Critical Literacy in the Early Years : Emergence and Sustenance in an Age of Accountability

The work of early childhood educators in facilitating young children’s literacy acquisition has never received more attention than in the new millennium. Media hype about literacy crises, falling standards, teacher quality and government promises of minimum standards for all children have simultaneously increased the ‘visibility’ of literacy and the stakes for school performance. Indeed the last two decades could be seen as an age of pronouncements with respect to literacy, with politicians internationally promising to cure supposed low literacy with standardized tests and mandated programmes. As the rhetoric around literacy intensifies many late-capitalist economies are experiencing shifts that have increased the gaps between rich and poor, changed the very nature of work, and fundamentally altered the cultural mix of their populations. More and more children attending schools where English is the language of instruction speak it as a second or third language. Many children have experienced the effects of war, terrorism, migration and poverty. Many live in fractured, fragmented and changing families. Teacher populations are changing too. In some places aging teacher workforces mean that there is already a shortage of qualified teachers. Literacy is also changing as the impact of digital technologies on global and local communication, economies and knowledges begins to bite in everyday and working lives. It is challenging to think about how spaces for the emergence and sustenance of critical literacy in early childhood education might be created.

A cross-sectional analysis of patterns of obesity in a cohort of working nurses and midwives in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom

Objective The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of overweight and obesity and the association with demographic, reproductive work variables in a representative cohort of working nurses and midwives. Design A cross sectional study of self reported survey data. Settings Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Methods Measurement outcomes included BMI categories, demographic (age, gender, marital status, ethnicity), reproductive (parity, number of births, mother's age at first birth, birth type and menopausal status) and workforce (registration council, employment type and principal specialty) variables. Participants 4996 respondents to the Nurses and Midwives e-Cohort study who were currently registered and working in nursing or midwifery in Australia (n=3144), New Zealand (n=778) or the United Kingdom (n=1074). Results Amongst the sample 61.87% were outside the healthy weight range and across all three jurisdictions the prevalence of obesity in nurses and midwives exceeded rates in the source populations by 1.73% up to 3.74%. Being overweight or obese was significantly associated with increasing age (35–44 yrs aOR 1.71, 95% CI 1.41–2.08; 45–55 yrs aOR 1.90, 95%CI 1.56–2.31; 55–64 aOR 2.22, 95% CI 1.71–2.88), and male gender (aOR 1.46, 95% CI 1.15–1.87). Primiparous nurses and midwives were more likely to be overweight or obese (aOR 1.37, 95% CI 1.06–1.76) as were those who had reached menopause (aOR 1.37, 95% CI 1.11–1.69). Nurses and midwives in part-time or casual employment had significantly reduced risk of being overweight or obese, (aOR 0.81, 95% CI 0.70–0.94 and aOR 0.75, 95% CI 0.59–0.96 respectively), whilst working in aged carried increased risk (aOR 1.37, 95% CI 1.04–1.80). Conclusion Nurses and midwives in this study have higher prevalence of obesity and overweight than the general population and those who are older, male, or female primiparous and menopausal have significantly higher risk of overweight or obesity as do those working fulltime, or in aged care. The consequences of overweight and obesity in this occupational group may impact on their workforce participation, their management of overweight and obese patients in their care as well as influencing their individual health behaviours and risks of occupational injury and chronic disease.

An informal community of practice : the case of the DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group

The DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group has an informal membership of nearly 200 members with an interest in education and virtual worlds within the Australian and New Zealand context. Members come from a variety of academic disciplines and may be teaching or research academics, Research Higher Degree candidates, project managers, virtual world builders and developers. The group acts as an informal Community of Practice, facilitating learning and the transfer of skills through social contact, opportunities to collaborate on projects and publications, and through the sharing of knowledge and experience. This poster provides a snapshot of the activity of this highly active group.

Working for a better life : longitudinal evidence on the predictors of employment among recently arrived refugee migrant men living in Australia

Although a number of studies have investigated the predictors of employment among refugee migrants, there is a dearth of evidence from longitudinal data. This study investigated the cross-sectional and longitudinal predictors of employment among 233 adult refugee men living in South-East Queensland, Australia. Participants were interviewed four times at six-month intervals between 2008 and 2010. Using a conceptual model developed from the literature, Generalised Estimating Equations were used to model the predictors of employment. Over time, the employment rate increased from 44 percent to 56 percent. Region of birth, length of time in Australia, seeking employment through job service providers and informal networks, and owning a car were significant predictors of employment. Contrary to previous research, English language proficiency was not a significant predictor when other variables were controlled for. Recognition of overseas skills and qualifications decreased the chances of finding employment. The policy and program implications are discussed.

