LAN cafes: cafes, places of gathering or sites of informal teaching and learning?

Despite the interest of sociologists and educational researchers in Internet café as sites for new cultural and social formations and informal learning, thus far little attention has been paid to the function of café owners, managers and other staff in the mediation and co-construction of those spaces. Drawing from interviews with managers of commercial Internet café in Australia specialising in LAN (Local Area Network) gaming, this article seeks to examine their role and their attitudes more closely; in particular with regard to school-aged users of their facilities. We contend that LAN café are liminal spaces situated at the margins of Australian culture and located at the junctions between home, school and the street, online and offline spaces, work and play. The roles of LAN café managers are similarly ambiguous: in many ways they can be regarded as informal teachers facilitating the process of informal learning.

To the very ground of meaning, to vary the ground of meaning

Parody may be understood as the absorption of a revolutionary impulse into the everyday production of meaning as continuous variation and soft subversion. Considered in this way, parody is transformative because it operates on the components within a system of meaning and/or the context, logic or spatial perspective that grounds the possibility of meaning. It is the conditions under which shared meaning, sense and sensation depend that I aim to unpack in order to suggest the ways in which parody can alter a person’s relationship to the world. By approaching parody as a mode of lived abstraction and as an embodied approach to affective self-organisation, body-environment co-construction and a challenge to identity, it becomes possible to move from formal concerns that have characterised parody to a set of transformative practices. Thus parody indicates where the anchors of embodied, embedded, extended, enacted and affective are dug in and hold identity and the ground of meaning in a steady state. This paper will examine how parody moves from the impulse to overthrow and invert — ‘Beneath the street, The beach’—to a collective impulse that moves the ground of meaning into a reconfigurative process that is allows totalised systems of meaning to collide and intersect. What is left is not the rubble and ruins of meaning but revitalised fragments, stems cells of meaning ready-to-be-remade.A lineage of parodic works will be paraded and discussed that directly address the tacit relation of ground, horizon, orientation and position. This parody parade will form the basis of a critique and the analysis of the ontological orientations that for example, opposing systems of perspective insert as the very ground of meaning. The implication of this line of inquiry leads to the assertion that all descriptions of the world, universe and the cosmos are parodies in search of an origin. Totalised or unified images of the ground of meaning are already parodies of a/the set of conditions by which meaning operates that also produce a trajectory that as a lived-abstraction directs or hijacks subsequent productions of meaning

Strangely familiar: teacher-researchers rethinking literacy pedagogies in digital environments

This article reports on a collaborative project between middle school teachers and university researchers exploring the impact of a one to one netbook program on literacy teaching and learning at one Australian primary school. Following the traditions of ethnographic classroom research and practitioner research in literacy, we describe and analyse the evolution of teacher knowledge and understandings informing the processes of reshaping print based literacy pedagogies and practices within digital learning environments. The study sought to explore the possibilities of one-to-one computing through an investigation of the affordances of digital literacy pedagogies within an open plan learning environment. We focus on the richness of ethnographic tools, in particular visual ethnographic methods, for "making the familiar strange" and identify contexts supporting the emergence of innovative digital literacy pedagogies and powerful professional learning in primary classrooms. Drawing on surveys, interviews and conversations with teachers and students and classroom observations, we suggest that dialogues between teachers and researchers provide a forum for co-construction of insights into innovative digital literacy pedagogies and offer rich learning opportunities for students, teachers and researchers.

Performance and narrative, bodies and movement in the construction of places and objects, spaces and knowledges: The case of the Maltese megaliths

The article explores the ways knowledge and space are co-produced performatively through bodily movement in an examination of the Maltese megaliths the first complex stone structures in the world. It is argued that knowledge is best seen as spatialized narratives of human actions and objects as materialized forms of those spatial narratives. Rewriting our social and historical narratives so that the performativity of place, space and knowledge is restored opens new possibilities for rethinking the social and material order.

Linkage measures of the construction sector using the hypothetical extraction method

The hypothetical extraction method (HEM) is used to extract a sector hypothetically from an economic system and examine the influence of this extraction on other sectors in the economy. Linkage measures based on the HEM become increasingly prominent. However, little construction linkage research applies the HEM. Using the recently published Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development input-output database at constant prices, this research applies the HEM to the construction sector in order to explore the role of this sector in national economies and the quantitative interdependence between the construction sector and the remaining sectors. The output differences before and after the hypothetical extraction reflect the linkages of the construction sector. Empirical results show a declining trend of the total, backward and forward linkages, which confirms the decreasing role of the construction sector with economic maturity over the examined period from a new angle. Analytical results reveal that the unique nature of the construction sector and multifold external factors are the main reasons for the linkage difference between countries. Moreover, hypothesis-testing results consider statistically that the extraction structures employed in this research are appropriate to analyse the linkages of the construction sector.

