Exemplification and deconstructive writing: dancing with Massumi, Derrida, and others

I am experimenting with ‘exemplification’ (Massumi, 2002) and ‘deconstrucitve writing’ (Maclure, 2010) by applying them to selected data from research for my doctoral thesis. Central to both is the power of examples to expose detail and divergence that lead to new and different possibilities and connections. I have been inspired by Derrida’s (Maclure, 2003; Spitzer, 2011) notion of the fabric of a text with ‘tears’, ‘cuts’, ‘knots or aporias’. Therefore, I have created a fabric of text with tears and aporias: one that encourages readers to think and read doubly (Derrida, cited in Spitzer, 2011). I write in an ‘inattentive’ way (Massumi, 2002): juxtaposing examples (narratives) with the identities of the narrators, my responses to their narratives, and theoretical and other musings to play with the ambiguity of reality and identity. The interplay of inattention, exemplification, and deconstructive writing allows for interpretation, reinterpretation, affective responses, and new and different impressions and possibilities. My aim in writing this paper is threefold: (1) to explore the application of a Derridean perspective to some of my research, (2) to practise exemplification and deconstructive writing, and (3) to write in an inattentive and creative way.

On film character retrieval in feature-length films

The problem of automatic face recognition (AFR) concerns matching a detected (roughly localized) face against a database of known faces with associated identities. This task, although very intuitive to humans and despite the vast amounts of research behind it, still poses a significant challenge to computer-based methods. For reviews of the literature and commercial state-of-the-art see [21, 372] and [252, 253]. Much AFR research has concentrated on the user authentication paradigm (e.g. [10, 30, 183]). In contrast, we consider the content-based multimedia retrieval setup: our aim is to retrieve, and rank by confidence, film shots based on the presence of specific actors. A query to the system consists of the user choosing the person of interest in one or more keyframes.

(Re)examining identities: working with diversity in the pre-service teaching experience

Australia, like the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), continues to experience a mismatch between the cultural backgrounds and socio-economic class of teachers and those of the students they work with. This article reports on a study that explored how a group of Australian teacher-education students understand their own ethnic and socio-economic class identities and how they work with students of ethnic and class backgrounds different from their own. Analysis of data from interviews and focus groups with the student-teachers is presented to highlight how they make sense of difference and how they take up the challenges of teaching for diversity. The paper raises issues and concerns regarding how diversity and difference might be addressed in teacher education.

Working with 'diverse bodies, diverse identities': an approach to professional education about 'diversity'

The complexity and diversity of populations in contemporary Western societies is becoming a significant public policy issue. The concept of 'diversity' has come to represent cultural, ethnic, racial and religious differences between the 'dominant group' and immigrant and indigenous populations. 'Diversity training' is amongst many strategies being implemented to address social and economic objectives in complex societies. This paper discusses and critically evaluates a professional education programme, 'Diverse Bodies, Diverse Identities', that is offered to human service practitioners and social work students in Victoria, Australia. It is concluded that a range of approaches is needed to address 'diversity' in contemporary societies.

Standardising differences? Theorising 'identities' and pedagogical approaches to working with diversity

‘Race’, socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity are theorised as fluid, dynamic and interconnected categories of identity within post-structural theories. Understanding identities as socio-culturally constructed offers opportunities to think differently about how teachers and teacher education students position themselves and are positioned within these discourses. In Australia, where the teaching profession is overwhelmingly Anglo-Australian (Rizvi 1992; Santoro et al, 2001), mono-lingual and of middle-class background, Australian students are becoming far more linguistically and culturally diverse. Since engagement with teachers who ‘know’ their students, (Delpit, 1995) and the communities from which they come is a major predictor of successful educational outcomes, the growing disparity between teachers’ and students’ cultural and classed experiences is of concern. While teacher education programs focus on developing the attributes in new graduates to work productively with difference, the actualities of doing so are problematic.

This paper reviews some current Australian, North American and United Kingdom approaches to working with student teachers’ constructs of self in terms of ethnicity, ‘race’ and class in order to problematise taken-for-granted ideas of ‘normal’. It considers debates that surface around ‘individuality’ versus ‘collective’ differences; additionally, some of the resistances and dilemmas that emerge when ‘white’, middle class students are asked to rethink their own positionality are examined. Questions regarding what constitutes productive ways to teach inclusive and transformative pedagogies are raised in light of current theory and practice.

Software reliability growth models based on local polynomial modeling with kernel smoothing

Software reliability growth models (SRGMs) are extensively employed in software engineering to assess the reliability of software before their release for operational use. These models are usually parametric functions obtained by statistically fitting parametric curves, using Maximum Likelihood estimation or Least–squared method, to the plots of the cumulative number of failures observed N(t) against a period of systematic testing time t. Since the 1970s, a very large number of SRGMs have been proposed in the reliability and software engineering literature and these are often very complex, reflecting the involved testing regime that often took place during the software development process. In this paper we extend some of our previous work by adopting a nonparametric approach to SRGM modeling based on local polynomial modeling with kernel smoothing. These models require very few assumptions, thereby facilitating the estimation process and also rendering them more relevant under a wide variety of situations. Finally, we provide numerical examples where these models will be evaluated and compared.

