Generating domain-specific visual language tools from abstract visual specifications

Domain-specific visual languages support high-level modeling for a wide range of application domains. However, building tools to support such languages is very challenging. We describe a set of key conceptual requirements for such tools and our approach to addressing these requirements, a set of visual language-based metatools. These support definition of metamodels, visual notations, views, modeling behaviors, design critics, and model transformations and provide a platform to realize target visual modeling tools. Extensions support collaborative work, human-centric tool interaction, and multiplatform deployment. We illustrate application of the metatoolset on tools developed with our approach. We describe tool developer and cognitive evaluations of our platform and our exemplar tools, and summarize key future research directions.

Organizational factors in the diffusion of an industry standard: implementing an online documentation system for Australian exporters

At present, governments in many countries are actively engaged in the development of electronic trading and certification standards to enable the smooth operation of export markets. Standards and their usability underpin confidence in the operations of markets and their effective functioning. In institutional markets, an important role for government agencies lies in developing the initial specifications for standards for interoperable systems. Once these specifications are accepted, governments can then facilitate the eventual diffusion of a standard to the B2B marketplace. Acceptance of an industry standard can determine demand, which defines the viability of that market. In this paper, we describe an initiative by a government agency, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS), in developing EXDOC, a standard for export documentation and the role that AQIS played in its implementation and diffusion. Our case study illustrates a successfully facilitated B2G implementation. It demonstrates how a standard can be supported and promulgated for the effective functioning of markets in the transition from manual to online export documentation. Once the overarching specifications for related industries have been established and diffused by government, opportunities arise for private sector markets to develop across these industries. Government agencies can promote the effective operation of standards for electronic markets. The EXDOC implementation and its iterations provide an exemplar of active engagement in the development of electronic trading and certification standards for an institutional market. Its successful diffusion provides a model of the implementation process for other export sectors and agencies.

Comparing the hairiness of solospun and ring spun worsted yarns

This paper compares the hairiness of Solospun yarns with conventional ring spun worsted yams of the same specifications. A 24-spindles worsted ring spinning frame is used to spin the Solospun and conventional ring spun yarns at the same time, and yarn hairiness is measured. The total hairiness number (Tp), the number of hairs longer than or equal to 3mm (S3), the percentage of longer hairs in total hairs (100S3/Tp), and the total hair length per unit yarn length (K' ) are used to compare the hairiness of these yams. The results indicate that the Solospun yarn exhibits less hairiness in each of the hair length groups and has lower variations in yarn hairiness. The hair-length distribution of the Solospun yarn follows an exponential law just like conventional ring spun yams. There is a statistically significant difference between the Solospun and conventional ring spun yams for T p, S3, and K', but the difference in 1 00S 3/Tp is not statistically significant for these yams. In addition, the Tp, S3, and K' values of the Solospun yarn decrease with twist increase and increase with spindle speed increase, but the 100S3/Tp values of the Solospun and conventional ring spun yarns in this study behave differently in that they are affected by twist level and spindle speed.

Predicting worsted spinning performance with an artificial neural network model

For a given fiber spun to pre-determined yarn specifications, the spinning performance of the yarn usually varies from mill to mill. For this reason, it is necessary to develop an empirical model that can encompass all known processing variables that exist in different spinning mills, and then generalize this information and be able to accurately predict yarn quality for an individual mill. This paper reports a method for predicting worsted spinning performance with an artificial neural network (ANN) trained with backpropagation. The applicability of artificial neural networks for predicting spinning performance is first evaluated against a well established prediction and benchmarking tool (Sirolan YarnspecTM). The ANN is then subsequently trained with commercial mill data to assess the feasibility of the method as a mill-specific performance prediction tool. Incorporating mill-specific data results in an improved fit to the commercial mill data set, suggesting that the proposed method has the ability to predict the spinning performance of a specific mill accurately.

Using information flow model to specify the Kanban-controlled shopfloor control system

The implementation of Kanban-based production control systems may be difficult in make-to-order environments such as job shops. The flexible manufacturing approach constitutes a promising solution to adapt the Kanban method to such environments. This paper presents an information flow modelling approach for specifying the operational planning and control functions of the Kanban-controlled shopfloor control system (KSCS) in a flexible manufacturing environment. By decomposing the KSCS control functionalities, we have created the system information flow model through the data flow diagrams of Structured Systems Analysis Methodology. The data flow diagrams serve effective system specifications for communicating the system operations to participants of different disciplines as well as the system model for the design and development of KSCS.

