Who's Dean today? Acting and interim management as paradoxes of the contemporary university

Interim, discontinuous or 'acting' management is an increasingly ubiquitous feature of universities. This paper asks: What are the implications of this for good academic governance? Should we understand this managerial dance as a symptom of the collapse of good managerial order or, by contrast, as a symptom of the robustness and flexibility of the organisational culture of the university? Or both? This paper answers 'all of the above' to these questions. It reaches that conclusion by examining relevant literature, theorising a methodology for reading the field of interim management, and by applying this theorising to an analysis of qualitative data collected as part of a national collaborative research project conducted in Australia.

Dean's great discovery : multiplication, division and fractions

Multiplication, division and fractions are 'hotspots' for students in the middle years with many students experiencing difficulty with these concepts (Siemon, Virgona & Cornielle, 2001). Arrays effectively model multiplication and help children develop multiplicative thinking and learn multiplication facts (Young-Loveridge, 2005). In this article we show how an open-ended array problem enabled a Grade 5/6 student to think about the relationship between multiplication, division and fractions. In the article we describe the project and 'hot spot' mathematical tasks that we used and provide some background on multiplicative thinking before presenting the case and a commentary (Western Melbourne Roundtable, 1997) of one student's exploration. This case was documented whilst we were working on a collaborative project with a team of upper primary teachers and a group of pre-service teachers at a local primary school.

Identification of expressed HSP`s in blacklip abalone (Haliotis rubra Leach) during heat and salinity stresses

Both prokaryotes and eukaryotes express a set of highly conserved proteins in response to external and internal stress. The stressors include tissue trauma,anoxia, heavy metal toxicity, infection, changed salinity, and the mmost characterized, heat shock. The result is an expression of stress proteins or heat shock proteins (HSP's) which lead to protection of protein integrity, and also to tolerance under continued heat stress conditions. The Australian backflip abalone (Haliotis rubra) is found principally in southern coastal water and also in estuarine/bay environments. Esturaine/bay environments have greater fluctuations in environmental conditions, especially those of salinity and water temperature, than they are found along oceanic coasts. Abalone from esturaine/bay and oceanic coastal environments were subjected to either increased temperature (2° C/day for a total of 10°C) or hyposalinity (80% seawater). Esturaine/bay abolone were less affectes than the oceanic animals by temperature increase and also demonstrated the ability to volume regualte 3 h after the initial salinity shock. SDS-PAGE and Western blotting techniques, together with dot blots of total protein, using HSP70 specific antibodies, were used to detect HSP70s in the foot muscle of the animals and indicated an expression of HSP70 in response to heat shock in abalone, but not following hyposalinity shock. RT-PCR yeilded a partial cDNA clone of HSP70 from the foot muscle.

Empirical generalisation as an inadequate cognitive scaffold to theoretical generalisation of a more complex concept

The impact of prior learning on new learning is highlighted by the case of Dean, a Year 8 student who developed his own method to find the sum of the interior angles of a polygon without knowing why his method worked. Enriched transcripts and visual displays of the cognitive, social (Dreyfus, Hershkowitz, & Schwarz, 2001) and affective elements (Williams, 2002) of Dean's interrupted abstraction process informed the identification of factors that inhibited Dean's constructing process. It was found Dean possessed an empirical, not theoretical, generalization (Davydov, 1990) about sums of interior angles of triangles that was an inadequate cognitive artifact for constructing the new more complex theoretical generalization. The study suggests use of tasks designed with the opportunity develop assumed knowledge in conjunction with new concepts.

Discordance between lung function of Chinese university students of 20-year-old established norms

Objective: We examined the validity of the 20-year-old established Asian norms for pulmonary function in a contemporary cohort of Hong Kong Chinese university students. Design and participants: Pulmonary function testing was conducted in university students (n = 805). Setting: A university campus in Hong Kong. Measurements and results: Parameters recorded included gender, age, height, weight, standard lung function variables (ie, FEV1, FVC, and peak expiratory flow rate [PEFR]), and exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) level. Subjects completed a questionnaire on pulmonary health, smoking history, and their dietary and exercise habits within 3 months of the study. Data were compared with the established norms for lung function for Chinese persons from Hong Kong. On average, subjects were taller than those reported in the original cohort, on whom the established norms are based; however, FEV1, FVC, and PEFR were lower. As predicted, the exhaled CO level was higher in smokers. Those who exercised regularly had a higher FEV1 and FVC, and reported fewer respiratory complaints. Conclusions: Our findings support the idea that lung function norms not only differ across ethnic groups, but that they may be susceptible to change over a single generation within an ethnic group living in the same geographic region. Assuming the equivalence of our testing methods and those on which established norms are based, our findings shed further insight into the dynamic nature of lung function, and have implications regarding the definition of normal pulmonary function and its variance over the short term.

Interrelationship between anxiety, lifestyle self-reports and fitness in a sample of Hong Kong University students

Although anxiety in university students has been well documented, the influence of lifestyle and fitness status in relation to anxiety has not been investigated from a cultural perspective previously. To make recommendations regarding the avoidance or management of anxiety in this anxiety-prone cohort that are rationally based, this preliminary investigation examined the interrelationship between anxiety, lifestyle self-reports and aerobic fitness in Hong Kong Chinese University students. The State Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form Y-2) and a lifestyle questionnaire were completed by 213 students. Female students were more anxious than male students. Subjects with high anxiety reported more deleterious lifestyle behaviours including higher salt consumption and lower levels of exercise; in addition to more frequent symptoms of anxiety such as headaches and daytime somnolence. The extremes of this sample were stratified into a low anxiety group ( n =17) and a high anxiety group ( n =14) to compare their fitness status. Although both groups had below normal aerobic capacity, the higher systolic blood pressure observed for the high anxiety group is consistent with signs of anxiety, or greater deconditioning in this group or both. The results of this study have highlighted anxiety as a concern in Hong Kong University students and identified some lifestyle and fitness correlates. Understanding lifestyle and pathophysiological correlates of anxiety in Hong Kong University students that may have a cultural basis, is a crucial step toward averting or managing anxiety when these students are studying either in Hong Kong or abroad.