network density and centrality statistics were calculated, using UCINET social network software, to examine the role of networks in obesity prevention. Results. “Degree” (influence) and “betweeness” (gatekeeper) centrality measures of staff inter-relationships about physical activity, dietary, and policy information identified key players in each center. Network density was similar and high on some relationship networks in both centers but markedly different in others, suggesting that the network tool identified unique center social dynamics. These differences could potentially be the focus of future team capacity building. Conclusion. Social network analysis is a feasible and useful method to identify existing obesity prevention networks and key personnel in long day care centers.

The visual/verbal nexus: conflating conventional notions of listening

This paper re-examines the terrain of traditional communication time-based studies in the context of a case study of the communication practices of higher education students in both formal and informal contexts through an online survey and semi-structured phenomenologically focussed interviews. While focussing on the nature of students’ listening behaviour for learning and for leisure, the study explores how ideas and information are mediated in contemporary communication environments which encompass mobile devices, social media, etc. In exploring the nexus between the visual and the verbal, the research probes the ways in which contemporary higher education students navigate the increasingly complex communication environment and questions the capacity of current multiliteracies theories, for example, to engage meaningfully with this less charted terrain. The data suggests that the rapid and pervasive changes due to digital affordances have now positioned listening in a pivotal position alongside the explosive visual communication media. The capacity of our current curricula to respond creatively to the increasingly complex mix of new communication paradigms is open to question.