Beyond pretence: new sensibilities for computing and communication technologies in teacher education

Making particular reference to schools’ traditional relationships with CCTS (and the kinds of ‘pretend’ and ‘artificial’ learning/assessment tasks that this relationship has historically produced), this paper details a research and teaching agenda focused on exploring the potential of having students work on tasks with value to local and/or school communities. The paper maps the informing theories and current practices of schools
participating in the ‘knowledge producing schools’ (KPS) agenda. Particular attention is given to the ways in which KPS schools are better positioned to respond to the needs of diverse student/community populations, particularly those students traditionally perceived as ‘at risk’.

Towards a new settlement in Australian teacher education : a review of shifting sensibilities

This essay reviews and provides a critical introduction to the papers found within these Refereed Proceedings of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) Conference held in Yeppoon, Queensland, 5-8 July, 1997. It argues that within Australia, and to a lesser extent the Asia Pacific region, there is evidence of a new settlement in teacher education, the parameters and particulars of which are characterised by significant changes in its political economy, social and knowledge bases. While it is evident that particular features of previous settlements in Australian teacher education remain, in recent times many of these features have acquired different emphases and meanings; in part due to their conjoining with and (re)positioning amongst other elements previously illegitimated or `held at bay'. Each of the themes of change is examined in turn and, at relevant junctures, references are made to papers within the volume that provide further illustration and explanation.

Taxation threat, motivational postures, and responsive regulation

The central proposition of motivational posturing theory is that regulatees place social distance between themselves and authority, communicating the nature of that distance through a narrative that protects the self from negative appraisal by the authority. One of the key components of posturing is the coping sensibility that individuals adopt to manage the threat of authority. At a baseline level, authorities make demands on citizens and as such threaten individual freedom. At the highest level, authorities threaten through punishment for non-compliance. Data collected from 3,253 randomly selected Australian taxpayers and a special group of 2,292 taxpayers in conflict with the tax authority are used to show that in both groups, three coping sensibilities contribute to posturing ("thinking morally,""feeling oppressed," and "taking control"), and that all three sensibilities are significantly heightened in the group experiencing conflict with the authority. The article argues that the most effective regulatory outcome is achieved when the regulatory process can dampen the "taking control" and "feeling oppressed" sensibilities, and strengthen the "thinking morally" sensibility. Responsive regulation is an approach that encourages tax authorities to read motivational postures, understand the sensibilities that shape them, and tailor a regulatory intervention accordingly.

The Body of Christ : blasphemy, eroticism and transgression in Martin Scorses's The Last Temptation of Christ

Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) has polarised critics and audiences for almost two decades. The film is most often remembered for offending the religious sensibilities of fundamentalist Christians, who objected to Scorsese’s representation of Christ as a neurotic figure who struggles to reconcile his divinity with his sexual impulses.

Even critics who reject the fundamentalist accusations of blasphemy are divided about the film’s value. For example, Rolando Caputo praises the film as an unrecognised masterpiece, which confirms Scorsese’s status as an auteur. Conversely, Leonard W. Levy, dismiss the film as having little artistic merit. This paper re-evaluates the film as a serious theological text by re-examining the film in the light of Michel Foucault’s essay ‘A Preface to Transgression,’ arguing that the film can be read as a sophisticated attempt to examine the connections between corporeality, divinity and human subjectivity.

So flat, so cute! Robots, superflatness and asian architectural futures

Many depictions of urban futures have a distinctly Asian flavour. There have been numerous visions of highly technological futures whose environments extrapolate present societies into futures technically, culturally and politically dominated by China or Japan, Such futures are portrayed as both exciting and threatening, to the point that the Japanese academic and cultural critic Toshiya Ueno used the term ‘Techno-Orientalism’ to describe the phenomenon. Nevertheless, whether Western interest is Orientalist or not, Asian architects are also increasingly looking to their own contemporary and future cultures for inspiration. This paper will discuss two manifestations of this. The first is Thai architect Sumet Jumsai’s Bank of Asia. Unlike contemporaneous English hightech buildings, with their coldly mechanistic representation of ducts and struts, Jumsai’s Bank of Asia, takes on the anthropomorphic character of Japanese scifi robots. It is endearing, friendly, even cute. The second example is what might be termed superflat architecture, from the term coined by the artist Takashi Murakami to describe an aesthetic of intrinsic flatness, eliminating depth in favour of skin and surface. The emergence of Techno-Cute and Superflat architecture suggest contemporary Asian architectural sensibilities that neither derive their aesthetic qualities solely from tradition nor from Western Modernism or Postmodernism.

