Thinking teaching: seeing mathematics teachers as active decision makers

Many teachers are now incorporating a broader range of strategies into their teaching, including problem solving, investigations and open-ended questions. Among other things, such teaching requires teachers to talk less but to make more decisions. The acknowledgment of this complexity and the centrality of active decision making have implications for teacher education and teacher development, and for the strategies and resources used.

Equity-focused health impact assessment: a tool to assist policy makers in addressing health inequalities.

In Australasia (Australia and New Zealand) the use of health impact assessment (HIA) as a tool for improved policy development is comparatively new. The public health workforce do not routinely assess the potential health and equity impacts of proposed policies or programs. The Australasian Collaboration for Health Equity Impact Assessment was funded to develop a strategic framework for equity-focused HIA (EFHIA) with the intent of strengthening the ways in which equity is addressed in each step of HIA. The collaboration developed a draft framework for EFHIA that mirrored, but modified the commonly accepted steps of HIA; tested the draft framework in six different health service delivery settings; analysed the feedback about application of the draft EFHIA framework and modified it accordingly. The strategic framework shows promise in providing a systematic process for identifying potential differential health impacts and assessing the extent to which these are avoidable and unfair. This paper presents the EFHIA framework and discusses some of the issues that arose in the case study sites undertaking equity-focused HIA.

Market makers v's the general public : a first look at S & P500 futures trade data

This paper considers 15 minute records of trading volume and traded prices coinciding with the reporting intervals required by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Records are extracted from trade records for market trade and also two way trade between market makers (CT1) and the general public (CT4) from January 1994 to June 2004. Futures price records are matched with S&P500 cash index price records. Simultaneous volatility models are specified and estimated to test trading volume to futures volatility lead/lag effects and also futures volatility to cash index volatility lead/lag effects. As we disaggregate from the market records to CT1 and CT4 records and further into year to year samples volume to futures volatility leading effects and also futures volatility to cash volatility leading effects dominate. The results raise important issues for risk management and dynamic hedging models employing intra-day trader data. A number of important issues for further analysis are also raised in this paper.

Ethnomusicological study of music makers in an Australian military band

This dissertation reports on a study of music making in a band of the Australian Army Band Corps. The thesis of the dissertation is how the world views of the soldier-musicians of the Australian Army Band, Kapooka, are constructed in the context of their work in military music performance. In arguing this thesis, the author provides a brief history of military music in Australia, and - demonstrates how rank and military discipline intersect with music making in the lived experience of the soldier-musicians; - explores how the dichotomy between music making as a craft and music making as art is resolved in a setting where the employer regards music making as a trade, while the soldier-musicians strive to meet artistic goals; - demonstrates how successful music making and successful soldiering are both forms of work which depend upon effective collective action; - demonstrates that while military bands play the widest repertoire of musical styles of any Western music ensemble, the styles converge toward a homogenous, eclectic, military band performance style: and - explores how military music, which may have limited intrinsic interest, in certain ceremonial settings may link with other visual and auditory symbol systems to generate profound meaning both for the soldier-musicians themselves and for their audiences. The study examines the processes by which the world views of soldier-musicians are shaped by the institutional context in which they work, as they participate in a music tradition which has been a powerful agent in the shaping of Australian patriotic traditions. The study uses a naturalistic participant observation methodology. The author worked as an honorary guest civilian member of the band’s trombone section to collect data in the form of fieldnotes and interviews. Data analysis and interpretation was made according to the tenets of grounded theory. Evidence in the form of first hand accounts from the perspective of the researcher and from the soldier-musicians themselves is employed to generate both emic and etic understandings. An understanding of a music culture from the participant's point of view is a central concern of the study.

Assessing cost-effectiveness in mental health: helping policy-makers prioritize and plan health services

Objective: We assessed, from a health sector perspective, options for change that could improve the efficiency of Australia's current mental health services by directing available resources toward 'best practice' cost-effective services.

Method: We summarize cost-effectiveness results of a range of interventions for depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and anxiety disorders that have been presented in previous papers in this journal. Recommendations for change are formulated after taking into account 'second-filter criteria' of equity, feasibility of implementing change, acceptability to stakeholders and the strength of the evidence. In addition, we estimate the impact on total expenditure if the recommended mental health interventions for depression and schizophrenia are to be implemented in Australia.

