Productive and inclusive? How documentation concealed racialising practices in a diversity project

This article examines how documentation concealed racialising practices in a diversity project that was seen to be productive and inclusive. Documentation examples are taken from a doctoral study about embedding Indigenous perspectives in early childhood education curricula in two Australian urban childcare centres. In place of reporting examples of ‘good’ early childhood education practice, the study labelled racialising practices in educators’ work. The primary aim was to understand how racialising practices are mobilised in professional practices, including documentation, even when educators’ work is seen to be high quality. Extracts from two communal journals that captured an action research process around embedding practices are examined to show how racism and whiteness were concealed within the documentation. This enables understanding about how documentation can provide evidence to stakeholders that diversity work in mainstream childcare centres is productive and inclusive, despite disparity between what is recorded and what occurs in practice.

The genographic project: Traditional knowledge and population genetics

This article considers the debate over patent law, informed consent, and benefit-sharing in the context of biomedical research in respect of Indigenous communities. In particular, it focuses upon three key controversies over large-scale biology projects, involving Indigenous populations. These case studies are representative of the tensions between research organisations, Indigenous communities, and funding agencies. Section two considers the aims and origins of the Human Genome Diversity Project, and criticisms levelled against the venture by Indigenous peak bodies and anti-biotechnology groups, such as the Rural Advancement Foundation International. It examines the ways in which the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) grappled with questions of patent law, informed consent, and benefit sharing in relation to population genetics. Section three focuses upon the ongoing litigation in Tilousi v. Arizona State University, and the Havasupai Tribe v. Arizona State University. In this matter, the Havasupai tribe from the Grand Canyon in the United States brought legal action against the Arizona State University and its researchers for using genetic data for unauthorised purposes - namely, genetic research into schizophrenia, migration, and inbreeding. The litigation raises questions about informed consent, negligence, and larger matters of human rights. Section four explores the legal and ethical issues raised by the Genographic Project. It considers the aims and objectives of the venture, and the criticisms levelled against it by Indigenous communities, and anti-biotechnology groups. It examines the response of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to the Genographic Project. It charts the debate over the protection of traditional knowledge in various international fora. The conclusion recommends a number of measures to better regulate large-scale biology projects involving the participation of Indigenous communities.

Robust estimation of local genetic ancestry in admixed populations using a nonparametric Bayesian approach.

We present a new haplotype-based approach for inferring local genetic ancestry of individuals in an admixed population. Most existing approaches for local ancestry estimation ignore the latent genetic relatedness between ancestral populations and treat them as independent. In this article, we exploit such information by building an inheritance model that describes both the ancestral populations and the admixed population jointly in a unified framework. Based on an assumption that the common hypothetical founder haplotypes give rise to both the ancestral and the admixed population haplotypes, we employ an infinite hidden Markov model to characterize each ancestral population and further extend it to generate the admixed population. Through an effective utilization of the population structural information under a principled nonparametric Bayesian framework, the resulting model is significantly less sensitive to the choice and the amount of training data for ancestral populations than state-of-the-art algorithms. We also improve the robustness under deviation from common modeling assumptions by incorporating population-specific scale parameters that allow variable recombination rates in different populations. Our method is applicable to an admixed population from an arbitrary number of ancestral populations and also performs competitively in terms of spurious ancestry proportions under a general multiway admixture assumption. We validate the proposed method by simulation under various admixing scenarios and present empirical analysis results from a worldwide-distributed dataset from the Human Genome Diversity Project.

De la diversité des équipes : étude du rôle des vecteurs de failles sur la performance.

