Shared learning : a collaborative approach for supporting pre-service teacher's reflective practice

Independent learning and critical thought are developed when students are encouraged to express and review their own understandings and the ideas of others as part of their learning journey. This paper focuses on an innovation to engage and support pre-service teachers (students) in a collaborative approach to learning following a teaching practicum. Through the creation of a learning community, information and practice is shared and further challenged in a supportive environment. The opportunity for students to review their own work in relation to responses of peers enables them to become involved in the process of critiquing their own beliefs and practices as well as their peers, within a set framework. Favourable outcomes for both students and university staff augur well for the future development of the process.  

To do or not to do (exercise) : physical activity in the lives of people with cerebral palsy

We examined the lives of adults with cerebral palsy who had minimal involvement in physical activity (Judy, aged 60; Alana, aged 29), who were involved in physical activity (Amy, aged 25; Ben, aged, 30), or who had minimal involvement in physical activity and who then participated in physical activity (David, aged 27; Tim, aged, 24). After receiving ethical approval, a life-history research approach (Denzin, 1989: Interpretive biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage) was used, with the participants’ stories being interpreted using primarily psychodynamic theory (Freud, Erikson, Adler, Basch) to gain insight into their meaning and experiences of physical activity.

Judy and Alana had similar childhood experiences, which included: performing difficult, and sometimes painful, physiotherapy; wearing callipers to assist their walking; lacking competence at physical activity; and being socially isolated from their classmates. These aspects of their life histories seemed to contribute to their subsequent avoidance of physical activity and early onset of functional decline.

Amy and Ben had negative experiences with physical activity as children (similar to Judy and Alana), but were involved in, and valued, physical activity as adults. Physical activity was a means of displaying competence, delaying further functional loss, and becoming socially connected.

David and Tim lost the ability to walk in early adolescence. The minimal physical activity in which they engaged during their adult lives was directed towards trying to walk again. Walking seemed to be intimately connected with psychosocial growth. David’s weight-training programme seemed to provide him with another avenue for self-improvement towards his goal of attracting a life partner. Tim’s warm-water aerobic programme provided him with an opportunity to develop competence at swimming and at walking, and to enhance his self-esteem for these activities.

Involvement in physical activity may be important for people with cerebral palsy in their endeavours to successfully face the various psychosocial challenges throughout life. Implications of this research include: parents and teachers of children with cerebral palsy should provide support for their involvement in physical activity; physiotherapists should try to reduce the pain and increase the perceived relevancy of the treatments they deliver to young people with cerebral palsy; and psychologists should be aware of some of the difficulties people with cerebral palsy face and how they may manifest in adults with the condition.

UnitingCare West Outreach Services and the Good Lives Model of offender rehabiliation

UnitingCare West is a not-for-profit community services organisation committed to achieving justice, hope and opportunity for all, and works to support and empower in particular those most in need in the WA community. Through its program Outreach Services, it delivers a specialist re-entry service for sex offenders and men serving life and indeterminate sentences. The program has recently been reviewed by Dr Andrew Day from the Centre for Offender Reintegration, Deakin University with input from Dr Tony Ward, University of Victoria, Wellington, New Zealand. In this paper we describe the aims of the review, the process and findings and our ongoing work in developing a rationale for the service that is underpinned by the Good Lives Model (GLM) of offender rehabilitation. More generally, the presentation will seek to understand the needs of offenders who re-enter the community following long-term imprisonment in relation to those areas of need identified in the GLM.

A novel zebrafish jak2a V581F model shared features of human JAK2 V617F polycythemia vera

Objective : The Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) is important for embryonic primitive hematopoiesis. A gain-of-function JAK2 (JAK2^V617F) mutation in human is pathogenetically linked to polycythemia vera (PV). In this study, we generated a zebrafish ortholog of human JAK2^V617F (referred herewith jak2a^V581F) by site-directed mutagenesis and examined its relevance as a model of human PV.