Teaching building services to architecture and building students

Building environmental services can often be categorised as ‘one of the least desirable courses’ in the curriculum of architecture and building. Nevertheless, it is also one of the most important and confronting subjects in the procurement of real building projects. The principal message to designers is that of spatial requirements while to the builders it may become one of capital cost, installation specifications and maintenance of equipment. Getting these concepts across in a creative, yet project oriented, manner can be challenging to the students and to the lecturer. This paper presents the developments of ten years of teaching the subject, as well as the methods of delivery which have proven to be successful.

An experimental study on fabric softness evaluation

Purpose – To examine a simple testing method of measuring the force to pull a fabric through a series of parallel pins to determine the fabric softness property.

Design/methodology/approach – A testing system was setup for fabric pulling force measurements and the testing parameters were experimentally determined. The specific pulling forces were compared with the fabric assurance by simple testing (FAST) parameters and subjective softness ranking. Their correlations were also statistically analyzed.

Findings – The fabric pulling force reflects the physical and surface properties of the fabrics measured by the FAST instrument and its ability to rank fabric softness appears to be close to the human hand response on fabric softness. The pulling force method can also distinguish the difference of fabrics knitted with different wool fiber contents.

Research limitations/implications – Only 21 woven and three knitted fabrics were used for this investigation. More fabrics with different structures and finishes may be evaluated before the testing method can be put in practice.

Practical implications – The testing method could be used for objective assessment of fabric softness.

Originality/value – The testing method reported in this paper is a new concept in fabric softness measurement. It can provide objective specifications for fabric softness, thus should be valuable to fabric community.

Highlights from the tennis Australia heritage collections : mini-exhibition in the player cafe, Rod Laver Arena

Summary : This 'mini-exhibition' arose as an opportunity to showcase recent acquisitions as well as established holdings of significant items of tennis related heritage within the Tennis Australia Heritage Collections. In general, the Collections have two main strengths, and the mini-exhibition was designed to communicate these. The first strength is the ability to show the evolution of tennis technology and practices over time, from the beginnings of modern tennis in the 1860s, to today. This evolution is a result of tennis being influenced by changes in the wider world, such as the Industrial Revolution. The second strength of the Collections is in showing the impact and influence of tennis on society. Many items in the Collections are evidence of the immense and enduring popularity of the sport across the world. The Collections contain many beautiful, rare and fascinating items of decorative arts, fashion, literature and social history which feature tennis as a motif. These items show the reverse influence - the deep impression tennis has made outside of the sport itself.  This mini-exhibition focuses on these two themes. Some displays focus on the first theme. They demonstrate the evolution of tennis racquets, tennis balls, instructional publications and other tennis related equipment over the past century and a half. Other displays focus on the second theme. There are cases which examine tennis' influence upon global popular culture, in board games, fashion and decorative arts from around the world.  The mini-exhibition includes items from the U.s, U.K., Germany, France, Austria, Japan and Australia, demonstrating the global phenomenon that tennis quickly became, and showcasing the international scope of the Collections.  Each case contains text panels listing the objects and their specifications, and panels providing contextual information about the display. The miniexhibition is expected to be on display until November 2009. A case-bycase breakdown of objects, with images and a layout map follows.

Higher education, real income and real investment in China : evidence from Granger causality tests

This paper employs cointegration and error-correction modelling to test the causal relationship between real income, real investment and tertiary education using data for the People's Republic of China over the period 1952-1999. To proxy tertiary education we use higher education enrolments and higher education graduates in alternative empirical specifications. One of the paper's main findings is that real income, real investment and tertiary education are cointegrated when real investment is the dependent variable, but are not cointegrated when either tertiary education or real income is the dependent variable. We also extend the in-sample analysis to examine the decomposition of variance and impulse response functions.

