Geek goddesses go to school : A study of female pre-service teachers in information technology courses

Various reasons have been proffered for female under-representation in tertiary information technology (IT) courses and the IT industry with most relating to cultural moirés. The 2006 Geek Goddess calendar was designed to alter IT’s “geeky image” and the term is used here to represent young women enrolled in pre-service IT teaching courses. Their special mix of IT and teaching draws on conflicting stereotypes and represents a micro-climate which is typically lost in studies of IT occupations because of the aggregation of all IT roles. This paper will report on a small-scale investigation of female students (N=25) at a university in Queensland (Australia) studying to become teachers of secondary IT subjects. They are entering the IT industry, gendered as a “male” occupation, through the safe space of teaching a discipline allied to feminine qualities of nurturing. They are “geek goddesses” who – perhaps to balance the masculine and feminine of these occupations - have decided to go to school rather than into corporations or government.

Designing interaction for local communications : an urban screen study

This paper discusses the ongoing design and use of a digital community noticeboard situated in a suburban hub. The design intention is to engage residents, collect and display local information and communications, and spark discussion. A key contribution is an understanding of Situated Display navigation that aids retrieval from a long-term collection created by and for suburban community, and engaging qualities of this collection.

Inter-agency working : good intentions and interaction dynamics

This paper explores inter-agency working and examines the implications of inter-agency operations for delivering multi-domain service outcomes. Cross-agency collaborative approaches to service delivery are suggested to provide the vehicle for achieving integrated service and policy goals. However, it is argued these need to be crafted ‘fit’ for purpose’ and may not be the requisite approach for all joint purposes. Moreover, some commentators suggest that the optimism about these partnership arrangements and cross-agency actions to resolve complex multi-dimensional problems may be misplaced and propose that further research into the actual rather than desired consequences of these arrangements may find that, at times, partnership working creates negative effects. While collaboration and partnerships are often framed as the way to achieve real breakthroughs in service delivery across agencies, there remain key challenges to interagency working. As more and insistent calls for agencies and other community actors to work together in resolving complex social problems are heeded, the implications of working across organizational boundaries need to be further investigated. This paper investigates cases of inter-agency programmes to understand the dimensions and limitations of inter-agency working. The paper concludes by offering a framework for better inter-agency working that has applicability across all sectors.

Determinants of pre-hospital care non-usage for patients with emergency care needs [including commentary by Snooks H.]

Objective-To establish the demographic, health status and insurance determinants of pre-hospital ambulance non-usage for patients with emergency medical needs. Methods-Triage category, date of birth, sex, marital status, country of origin, method and time of arrival, ambulance insurance status, diagnosis, and disposal were collected for all patients who presented over a four month period (n=10 229) to the emergency department of a major provincial hospital. Data for patients with urgent (n=678) or critical care needs (n=332) who did not use pre-hospital care were analysed using Poisson regression. Results-Only a small percentage (6.6%) of the total sample were triaged as having urgent medical needs or critical care needs (3.2%). Predictors of usage for those with urgent care needs included age greater than 65 years (prevalence ratio (PR)=0.54; 95% confidence interval (CI)= 0.35 to 0.83), being admitted to intensive care or transferred to another hospital (PR=0.62; 95% CI=0.44 to 0.89) or ward (PR=0.72; 95% CI=0.56 to 0.93) and ambulance insurance status (PR=0.67; 95% CI=052 to 0.86). Sex, marital status, time of day and country of origin were not predictive of usage and non-usage. Predictors of usage for those with critical care needs included age 65 years or greater (PR=0.45; 95% CI=0.25 to 0.81) and a diagnosis of trauma (PR=0.49; 95% CI=0.26 to 0.92). A non-English speaking background was predictive of non-usage (PR=1.98; 95% CI=1.06 to 3.70). Sex, marital status, time of day, triage and ambulance insurance status were not predictive of non-usage. Conclusions-Socioeconomic and medical factors variously influence ambulance usage depending on the severity or urgency of the medical condition. Ambulance insurance status was less of an influence as severity of condition increased suggesting that, at a critical level of urgency, patients without insurance are willing to pay for a pre-hospital ambulance service.