‘Working with the team’ : an exploratory study of improved type 2 diabetes management in a new model of integrated primary/secondary care

This study aimed to explore how a new model of integrated primary/secondary care for type 2 diabetes management, the Brisbane South Complex Diabetes Service (BSCDS), related to improved diabetes management in a selected group of patients. We used a qualitative research design to obtain detailed accounts from the BSCDS via semi-structured interviews with 10 patients. The interviews were fully transcribed and systematically coded using a form of thematic analysis. Participants’ responses were grouped in relation to: (1) Patient-centred care; (2) Effective multiprofessional teamwork; and (3) Empowering patients. The key features of this integrated primary/secondary care model were accessibility and its delivery within a positive health care environment, clear and supportive interpersonal communication between patients and health care providers, and patients seeing themselves as being part of the team-based care. The BSCDS delivered patient-centred care and achieved patient engagement in ways that may have contributed to improved type 2 diabetes management in these participants.

Literacy coaching roles in diverse contexts of teaching and learning : New ways of working

As the demands placed on the literacy coach have evolved, so too have the roles of these educational providers who are often responsible for working with school teams to turn around student performance on standardized literacy tests. One literacy coach based in a Queensland primary school recounts her experiences via open-ended interview over a two year period. We offer a theorisation of the new ways of working as a literacy coach in a context of teaching and learning marked by diversity.

Conflict and communication among engineers

The trend of cultural diversity is increasing in all organizations, especially engineering ones, due to globalization, mergers, joint ventures and the movement of the workforce. The collaborative nature of projects in engineering industries requires long-term teamwork between local and international engineers. Research confirms a specific culture among engineering companies that isassumed to have a negative effect on collaboration and communication among co-workers. Multicultural workplaces have been reported as challenging environments in the engineering work culture, which calls for more research among engineering organizations. An everyday challenge for co-workers, especially in culturally diverse contexts, is handling interpersonal conflict. This perceived conflict among individuals can happen because of actual differences in tasks or relationships. Research demonstrates that task conflict at the group level has some positive effects on decision-making and innovation, while it has negative effects on employees’ work attitude and performance. However, relationship conflict at the individual level has only negative effects including frustration, tension, low job satisfaction, high employee turnover and low productivity. Outcomes of both task and relationship conflict at individual level can have long-term negative consequences like damaged organizational commitment. One of the most important sources of differences between individuals, which results in conflict, is their cultural backgrounds. First, this thesis suggests that in culturally diverse workplaces, people perceive more relationship conflict than task conflict. Second, this thesis examines interpersonal communication in culturally diverse work places. Communicating effectively in culturally diverse workplaces is crucial for today’s business. Culture has a large effect on the ways that people communicate with each other. Ineffective communication can escalate interpersonal conflict and cause frustration in the long term. Communication satisfaction, defined as enjoying the communication and feeling that the communication was appropriate and effective, has a positive effect on individuals’ psychological wellbeing. In a culturally diverse workplace, it is assumed that individuals feel less satisfied with their interpersonal communications because of their lack of knowledge about other cultures’ communication norms. To manage interpersonal interactions, many authors suggest that individuals need a specific capability, i.e., cultural intelligence (some studies use cultural competence, global intelligence or intercultural competence interchangeably). Some authors argue that cultures are synergic and convergent and the postmodernist definition of culture is just our dominant beliefs. However, other authors suggest that cultural intelligence is the strongest and most comprehensive competency for managing cross-cultural interactions, because various cultures differ so greatly at the micro level. This thesis argues that individuals with a high level of cultural intelligence perceive less interpersonal conflict and more satisfaction with their interpersonal communication. Third, this thesis also looks at individuals' perception of cultural diversity. It is suggested that level of cultural diversity plays a moderating role on all of the proposed relationships (effect of cultural intelligence on perception of relationship conflict/ communication satisfaction) This thesis examines the relationship among cultural diversity, cultural intelligence, interpersonal conflict and communication by surveying eleven companies in the oil and gas industry. The multicultural nature of companies within the oil and gas industry and the characteristics of engineering culture call for more in-depth research on interpersonal interactions. A total of 286 invitation emails were sent and 118 respondents replied to the survey, giving a 41.26 per cent response rate. All the respondents were engineers, engineering managers or practical technicians. The average age of the participants was 36.93 years and 58.82 per cent were male. Overall, 47.6 per cent of the respondents had at least a master’s degree. Totally, 42.85 per cent of the respondents were working in a country that was not their country of birth. The overall findings reveal that cultural diversity and cultural intelligence significantly influence interpersonal conflict and communication satisfaction. Further, this thesis also finds that cultural intelligence is an effective competency for dealing with the perception of interpersonal relationship conflict and communication satisfaction when the level of cultural diversity is moderate to high. This thesis suggests that cultural intelligence training is necessary to increase the level of this competency among employees in order to help them to have better understanding of other cultures. Human resource management can design these training courses with consideration for the level of cultural diversity within the organization.