Office building characteristics and the links with carbon emissions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present research which analysed energy consumption in the Melbourne central business district (CBD) office stock and examined all buildings to identify CO2 emissions in 2005. The rationale was that, by profiling a large group of buildings, it would be possible to identify characteristics of the stock. For example, do older buildings typically emit more CO2 per square metre than newer buildings?
Design/methodology/approach – This research conducted a detailed analysis of all Melbourne CBD office stock to identify which patterns and trends emerged regarding building characteristics and carbon emissions. The study examined variables such as building size, number of employees, occupancy levels, physical characteristics and building age.
Findings – By examining all office stock and aggregating data, the results confirm that it is possible to identify general physical building characteristics and carbon emissions. This research confirmed that clear relationships existed within the Melbourne CBD office stock in terms of building size, age and the density of occupation in relation to CO2 emissions.
Originality/value – Practitioners can apply this knowledge to the professional advice they give to clients to assist in achieving increased energy efficiency in the office stock, for example in refurbishment being conscious that smaller buildings will be generally less energy-efficient than larger ones.

Skills and qualities and the effective project manager in the UK construction industry

The professional project manager is a sought after commodity (McManus, 1995:12). Many companies face increasing demands to complete projects faster, at lower costs and to higher specifications and as Lock (1996;50) comments; “This work, far from requiring specialisation, demands a sufficient general understanding of the work carried out by those participants for the project manager to be able to discuss the work sensibly”. Though for some the term project manager can be clearly identified, others believe the terms project manager and project management, as used in the construction industry, mean all things to all men and lead to confusion (The Chartered Institute of Building, 1982;12). The lack of clarity surrounding the role of project manager made this area worthy of investigation.

This research sought a deeper understanding of the project management role and an identification of the skills and professionals associated with it. The desk top study revealed definitions of the role and perceptions of the skills involved. The literature showed that authors believed in the need for a balance between knowledge, experience and training and the types of professions involved. The research methodology comprised a qualitative approach, with a questionnaire sent out to a non-random sample of practices specialising in project management. The data analysis adopted uni and bi-variant methods, using SPSS. The research found that the role of the project manager is very broad. Furthermore it is adopted by many construction professions as the background of the project manager is largely perceived as irrelevant to the role. A definition is proposed and relevant skills are identified, finally the importance of experience and training is highlighted.

Common industry exposure in seemingly unrelated commodities

We propose and document robust evidence of cross-market return, volatility, and volume interactions among futures contracts written seemingly unrelated commodities exposed to a common industry. On the Tokyo Commodity Exchange, we find such evidence in natural rubber (NR), aluminum (AL) and gasoline (GA) futures markets, which are complementary commodities heavily consumed by Japan's automobile industry. Our VAR results indicate that (i) for shorter dynamics, NR and GA volatility both influence AL volatility; GA volume affects NR volatility and volume; the GA market is immune to both NR and AL trading activities; (ii) for longer dynamics, AL volume affects both NR volume and GA volatility; NR volume influences GA volume. These results are robust to lag-specifications, volatility measures and are consistent with full BEKK-GARCH estimates. Further analysis using the silver contract, TOCOM and TOPIX transportation indices, shows that a commodity market factor cannot explain our result. Our results offer insights into how commodity and equity markets relate at an industry level.