Economic analyses on multinational real estate and construction sectors

Both the construction and real estate sectors have been considered vital productive drivers for the economic development of a nation. Multinational economic analyses on these two sectors over a long period enable a better comprehension of their effects and interrelationships. Based on the recently published Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) input-output database at constant prices, this paper compares the real estate and construction sectors of six countries in terms of their shares in gross national product and gross national income. The push and pull effects of these two sectors onto the whole economy are further determined using forward and backward linkage indicators respectively. In addition, the interactions between themselves are formulated in terms of direct and total input parameters. This research provides a numerical approach to examine the economic influences and sectorial correlation of the real estate and construction sectors.

Web communities analysis and construction

Yanchun Zhang and his co-authors explain how to construct and analyse Web communities based on information like Web document contents, hyperlinks, or user access logs. Their approaches combine results from Web search algorithms, Web clustering methods, and Web usage mining. They also detail the necessary preliminaries needed to understand the algorithms presented, and they discuss several successful existing applications. Researchers and students in information retrieval and Web search find in this all the necessary basics and methods to create and understand Web communities. Professionals developing Web applications will additionally benefit from the samples presented for their own designs and implementations

Community school teacher education and the construction of pedagogical discourse in Papua New Guinea

Pedagogical discourse in Papua New Guinea (PNG) community schooling is mediated by a western styles education. The daily administration and organisation of school activity, graded teaching and learning, subject selection, content boundaries, teaching and assessment methods are all patterned after western schooling. This educational settlement is part of a legacy of German, British and Australian government and non-government colonialism that officially came to an end in 1975. Given the colonial heritage of schooling in PNG, this study is interested in exploring particular aspects of the degree of mutuality between local discourses and the discourses of a western styled pedagogy in post-colonial times, for the purpose of better informing community school teacher education practices. This research takes place at and in the vicinity of Madang Teachers College, a pre-service community school teachers college on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. The research was carried out in the context of the researcher’s employment as a contract lecturer in the English language Department between 1991-1993. As an in-situ study it was influenced by the roles of different participants and the circumstances in which data was gathered and constituted, data which was compatible with participants commitments to community school teacher education and community school teaching and learning. In the exploration of specific pedagogic practices different qualitative research approaches and perspectives were brought to bear in ways best suited to the circumstances of the practice. In this way analytical foci were more dictated by circumstances rather by design. The analytical approach is both a hermeneutic one where participants’ activities are ‘read like texts’, where what is said or written is interpreted against the background of other informing contexts and texts, to better understand how understandings and meanings are produced and circulated; and also a phenomenological one where participants’ perspectives are sought to better understand how pedagogical discursive formations are assimilated with the ‘self’. The effect of shifting between these approaches throughout the study is to build up a sense of co-authorship between researcher and participants in relation to particular aspects of the research. The research explores particular sites where pedagogic discourse is produced, re-produced, distributed, articulated, consumed and contested, and in doing so seeks to better understand what counts as pedagogical discourse. These are sites that are largely unexplored in these terms, in the academic literature on teacher education and community schooling in PNG. As such, they represent gaps in what is documented and understood about the nature of post-colonial pedagogy and teacher training. The first site is a grade two community school class involved in the teaching and early learning of English as the ‘official’ language of instruction. Here local discourses of solidarity and agreement are seen to be mobilised to make meaningful, what are for the teacher and children moments in their construction as post-colonial subjects. What in instructional terms may be seen as an English language lesson becomes, in the light of the research perspectives used, an exercise in the structuring of new social identities, relations and knowings, problematising autonomous views of teaching and learning. The second site explores this issue of autonomous (decontextualised) teaching and learning through an investigation of student teachers’ epistemological contextualisations of knowledge, teaching and learning. What is examined is the way such orientations are constructed in terms of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ epistemological and pedagogical alignments, and, in terms of differently conceived notions of community, in a problematisation of the notion of community schooling. The third and fourth sites examine reflective accounts of student teachers’ pedagogic practices, understandings and subjectivities as they confront the moral and political economies and cultural politics of schooling in School Experiences and Practicum contexts, and show how dominant behaviourist and ‘rational/autonomous’ conceptions of what counts as teaching and learning are problematised in the way some students teachers draw upon wider social discourses to construct a dialogue with learners. The final site is a return to the community school where the discourse of school reports through which teachers, children and parents are constructed as particular subjects of schooling, are explored. Here teachers report children’s progress over a four year period and parents write back in conforming, confronting and contesting ways, in the midst of the ongoing enculturation of their children. In this milieu, schooling is shown to be a provider of differentiated social qualifications rather than a socially just and relevant education. Each of the above-mentioned studies form part of a research and pedagogic interest in understanding the ‘disciplining’ effects of schooling upon teacher education, the particular consequences of those effects, what is embraces, resisted and hidden. Each of the above sites is informed by various ‘intertexts’. The use of intertexts is designed to provide a multiplicity of views, actions and voices while enhancing the process of cross-cultural reading through contextualising the studies in ways that reveal knowledges and practices which are often excluded in more conventional accounts of teaching and learning. This research represents a journey, but not an aimless one. It is one which reads the ideological messages of coherence, impartiality and moral soundness of western pedagogical discourse against the school experiences of student-teachers, teachers, children and parents, in post-colonial Papua New Guinea, and finds them lacking.

