Why we interview now-reflexivity and perspective in a longitudinal study

This paper discusses a longitudinal, interview-based study of Australian secondary school students that explores the interaction between school ethos and forms of subjectivity. The study was designed to enable prospective and retrospective understandings of identity over time. It is suggested that this methodology encourages a reflexive self-positioning for both participants and researchers and, in the accumulation of an archive of perspectives, responds to poststructuralist critiques of contingency and construction in research interviews. Second, it is argued that the richness of longitudinal research invites more than one kind of analysis, and that working with and across conventionally divergent theoretical approaches can be fruitful. This is discussed with reference to Bourdieu's account of social field and habitus, and Hollway and Jefferson's notion of the 'defended subject'.

Social determinants of health - why we continue to ignore them in the search for improved population health outcomes!

There is now unequivocal evidence that the health status of individuals and of whole communities is socially and economically determined, as are many other aspects of our lives. This suggests, as advocates of public health and population health approaches argue, that our efforts in managing our health and wellbeing should focus much more on early intervention and prevention programs than has been the case to date. However, although this ideology of social and economic determinism is generally accepted, practice does not reflect such values. Indeed, as increasing demand at the critical end of health service provision sees us spending more and more of our limited health care resources on acute and chronic illness, less resources are devoted to constructing and maintaining health-creating communities and environments. Paradoxically, while most of our leaders, academics and policy makers have themselves been nurtured in a sound understanding of cause and effect in the world, they are ignoring these fundamental premises in their approaches to the provision and management of health care. This paper explores some of the reasons why this might be the case and draws on key evidence to suggest that the time has come for us to think more ideologically in approaching health care in the future.

Why do you write? Creative writing and the reflective teacher

Whether we write creatively or academically (or both) it takes time to understand the reasons why we ‘want’ to write, and the more we write the more we fully begin to appreciate why we write and why we have to write in the first place. From the age of nine, I kept a diary and now, 31 years later, I’m still writing down thoughts, opinions, feelings and aspirations. Nearly every day, I actively participate in recording my reflections. These reflections are part of an academic writing ritual that fuels research ideas and potential narratives associated with reflective teaching practices. I have discovered that the daily practice of imagining and writing compared to academic research and writing has more similarities than differences. Other creative writers who operate in higher education as learning and teaching academics have also taken note of ‘the similarity between the processes of writing fiction, and writing learning texts, not the contrasts’ (McVey, 2008, p. 290, emphasis). More specifically, I have come to realise that strengthening one’s use of the imagination via self-confessional writing exercises is a central ingredient in order to fulfill a well-rounded learning and teaching career.

We ‘are’ rhetoric. Get over it!

This paper argues that a better understanding of public relations would help us to get an urgently needed better understanding of people. It explains why public relations should be considered the contemporary manifestation of the millennia-old art of rhetoric which in turn should be considered the basis of, at least western culture. This article introduces a thesis that understanding rhetoric properly will lead to the best way of understanding public relations properly. It will critique existing writers about the rhetoric to public relations nexus to suggest that there is a crucial need to more carefully consider the true relevance
of massively organised deliberate persuasive discourse. The urgency is because few of these commentators quite capture the extent to which public relations and related  activities are creating us. It will explain why we are almost unconscious of this process and it will point out that by contrast ancient sophists and the more accomplished pre-modern rhetoricians have always been aware of this ‘construction of people process’. The approach of this paper is premised on the observation of classicist Werner Jaeger who explains that rhetoric is at the centre of being human. When explaining the use of  grammar, rhetoric and dialectic by Greek Enlightenment sophists he writes that: “This educational technique is one of the greatest discoveries which the mind of man has ever made: it was not until it explored these three of its activities that the mind apprehended the hidden law of its own structure.” (Jaeger, 1947:314)

Integrating highlights for more complete sports video summarization

Summarization is an essential requirement for achieving a more compact and interesting representation of sports video contents. We propose a framework that integrates highlights into play segments and reveal why we should still retain breaks. Experimental results show that fast detections of whistle sounds, crowd excitement, and text boxes can complement existing techniques for play-breaks and highlights localization.

Different rhythms to similar tunes: African beats in action across two continents

In this article I present some theoretical perspectives on reflective practice and African music. As reflection is a voyage of on-going self-discovery and change, and most challenging, I consider the teaching of African music across two continents and institutions. After a recent visit to South Africa (August-October 2006), I describe and discuss some similarities that I as a music educator at Deakin University, share with a music educator from the University of the North West, South Africa regarding the teaching and learning of African music. Through observation and interview data with my colleague, I offer some thoughts on what is African music and why we teach different rhythms to similar tunes across two continents at our tertiary institutions. I see this as a way forward to transmit and promote togetherness in a multicultural society where we respect diversity and the notion of 'other'.

Ethics education for accounting students - a toolkit approach

In 2006, the International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB), an independent standard-setting board of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) released an information paper entitled Approaches to the Development and Maintenance of Professional Values, Ethics and Attitudes in Accounting Education Programs. The information paper stems from a global research project on ethics education in the accounting profession. The paper is designed to stimulate discussion and debate on the subject of ethics education and includes the provision of an Ethics Education Toolkit to encourage and assist accounting educators and member bodies of IFAC to implement ethics education programmes. Through a review of the literature, this paper considers why we should teach ethics, the types of ethics interventions that have been undertaken and the issues in teaching ethics to accountancy students. The paper then describes in detail the Ethics Education Toolkit and provides some evidence on the positive reaction of a group of students who are taught ethics, based on the principles and practice included in the toolkit.