Changing bodies, changing discourses : women's experiences of early menopause

Early menopause has been constructed by discourses of biological determinism as an untimely, but natural, failure of the female body. Medical discourses in particular have interpreted early menopause as a congenital irregularity and a rare anomaly of menopause at midlife. In this thesis I challenge the notion that early menopause is an innate imperfection related only to women’s age. I propose that early menopause is dependent upon the cultural interpretations of individual women and is constituted through the mercurial and multiple discourses of women who have this embodied experience. Moreover, I reveal that early menopause is a contemporary condition and that its location in history is inextricably bound to discourses of risk, naturalism and the self. Further I make the assumption that having an early menopause both affects and is an effect of women’s fertility, sexuality and subjectivity. I have drawn upon a broad range of sources to provide a sociological analysis of early menopause. Literature on early menopause is dominated by positivist discourses, yet many alternate discourses negotiate these influential constructions. I suggest here that the perception of early menopause as a natural fault is merely a construction by medical discourses and does not incorporate the dynamic discourses of early-menopausal women. Moreover, the restriction of early menopause to a genetic female failure excludes the majority of women who have an early menopause through iatrogenisis. This omission occurs through the failure of positivist discourses to accommodate diversity in discourses. Recent sociological and feminist studies have vindicated menopausal women. They have reconstructed menopause through notions of embodiment and have removed the veil of negativity used by the medical sciences to contain menopausal women (Komesaroff, Rothfield and Daly 1997). The visibility of menopausal women, however, remains connected to age. Menopause has been created as a predictable consequence of aging and as such has come to be synonymous with middle age. Nowadays, even men are said to experience menopause at midlife (Carruthers 1996). But early menopause is constituted within the discourses of women who have this experience. Medico-scientific discourses, based upon theories of genetic inevitability, disregard this perspective. Consequently early menopause is subsumed by naturalistic discourses that relate menopause to midlife. Such restraint reflects the unease created by menopause that does not coincide with prescribed life stages. Women's experiences of their changing bodies are largely unheard. Thus, women who have an early menopause are faced with a chasm of ‘cultural non-recognition’ (Fraser 1997). Conjointly with this discursive repression early-menopausal women face social imbalances that are transacted as both cause and consequence of early menopause. In particular the contemporary creation of early menopause is bound to the social and historical location of women as a group. Women are exploited by the institution of medicine, ‘exposure to environmental toxicity’ (Fraser 1997: 11) and commercialization as causes of early menopause. Yet the corporeal effects of practices of risk avoidance (Beck 1993), social practices (Shilling 1993) and Western consumerism (Lupton 1994) fail to be recognized. I address these problematics through a poststructural and feminist critique that assumes moments of commonality among women, while at the same time recognizes shifting and multiple differences (Nicholson 1999). I suggest here that early menopause falls into cultural misrecognition in Fraser's (1997) terms and argue that it is united concurrently with the gender injustice of androcentrism (Fraser 1997: 21). Fraser (1997: 16) suggests that it is only by relating these dual problematics that we are able to make sense of current dilemmas. Thus I have critiqued early menopause through a connection between individual embodied experiences of early menopause and early menopause as a modern phenomenon that is specific to women. I have attempted to unravel these arguments that simultaneously call to ‘... abolish gender differentiation and to valorize gender specificity’ (Fraser 1997: 21) while at the same time acknowledging their interconnectedness. An approach of merely combining women’s discourses with overarching social issues would be inadequate as not only do these problematics intersect but they also can be opposed. As Fraser (1997: 25) notes with her theory, redressing one aspect of cultural or social analysis can further imbalance another. For instance making visible the diversity and uniqueness of individual experiences of early menopause could detract from acknowledging the contemporary construction of early menopause through social inequality. Crucial to this understanding is a destabilizing of the binary construction of differences between the sexes that makes way for a reconstruction of early menopause through ‘sexual slippage’ (Matus 1995). In this thesis I look for a subtlety between the particular and the collective that views early menopause as concurrently a singular and changeable experience as well as imbedded in social practice. I suggest that these concepts are entwined as interactive effects of early menopause. Thus I have analyzed the bivalent problematics of the embodiment and social location of early menopause as imbricated, dynamic and unending discourses. From this perspective I reviewed the literature that was available on early menopause. In Chapter One I look to descriptions of early menopause and note that it has disappeared into a conglomeration of disparate, mostly medical, discourses that are contradictory. Nevertheless medical discourses offer ‘conclusive’ definitions of early menopause that are based on naturalistic views of the body (Shilling 1994). The determinants used are inconsistent and do not include women's discourses of early menopause. Thus, dominant medical discourses obscure women’s embodied experiences of early menopause and ignore the contemporary causes of early menopause. In Chapter Two I examine the causes of early menopause as a way of explaining the disparity between medical discourses and my anecdotal observations of early menopause as a fairly common contemporary occurrence. The relatively recent escalation in gynaecological surgery, especially hysterectomy, appears to account almost single-handedly for early menopause as a current phenomenon. Moreover, the extraordinary number of women who have their uterus removed at hysterectomy can be interpreted as a modern implementation of ancient anxieties. Women's sexuality has been constructed throughout history as problematic and this unease has been translated through women's bodies as dangerous and in need of control (Greer 1992). Thus social concerns which have evolved historically have emerged through the representation of a woman's uterus as an unseen, dark and mysterious risk (Beck 1993). Medical discourses define this risk and are able to negate the so-called dangers of women's sexuality through the surgical removal of their organs. Widespread negotiation of medical discourses is apparent, as hysterectomy in the modern Western world is the most common of all surgical operations (Hufnagel 1989). It is overwhelmingly the most common cause of early menopause as well. I examine also the historical condemnation of infertile women and how this anxiety has been transposed to the modern world through the commercialization of reproduction. Transactions of this social unease can cause early menopause. For instance the medical technology of in-vitro fertilization (I.V.F.) has been offered as a panacea for the infertility of early menopause but, paradoxically, can cause early menopause as well. Conception through technology has been normalized as a viable option for women who are unable to conceive and understandings of I.V.F. have moved into everyday discourse. Medical discourses have constructed fertility as a saleable item and infertile women expect that they can purchase this merchandise. Human eggs have become lucrative commodities that now are available in the market place. Egg ‘donation’ for I.V.F. programs can hasten the attrition rate of eggs and can cause early menopause in some pre-menopausal women (Rowland 1992: 24). Even the recycling of a woman’s uterus supposedly has become a possibility through the transferring of this ‘used’ organ at hysterectomy to a recipient woman who can use the other woman’s uterus as a ‘gestational garage’ (Rogers 1998). In this way women have been disembodied as