Better dead: J. M. Barrie’s first book and the shilling fiction market

This article provides a critical and bibliographical discussion of J. M. Barrie’s neglected first book, Better Dead, published by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co. in 1887. Drawing on previously unexamined evidence in the Sonnenschein archive, it shows how this shilling novel was marketed and sold to its readers at railway bookstalls, and argues that the content and style of the story was conditioned by its form. Examining the many references and allusions in the story, it proposes that the work is best understood as a satire on contemporary political, social and literary themes. The article also shows how, contrary to all published accounts, the author actually earned a small amount of money from a work which, in spite of his efforts, refused to stay dead.

Building virtual learning communities

This chapter introduces the concept of virtual learning communities and discusses and further enhances the theory and definitions presented in related literature. A model comprising four criteria essential to virtual learning communities is presented and discussed in detail. Theory and case studies relating to the impact of virtual learning communities on distance education and students from diverse cultural groups are also examined. In addition, this chapter investigates the enabling technologies and facilitation that is required to build virtual learning communities. Other case studies are used to illustrate the process of building virtual learning communities. Emerging technologies such as wikis and video lectures are also analysed to determine the effects they have on building and sustaining effective virtual learning communities.

Regimes of risk: the need for a pedagogy for peer groups

Peer groups matter more than we think. In this paper we assert that peer group commitments and affiliations are often the primary social reference in determining the way young people think about and practice risk. It is, we argue, inappropriate to impose adult constructions of risk-taking and anti-social behaviour when trying to assert influence over the decisions and practices young people make in the context of their peers. Prominent in our discussion is a concern that mainstream educational theory and practice focuses disproportionately on the individual and their capacity to make rational and independent choices. We believe that within this individualizing framework, teachers have only a very limited capacity to influence the practices and decisions young people make in the presence of their peers, their friends. To ground this discussion we juxtapose the actions and interactions of two young male peer groups, to highlight their respective constructions of group identity.

The impact of social phobia on quality of life: the advantages of anxiety support groups

Social phobia is the least well known of the anxiety disorders and it is perhaps also the least well understood. The lifetime prevalence rates for social phobia, which range from 3% to 13%, clearly indicate that social phobia is a widespread mental health problem. Those affected by social phobia often live their lives around the limitations of the disorder including avoidance of social situations, depression and loneliness. Thus for these individuals, social phobia becomes an impairing disorder which can have long-term negative impacts on work performance and social relationships. Anxiety support groups offer an important resource to sufferers of social phobia. Support groups provide a potentially safe and confidential environment in which to interact with others. Support groups also have the potential to help to de-stigmatize the disorders for sufferers as all members share similar concerns that are often not well understood by others. The practical benefits to be derived from anxiety support groups are presented through the discussion of two case studies.

Working and learning in vocational education and training in the knowledge era : final report of the professional development for the future project

This Report summarises the outcomes of the phases of the Professional
Development for the Future Project and presents the implications of this research for professional development of staff in Vocational Education and Training (VET), as they become knowledge workers.

These shifts are occurring within the knowledge era. Distinguishing features of this era are summarised into four broad areas:
- the importance and value placed on knowledge in organisations
- the time span of discretion
- the complexity of relationships, and
- the ubiquitous nature of information and communication technology.

It is within this context that work is currently performed, and understanding this context provides the foundation for considering new capabilities required in the knowledge era.
Key capabilities required of knowledge workers to work effectively in the
knowledge era were drawn together from an analysis of the theoretical literature and the results of interviews with knowledge workers. The core capabilities identified include:
- adaptive problem solving – becoming designers as well as problem -
solvers
- rapid knowledge gathering and sharing with others
- discriminating between relevant and irrelevant information, and
- understanding and working effectively with the organisation’s culture.

Knowledge era characteristics and knowledge worker capabilities have been mapped to each other illustrating conceptual linkages between these two areas.

Professional development themes drawn from interviews with knowledge
workers are presented. While global trends in knowledge work have been well documented, the impact of these trends on the capabilities of workers, and the ways in which knowledge workers develop these capabilities is less well understood. Their learning methods challenge our current thinking in relation to the ways in which workers acquire skills and knowledge. Some of the professional development methods include seeking exposure to new ideas from a wide variety of sources, embracing intense learning opportunities, and using relationships to increase knowledge.

‘Thought pieces’ (see p17 ff) commissioned for this Project, as well as
subsequent interviews with the authors, provided further insights into the
professional development of knowledge workers. The implications of these insights are an extension of earlier themes and emphasise:
- the emergent nature of knowledge work
- the importance of relationships that facilitate knowledge sharing
- coherent conversations and dialogue
- collaborative work and generosity.

A key insight is the shift from thinking about knowledge work in terms of
borrowed knowledge to an emphasis on generated knowledge within a context.

