Exchange

EXCHANGE was curated by Liza McCosh and highlighted the practice of Beijing artist Zhou Mian and Melbourne artist Denise Keele-bedford who spends several months each year creating and exhibiting her artwork in China.  The exhibition comprised a body of politically based paintings from Zhou Mian executed in a traditional Western style alongside the mixed media artworks from Keele-bedford which had an obvious Eastern influence. 

International capstone exchange – the SUT and NDSU experience

We describe out experiences in running an “International Capstone Exchange” project between North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo, ND in the USA and Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) inMelbourne, Australia. An NDSU-based student team worked on an industry capstone project with a Melbourne-based organization (National ICT Australia) and a Melbourne-based student team worked on anindustry capstone project with a Fargo-based organization (Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute). We describe the rationale behind the international capstone exchange, how we organized the projects and teams, how the projects and teams fared, lessons learned, and plans for expanding in the future.

The disembodied apprentice : reflections on doctoral exchange

This presentation explores my experience as a full-time on-campus doctoral candidate involved in an international postgraduate exchange. My doctoral work, concerned with the use of networks as a policy mechanism to understand and manage risk for young people, is being completed within an ARC Linkage Project. As such, my doctoral journey is undertaken collaboratively with an industry partner and alongside a community of academics. This stands in contrast to the more common experience of the part-time off-campus Education doctoral candidate largely isolated from an academic community and interacting, to a greater or lesser extent, with only a principal and/or associate supervisor. Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of legitimate peripheral participation explores the nature of situated learning, moving the focus from the observation and imitation that occurs between the master/apprenticeship to the learning that occurs within the community of which the master forms a part and in which learning occurs as access to practice. The idea of communities of practice is further developed by Wenger (1999) to include both questions of practice, including meaning, community, learning, boundaries and locality and questions of identity including identity in practice, participation, modes of belonging, identification and negotiability. My doctoral process as a disembodied experience of situated learning within a community of practice was highlighted by the opportunity to witness aspects of the academic apprenticeship of higher degree students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That comparative experience provides new understandings about the distinctive model of research training that constitutes my academic apprenticeship within Australian higher education.

Brutalism, metabolism and its American parallel : encounters in Skopje and in the architecture of Georgi Konstantinovski

Abstract Massive, raw concrete structures – the likes of the Telecommunications Building (1972–81) by Janko Konstantinov; the campus of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University (1974) by Marko Musˇicˇ; the National Hydraulic Institute (1972) by Krsto Todorovski; and the Bank Complex (1970) by R. Lalovik and O. Papesˇ – have led to the production of an enduring monumental presence and helped inspire Skopje’s title as the “Brutalist capital of the world”. These works followed Kenzo Tange’s introduction of Japanese Metabolism to Skopje through his role in the 1965 United Nations sponsored reconstruction competition. The unique position of a Non-Aligned Yugoslavia staged and facilitated architectural and professional exchange during the Cold War. Each trajectory and manifestation illustrates the complex picture of international architectural exchange and local production. Skopje and its numerous Brutalist edifices is an elucidative story, because it represents a meeting point between Brutalism, Metabolism and its American parallel. This article discusses, in particular, the Skopje Archive Building (1966) and the “Goce Delcˇev” Student Dormitory (1969) – two buildings designed by the architect Georgi Konstantinovski, realised on his return from a Masters program at Yale University and employment within I. M. Pei’s New York office. Their architecture illustrates the simultaneous preoccupations of leading architects at the time in regaining a conceptual ground made explicit through a complete and apprehensible image. From this particular position, the article explores the question of ethics and aesthetics central to Banham’s outline of the “New Brutalism”.

Book review : Entrepreneurship in the creative industries : an international perspective

Colette Henry (Ed) (2007) Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: An International Perspective, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, United Kingdom

International comparisons of construction industry performance: further investigations

While there have been many attempts at comparisons of construction performance over the past 50 years, the results have generally been inconclusive and/or contradictory.

Such comparisons are of great interest to industry, governments and theorists alike but there is little agreement as to how they are best done. A variety of methodologies have been used, however, the lack of satisfactory outcomes has been due largely to one factor, the lack of a truly reliable method for comparing construction costs in different currencies

Exchange rates are recognised as being unsuitable, and while purchasing power parity (PPP) has a long history, the method still has many critics. In addition, the nature of the building industry and its products makes the establishment of reliable construction PPPs very difficult. Both the UN’s International Comparison Program (ICP) and the European Union gather data for the production of construction-specific PPP indices, but neither body publishes them, as there is too much doubt about their reliability.