Re-discovering Wardell’s Chantry Chapel for Lord Petre : a crumbling fabulation

In January 2009 The Times reported that the Historic Chapels Trust (HCT) was undertaking the preservation and conservation of the Chantry Chapel of Thorndon Hall, near Brentwood, Essex, England, once the seat of the Petre family, one of England’s oldest Catholic families. The chapel has lain severely neglected for many years with missing and loose tiles, blocked gutters, and heavily eroded stonework. In spite of its desperate need of repair, inside, glimpses of the richly carved and lavishly decorated interior remain, witness to exquisite craftsmanship. Because of its quality Nikolas Pevsner had attributed the building to A W N Pugin. More recent research has established that in fact William Wardell was the architect.

By 1854, when Lord Petre commissioned this mausoleum for his estate, Wardell would have been especially known for his London curvilinear decorated churches at Greenwich, Clapham and Hammersmith. Wardell produced three complete sets of drawings for the Chantry Chapel. Drawings for all three designs are extant, and give valuable insights into Wardell's design methods and the evolution of his design thinking. They raise questions about Early Victorian and High Victorian Gothic sensibilities and establish Wardell’s architectural and design credentials beyond a doubt. This paper explores Wardell’s debt to Pugin, posits the Chantry Chapel as a rival to Pugin’s St Giles Church, Cheadle, and considers the question of patronage.

Now acknowledged to be ‘of outstanding architectural and historic interest ‘ by HCT and English Heritage, the Chantry chapel - a crumbling fabulation - is the subject of major heritage considerations. Questions about authenticity in rebuilding and reconstruction are currently overridden by the urgent need to secure the structure from collapse.

Migrant mothers: family photographs and the intra-active fashioning of a visual-material ethics

Migrant mothers play crucial roles within the social landscape of schools, particularly in providing care, education and a transition between home and school for their children. My research considers the relevance of theories of space, place, temporality and mobility in Iranian migrant mothers’ production of subjectivity for themselves and their children in and through their family photograph collections. Gillian Rose’s anthropological approach to visual objects is put to use in an exploration of the co-constitution of migrant women and their photographs. In this paper, I trace the shaping of a visual-material ethics within the research context and appropriate to the sensibilities and needs of the participant women who each moved from Iran to Australia with their children. Karen Barad’s notion of a posthumanist ‘ethics of mattering’ is drawn upon in conceptualising a visual-material ethics as fashioned in the intra-actions of people and visual objects. Specific ethical issues considered include the collaborative process of producing a family photograph, and the shaping and reshaping of images from photograph to line drawing to hybridised photograph-line drawing. A research ethics committee’s application of a liberal individualist, utilitarian and positivist biomedical paradigm in considering the research project is discussed as not only inadequate but also incompatible with the fashioning of a visual-material ethics in concert with the participant women and their photographs.

Bollywood’s Australian yarn

 It’s 101 years since the birth of Bollywood, the world’s largest and most vibrant movie industry and, of course, that’s more than enough time to mature and alter, to grow arms and legs. For some time, but since the 1990s particularly, the connections between Australia and Bollywood have really taken hold. So sit back and enjoy a cinematic journey that’s sure to entertain. As a genre Bollywood has grown and developed over a period of 100 years, coloured by India’s history, politics, socio-economic conditions, culture, sensibilities, dreams, fantasies, hopes and expectations. The ever-increasing presence of the Indian diaspora in different parts of the world has helped to realise what we might think of as Bollywood’s cultural diplomacy project. Various Australian state tourism bodies have since supported Indian productions and used Bollywood stars as ambassadors to promote Australia as a welcoming nation. The 1996 film Indian has been credited for featuring the first appearance of kangaroos in Indian cinema. But I have noticed that as early as 1974, a Hindi film Majboor made first reference to Australia and its iconic boxing kangaroo. It featured Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan with a poster captioned: ‘Just hop, skip and jump every Thursday to Perth Sydney’. Australia is now a hot destination for Bollywood as well as regional language film-makers, with a successful foray of films from Soldier (1998) to Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013). Over the past two decades, Australian films such as Holy Smoke! (1999), The Waiting City (2009), Save Your Legs! (2012), feature India, not just as a background location but as an integral part of the plot. Bollywood’s influence on Australia can be gauged by the direction of Australian film careers. Be it the Indian-Australian actress Pallavi Sharda (Besharam) or Australia’s bowling sensation Brett Lee (Asha and Friends), Mary Ann Evans – AKA Fearless Nadia, Louise Lightfoot, Tom Cowan, Bob Christo, Tania Zaetta (Salaam Namaste), Nicholas Brown (Kites), Tabrett Bethell (Dhoom 3), Rebecca Breeds (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag), Kristina Akheeva (Yamla Pagla Deewana 2), Emma Brown Garett (Yamala Pagla Deewana), Vimala Raman (Mumbai Mirror), Anusha Dandekar (Delhi Belly), and Maheep Sandhu (Shivam). In this paper I would focus on the journeys and stories of actors, chiefly Fearless Nadia, Bob Christo, and Pallavi Sharda; and also compare a few Bollywood films, particularly Kya Kehna (2000) and Salaam Namaste (2005) made on same theme but set in India and Australia respectively, to show how Australia as has been presented as sexually liberating, visually romantic, and fantastical land of beaches and beauties.

