Mobility, aspiration, voice : a new structure of feeling for student equity in higher education

There is a changed ‘structure of feeling’ emerging in higher education systems, particularly in OECD nations, in response to changed social, cultural and economic arrangements. Taking a student equity perspective, the paper names this change in terms of ‘mobility’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘voice’. It argues that (1) new kinds and degrees of mobility are now a significant factor in sustaining unequal access to and experience of higher education for different student groups, (2) despite government and institutional aspirations to expand higher education, students' desires for university are not a given among new target populations and (3) while universities are seeking to enroll different students in greater numbers, the challenge now is how to give greater voice to this difference. Drawing on these themes of mobility, aspiration and voice and taking recent changes to higher education policy in Australia as the case, the paper presents a new conceptual framework for thinking about student equity in HE. The framework extends from established approaches that focus on barriers to accessing higher education in order to focus on people's capacities in relation to higher education participation.

A right to respond? Monopolisation of 'voice' in CMS

This paper explores the power effects of, and possible justifications for, the differential 'voice' and 'silence' accorded to academic and non-academic subjects within Critical Management Studies (CMS). I explore these issues through a discussion of the practice of 'giving voice' to some subjects critiqued in CMS journal articles by providing them with the opportunity to publish a 'response'. I question the justification for extending this right only to academic subjects, and use this example to provoke CMS to question further its institutional orientation to issues of voice and silence in relation to the non-academic research subject.

Cartoon voice saying no several times SFX

"No, no, no, no, no, no ... no".

Multimodal synthesis and the voice of the multimedia author in a Japanese EFL context

This paper examines a powerful potential of multimodal design: meaning that transcends the total semiotic contribution of a text's constituent parts. With reference to data drawn from the digital storytelling practices of Japanese university students, the author argues and demonstrates that in the current semiotic climate, characterised by the increasing availability and complexity of communication tools and ready appropriation of available designs, practices of multimedia authorship truly can evince expression that is authentically multiplicative. However, this sort of meaning making does not automatically come about. Controlling the inherent polysemy of multimodal texts, in the author's view, is a matter of recognising points of semantic correspondence among co-deployed images, language, etc. and creating syntheses of potential meaning that cut across these semiotic modes. The author further argues that it is in this way that the voice of the multimodal author can most clearly be heard, particularly in cases in which a language learner–author integrates elements within a multimedia text that encode meaning in the L2.

I'm the slice of pie that's ostracised.... : Foucault's technologies, and personal agency, in the voice of women who are homeless, Adelaide, South Australia

In contrast to the international research (particularly in the United Kingdom and North America), much of the Australian literature regarding homelessness to date omits the perspective of people who are homeless. In contributing to the fledgling Australian literature in the field, the following article adopts a secondary approach to the data analysis of original research. When analysed, the voices of homeless women from an agency in Adelaide, South Australia exhibit elements of both Foucault’s technologies of domination and the self. While the results show that the women do have a powerful sense of the broader external issues exerted on them (reflecting both technologies of domination and the self), the analysis also reveals ambiguities in their responses. Apparent in the voice of homeless women is a sense of personal agency which appears to be absent in Foucault’s technologies. By considering the viewpoints of homeless women, various policy implications can also be drawn. Indeed, this is one of the motivations of the article, namely to inject into policy debate and development the voices of the people most adversely affected by it. The policy implications of the women’s voices centre around the desire to be included rather than remain on the margins, the need for supportive relationships, the necessity to take small steps to independent living, and the need for more affordable, independent housing.

Attempting to hear the excluded : the voice of homeless people and policy implications

Until recently, there have been very few systematic attempts to hear what people who are homeless say about their lives and situations. Yet there are a few exceptions particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom (for example, Snow & Anderson 1993; Hutson & Liddard 1994). The Inquiry which resulted in the Burdekin Report in Australia also held consultations in which people who were homeless submitted evidence (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 1989). Other Inquiries have done likewise and some reports have used the accounts of people who are homeless (for example Bartholomew 1999; Fopp 1989; MacKenzie & Chamberlain 2003).

Incorporating domain knowledge with video and voice data analysis in news broadcasts

This paper addresses the area of video annotation, indexing and retrieval, and shows how a set of tools can be employed, along with domain knowledge, to detect narrative structure in broadcast news. The initial structure is detected using low-level audio visual processing in conjunction with domain knowledge. Higher level processing may then utilize the initial structure detected to direct processing to improve and extend the initial classification.

The structure detected breaks a news broadcast into segments, each of which contains a single topic of discussion. Further the segments are labeled as a) anchor person or reporter, b) footage with a voice over or c) sound bite. This labeling may be used to provide a summary, for example by presenting a thumbnail for each reporter present in a section of the video. The inclusion of domain knowledge in computation allows more directed application of high level processing, giving much greater efficiency of effort expended. This allows valid deductions to be made about structure and semantics of the contents of a news video stream, as demonstrated by our experiments on CNN news broadcasts.

This voice and notes

This poem plays around with ideas of ‘voice’. The title draws attention, through its use of a demonstrative pronoun, to the instability of voice in lyric poetry. In other words, by calling the poem ‘This Voice’, I hope to make the reader think ‘Which voice is this? The author’s? Mine? A fictional character’s?’

Workers, a neglected voice in environmental decisions

The European Aarhus Convention is the only public law convention devoted to public participation in environmental matters. The Convention has application broadly to Australia as many of the Convention’s provisions are reflected in Australian environmental law. The Convention has an ambitious aim being, to engage civil society in effective public participation at all levels of environmental decision-making. Trade unions and workers as members of civil society are granted rights under the Aarhus Convention to participate in environmental decisions. However in spite of this, the trade union movement has largely ignored the Convention. This article examines the potential rights which the Convention grants to trade unions and workers and explores the broader debate regarding the involvement of unions in environmental matters.