Results: There are cost-effective treatment options for mental disorders that are currently underutilized (e.g. cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) for depression and anxiety, bibliotherapy for depression, family interventions for schizophrenia and clozapine for the worst course of schizophrenia). There are also less cost-effective treatments in current practice (e.g. widespread use of olanzapine and risperidone in the treatment of established schizophrenia and, within those atypicals, a preference for olanzapine over risperidone). Feasibility of funding mechanisms and training of staff are the main second-filter issues for CBT and family interventions. Acceptability to various stakeholders is the main barrier to implementation of more cost-effective drug treatment regimens. More efficient drug intervention options identified for schizophrenia would cost A$68 million less than current practice. These savings would more than cover the estimated A$36M annual cost of delivering family interventions to the 51% of people with schizophrenia whom we estimated to be eligible and this would lead to an estimated 12% improvement in their health status. Implementing recommended strategies for depression would cost A$121M annually for the 24% of people with depression who seek care currently, but do not receive an evidence-based treatment.

Conclusions: Despite considerable methodological problems, a range of cost-effective and less cost-effective interventions for major mental disorders can be discerned. The biggest hurdle to implementation of more efficient mental health services is that this change would require reallocation of funds between interventions, between disorders and between service providers with different funding mechanisms.

Deficient "disadvantage students" or media-savvy new meaning makers?: engaging new metaphors for redesigning classrooms and pedagogies.

Words work in powerful ways in the world. We work from and with an understanding that the ways we talk about people, places and practices matter. If this was ever in doubt, witness recent media reports of the 'attacks on America' and the aftermath of the 'war on terrorism': the world's people have been re-divided both metaphorically and materially in these phrases. Meaning is constructed in and through language as categories, metaphors, rationales, stories, and tropes (Game & Metcalfe, 1996) and, while these are just representations of ideas, practices and material events and circumstances (Hall, 1997), we nevertheless act on those meanings (Fairclough, 1989; Gee, 1999). For example, whether people are described as 'border crossers,' 'invaders,' 'nomads,' 'gypsies,' 'asylum seekers' or 'refugees' affects how they treated, what they can be and what they can do. And in education, whether it's the 'literacy hour' or 'catching children in the net' or reading 'recovery,' words are inevitably tied to programs and proposals for solutions. How the problems are described and defined are crucial in how decisions are made.

Are policy makers,researchers and educators 'addicted' to the equity failure cycle?’

Introduction : In this paper,  I suggest part of the key to equity progress is to remove our gaze from the equity defined ‘others’ to focus on recognising and transforming the ‘privilege- benefit loop’ (author’s term) that underpins the creation and maintenance of hegemonic Western educational institutions. As a modest contribution to the efforts to address the ‘equity failure cycle’ (author’s term, later expanded on), I suggest three combined approaches (drawing from critical theory and critical pedagogy ) that incorporate and illustrate the interconnected, usually concurrent and complementary political, cultural/institutional and personal levels of understanding, experience and action that I think are necessary ingredients for change. Each of the three levels or domains are inter-related and ‘co-constructive’ and therefore, potentially ‘de-constructive’ .

Job stress as a preventable upstream determinant of common mental disorders: a review for practitioners and policy-makers

There is growing recognition of the important role of mental health in the workforce and in the workplace. At the same time, there has been a rapid growth of studies linking job stress and other psychosocial working conditions to common mental disorders, and a corresponding increase in public concern media attention to job stress and its impact upon worker health and well-being. This article provides a summary of the relevant scientific and medical literature on this topic for practitioners and policy-makers. It presents a primer on job stress concepts, an overview of the evidence linking job stress and common mental disorders, a summary of the intervention research on ways to prevent and control job stress, and a discussion of the strengths and weakness of the evidence base. We conclude that there is strong evidence linking job stress and common mental disorders, and that it is a substantial problem on the population level. On a positive note, however, the job stress intervention evidence also shows that the problem is preventable and can be effectively addressed by a combination of work- and worker-directed intervention.