mechanical systems with inter-changeable body parts and the potentially detrimental consequences of these commercial transactions are ignored. In addition I show how early menopause can be caused by the connection between the self and the social structure. Women's subjectivity is constituted through the cultural discourses available to them and these discourses affect social behaviour (Lupton 1995). For instance smoking and dieting have been identified as causes of early menopause. These activities have been related to the creation of women’s bodies as hetero-sexually desirable and are endemic to young women (Evans-Young 1995). This suggests that cultural causes of early menopause are transactions of sexual politics. Yet there is a paucity of literature that acknowledges the relationship between women’s subjectivity and early menopause. Thus the second chapter exposes a link between sexual politics and causes of early menopause through women's relationships with risk, naturalism and the self. In Chapter Three I deconstruct early menopause through theoretical considerations. I rely on an overarching poststructuralism that embraces the concept of fragmented plural discourses and the subjectivity of menopausal women as a continuous process (Komesaroff 1997: 61). I have woven these variables through broad feminist critiques (Leonard 1997). Through this eclectic approach I hoped to find some loose alignment between the corporeal, ontological and embodied dimensions of early menopause. The recurring themes of sexuality, fertility and subjectivity emerge through deconstructing discourses of sexual difference as immutable and non-negotiable; exposing ‘premature ovarian failure’ as a discursive construction that censures early-menopausal women; and acknowledging the discourses of individual women as unique, diverse and dynamic. I looked to a method of exposing some of these individual discourses and in Chapter Four I describe a critical research process aimed at understanding early menopause as a lived experience. In the remaining chapters I align these ontological arguments with an analysis of the discourses of women who had experienced or were experiencing an early menopause. This section partly relieves the ‘cultural non-recognition’ of the discourses of early-menopausal women. I recorded the narratives of fifty early-menopausal women through in-depth interviews and used this empirical data to direct the study. This data provides the opportunity to understand early menopause as an assortment of embodied experiences. For instance women’s experiences of age at commencement of menopause spanned over three and half decades. They did not reflect the age specifications prescribed by medical discourses. Rather women interpreted their experiences within their own discourses and determined their menopause as early based upon the expectations of their cultural context. Many of the women experienced changes attributed to menopause at midlife. It was not these changes that were significant to early-menopausal women it was how each woman translated these changes that provided meanings of early menopause. In Chapter Five I introduce the women through a table that connects the varying experiences of each woman. This profile shows that, in the main, the women’s experiences of early menopause were unexpected. I suggest that this is due to the disparity between early-menopausal women’s experiences and the current age and social norms of menopause. By bracketing the women into cohorts patterns emerged displaying differences between women who had menopause in their teens, twenties, thirties and forties. Adolescent women had intense feelings of abnormality and despair. Women who were in their twenties were less devastated by menopause than the younger women but described their sexuality and self-identity as changing. And although some women in their thirties were shocked or dismayed to have an early menopause others were ambivalent or happy. These women also described their sexuality and self-identity through changing discourses. A number of the women who were in their forties said that they were ‘too young for the menopause’ but were far less despondent than the younger women. It seemed that the greater the distance between age norms and social norms the more negatively women responded. Age norms that determine the social norms of women's lives through a ‘biological clock’ are constructed to reflect social values. But age is a social construction that changes over time. Thus it would appear that women’s changing bodies and changing discourses of early menopause are in the process of recreating age and social norms around menopause. In Chapter Six I draw upon women’s narratives that describe a connection between early menopause and sexuality. Yet the respondents were not unified in their constructions of sexuality. For instance a number of the women rejected the containment of their sexuality as absolute and defined in terms of bi-lateral hetero-sexual opposition. The discourses of these women constructed their sexuality as continuously flexible. Some early-menopausal women described this sexual mobility as an equivocal relationship between their sexuality, reproductive capacity and female organs. Other women articulated their sexuality as vacillating, ambiguous and unrepresentative of the so-called ‘true woman’. Several felt that they were not meant to have female reproductive organs at all. Nearly one third of the women had had their uterus removed at hysterectomy and the reproductive organs of two women were rudimentary. Women’s narratives showed that the social value of fertility influences constructions of early menopause. In Chapter Seven I record the contrast between the poignant responses of women who wished to have a baby of their own and other women who resisted discourses that entwine reproductivity with being a woman. For instance some women negotiated fertility through economic discourses of consumerism with the expectation that they could purchase conception as a commodity. Other women welcomed their early menopause as freedom from contraceptive concerns and others had no interest in reproduction at all. Thus discord arose through discourses that problematize early-menopausal women as non-reproductive and discourses that value variability. In addition many of the women’s accounts constructed their subjectivity as mobile, challenging the notion that discourses of the self are immutable. Chapter Eight presents narratives which suggest that the subjectivity of many women was altered continuously by early menopause. Yet some of the women rejected the construction of their subjectivity as unfluctuating. These contradictions reflect the uncertainties of the contemporary world. Nevertheless most respondents found that the tethering of menopause to constructions of midlife was incongruous with their own experiences. Many women refused to accept the label of social redundancy attached to middle-aged women. They moved their subjectivity beyond the reproductive body to a shifting and tractable identity of the self. This thesis demonstrates that the medical construction of early menopause as a rare and natural female flaw varies from women's experiences which suggest that early menopause is common and discursively constructed. This disparity has occurred through the privilege placed upon the construction of bodies as immutable and sexually static. This privileging has obscured the multi-dimensional causes of early menopause and given preference to a mono-causal theory. By exposing the variety of causes of early menopause the medical construction of women through a universal and unalterable body of reproduction is challenged. Moreover, women's discourses of early menopause demonstrate that the medical reduction of early menopause to a spontaneous bio-chemical malfunction has ignored the volatility of women’s embodied experiences. Women experience early menopause variously and through mercurial discourses. I suggest here that women's discourses of their experiences of early menopause reflect recurring and restructuring philosophical quandaries of fertility, sexuality and subjectivity. While there can be no representative claims made from this thesis it contributes to an understanding of the embodied experiences of early menopause. It provides an understanding of the creation of early menopause through social practices and goes part way to redressing the problematics of what Fraser terms ‘cultural non-recognition’. But, more importantly, it acknowledges early menopause as a variety of experiences where women interpret their changing bodies through changing discourses.

