Politics of educational crisis

The Chinese symbol for 'crisis' is a combination of the symbols for danger and opportunity. Constructing a sense of crisis is dangerous because crisis discourse mobilises powerful emotions such as concern, fear and desire - particularly when it surrounds something as important to us as our children's education. Using the example of recent crisis discourses surrounding physical education, this thesis examines dangers and opportunities that arise when we declare that our education institutions are in crisis.

Reporting of the ACT heroin trials

The aim of this research is to analyse the reports of the proposed heroin maintenance trials in the Australian Capital Territory (A.C.T.), in Melbourne print media during 1997. The proposal for trials of heroin-prescription to long-term users in the A.C.T. was based on extensive scientific research. The rejection of this proposal by Prime Minister Howard raised many questions. This study was designed to help understand what discourses and rhetorical devices were used in the reporting of heroin issues in the media and what part some sections of the media played in the government’s decision. Discourse analysis was conducted of newspaper articles from two major Melbourne newspapers, The Age and the Herald-Sun for the year 1997. All articles relating to heroin and drug-policy from the newspapers were included for analysis. Those in favour of the trials used predominantly health and social discourses. Those opposed used moral discourses supported with stereotypes, metaphors, emotive practices and ‘inaccuracies’. There were considerable differences in discourses presented by The Age and the Herald-Sun. This study demonstrates that opposition to the heroin trials relied on rhetorical strategies and sensationalistic arguments, rather than meaningful debate of scientific and social issues. Researchers should act to identify the stereotypes and metaphors used in the discourses surrounding an issue and act to disarm them.

Discourses of regeneration in early twentieth-century Britain : from Bedlam to the Imperial War Museum

This paper examines the building that presently houses the Imperial War Museum, investigating the transformation of the archetypal ‘mad space’ of the Bethlem Royal Hospital into what has been described as the ‘biggest boy’s bedroom in London’. Following recent concerns in human geography with Imperial cities, it highlights the differing ways in which this transformation embodies a number of themes of degeneration and regeneration in early twentieth-century Britain.

English education for international students in local schools : practices of inclusion and discourses of exclusion

This paper is concerned with the ways secondary teachers in Victoria, Australia, speak about inclusive education for international students. Preliminary analysis of recent research shows teachers understand that English language teaching is crucial and are committed to its good practice. Nevertheless, further analysis suggests teacher approaches to education are contested, support a deficit view of teaching practice, and simplify notions of language and culture to their discrete and systemic characteristics vis-a-vis their embodied and ontological aspects. Even as teachers work to include all of their students, their efforts are mediated by discourses that negotiate the nexus between identity and difference, language and culture, and English language education. Together these discourses work to inscribe international students differently within the community, redefine the education provided to them, and constrain their access to contemporary and globalized life-worlds.

A visual mining system for theme development evolution analysis of scientific literature

Theme development evolution analysis of literature is a significant tool to help the scientific scholars find and study the frontier problems more efficiently. This paper designs and develops a visual mining system for theme development evolution analysis to deal with the large number of literature information. The analysis of related themes based on sub-themes, together with the dynamic threshold strategy are adopted for improving the accuracy of system. Experiments results prove that correlations of themes obtained from the system are accurate and achieve better practical effect in comparison with that of our early work.

Exploring diverse community discourses : reflections from a local perspective

This paper represents some of the diverse discourses in the social sciences that are not often known by, or considered relevant to, those people interested in community development. On the contrary, I argue that these discourses may in fact be vitally pertinent to understanding the divergent predicaments facing us in our present moment.
After working in the field for twenty years, I am in the final stages of a PhD case study on one of the Victorian 'Community Building Demonstration Projects', based in Melbourne's North. This discussion is therefore based on the intersections between working in a community, traditionally accepted discourses of community development, and 'alternative' discourses that often appear unrelated.
In particular there are seven taken-for-granted cultural stories I will examine: problem posing, holism, social research, post colonial studies, critical social theory, public policy, and eco philosophy, in the hope that these might provide an 'other' story for community and development. Given this broad canvas, I will necessarily be breif on each topic.

The brain in the jar : troubling the truths of discourses of adolescent brain development

Ideas about adolescent brains and their development increasingly function as powerful truths in making sense of young people. And it is the knowledge practices of the neurosciences and evolutionary and developmental psychology that are deemed capable of producing what we have come to understand as the evidence on which policy, interventions and education should be built. In effect these discourses reduce young people to little more than a brain in a jar. The paper examines how the evidence about adolescent brains - their volume, and the functioning and activity of different regions - from neuroscience and evolutionary and developmental psychology works as truth. What knowledge practices are used to produce this evidence, or are deemed capable of producing this evidence? What truth claims are able to attach to this evidence? What makes it true and why is it imagined as evidence of something that is true in policy, public and other research settings that are often far removed from where it was produced? I argue that the discourses of adolescent brain development disembody, reduce and simplify the complexities of these figures we know as adolescents. In effect they render the adolescent as a brain in a jar.

Breath and the truths of youth at risk : allegory and the social scientific imagination

The ways that we have invented for knowing young people are governmentalised. This governmentalisation produces powerful incentives to conform to the rule-bound and institutionalised knowledge practices that institutions, government departments, corporations, and NGOs understand as being capable of telling truths about young people and about risk. I argue that knowledge practices in the social sciences should trouble what counts as truth, as evidence, and the ways in which these truths can be produced.

These interests will be examined through a discussion of the ways in which Tim Winton's novel Breath can be read as an allegorical tale about the terror of being ordinary: and of the teenage years as being a time in a life in which the fear of being ordinary compels Winton's key characters to seek out, sometimes stumble upon that which promises to make their's a life less ordinary. Here risk is something that breathes energy and purpose into lifeworlds that are dominated by the institutionalised ordinariness of family, school, and work. As an allegorical tale told from the vantage point of hindsight, Breath unsettles what it is that the social sciences can tell us about youth (as becoming) and risk (as mitigated by prudential foresight).