Malgré que plus de 50 ans nous séparent des premières études empiriques s’attardant à la diversité dans les équipes de travail, il demeure difficile de tirer des conclusions claires et cohérentes quant à la nature et à la direction des relations qu’elle entretient avec la performance groupale. Ce constat a amené de nombreux auteurs à formuler diverses recommandations visant à sortir le domaine de recherche de l’impasse. Dans un contexte où, d’une part, les organisations tendent à s’appuyer de plus en plus sur des équipes afin d’assurer leur efficacité et, d’autre part, la diversité ne cesse de s’accroitre au rythme de l’immigration et de la spécialisation du savoir, il devient particulièrement pertinent de poursuivre les efforts de recherche en fonction de ces recommandations afin de clarifier les impacts de la diversité sur la performance. La présente thèse s’inscrit dans un courant de recherche en pleine croissance qui répond aux appels des chercheurs du domaine et qui vise à évaluer les effets de la structure de la diversité plutôt qu’uniquement ceux de la quantité de diversité dans les équipes. La théorie des vecteurs de failles (Lau & Murnighan, 1998), qui sont des lignes hypothétiques divisant les membres d’une équipe lorsque des caractéristiques de diversité concordent et créent des sous-groupes homogènes, constitue une avancée majeure à cet effet. Toutefois, certains résultats empiriques contradictoires à son sujet mettent en lumière l’importance de prendre en considération l’ensemble des recommandations qui ont été formulés à l’intention des chercheurs du domaine de la diversité. À travers la lentille des vecteurs de failles, la thèse vise à approfondir notre compréhension du rôle de la diversité sur la performance des équipes en mettant en pratique ces diverses recommandations, qui invitent à examiner le rôle des mécanismes médiateurs ainsi que des effets modérateurs pouvant intervenir dans cette relation, à préciser les typologies employées et à prendre en considération l’influence du contexte dans lequel évoluent les équipes de travail. Le premier article constitue un effort de synthèse empirique cherchant à préciser les effets différenciés que peuvent avoir divers types de failles sur divers types de performance et à évaluer le rôle modérateur que joue le type d’équipe étudié dans ces relations. Les résultats de la méta-analyse, menée à l’aide d’un échantillon de 38 études comprenant 3046 équipes, viennent nuancer ceux précédemment rapportés dans la documentation scientifique et montrent que les failles ont un effet négatif sur la performance comportementale mais pas sur la performance de résultats. De plus, le type d’équipe modère cette relation de sorte que celle-ci est plus fortement négative pour les équipes de projet et les équipes de gestion. Le deuxième article évalue empiriquement l’effet des vecteurs de faille informationnels sur une dimension spécifique de la performance, l’adaptabilité d’équipe, en examinant le rôle médiateur de la coordination implicite ainsi que l’effet modérateur de la clarté des rôles et responsabilités. Une analyse de médiation modérée auprès d’un échantillon de 14 équipes de projet révèle que la coordination implicite médie la relation négative entre les vecteurs de faille informationnels et l’adaptabilité d’équipe. De plus, cette relation est plus fortement négative lorsque les rôles et responsabilités des équipiers sont clairs ou très clairs. Les implications théoriques et pratiques des résultats obtenus sont discutées.

Island ecosystems - priorities for conservation?

In terms of their land area, many islands contain a disproportionate number of taxa for certain groups of organisms. Thus the IUCN/WWF Centres of Plant Diversity project, which identifies 234 first order sites that are globally most important from a botanical point of view, includes a considerable proportion of islands, and in Conservation International’s Hotspot programme, Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands, the Philippines, and the Caribbean are identified as three of the five “hottest of the hotspots”. Priority for conservation action is often assumed for islands because of the often dramatic losses already suffered and the serious level of threats to which plant or animal populations are subjected, largely as a result of direct or indirect human action. The practicalities of conservation are not, however, straightforward in many cases. In the conservation of island hotspots of biodiversity, in addition to the many scientific and technical issues involved, political, financial and socio-economic factors also have to be addressed. The priorities for conservation will be examined in the light of targets set by the recently approved CBD Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and in the wider context of sustainable development of island ecosystems and the needs and aspirations of the people who inhabit them. Particular attention will be given to the threats from invasive species and the resultant increasing homogenization of floras and faunas, leading to the ‘deinsularization’ of islands.

Molecules, wing pattern and distribution: an approach to species delimitation in the "loxurina group" (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae: Penaincisalia)

The wide range of morphological variations in the “loxurina group” makes taxa identification difficult, and despite several reviews, serious taxonomical confusion remains. We make use of DNA data in conjunction with morphological appearance and available information on species distribution to delimit the boundaries of the “loxurina” group species previously established based on morphology. A fragment of 635 base pairs within the mtDNA gene cytochrome oxidase I (COI) was analysed for seven species of the “loxurina group”. Phylogenetic relationships among the included taxa were inferred using maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood methods. Penaincisalia sigsiga (Bálint et al), P. cillutincarae (Draudt), P. atymna (Hewitson) and P. loxurina (C. Felder & R. Felder) were easily delimited as the morphological, geographic and molecular data were congruent. Penaincisalia ludovica (Bálint & Wojtusiak) and P. loxurina astillero (Johnson) represent the same entity and constitute a sub-species of P. loxurina. However, incongruence among morphological, genetic, and geographic data is shown in P. chachapoya (Bálint & Wojtusiak) and P. tegulina (Bálint et al). Our results highlight that an integrative approach is needed to clarify the taxonomy of these neotropical taxa, but more genetic and geographical studies are still required.