Influencing the experience of people in urban public places through mobile mediated interactions

This study presents research findings to informthe design and development of innovativemobile services aiming to enable collocated people to interact with each other in public urban places. The main goal of this research is to provide applications and deliver guidelines to positively influence the user experience of different public urban places during everyday urban life. This study describes the design and evaluation of mobile content and services enabling mobile mediated interactions in an anonymous way. The research described in this thesis is threefold. First, this study investigates how Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be utilised in particular urban public places to influence the experience of urban dwellers during everyday life. The research into urban residents and public places guides the design of three different technologies that form case studies to investigate and discover possibilities to digitally augment the public urban space and make the invisible data of our interactions in the urban environment visible. • Capital Music enables urban dwellers to listen to their music on their mobile devices as usual but also visualises the artworks of songs currently being played and listened to by other users in ones’ vicinity. • PlaceTagz uses QR codes printed on stickers that link to a digital message board enabling collocated users to interact with each other over time resulting in a place-based digital memory. • Sapporo World Window, Brisbane Hot Spots, and YourScreen are interactive content applications allowing people to share data with their mobile phones on public urban screens. The applications employ mobile phones to mediate interactions in form of location and video sharing. Second, this study sets out to explore the quality and nature of the experiences created through the developed and deployed case study applications. The development of a user experience framework for evaluating mobile mediated interactions in urban public places is described and applied within each case. Third, drawing on research from urban sociology, psychology, urban design, and the findings from this study, this thesis discusses how such interactions can have an impact on the urban experience.

Eye on the Street? Sensory Experience in Public Places

Research on the sensual experience of place is not a mainstream topic in the architectural debate; it is more common in other disciplines like landscape architecture or interior design. The curriculum sometime offers opportunities of cross-pollination between disciplines; students in architecture courses might be exposed to different theories of space more typical to other fields. This paper explore the teaching/research nexus within QUT Master of Architecture research stream; the focus of the discussion is students’ experimentation with people’s experience and navigation of the public space. Theories of placemaking in relation to urban design are first introduced; then the teaching/research nexus is discussed; finally students’ experience in approaching phenomenological research within the Master of Architecture are presented.

Lost in translation, found in translation : A case study of working psychodynamically in an interpreter-assisted setting

Effective use of psychotherapeutic treatment in interpreter-assisted settings is well established; however, there has been little discussion of the use of psychodynamically-informed treatments in such settings. The literature suggests that therapy facilitated by interpreters is not conducive to psychodynamic approaches due to the presence of a third person, the perceived lack of intimacy, and the difficulties of working with translated material. However, transference, countertransference and other unconscious communications and responses necessarily occur in every therapeutic setting, including triadic therapy using interpreters. This paper describes a short-term (12 session) psychodynamically-oriented intervention with a 52-year old Cantonese-speaking man suffering from depression. A female, Chinese-born interpreter assisted in every session. The integral role of supervision in supporting a containing relationship between the therapist and the patient and the difficult emotional responses experienced by the interpreter is highlighted. The paper attempts to trace some of the unconscious communications that occurred during the therapy and demonstrates the feasibility of working psychodynamically in an interpreter-assisted setting.