Heteroglossia : a space for developing critical language awareness?

This paper reports on research into the challenges of implementing a critical writing pedagogy within a teacher education program in Australia. Participants in this study are student teachers enrolled in a compulsory subject, ‘Language and Literacy in Secondary School’, a subject requiring them to develop a knowledge of the role of language and literacy across the secondary school curriculum and to show personal proficiency in literacy (this is dictated by state government specifications of graduate outcomes for teacher education programs). To develop an understanding of the way that language has shaped their lives, students write a narrative about their early literacy experiences – a task which they all find very challenging, especially in comparison with the formal writing of other university subjects. Rather than simply reminiscing about their early childhood, they are encouraged to juxtapose voices from the past and the present, and to combine a range of texts within their writing. They thereby create a heteroglossic text (Bakhtin, 1981) that stretches their repertoires as language users and enables them to develop a socially critical awareness of language and literacy, including the literacy practices in which they engage as university students. Later in the semester they revisit these accounts of their early literacy experiences, and (in a separate piece of writing) endeavour to place these accounts within the contexts of theories and debates they have encountered in the course of completing this unit.

The students’ writing provides a small window on how they are experiencing their tertiary education, including the managerial controls that are currently shaping university curriculum and pedagogy. Their writing also raises questions as to extent to which tertiary students are actually able to formulate a critical language awareness that will subsequently inform their professional practice as secondary teachers.