Materials and Methods : Zebrafish embryos at one-cell stage were injected with jak2a^V581F mRNA (200pg/embryo). In some experiments, the embryos were treated with a specific JAK2 inhibitor, TG101209. The effects of jak2a stimulation on hematopoiesis, jak/stat signaling, and erythropoietin signaling were evaluated at 18-somites.

Results : Injection with jak2a^V581F mRNA significantly increased erythropoiesis, as enumerated by flow cytometry based on gfp+ population in dissociated Tg(gata1:gfp) embryos. The response was reduced by stat5.1 morpholino coinjection (control: 4.37% ± 0.08%; jak2a^V581F injected: 5.71% ± 0.07%, coinjecting jak2a^V581F mRNA and stat5.1 morpholino: 4.66% ± 0.13%; p < 0.01). jak2a^V581F mRNA also upregulated gata1 (1.83 ± 0.08 fold; p = 0.005), embryonic α-hemoglobin (1.61 ± 0.12 fold; p = 0.049), and β-hemoglobin gene expression (1.65 ± 0.13–fold; p = 0.026) and increased stat5 phosphorylation. These responses were also ameliorated by stat5.1 morpholino coinjection or treatment with a specific JAK2 inhibitor, TG101209. jak2a^V581F mRNA significantly reduced erythropoietin gene (0.24 ± 0.03 fold; p = 0.006) and protein expression (control: 0.633 ± 0.11; jak2a^V581F mRNA: 0.222 ± 0.07 mIU/mL; p = 0.019).

Conclusion : The zebrafish jak2a^V581F model shared many features with human PV and might provide us with mechanistic insights of this disease.

Prostate cancer : Anglo-Australian heterosexual perspectives

Prostate cancer is one of the most prominent diseases in men’s health. It is inherently 'male', given the exclusivity of the prostate gland to men’s bodies and its physiological connection to testosterone and male sexuality. The biomedical complexities of prostate cancer continue to be unravelled and researched and are often connected to identifying causes, the virtues of screening and treatment modalities. However, despite the biological male 'sex' link, most of the prostate cancer research is not connected with research on gender relations, men and masculinities. The net outcome is that men’s lives and illness experiences are absent in much of the prostate cancer research. This PhD thesis Prostate cancer: Anglo-Australian heterosexual perspectives, is an ethnographic study of thirty-five Anglo-Australian men diagnosed with prostate cancer. Participants shared their experiences of living with prostate cancer in the context of health promotion, health services and in relation to their sexuality and intimate relationships. Through participant photographic novella and in-depth semi-structured interviews, rich cultural insights are provided. A social constructionist gender analysis is used in this research that shows how the social constructions of masculinity interconnect and occasionally collide with prostate cancer throughout the illness trajectory.

Defining moments in men's lives : a study of personal narratives

This study explores the defining moments in six men’s lives. The empirical dimension of the research is built around the personal narratives these men tell of their lives across a series of four interviews. The central research theme is the notion of the defining moment as a key element in the processes of establishing how men understand and interpret the events and incidents that have shaped their lives. In the context of this study, the defining moment is seen as the moment or period in time when an individual gives definition to a specific event or experience, as a transition point with (potentially) life-altering consequences. Some of the thematic structures presented include relationships with significant adults (parents, teachers), masculinity, self-harm, schooling, mental illness, isolation, loneliness, stress and relationships with peers. In my pursuit of a methodology that could accommodate the aims of this study, I explored the process of meaning through the qualitative paradigm. Drawing on the principles of qualitative research, as applied through narrative inquiry, I deployed a semi-structured interview format to collect the lived experiences of participants. By privileging the stories that individuals tell of their experiences, the narrative method recognises that data are inexorably located in the contextual and contingent. The experiences and narratives that are presented in this thesis are built around the authentic voices of participants. The study presents a warrant for working with men’s defining moments to disrupt, alter and redefine their attitudes and behaviours in order to improve their lives. Based on the insights gleaned through this study, I argue that there are defining times/points in people’s lives where their experiences can be life altering. When these experiences involve uncertainty, anxiety, stress and other pernicious effects, their longer-term consequences can be devastating. The study confirms existing research, that men are reluctant to seek help or reveal their insecurities during such times, therefore making them particularly vulnerable to defining moments. The conclusion of this thesis establishes some broad recommendations pertaining to working effectively with men and their defining moments. I focus particular attention on the place of schooling and education in helping individuals recognise and respond to the early symptoms of what is potentially a life-altering experience. Schools and, by association, teachers need to be actively and strategically involved in this process. To this end, I argue the need for targeted interventions that are both sensitive and timely. In their engagements with young males, parents, teachers, coaches and mentors need to be particularly attuned to their silent screams for help.