Taking a 'reality' check : expanding pre-service teachers' views on pedagogy and diversity

The outcomes of a two-pronged 'real-world' learning project, which aimed to expand the views of pre-service teachers about learning, pedagogy and diversity, will be discussed in this paper. Seventy-two fourth-year and 22 first-year students, enrolled in a Bachelor of Education degree in Queensland, Australia, were engaged in community sites outside of university lectures, and separate from their practicum. Using Butin's conceptual framework for service learning, we show evidence that this approach can enable pre-service teachers to see new realities about the dilemmas and ambiguities of performing as learners and as teachers. We contend that when such 'real-world' experiences have different foci at different times in their four-year degree, pre-service teachers have more opportunities to develop sophisticated understandings of pedagogy in diverse contexts for diverse learners.

Investigating Familiarity in Older Adults to Facilitate Intuitive Interaction

This paper discusses how intuitive interaction is a possible way to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of interaction with older adults. It provides insights into existing research on intuitive interaction, and the role of prior experience and familiarity in intuition. An experiment is discussed which investigates differences in familiarity between younger and older adults. A comprehensive coding system has been developed to help analyse the data collected. This research is currently in progress.

Before the first export decision : internationalisation readiness in the pre-export phase

Although the internationalisation process of the firm has been well researched since the 1970s, the behaviour of firms prior to internationalisation has not received commensurate research attention.This paper argues that a focus on firms’ pre-internationalisation activities will not only offer an additional important perspective to the study of firm internationalisation but it will also address a significant research gap in studies that are theoretically based on the so-called stages models. During the pre-internationalisation phase, a firm is exposed to stimuli factors that may trigger an impulse for foreign market expansion. Decision makers’ perceptions of stimuli, their attitudinal commitment towards internationalisation, the firms’ resources and capabilities, as well as the mediating effect of lateral rigidity comprise a learning process that leads a firm towards readiness to initiate an internationalisation decision. This paper advances the concept of internationalisation readiness and proposes a method for developing an Internationalisation Readiness Index.

Teacher educators embrace philosophy: reflections on a new way of looking at preparing pre-service teachers

Over the last decade in Australia, the role of the teacher has changed. Teachers are now expected to model and foster in their students a wide range of skills such as critical thinking, self-regulated learning, knowledge of self and others and lifelong learning. These changes are having a significant impact on the design of pre-service teacher education programmes, with university educators re-evaluating the teacher training curriculum and embedded pedagogical processes in order to consider how they might develop these skills in pre-service teachers. One approach is to consider the processes and practices inherent in philosophical inquiry. This paper reports on three participants’ reflections of a 12-week philosophy programme that was conducted for teacher educators at Queensland’s University of Technology (QUT) in 2008. The programme was facilitated by teachers from Buranda State School who have been teaching philosophy in their P-7 school for more than ten years. This paper provides insight into teacher educators’ reflections on the philosophy programme and the associated changes and challenges of implementing such a programme in pre-service teacher education degrees.

An investigation of the social learning and symbolic interaction models for the development of self-concepts and self-esteem

Two studies were conducted to investigate empirical support for two models relating to the development of self-concepts and self-esteem in upper-primary school children. The first study investigated the social learning model by examining the relationship between mothers' and fathers' self-reported self-concepts and self-esteem and the self-reported self-concepts and self-esteem of their children. The second study investigated the symbolic interaction model by examining the relationship between children's perception of the frequency of positive and negative statements made by parents and their self-reported self-concepts and self-esteem. The results of these studies suggested that what parents say to their children and how they interact with them is more closely related to their children's self-perceptions than the role of modelling parental attitudes and behaviours. The findings highlight the benefits of parents talking positively to their children.

“I am a secondary teacher and I teach history and SOSE” : negotiating pre-service teacher identities in times of curriculum change

Secondary social education in Australia is set to change with the new national history curriculum but integrated social education will continue in the middle years of schooling. Competing discourses of disciplinary and integrated social education approaches create new challenges for pre-service teachers as identification with a teaching area is an important aspect of developing a broader teacher identity. Feedback on a compulsory, final year curriculum studies unit revealed the majority of secondary pre-service teachers identified with at least one social science discipline. However, only a small number listed the integrated social education curriculum of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE), even though SOSE was an essential part of their brief. More complex identities were revealed in post-teaching practice interviews. In times of curriculum change, attention to pre-service teachers’ disciplinary knowledge is critical in developing a stable subject identity.

