The role of the music therapist in promoting parent infant attachment

Abstract
This paper provides a brief overview of recent literature relating to infant musicality and its basis for effective parent-infant work in music therapy. Two strong trends are revealed: the international breadth of the developing work by music therapists within family-centred contexts of practice, especially work with infants and their parents in the early years; and the use oftheoretical principles of communicative musicality (Malloch &Trevarthen, 2008] combined with knowledge of early musical skills. This focus on musical perception and musical development (Briggs, 1991; Trehub, 2003] provides a rationale as to why musical interaction supported by a qualified music therapist can offer a potential pathway for improved attachment between the parent and infant when therapeutic support is indicated.

Longitudinal Teacher Education Workforce Study [LTEWS] final report. November 2013

The Longitudinal Teacher Education Workforce Study (LTEWS) investigated the career progression of graduate teachers from teacher education into teaching employment in all states and territories across Australia in 2012 and the first half of 2013, and tracked their perceptions, over time, of the relevance and effectiveness of their teacher education programs. Specifically, it investigated: The career progression of the 2011 teacher education graduates from teacher education into, andpossible exit from, teaching employment, including their utilisation into teaching, their retention and attrition in teaching in their early years, and their geographic and schools sector mobility; and, The views of teacher education graduates over time on the relevance and effectiveness of their teacher education for their teaching employment, including the relationship between their views of their teacher education and their early career teaching career.LTEWS was conducted concurrently with the Studying the Effectiveness of Teacher Education (SETE) project, which is a three-year project investigating these issues in Queensland and Victoria. SETE is funded by the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD), the Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment (QDETE), the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT), and the Queensland College of Teachers (QCT). LTEWS focused on data collection in states and territories other than Queensland and Victoria. The findings from the SETE study were incorporated with the LTEWS findings to provide a national data set.

Streaming variational inference for dirichlet process mixtures

Bayesian nonparametric models are theoretically suitable to learn streaming data due to their complexity relaxation to the volume of observed data. However, most of the existing variational inference algorithms are not applicable to streaming applications since they re-quire truncation on variational distributions. In this paper, we present two truncation-free variational algorithms, one for mix-membership inference called TFVB (truncation-free variational Bayes), and the other for hard clustering inference called TFME (truncation-free maximization expectation). With these algorithms, we further developed a streaming learning framework for the popular Dirichlet process mixture (DPM) models. Our ex-periments demonstrate the usefulness of our framework in both synthetic and real-world data.

Two of everything: developing functional thinking in the primary grades through children's literature

Traditionally algebra has been regarded as the domain of the secondary school years in Australia and many other countries. Non-mathematics teachers, parents and students often narrowly regard algebra as the manipulation of symbols adhering to tightly prescribed rules (Serow, Callingham & Muir, 2013). It is now recognised, however, that foundational ideas associated with algebraic thinking can, and should be, included in mathematics curricula in the pre-school and primary years (Bobis, Mulligan & Lowrie, 2009). This stance is reflected in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (Australian Curriculum Assessment & Reporting Authority, 2012) which extends key algebraic ideas to patterns and generalisations, and acknowledges that number and algebra are developed together as each enriches the study of the other. This article explores the concept of functional thinking and demonstrates how the story, ‘Two of Everything’ (Hong, 1993) is employed as a springboard for developing functional thinking with students from the early years through to upper primary schooling.

Southern anthropology - a history of Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai

From far-flung sites in Australia and the Pacific Islands, Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt produced the landmark study Kamilaroi and Kurnai (1880). Their book revealed the complexity of Aboriginal and Pacific Island societies and changed the course of anthropology in the early years of the discipline. Using archival sources and an innovative approach, Southern Anthropology explores the research, writing and reception of Kamilaroi and Kurnai. Historical chapters track Fison and Howitt's collection and analysis of anthropological material in the context of raging debates about the evolution of humans. This narrative is interspersed with an introduction to the kinship and social organisation of Aboriginal and Pacific Island people that highlight the enduring value of Fison and Howitt's methods and the resurgence of their questions in contemporary anthropology. Southern Anthropology is designed to be read across disciplinary boundaries.