Music video and gendered pleasures in the lives of young women and men

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the cultural and social significance of music video in the lives of a group of young women and men. In so doing the thesis pays particular attention to issues of gender and pleasure. This research examines the interaction of a group of young people with music video in relation to four areas of research. Firstly, the importance of music video in terms of social interaction and the pleasure this entails is explored. Secondly the thesis looks at the ways in which gender is seen by the young people in this study to be established by music video performers. Thirdly, how gender becomes inscribed on the body is explored, and fourthly I examine the process of sexualization of the body. Theoretically this thesis draws upon feminist theory, poststructuralist theory, music video scholarship and educational theories. This eclectic approach has been necessary as this research speaks simultaneously to several distinct areas of scholarship: education, cultural studies and feminism. My research with a young audience of music video took place within a secondary school. Over two semesters I conducted research with two separate classes of Media Studies students who were aged fifteen and sixteen. A total of 49 students were interviewed, however I chose mainly to work with a small group of eleven students - five girls and six boys. The school where I conducted this research is located in a working class suburb of a provincial and industrial Australian city . The young people's social positioning in terms of class and ethnicity has been considered in some depth in relation to the construction of the gendered subject. Methodologically the thesis is skewed towards the audience, and also towards dealing with what is normally unspoken in the research process. For example, much academic research does not include the author of the research as an integral part of that research. In this thesis I include myself in a number of ways: historically, personally and as a feminist. This thesis places a high priority on ethics and the effects of research on those who participate in the research process. The thesis uses a number of research methods: structured interviews, informal conversations, memory-work and written responses to music videos. Generally the research methods used in this thesis have been developed reflexively; that is, they have developed directly in relation to the participants’ reactions, responses, suggestions, interests and comments. The research seeks to demonstrate the place of music video in the lives of the young people who participated in the study. I look at how the young people in this study connect music video to other cultural forms and social interactions. In this way the intertextuality of music video is demonstrated. The research looks at how young viewers 'read' the gender of music video performers, and how this affects their own gendering. The social and cultural meanings which are attached to certain parts of the body are also examined. Theorizing the body in terms of its social meanings is a significant part of this thesis. The research argues that young people often experience music video as pleasurable, and that music video can provide young people with access to powerful speaking positions. This is demonstrated through transcripts of our conversations and interviews, and also through the young people's written comments. However, these powerful speaking positions invariably invoke dominant discourses (homophobia and racism, for example). Thus the disruptive potential of music video is called into question. These dominant discourses are gendered in nature. Pleasure in the text (music video) and cultural inscriptions of gender on the body then, are realized differently for the girls and for the boys in this study. My research into music video, gender and young people has implications for research methodology generally, and for music video scholarship specifically. Music video scholarship to date has rarely focussed upon the audience of this cultural form. My research has certain implications for the ways in which research is currently conducted with young people in relation to popular culture generally, and music video specifically, and gendered subjectivity.