The police and punishment: understanding the pains of policing

This article argues that police studies should draw on the sociology of punishment to better understand state pain-delivery. Whereas penal theorists commonly assess the pain and punishment of inmates in relation to wider social sentiments, police theory has yet to regard police violence and harm in the same fashion. As a result, police scholars often fail to address why the damage caused by public constabularies, even when widely publicized, is accommodated and accepted. Adapting the idea of ‘punitiveness’ from penal theory allows some explanation of how the public views injury and suffering caused by the police by illuminating the emotions and sentiments their actions generate.

Sources of unreliable testimony from children

We distilled research findings on sources of unreliable testimony from children into four principles that capture how the field of forensic developmental psychology conceptualizes this topic. The studies selected to illustrate these principles address three major questions: (a) how do young children perform in eyewitness studies, (b) why are some children less accurate than others, and (c) what phenomena generate unreliable testimony? Throughout our research, our focus is on factors other than lying that produce inaccurate or seemingly inconsistent autobiographical reports.Collectively, this research has shown that (a) children’s eyewitness accuracy is highly dependent on context, (b) neurological immaturity makes children vulnerable to errors under some circumstances, and (c) some children are more swayed by external influences than others. Finally, the diversity of factors that can influence the reliability of children’s testimony dictates that (d) analyzing children’s testimony as if they were adults (i.e., with adult abilities, sensibilities, and motivations) will lead to frequent misunderstandings. It takes considerable knowledge of development—including information about developmental psycholinguistics, memory development, and the gradual emergence of cognitive control—to work with child witnesses and to analyze cases as there are many sources of unreliable testimony.

This is not the work

For the exhibition THIS IS NOT THE WORK, feminist artist-run-initiative LEVEL continue their investigation of alternative curatorial methods.

Surveying a selection of community-engaged artist projects from different locations around the world, this exhibition followed the pathways of women-centred social networks in order to initiate further collaboration and conversation. The projects documented in this exhibition are examples of artists working with women and community in challenging and unpredictable ways, demonstrating feminist sensibilities and a commitment to non-hierarchical and collective structures. As in the past, LEVEL uses the gallery as a conceptual base-camp or frontline rather than a just site of display.

Poetry

Short story exploring the relationship of middle-class sensibilities to terrorism.

Tokyo’s Dojunkai experiment: courtyard apartment blocks 1926–1932

Dojunkai apartments were constructed by the Japanese Government as a work of relief, after the Great Kanto Earthquake in Tokyo. These apartments were leading examples in concrete construction in Japan and were innovative in their exterior space design ideas and building organizational themes. Dojunkai apartments were designed not only as solutions to particular sites, but as possible models for the further development of well-planned, secure, and communal neighbourhood style residential developments. During 1920–1930, Japanese architects and designers were actively involved in experimenting with foreign concepts of urban remodelling and town planning. However while these town-planning concepts and theories were embraced by Japanese architects and town planners, the resultant apartment complexes suggest that they endeavoured to adapt and transform them to suit Japanese sensibilities and urban requirements. This paper examines the nature of these adaptations and transformations. The principles of exterior space design are deployed to examine and identify patterns in building arrangement and exterior space design for six selected Dojunkai apartments. This paper discusses the pre-existing models of urban planning in Japan to establish a relationship between the adopted foreign town-planning models and the pre-existing ideas of urban settlements in the Japanese society.