Research writing chronotopes and constitutions of possibility.

 This research experiment works toward a research writing form which recognises and facilitates the role of research in the creation of new possibility in the world. It experiments with and examines the forms of time and space constituted in research texts, by reading these through similar patterns in fiction texts.

What reading and writing trauma fiction illuminates about post-traumatic growth.

Angelina Mirabito's PhD in Creative Writing investigated the therapeutic value of reading and writing trauma fiction. Her findings show that it is possible for adult survivors of complex trauma to experience post-traumatic growth from writing an adult survivor of childhood trauma coming of age story.

Tertiary Journalism Education: Its Value in Cadet Selection at Metropolitan Media

Tertiary study in journalism has been a feature of the education of Australian journalists for decades. Yet the value of what is loosely termed a “journalism degree” continues to be debated, and many industry representatives remain sceptical of its value. Journalism educators have a number of ways of assessing the level of industry acceptance of journalism education. These include looking at the percentage of students who find employment and the percentage of journalism graduates who fill entry level positions. This paper addresses the latter category, looking at data on the employment of entry-level journalists at four major institutions over a period of several years.

News values and country non-daily reporting

Australia's country, non-daily newspapers present journalism graduates with excellent opportunities to get a foot in the door, experience a wide range of journalistic responsibilities and compile an impressive portfolio. However, tertiary journalism courses largely ignore the unique news values, issues and challenges involved with country non-daily reporting. Considering a large percentage of future journalists are likely to enter the industry on a country non-daily, journalism education's current attitude has serious implications for the profession. However, this situation cannot be rectified until these specific news values, issues and challenges have been documented in order for them to be integrated into pedagogical models. This article documents the country non-daily's news values, issues and challenges, and indicates their importance to journalism training and education.

Resuming the dialogue: rhizomic actualisations

Since 1996, we have organised conferences on the discourse of the arts. The conferences have, in turn, led to a journal entitled Double Dialogues, the first of which was in hard copy under the sole editorship of Ann McCulloch and has been distributed internationally. After innumerable obstacles, we decided to situate articles, essays, exhibitions, and the like, from both these conferences and contributions related to our themes from interested parties, on-line. This refereed electronic journal deals with the discourse and practice of the arts, ranging across the visual arts, film, multi-media, dance, music, creative writing and theatre. Our decision to do this is manifold, but one of the reasons has been determined by our wish to become part of a global debate. We recognise that our interests are ones that are being experienced within academic institutions and art-centres world-wide. Before exploring the central theme of this Issue, perhaps we ought to contextualise it in terms of a journey over the last six years and into the future.

Art, pain, children: utopian and dystopian discourses in picture books

It is often assumed that picture books are intended for young children and that they are therefore mainly concerned with safe and reassuring stories, say, about home and family, friends and starting school. There are many picture books which fit within this category, but the form itself, a 32-page format which developed during the 1960s from illustrated books, has always been peculiarly open to experimentation and has enlarged its audience to include older children and adults. Unlike the novel, the picture book is not weighed down by the practices and conventions of the past; and the combination of verbal and visual texts makes for a particularly complex genre as it constructs ideas through dialogical relations between words and pictures.

Missionaries, music and method - dissemination of tonic sol-fa in Asia-Pacific countries during the nineteenth century

The Tonic Sol-fa method of teaching choral singing and its system of music notation was developed in England by John Curwen and propagated throughout the British Isles as a means of both enhancing Christian worship and achieving social reform. Tonic Sol-fa may be identified as an entirely foreign musical practice introduced to indigenous people in many British colonies and in other overseas countries during the nineteenth century as an instrument of Christian evangelism as well as of European cultural imposition. Nevertheless, indigenous communities were introduced to other aspects of European musical culture including a choral repertoire consisting of four-part hymnody and masterworks by Handel, Bach, Mozart, etc which sometimes resulted in the emergence of a school of indigenous composers writing in Tonic Sol-fa notation and using the tonal harmonic style. The result has been that in several countries-such as South Africa and Fiji for example-Tonic Sol-fa has been so fully assimilated into the ethnic culture that it has been "indigenized" and may now be said to represent a significant exogenous aspect of the musical culture in these countries.

Tonic Sol-fa was most commonly introduced to countries in the Asia-Pacific Region -as in Africa - by Christian missionaries who sought to exploit the attraction of hymns, particularly when sung in four-part harmony, as a means of evangelizing indigenous people who frequently regarded this aspect of missionary activity as a form of "magic". In particular, the Tonic Sol-fa method and notation gained a significant foothold in what were referred to as the South Sea Islands--especially in Fiji where today, the Fijian Hymn Book (1985 edition) is notated exclusively in Tonic Sol-fa. The vast majority of the Fijians are literate in Tonic Sol-fa notation and congregational singing in four parts is the norm in Fijian churches.

This paper will draw on data from nineteenth century journal sources, particularly The Tonic Sol-fa Reporter (1853-1888) and The Musical Herald (1889-1920), and will document the introduction and dissemination of Tonic Sol-fa in several Asia-Pacific countries where, unlike Australia and New Zealand, the indigenous population has maintained its own cultural and demographic predominance. Countries to be considered will include India, China (including Hong Kong), and Pacific Island nations. There will also be a consideration of the contemporary usage and applications of Tonic Sol-fa in the region, with specific reference to Fiji. It will be argued that countries where Tonic Sol-fa notation has become the norm should resist any external pressure to transfer to the standard staff notation merely for the sake of conformity. In the case of Fiji, almost universal music literacy has been achieved through Tonic Sol-fa and this should be recognized as an enviable social and cultural asset.