Programmer friendly and efficient distributed shared memory integrated into a distributed operating system

Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) provides programmers with a shared memory environment in systems where memory is not physically shared. Clusters of Workstations (COWs), an often untapped source of computing power, are characterised by a very low cost/performance ratio. The combination of Clusters of Workstations (COWs) with DSM provides an environment in which the programmer can use the well known approaches and methods of programming for physically shared memory systems and parallel processing can be carried out to make full use of the computing power and cost advantages of the COW. The aim of this research is to synthesise and develop a distributed shared memory system as an integral part of an operating system in order to provide application programmers with a convenient environment in which the development and execution of parallel applications can be done easily and efficiently, and which does this in a transparent manner. Furthermore, in order to satisfy our challenging design requirements we want to demonstrate that the operating system into which the DSM system is integrated should be a distributed operating system. In this thesis a study into the synthesis of a DSM system within a microkernel and client-server based distributed operating system which uses both strict and weak consistency models, with a write-invalidate and write-update based approach for consistency maintenance is reported. Furthermore a unique automatic initialisation system which allows the programmer to start the parallel execution of a group of processes with a single library call is reported. The number and location of these processes are determined by the operating system based on system load information. The DSM system proposed has a novel approach in that it provides programmers with a complete programming environment in which they are easily able to develop and run their code or indeed run existing shared memory code. A set of demanding DSM system design requirements are presented and the incentives for the placement of the DSM system with a distributed operating system and in particular in the memory management server have been reported. The new DSM system concentrated on an event-driven set of cooperating and distributed entities, and a detailed description of the events and reactions to these events that make up the operation of the DSM system is then presented. This is followed by a pseudocode form of the detailed design of the main modules and activities of the primitives used in the proposed DSM system. Quantitative results of performance tests and qualitative results showing the ease of programming and use of the RHODOS DSM system are reported. A study of five different application is given and the results of tests carried out on these applications together with a discussion of the results are given. A discussion of how RHODOS’ DSM allows programmers to write shared memory code in an easy to use and familiar environment and a comparative evaluation of RHODOS DSM with other DSM systems is presented. In particular, the ease of use and transparency of the DSM system have been demonstrated through the description of the ease with which a moderately inexperienced undergraduate programmer was able to convert, write and run applications for the testing of the DSM system. Furthermore, the description of the tests performed using physically shared memory shows that the latter is indistinguishable from distributed shared memory; this is further evidence that the DSM system is fully transparent. This study clearly demonstrates that the aim of the research has been achieved; it is possible to develop a programmer friendly and efficient DSM system fully integrated within a distributed operating system. It is clear from this research that client-server and microkernel based distributed operating system integrated DSM makes shared memory operations transparent and almost completely removes the involvement of the programmer beyond classical activities needed to deal with shared memory. The conclusion can be drawn that DSM, when implemented within a client-server and microkernel based distributed operating system, is one of the most encouraging approaches to parallel processing since it guarantees performance improvements with minimal programmer involvement.

Importance of the contribution of Australians to the penetration of China by the China Inland Mission in the period 1888-1953, with particular reference to the work of Australian women missionaries