Is there something quantum-like about the human mental lexicon?

Following an early claim by Nelson & McEvoy suggesting that word associations can display `spooky action at a distance behaviour', a serious investigation of the potentially quantum nature of such associations is currently underway. In this paper quantum theory is proposed as a framework suitable for modelling the mental lexicon, specifically the results obtained from both intralist and extralist word association experiments. Some initial models exploring this hypothesis are discussed, and they appear to be capable of substantial agreement with pre-existing experimental data. The paper concludes with a discussion of some experiments that will be performed in order to test these models.

A Malaysian tale : pre-service teacher education and ICT integration for a better world

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education is often a topic of much discussion within all sectors of education with educators and educational researchers continually looking for innovative ways of using these technologies to support and enhance student outcomes in education. Consequently, Malaysia is no exception to this and as the Ministry of Education (MOE), Malaysia strives to meet its government’s Vision 2020, educational reform across all educational sectors has become imperative. ICT will play an integral role in the educational reform process and teacher education programs are no exception to this. ICT and capacity building will play an important role in the re-conceptualisation of teacher education programs. This paper reports on how a collaborative capacity building project between two Malaysian teacher education Institutes and an Australian University has given lecturers and pre-service teachers an opportunity to redefine their use of ICT in their prospective teaching areas of science, mathematics and design and technology. It also highlights the positive capacity building programs that occurred between both Australian university lecturers and Malaysian Institute lecturers and how this contributed to the effective integration and use of ICT.

The interaction order of Second Life : how micro sociology can contribute to online games innovation

This paper uses the virtual world Second Life (as Web 2.0 environment) to discuss how sociological theory is a relevant tool for innovation in the area of games design as a methodological strategy. Via the theories of Erving Goffman’s interaction order the paper illustrates how micro studies of online interaction demonstrate active accounts of membership and complex interactivity. In order to achieve this, the paper outlines a methodological tool to assist in the application of micro sociology to Web 2.0 environments that accounts for the multiple dimensions of participation within the digital field.

Multi-vehicles interaction graph model for cooperative collision warning system

Cooperative collision warning system for road vehicles, enabled by recent advances in positioning systems and wireless communication technologies, can potentially reduce traffic accident significantly. To improve the system, we propose a graph model to represent interactions between multiple road vehicles in a specific region and at a specific time. Given a list of vehicles in vicinity, we can generate the interaction graph using several rules that consider vehicle's properties such as position, speed, heading, etc. Safety applications can use the model to improve emergency warning accuracy and optimize wireless channel usage. The model allows us to develop some congestion control strategies for an efficient multi-hop broadcast protocol.

A thematic approach to integrating maths and science for pre-service primary teachers via sustainability

Efforts to improve mathematics and science content knowledge have in many institutions required redefining teacher education through new teaching and learning. See, for example, Peard & Pumadevi (2007) for an account of one such attempt involving the development of a Foundations Unit, Scientific and Quantitative Literacy. This unit is core for all first year pre-service primary teacher education students at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and two Education Institutes in Malaysia, Institute Perguruan Raja Melewar (IPRM), and Institute Perguruan Teknik (IPT) Kuala Lumpur. Since then, QUT has modified the unit to adopt a thematic approach to the same content. An aim of the unit rewrite was the development of a positive attitude and disposition to the teaching and learning of mathematics and science, with a curiosity and willingness to speculate about and explore the world. Numeracy was specifically identified within the mathematics encountered and appropriately embedded in the science learning area. The importance of the ability to engage in communication of and about mathematics and science was considered crucial to the development of pre-service primary teachers. Cognisance was given to the appropriate selection and use of technology to enhance learning - digital technologies were embedded in the teaching, learning and assessment of the unit to avoid being considered as an optional extra. This was achieved around the theme of “the sustainable school”. This „sustainability‟ theme was selected due to its prominence in Australia‟s futures-oriented National Curriculum which will be implemented in 2011. This paper outlines the approach taken to the implementation of the unit and discusses early indicators of its effectiveness.