Discovering semantics from multiple correlated time series stream

In this paper, we study a challenging problem of mining data generating rules and state transforming rules (i.e., semantics) underneath multiple correlated time series streams. A novel Correlation field-based Semantics Learning Framework (CfSLF) is proposed to learn the semantic. In the framework, we use Hidden Markov Random Field (HMRF) method to model relationship between latent states and observations in multiple correlated time series to learn data generating rules. The transforming rules are learned from corresponding latent state sequence of multiple time series based on Markov chain character. The reusable semantics learned by CfSLF can be fed into various analysis tools, such as prediction or anomaly detection. Moreover, we present two algorithms based on the semantics, which can later be applied to next-n step prediction and anomaly detection. Experiments on real world data sets demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed method. © Springer-Verlag 2013.

Building a model of support for preschool children with speech and language disorders

Speech and language disorders impede young children’s abilities to communicate and are often associated with a number of behavioural problems arising in the preschool classroom. This paper reports a small-scale study that investigated 23 Australian educators’ and 7 Speech Pathologists’ experiences in working with three to five year old children with speech and language disorders. The participants responded to a questionnaire relating to the types of SaLD; social and emotional challenges experienced by children; their role in providing support and issues confronting both professions. The findings highlighted that educators play a valuable role in supporting children’s speech and language disorders through the social context of the preschool classroom. Furthermore inter-professional practice between Speech Pathologists and educators was viewed as highly valuable. Drawing upon these findings, a model of support is presented to improve interventions for holistic development.

The baby makes 3 plus project in the Great South Coast region: final report from the external evaluator, January 2016

This report presents the evaluation of the Baby Makes 3 Plus project in the Great South Coast region of Victoria. Baby Makes 3 Plus was one of 12 projects funded by the Department of Justice and Regulation in Victoria under initiative to support primary prevention and early intervention-focused partnership projects to address violence against women and children. The project provided the Baby Makes 3 relationship education program to new parents across the region, and conducted a variety of training to increase the skills of Great South Coast early years practitioners (the Plus component of the project). The three key objectives of the project were:• To increase the capacity of first time parents to build equal and respectful relationships in response to the lifestyle and relationship changes that follow the birth of a child.• To increase the capacity of health professionals and organisations to promote equal and respectful relationships during the transition to parenthood.• To building capacity to identify women at risk of experiencing family violence through a gender equity component of in-service training.

A to Z safari

An alphabet app designed by Deakin University researchers specialising in literacy education, IT and graphic design to support children beginning to learn letter-sound relationships using research into memory retention. Tested with Australian primary school students, the ‘form-taking’ images used in this app have been found to be more effective at assisting children to learn common letter-sound relationships than images that are not form-taking (e.g. integrated images). A to Z Safari offers engaging mini-games to explore and reinforce letter-sound relationships, along with a password-protected admin/data area where students’ progress and gameplay statistics are recorded – data which can be emailed directly to the teacher. A to Z Safari has not been designed to replace classroom activities, but was designed as an electronic application to complement them. An A3-sized alphabet chart accompanies the app in the teacher area so that teachers can print the charts out to place on their students’ tables for their reference outside of game play.

Affordances of using multiple videoed events to construct a rich understanding of adult-child book readings

This paper explores the affordances of using video-based research to capture a multiplicity of events, along with multimodal representations when producing data related to adult–child book readings. In doing this we answer two questions: (1) why more than one event is needed when seeking a comprehensive collection of information for the purpose of analysis; and (2) why one mode of data production alone (e.g. audio recordings or note taking) is insufficient to record practice or interviews when richness is of priority. This research used three videoed events to produce data. These included videoing: (1) caregiver–child interactions during four shared book reading sessions, (2) interviews with caregivers immediately following each of the reading sessions and (3) video-stimulated discussions with caregivers within two months of the final shared book reading. In this paper, I contribute to discussions that highlight the affordances of using video-based research as a means of capturing the multimodal elements of an experience, which can contribute to the analysis and interpretation of data. I expand on this, however, to suggest that when coupled with a multiplicity of events, video-based research can be a means of pursuing richness via a method that has been criticized for its narrow subjectivity.