New approaches are being developed and some are soon to be trialled. This paper looks at the problems, describes and discusses some new approaches, and assesses their potential.

Knowledge synthesis, translation and exchange in public health and health promotion: the role of a Cochrane review group

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international non-profit organisation that aims to produce high quality systematic reviews of the effectiveness of health interventions. This work is conducted by 51 Review Groups that span a  range of topics (e.g. pregnancy and childbirth, HIV/AIDS). The role of Fields within the Collaboration has been to actively engage relevant stakeholders internationally to improve the quality and relevance of reviews. Since the inception in 1996 of the Cochrane Public Health and Health Promotion Field, the Cochrane Collaboration has begun to embrace reviews related to public health and health promotion and is adapting to the changing needs of end-users. The introduction of a Cochrane health promotion and public health review group will help ensure that reviews will be oriented towards building evidence for equity and reducing inequalities and best meet the needs of decision-makers, practitioners and consumers. Our role as a Field has led to us working with a range of partners including reviewers,  researchers, practitioners and consumers. Knowledge synthesis, translation and exchange (KST&E) has emerged as an issue in need of further  exploration for practice to influence decision-makers and for policy to  influence practitioners. 2007 will be an exciting year for evidence-informed Health Promotion and Public Health (HPPH) both within the Cochrane Collaboration and for our partners in policy, practice and research.

Forecasting industry-level CPI and PPI inflation : does exchange rate pass-through matter?

We show that incorporating the effects of exchange rate pass-through into a model can help in obtaining superior forecasts of domestic, industry-level inflation. Our analysis is based on a multivariate system of domestic inflation, import prices and exchange rates that incorporates restrictions from economic theory. These are restrictions on the transmission channels of the exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices, and are presented as testable hypotheses that lead to model reduction. We provide the results of various tests, including causality and prior restrictions, which support the underlying economic arguments and the model we use. The forecasting results for our model suggest that it has a superior performance overall, jointly producing more accurate forecasts of domestic inflation.

The credit spread dynamics of Latin American euro issues in international bond markets

This paper investigates two important relationships using the sovereign issues made by major Latin American economies in the international bond market: the determinants of credit spread changes using variables derived from structural and macroeconomic theory and the impact of a default episode on the underlying equilibrium dynamics. We find four significant determinants of credit spread changes: an asset and interest rate factor—consistent with structural models of credit spread pricing; the exchange rate—consistent with macroeconomic determinants and the slope of the yield curve—consistent with a business cycle effect. Also, an intra-regional analysis of sovereign yields reveals a shift in the long-run equilibrium dynamics around the Argentine default on the 23 December 2001.

Broadening conceptions of curriculum for young people : reports from three student - teachers on exchange

Research reports prepared by three Australian preservice teachers Paula Shaw, Chris Sharp and Scott McDonald undertaking their teacher education practicum in Canada, form the basis of this paper. The reports provide critical insights into three aspects of education for young people in both Canada and Australia. They also provide critical insight into the ways in which a practicum research project, along with the opportunities afforded through an international experience, enabled the preservice teachers to broaden their understanding of the curriculum for young people, of issues relevant to the diverse needs of young people, and of themselves and their priorities as teachers. The preservice teachers investigated three topics: attempts to reduce homophobia in schools; the presence or absence of Aboriginal content in the school curricula in British Columbia and Queensland; and “schools-within-schools” as a means to meet the needs of diverse student populations. Linda Farr Darling from the University of British Columbia provides a response to the three reports.

Exchange as a determinant in corporate citizenship : exploratory action research into the social construction of corporate citizenship

This study attempts to achieve two things. Firstly it contextualizes corporate citizenship drawing on scholarly, government, media, legal and business discourses which when viewed as a whole, reveals the importance of exchange as a central determinant in how all the major themes or subfields of corporate citizenship function and subsequently become valued within public discourse. Secondly, it reports on exploratory action research where I as a researcher occupied a central role in understanding and contributing towards how organizational settings socially construct and evolve corporate citizenship in real time through various exchange behaviour, drawing from four years field research within BP and its interactions with the external world. This research contributes to new knowledge by building a rare contextual understanding into how cultural change evolves over time within an organization, from its public face, through policy, down into employee and stakeholder reactions, including identifying the crucial role played by Cultural bridges’ in shifting entrenched organizational culture towards embracing new, more sustainable ways of doing business, and additionally how practitioners can legitimately act as a researcher in facilitating this process by assisting an organization to move from simple, transactional relationships to more sustainable integrated social, financial and environmental exchange between business and its broader context. Importantly, this research develops entirely new theoretical models for understanding the social application and commercial value of corporate citizenship to both business and society.