Australians, in the main, are unaware of the role which Australia played in the evangelization of China in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Most would never have heard of the China Inland Mission (CIM), the largest of the Protestant bodies which penetrated the Middle Kingdom, and few would know of the contribution that its Australian contingent, which consistently comprised about a tenth of the CIM's numbers, made towards the Christianization of that vast country. This thesis aims to raise the level of awareness in this area. Academic researchers have not totally neglected to examine the proselytization of China, and historians of the stature of Latourette have not let it escape their attention. However, most of the studies which have not merely fleetingly focused on the subject while viewing a larger canvas, have been North American, singling out the efforts of United States and Canadian bodies in introducing Christianity to the Chinese. Here, authors like Amerding, Bacon, Creighton, Gates, Hawkes, Ho, Ko, Mensendiek, Michell and Quale have left their mark. In the case of the present thesis, the outlook from which events played out in China are viewed is firmly based in Australia rather than North America. Earlier Australian research has been scarce, and is dominated by Loane and Dixon. Loane, evidently primarily working from Australasian Council minutes, mainly concentrates on the efforts of the CIM's Home Council, examining its endeavours decade by decade against a backdrop of contemporaneous events in China, and briefly referring to aspects of the lives of a cross-section of Australasian missionaries, without providing much idea about what they actually did in the field or what they achieved there. Because of its preoccupation with the Home Council, which never admitted women into its ranks, Loane's treatise is systemically biased towards men, though the more prominent of the women, like Mary Reed and Susie Garland, are given due recognition. The current thesis looks in detail at what Australians did in the field, the level of success they achieved, and at the particular contribution of Australian women towards the evangelization of China. Dixon took upon herself the formidable task of examining the endeavours of all missions in China which contained Australian missionaries. Because of the magnitude of her task, she could not focus to any great extent on particular missions, nor pursue in any detail the work of individual Australian missionaries. Like Loane, she was unable to explore what they actually did in the field or what they achieved there. Neither could she delve to any depth into the work of Australian women missionaries, though on the basis of the information she had accumulated, she drew the conclusion that Australian women had largely only brought about some unintended feminist consequences amongst Chinese women. This sweeping generalization failed to take into account the other very real social changes for Chinese women the Australian female missionaries quite purposely helped to bring about, and this thesis makes good that omission. This thesis studies aspects of the Australian missionary endeavour which both Loane and Dixon have neglected, thereby breaking new ground, and sets out to correct erroneous impressions which Dixon's dissertation has left on the historical record. One of these impressions concerned the longevity of the effect of the Australian effort in China. She had the View, writing in 1978, that the Chinese Church was moribund (a view shared by Varg and Lacy) , and that therefore the effects attributable to the endeavours of any nationality had proved fruitless, whereas the author is able to show, using modern-day sources, that the church has burgeoned in recent years thanks to earlier missionary endeavours and later neo-evangelistic efforts like Gospel radio, and now has a complement of perhaps 50 million adherents, making it second only to the United States in the size of its Protestant evangelical population. Another impression she left was that the Australian input into the evangelization of China can be largely dismissed because no totally Australian organization emerged, leaving the direction of Australia's effort in other hands. Contrary to that impression, the author shows that the Australian impact in China was significant and that Australians enjoyed more power than Dixon ever imagined. The author also shows that Australians were accepted as the equal of other nationalities in the CIM once they had acquired the necessary field expertise, a factor which doubtless also applied in respect of other missions with Australian components in China. Marchant has suggested that it is a fiction perpetuated by mission periodicals that Christianity spread and progressed in a determined manner in China. This thesis establishes that within the CIM's bailiwick, though there was some patchiness, Christianity progressed steadily and inexorably. One mission alone, the CIM, is concentrated upon, firstly in order to render the data manageable, secondly because it was the largest mission in China and had a sizeable Australian (including female) contingent, and thirdly because it exemplified many of the problems which would have been faced by missions in that country and their Australian components. The methodology employed is multifaceted. The written testimony of the missionaries themselves, contained in CIM periodicals, Field Bulletins, Monthly Notes, Annual Reports, autobiographies, personal files, diaries and letters is used to illustrate various aspects of the CIM's work in which Australians were engaged. This approach is augmented by other sources such as China and Australasian Home Council Minutes, missionary conference reports, Candidates' Books, biographies, and other selected material from archival holdings in Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, America and Canada. Statistics, especially ratio analyses and growth rate comparisons are used to demonstrate the relative success of different missions, missionaries and genders. Also employed are reminiscences of missionaries and descendants obtained by personal interview, and these are aggregated to provide some general conclusions. Data from these various sources have been synthesized to serve the central objective of demonstrating the importance of the contribution of Australians to the penetration of China by the CIM in the period 1888-1953 with particular reference to the work of Australian women missionaries.