Constructing the identities of `responsible mothers, invisible men` in child protection practice

Social constructionism offers valuable insights into the study of social problems for example, poverty, homelessness, crime and delinquency, including how social phenomena 'become' social problems, through social processes of interaction and interpretation. The social construction of child maltreatment has recently emerged as a site of scholarly inquiry and critique. This paper explores through three case studies how 'responsibility for child maltreatment' is constructed in child protection practice, with a specific focus on how 'responsibility' may also be gendered. In particular, how is gender associated with responsibility, such that the identity-pair, 'responsible mothers, invisible men', is a highly likely outcome as claimed in feminist literature? What other assumptions about 'identities of risk' or 'dangerousness' articulate with patriarchy and influence how responsibility is constructed? The case studies explore normally invisible processes by which social categories become 'fact', 'knowledge' and 'truth'. Furthermore, the social construction of 'responsibility for child maltreatment' is extended by a reflexive analysis of my own constructionist practices, as researcher/writer in claims making. The analysis offers an insight into the dynamic and dialectical relationship between professional and organisational knowledge and practice, allowing for a critique of knowledge itself, the basis for the claims made and possible alternative ways of knowing.

Caught up in the teaching-training divide: confusing professional identities

The adult education sector in Australia has undergone significant changes in recent years including a shift towards the marketisation of education and the delivery of highly prescriptive Vocational Education and Training (VET). This article reports on research that explored the ways in which educators in the adult sector understand their work and identify as professionals in this changed context. The findings of the study suggest that educators who have work histories as “teachers” strongly resist the ways in which the current discourses of VET position them as “trainers”. Data from interviews with educators and observations of them at work are analysed to highlight the ways in which they understand teaching and training as binary opposites. I examine the consequences of teachers investing in a rigid and  uncompromising teaching/training binary and argue that it is counterproductive to their forging new identities in a changed education context.

One career, two identities : an assessment of gay men`s career trajectory

Most of the research on career development of sexual minorities focuses on lesbians. Gay men, on the other hand, have received little attention in the literature as it is assumed that they face fewer difficulties in career development because they are men. This paper redresses this gap by presenting an analysis of the impact of sexual identity on the career development of gay men, drawing on both a literature review of the literature on sexual identity, gay organizational studies and career development and the results of a recent interview study. In accord with other literature, the study demonstrates that gay men, like other sexual minorities, are confronted with a conflict between personal and career needs, and have to deal with society's expectations and intolerance towards homosexuality. Suggestions are given for research that will lead to a deeper understanding of the career decisions and attitudes of gay men.

Troubling identities: teacher education students` constructions of class and ethnicity

Working with diverse student populations productively depends on teachers and teacher educators recognizing and valuing difference. Too often, in teacher education programs, when markers of identity such as gender, ethnicity, 'race', or social class are examined, the focus is on developing student teachers' understandings of how these discourses shape learner identities and rarely on how these also shape teachers' identities. This article reports on a research project that explored how student teachers understand ethnicity and socio-economic status. In a preliminary stage of the research, we asked eight Year 3 teacher education students who had attended mainly Anglo-Australian, middle class schools as students and as student teachers, to explore their own ethnic and classed identities. The complexities of identity are foregrounded in both the assumptions we made in selecting particular students for the project and in the ways they constructed their own identities around ethnicity and social class. In this article we draw on these findings to interrogate how categories of identity are fluid, shifting and ongoing processes of negotiation, troubling and complex. We also consider the implications for teacher education.

Music education and minority groups cultural and musical identities in the 'newer' South Africa : white Afrikaners and Indians

Music Education, as well as cultural and musical identities are all being renegotiated, post-Apartheid, within the so-called 'newer' rather than the commonly known 'new' South Africa. The developing situation with certain minority groups is particularly interesting. Education in general has undergone much change since the first democratic elections in 1994: music education specifically has been affected by such change in terms of content, delivery and assessment. Within the South African context, cultural and musical identities are often intertwined with language, racial and even tribal identities, and discussing one implies the others. We are particularly interested here in the role of formal Music Education in relation to white Afrikaners and Indians as they renegotiate their cultural development, including musical aspects

Polyhedral results and exact algorithms for the asymmetric travelling salesman problem with replenishment arcs

The asymmetric travelling salesman problem with replenishment arcs (RATSP), arising from work related to aircraft routing, is a generalisation of the well-known ATSP. In this paper, we introduce a polynomial size mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation for the RATSP, and improve an existing exponential size ILP formulation of Zhu [The aircraft rotation problem, Ph.D. Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, 1994] by proposing two classes of stronger cuts. We present results that under certain conditions, these two classes of stronger cuts are facet-defining for the RATS polytope, and that ATSP facets can be lifted, to give RATSP facets. We implement our polyhedral findings and develop a Lagrangean relaxation (LR)-based branch-and-bound (BNB) algorithm for the RATSP, and compare this method with solving the polynomial size formulation using ILOG Cplex 9.0, using both randomly generated problems and aircraft routing problems. Finally we compare our methods with the existing method of Boland et al. [The asymmetric traveling salesman problem with replenishment arcs, European J. Oper. Res. 123 (2000) 408–427]. It turns out that both of our methods are much faster than that of Boland et al. [The asymmetric traveling salesman problem with replenishment arcs, European J. Oper. Res. 123 (2000) 408–427], and that the LR-based BNB method is more efficient for problems that resemble the aircraft rotation problems.