Narcissism

Reflects on the hidden history and banal peculiarities of the human form.

Experiential learning in practice as research: context, method, knowledge

Creative arts research is often motivated by emotional, personal and subjective concerns; it operates not only on the basis of explicit and exact knowledge, but also on that of tacit and experiential knowledge. Experience operates within in the domain of the aesthetic and knowledge produced through aesthetic experience is always contextual and situated. The continuity of artistic experience with normal processes of living is derived from an impulse to handle materials and to think and feel through their handling. The key term for understanding the relationship between experience, practice and knowledge is 'aesthetic experience', not as it is understood through traditional eighteenth century accounts, but as 'sense activity'.

In this article, I will draw on the work of John Dewey, Michael Polanyi and others to argue that creative arts practice as research is an intensification of everyday experiences from which new knowledge or knowing emerges. The ideas presented here will be illustrated with reference to case studies based on reflections, by the artists themselves, on successful research projects in dance, creative writing and visual art.

A question of genre : de-mystifying the exegesis

In this paper I wish to draw together two on-oing debates which are being played out, at least in part, in TEXT. These debates concern the nature of research for the discipline of Creative Writing and those dealing with problems associated with awarding and assessing research higher degrees - MAs, MA(Hons), MPhils and PhDs. In particular I wish to suggest that the combination of these two debates sheds considerable light on the nature and role of the research higher degree's exegesis which accompanies the creative product.

Experiential learning in practice as research : context, method, knowledge

Creative arts research is often motivated by emotional, personal and subjective concerns; it operates not only on the basis of explicit and exact knowledge, but also on that of tacit and experiential knowledge. Experience operates within in the domain of the aesthetic and knowledge produced through aesthetic experience is always contextual and situated. The continuity of artistic experience with normal processes of living is derived from an impulse to handle materials and to think and feel through their handling. The key term for understanding the relationship between experience, practice and knowledge is ‘aesthetic experience’, not as it is understood through traditional eighteenth century accounts, but as ‘sense activity’. In this article, I will draw on the work of John Dewey, Michael Polanyi and others to argue that creative arts practice as research is an intensification of everyday experiences from which new knowledge or knowing emerges. The ideas presented here will be illustrated with reference to case studies based on reflections, by the artists themselves, on successful research projects in dance, creative writing and visual art.

Word processing in the classroom

This study describes the use of one word processor in a working classroom of Grade Four children over a period of nine months. The class had only limited access to the computer as, it was shared with several other grades - the computer was mobile to be moved from room to room. The study was aimed not only at monitoring the reactions of the children to the Introduction of the computer itself, but also on the wider impact within the classroom through a series of cycles. The study is a report of a form of action research. The findings were that children were highly, motivated to write when using a word processor for creative writing. The writing of the children in this study was enhanced by using a word processor. The word processor could be used at several levels of its full potential for various purposes and at different grade levels. It could be used successfully and integrated into an existing creative writing program such as the ‘writing process’ approach and used concurrently with other writing materials. Creative writing can be enhanced and classroom implementation of word processors can be facilitated by peer-group and cross-age tutoring.

Gender and genre : a case study of a girl and a boy learning to write

This study addresses questions of gender and genre in early writing by drawing on systemic linguistic theory, It is a longitudinal case study that compares the writing development of two children, a boy and a girl/ who learned to write in classrooms that adopted an approach to writing known in Australia as 'process writing1, The children's written texts were analysed using the systemic functional grammar as developed by MAK, Hallidey and the models of genre and register as proposed by J,R, Martin. The children were followed for the first two and a half years of their schooling, from the first day of kindergarten to the middle of grade two. They were observed weekly during the daily ‘writing time’ and all texts were collected. Although the children were ostensibly 'free’ to determine both the writing topics and text types they produced, systemic analysis revealed that: 1) the majority of texts written were of one genre, the Observation genre, in which the children reconstructed their personal experience with family and friends and offered an evaluation of it. 2) a significant pattern of gender differences occurred within this genre, such that the boy reconstructed experience in terms of the male cultural stereotype of being an active participant in the world, while the girl reconstructed experience in terms of the female stereotype of being a more passive observer of experience. It is the strength of systemic linguistic analysis that it revealed how the choices the children made in language were constrained by a number of social and cultural contexts, including: a) the teacher's theoretical orientation to literacy; b) the models of spoken and written language available to the children; and c) the ideology of gender in the culture. In particular, the analysis made visible how children appropriate the meanings of their culture and socialise themselves into gender roles by constructing the ideology of gender in their writing. The study contributes to an understanding of genres by offering a revised description of the Observation genre, which derives from the Observation Comment genre originally identified by Martin and Rothery (1981). It also raises a number of implications for teacher training and classroom practice, including the need for: 1) increased teacher consciousness about gender and genre, especially an understanding that choices in language are socially constructed 2) a critical reassessment of the notion of 'free topic choice’ promoted by 'process writing' pedagogy, a practice which may limit choice and tacitly support the gender status quo.

Teaching narrative journalism and the APN Professional Development Program

This paper extends the familiar concept of ‘journalism-as-storytelling’ into a description of some of its practical applications in a university and industry partnership resulting in a commercial training arrangement in early 2007. It describes the APN/USQ Professional Development Program for newspaper employees (with no formal journalism qualification) and exemplifies how print journalism courses may be adapted to teach narrative writing techniques. It demonstrates how foundation skills in journalistic practice may be incorporated into an adapted teaching model, suggesting that “the basics” of narrative writing should not be thought of as discrete components of journalism education. This argument is further supported by the description of a robust pedagogical approach informed by Mezirows’ transformative learning theory for a cross-disciplinary knowledge base.