Critical success factors for stakeholder management: construction practitioners' perspectives

Although various factors have been identified as important for accomplishing successful stakeholder management, few studies appear to have undertaken a comparative analysis of practitioners’ views on the relative importance of critical success factors (CSFs) for stakeholder management in construction projects. In an attempt to fill this research gap, a questionnaire survey was conducted in Hong Kong to collect the opinions of construction practitioners regarding the relative importance of CSFs for stakeholder management. Findings from this study show that all 15 selected CSFs are regarded as critical by most respondents for the success of stakeholder management in construction projects. The factor regarding social responsibilities is considered most important for managing stakeholders. Although correlations between CSFs and types of projects and organizations were statistically significant, these were not particularly strong. Also, even though there is a general consensus on the rankings of the CSFs among different respondents, the detailed pairwise comparisons actually show the existence of a few differences in perceptions on the relative importance of the CSFs. Therefore, the working priorities of project managers for managing stakeholders are context specific, depending on the nature, client sector, and cost of the project, and also on their organizations and management levels in the organization. These findings should help project managers become more aware of their responsibilities and the relative importance of issues for management stakeholders.

A critical analysis of techniques for risk mitigation in the construction industry

Risks exist in every form of construction project. The risks associated with construction projects are often diverse and varied and the management of these risks is nowadays considered compulsory in order to achieve project success. This paper analyses the diverse strategies of risk mitigation that have been employed in construction projects. These strategies are classified into analysed categories of procurement strategies. contingency and co-operative approach along with the utilisation of a designated risk manager. The analysis showed that in order to improve risk mitigation within the construction industry, there is a requirement tor an industry based standard. This standard will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the risk mitigation response technique to risk management.

Height and construction costs of residential high-rise buildings in Shanghai

A widely recognized theme of construction economics suggests that the cost of construction per square meter increases as building height rises. However, over a number of years, research conducted regarding the height and cost issue has established a classic relationship between the two factors which can be represented by a U-shaped curve. This paper describes the study of the height-cost relationship of high-rise residential buildings in Shanghai in terms of the total construction cost and elemental costs while considering the context and commonality of buildings. This research was developed as an extension of the previous work, which examined data for buildings in Hong Kong. Initial findings indicate that the curves illustrating the relationships between height and cost of residential buildings in Shanghai and Hong Kong exhibit different profiles. The dissimilarities indicate that different sets of criteria should be applied in the judgment of height that affects cost in different locations. In terms of elemental costs, the findings suggest that there are differences in the way these costs react to changes in the building height.

Contemporary service theories integrated into construction project management

Project management plays an important role in successful completion of construction projects. One trend in the construction sector is a growing emphasis on project management. Ineffective integration of project management of project-based enterprises and operational processes of project owners, contractors and consultants prevents synergistic effects and causes resource waste and management inefficiency. Contemporary service theories, specifically service science and service-dominant logic, elucidate the involvement of clients in the creation of value and reinforce the nested relationship between project management service providers and clients. This study expands understanding of service theories by complementing service systems from project management and proposes a new framework for project management service systems, embedding service exchange and value co-creation in the construction processes. Research outcomes represent the importance of project management embedded with service theories in the construction industry and suggestions of research questions for future work.