"It’s just very natural" – interpersonal knowledge as a didactical device in guided classroom conversations in religious education

This article investigates how teachers in religious education (RE) think and act as professionals while working with differences in religious and philosophy of life experiences and beliefs in class and trying to do this in respectful and inclusive ways. It analyses data from two research projects that were carried out in lower secondary school in Norway. The main research question is: What is the relationship between teachers’ contextual knowledge and knowledge of the child and how do these two dimensions of professional knowledge interact when religious education teachers try to strike a good balance between inclusion and productive learning in their teaching practice? The data analysed were drawn from three different data sets featuring three Norwegian religious education-teachers. The research was part of the EU-funded "REDCo"-project and the "Religious education and diversity" - project ["ROM"] funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The interviewees emphasized the potential of the religious education subject to contribute to a wider tolerance for difference and to support individual students in their identity management. The analysis shows, however, that considerable contextual awareness - of the classroom and of the local community - is needed to realize this potential. It also shows the importance of interpersonal knowledge between the teacher and each student if contextual awareness is to be effective in terms of inclusion, participation, wellbeing and good learning outcomes for all students.

WAWASH Knowledge Management System

A knowledge management tool developed by the GIS Center for to support project reporting tools, project publications, and a project data portal for materials related to the WAWASH Program.

Early intervention music therapy : reporting on a 3-year project to address needs with at-risk families

Sing & Grow is an early intervention music therapy project presented to families with additional needs, or those at risk of experiencing disadvantage due to social and/or economic circumstances that may impact on their parenting experiences. The aim of the project is to provide short term music therapy programs to families in communities where access to such services may be limited. The program is strengths-based and focuses on building upon a parent’s capacity to relate to and respond to their child’s emotional and developmental needs.

Valuing diversity : a multiliteracies project in a remote Indigenous community

This chapter draws attention to the complex nature of teachers’ work when working with linguistically and culturally diverse students and their communities in an era of new literacies. One multiliteracies project undertaken within a remote Indigenous community in the Torres Straits, Far North Queensland, Australia, is presented. The discussion considers understandings of student diversity as articulated in the Australian Curriculum documents, designs of meaning for written and visual text and the various components of pedagogy introduced into a multiliteracies project. The chapter concludes by highlighting the usefulness of the ‘wide, but not vague’ multiliteracies approach and the importance of an explicit grammar for written and visual text, for meeting the literacy learning needs of one group of 21st century learners.

Seeking inclusion : views from ‘vulnerable’ communities about reporting by the Australian news media

This conference paper reports on the findings of the 'Vulnerability and the News Media’ project about news reporting on communities that are commonly regarded as ‘vulnerable’ by virtue of their issues or circumstances. The project focuses on news reporting of Indigenous and ethnically diverse communities, as well as people affected by mental health issues, people with disabilities, and survivors of crime and traumatic events. Numerous educational initiatives have tried to improve the quality of media reports about these communities and their issues. Despite this, the project’s research with stakeholders from those communities has found that they continue to raise the same concerns that have been expressed about the news media since the 1970s. In focus group research, stakeholders from these communities expressed concern about their continuing under-representation or omission from the news media. They felt that voices, experiences, perspectives and issues from their communities rarely appeared, or if they did appear, it was in limited contexts – often in circumstances that portrayed them as vulnerable or disruptive. They also pointed to ongoing media misrepresentation, such as stereotyping, inappropriate framing, and over-reliance on ‘usual suspects’ to talk about their communities. A common theme that they voiced was their need for greater inclusiveness in the media. Participants wished that journalists would better represent the diversity of life experiences and perspectives within their communities. Stakeholders also wanted an increased in representation of their political frameworks, such as stories about the difficulties they encountered in dealing with social and bureaucratic systems, and their understandings of causes and potential solutions for issues affecting their communities.

Improving level crossing safety through enhanced data recording and reporting : The CRC for Rail Innovation’s Baseline Rail Level Crossing Video project

This paper describes the work being conducted in the baseline rail level crossing project, supported by the Australian rail industry and the Cooperative Research Centre for Rail Innovation. The paper discusses the limitations of near-miss data for analysis obtained using current level crossing occurrence reporting practices. The project is addressing these limitations through the development of a data collection and analysis system with an underlying level crossing accident causation model. An overview of the methodology and improved data recording process are described. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of benefits this project is expected to provide the Australian rail industry.