Meaning of home : a comparison of the meaning of home as identified by samples of Victorians with, and without, an intellectual disability

This phenomenological study of the meaning of home from the perspectives of people with and without an intellectual disability sought to identify, (a) any common ‘essence’ of meaning held by and, (b) the nature of any differences of perception between, the groups. Purposive samples of 18 people with an intellectual disability and 21 non-disabled people were surveyed using a semi-structured interview to ascertain their experiences of home and 'non-homes'. Inductive analysis of the data revealed a shared understanding of the meaning of home at a fundamental level. This shared meaning of home was found to comprise: the ability to exert control over an area; having a personalised space; feeling content with the living situation; a sense of familiarity with the setting; a set of behaviours and routines usually only enacted when at home; common names and uses for rooms; socialising at home with others; the importance of a positive social atmosphere in the home; and, recognition of places as non-homes because they lacked one or more of these attributes. Further analysis revealed the essence of home is its experience as the place where stress is most reduced or minimised for the individual. The study demonstrates that the concept of stress is superordinate to previously identified concepts considered fundamental to home such as privacy, control and non-homes. Major differences between the two samples were largely differences of degree with people who have an intellectual disability reporting the same fundamental attributes of home as people who do not have an intellectual disability, but in a less elaborated form. Principal among these differences of degree was the notion of control over the home and its derivative elements which encompassed the whole dwelling including its setting for people without an intellectual disability but was very restricted for people with an intellectual disability being largely confined to the person's bedroom. Socialising in or from the home was also very limited for people with an intellectual disability in comparison with that experienced by non-disabled informants with the former group conveying an impression of leading significantly socially isolated lives at home. The major implications of this study are related to the meaning of home per se, to residential service provision to people with an intellectual disability, and to future research.

Women clinical nurses' constructions of collegiality : an ethnomethodological study

This research is about a shared journey of being together. It involved thirteen women nurses (including myself) in a process approach to working with data collected through audio transcriptions of conversations during group get-togethers, field notes and journalling over twelve months. The project was conducted in a large acute care metropolitan hospital where the ward staff interests lie in a practice history of the medical specialty of gynaecology and women's health. Prior to commencement ethical approval was gained from both the University and hospital ethics committees. Accessing the group was complicated by the political climate of the hospital, possibly exaggerated further by the health politics across the state of Victoria, at a time of major upheaval characterised by regionalism, rationalisation and debt servicing. In order to ascertain women clinical nurses' constructions of collegiality I adopted an ethnomethodological approach informed by a critical feminist lens to enable the participants to engage in a process of openly ideological inquiry, in critiquing and transforming practice. I felt the choice of methodology had to be consistent with my own ideological position to enable me to be myself (as much as I could) during the project. I wanted to work with women to illuminate the ways in which dominant ideologies had come to be apprehended, inscribed, embodied and/or resisted in the everyday intersubjective realities of participants. The research itself became a site of resistance as the group became aware of how and in what ways their lives had become distorted, while at the same time it collaboratively transformed their individual and collective practice understandings, enabling them to see the self and other anew. Set against the background of dominant discourses on collegiality, women's understandings of collegiality have remained a submerged discourse. Revealed in this work are complex inter-relationships that might be described by some as collegial!, but for others relations amongst these women depict alternative meanings in a rich picture of the fabric of ward life. The participants understand these relations through a connectedness that has empathy as its starting point. In keeping with my commitment to engage with these women I endeavoured to remain faithful to the dialogical approach to this inquiry. Moreover I have brought the voices of the women to the foreground, peeling away the rhizomatic interconnections in and between understandings. What this has meant in terms of the thesis is that the work has become artificially distanced for the purposes of academic requirements. Nevertheless it speaks to the understandings the participants have of their relationships; of the various locations of the visible and invisible voices; of the many landscapes and images, genealogies, subjectivities and multiple selves that inform the selves with(in) others and being-in-relation. Throughout the journey meanings are revealed, revisited and reconstructed. Many nuances comprise the subtexts illuminating the depths of various moral locations underpinning the ways these women engage with one another in practice. The process of the research weaves through multiple positions, conveying the centrality of shared goals, multiple identities, resistances and differences which contribute to a holding environment, a location in which women value one another in their being-in-relation and in which they stand separately yet together.

Review essay : insiders, outsiders, and shared stories

The article reviews several books including "Being Australian: Narratives of National Identity," by Catriona Elder, "Australian Pastoral: The Making of a White Landscape," by Jeanette Hoorn, and "The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character Since 1770," by John Hirst.