Discussion paper and working paper series : Motivations, expectations and experiences of Australian rural and regional planners

Despite playing an extremely important role in shaping communities, the role and contribution of planners is not widely understood or acknowledged. At the same time, there is a shortage of planners in Australia, especially in non-urban areas. Thus, though an online survey of 185 rural and regional planners, this research explores their motivations, expectations and experiences. Most enjoyed and felt confident in their role, explaining that they valued the relaxed family orientated rural lifestyle and the varied nature of the planning work. Although they sometimes felt isolated, the non-urban location provided quicker progression to senior roles, the ability to engage directly with the community and to see the consequences of their decisions. Only half felt their education had prepared them well for their role, citing gaps in terms of computerised modelling, team leadership and conflict resolution skills. Their feedback centred on providing a more practical course, focussing more on regional planning, and encouraging urban and rural experience placements. As the first study to quantifiably explore rural and regional Australian planners perceptions of their role and challenges, the findings illustrate current experiences, key planning challenges, perceived educational gaps and future priorities.

Workplace information literacy : cultivation strategies for 'working smarter' in 21st century libraries

This paper presents a hybrid framework of Swedish cultural practices and Australian grounded theory for organizational development and suggests practical strategies for 'working smarter' in 21st Century libraries. Toward that end, reflective evidence-based practices are offered to incrementally build organizational capacity for asking good questions, selecting authoritative sources, evaluating multiple perspectives, organizing emerging insights, and communicating them to inform, educate, and influence. In addition, to ensure the robust information exchange necessary to collective workplace learning, leadership traits are proposed for ensuring inclusive communication, decision making, and planning processes. These findings emerge from action research projects conducted from 2003 to 2008 in two North American libraries.

Reshaping children’s knowledge through film making: What to film, how to film and why

How can teachers reinvigorate content area knowledge and representation through filmmaking? We give examples of what to film, how to film, and why, drawing on our visual ethnographic research with Year 5 students in a working class suburb of Logan, Queensland. The unit developed content knowledge of Indigenous places and practices through sensitising activities in nature. Valuing students’ funds of knowledge, we interpreted local places through epistemologies of different cultures. Through filmmaking workshops by a digital artist, students filmed community members in a local shopping mall about their perceptions of health and happiness in local places. Students were positioned as future community leaders, presenting their films at a national conference. To conclude, we map the dominant and marginalised, local and specialised, and print and visual forms of knowledge that were interwoven, reshaped, and shared through multimodal design.

Urban jungle : making cities healthy places for Australians with neurodiversity

This paper documents a preliminary investigation into the relationship between neurodiversity and the built environment using a pilot project developed with Logan City Council and engaging candidates within the Master of Urban Design at the Queensland University of Technology. The research begins to examine the way many places are designed and built can be alienating and inhibit accessibility to people with movement and sensory differences. Logan Central has been used as a case study area to map the physical attributes, and identify barriers and challenges in the built environment – specifically for people with disabilities but also taking in consideration the wider population. The integration of all individuals – mainstream, those with disability, differences and multigenerational populations – strengthens the social and economic fabric of Australia, enabling its citizens to live healthy, productive, and fulfilling lives.

Gelatine : making coworking places gel for better collaboration and social learning

Public libraries and coworking spaces seek for means to facilitate peer collaboration, peer inspiration and cross-pollination of skills and creativity. However, social learning, inspiration and collaboration between coworkers do not come naturally. In particular in (semi-) public spaces, the behavioural norm among unacquainted coworkers is to work in individual silos without taking advantage of social learning or collaboration opportunities. This paper presents results from a pilot study of ‘Gelatine’ – a system that facilitates shared encounters between coworkers by allowing them to digitally ‘check in’ at a work space. Gelatine displays skills, areas of interest, and needs of currently present coworkers on a public screen. The results indicate that the system amplifies users’ sense of place and awareness of other coworkers, and serves as an interface for social learning through exploratory, opportunistic and serendipitous inspirations, as well as through helping users identify like-minded peers for follow-up face-to-face encounters. We discuss how Gelatine is perceived by users with different pre-entry motivations, and discuss users’ challenges as well as non-use of the system.