Data from focus groups of the Project provide further insights for knowledge worker professional development. These augment the perspectives of the earlier data analysis but also add greater emphasis to:
- the clear and direct relationship between professional development and
work and career aspirations of knowledge workers,
- the relationship of professional development to the organisational
mission, and
- the issues of managing and leading knowledge workers and their
development.

As part of this analysis the defining features of organisational life in VET were reviewed in relation to effective professional development of knowledge workers.

The final section of the Report revisits the core dimensions of the Project.
Concise commentaries on working and learning in the knowledge era,
professional development in the knowledge era, and leadership and
management in the knowledge era are presented.

The Report concludes with a discussion of the enablers of professional
development for knowledge workers in VET. This discussion is introduced by a re-statement of the VET sector’s positioning in the knowledge era and the consequences of this for VET managers an d staff in terms of complexity, uncertainty and diminished prospects for accurate predictiveness. The enablers comprised:
- integration of information technology into socio -technical systems
- greater understanding of the organisation from within
- connecting staff to the organisation’s fundamental identity
- connecting to the work and career trajectories of workers
- establishing work structures which integrate the use of professional
development resources with knowledge work
- providing workers with the autonomy to design their own professional
development activities
- building professional development into the iterative nature of knowledge
work, and
- creating organisational contexts that value intuitive thinking and working.

Professional development needs to be thou ght of in a much broader context in the knowledge era. What each VET staff member knows and shares will become increasingly central to their work, and in that sense all VET workers require capabilities for knowledge work. This report accurately describes t he VET context, the capabilities required, and the organisational enablers that will promote ‘knowing’ and thus embed a new style of professional development within VET.

Special report : the wellbeing of Australians : groups with the highest and lowest wellbeing in Australia

Overview and Aim
1. This report concerns an analysis of the cumulative data from 15 surveys using the Personal Wellbeing Index to measure Subjective Wellbeing. The total number of respondents is about 30,000 but not all data were available for all analyses due to changing variables between
surveys.
2. The aim of this analysis is to determine those sub-groups with the highest and the lowest wellbeing.
Method
3. The definition of sub-groups is through the demographic variables of Income, Gender, Age, Household Composition, Relationship Status and Employment Status. Index domains are also included. While not every combination of demographic variables has been tested, the total number of combinations analysed was 3,277.
4. Extreme group mean scores are defined as lying above 79 points and below 70 points. These values are at least five standard deviations beyond the total sample mean score and are, therefore, extreme outliers. The minimum number of responses that could form such a group is
one. Data are accumulated across surveys for corresponding groups.
Results
5. The initial search for the most extreme groups identified the 20 highest and the 20 lowest groups with a minimum N=10. These are termed the ‘Exclusive’ groups since they were based only on the previously identified extreme scores. In order to determine the true mean of each of these groups, a further analysis incorporated all respondents who met the definition of group membership. For example, an Exclusive group defined as [male, 76+ years] would contain only the accumulation of scores from individual surveys that met the extreme score criterion (<70 or >79). The Inclusive group included the scores from all survey respondents who matched the group definition of male, 76+ years.
6. The results revealed a dominance by the domains of the Personal Wellbeing Index. The extreme high groups were predicted by high scores on all domains except safety and relationships. The low groups were defined by low scores on all seven domains.
7. A further search for extreme groups was undertaken that was restricted to the demographic descriptors. The 20 highest and 20 lowest groups were identified based on a minimum cell content of N=10. The corresponding Inclusive group means were then calculated as before.
8. In order to increase the reliability of the final groups, a minimum cell content of N=20 cases was imposed.
9. Six extreme high groups were identified. These are dominated by high income and the presence of a partner. Five extreme low groups were identified. These are dominated by very low income, the absence of a partner, and unemployment.
Conclusions
10. The conclusions drawn from these analyses are as follows:
10.1 The central defining characteristics of people forming the extreme high wellbeing groups is high household income and living with a partner.
10.2 The central defining risk factors for people forming the extreme low wellbeing groups are very low household income, not living with a partner, and unemployment.
10.3 None of these five demographic characteristics are sufficient to define extreme wellbeing groups on their own. They all act in combinations of at least two risk factors together.

Effects of laterally wedged insoles on symptoms and disease progression in medial knee osteoarthritis: a protocol for a randomised, double-blind, placebo controlled trial

Background: Whilst laterally wedged insoles, worn inside the shoes, are advocated as a simple, inexpensive, non-toxic self-administered intervention for knee osteoarthritis (OA), there is currently limited evidence to support their use. The aim of this randomised, double-blind controlled trial is to determine whether laterally wedges insoles lead to greater improvements in knee pain, physical function and health-related quality of life, and slower structural disease progression as well as being more cost-effective, than control flat insoles in people with medial knee OA.

Methods/Design: Two hundred participants with painful radiographic medial knee OA and varus malalignment will be recruited from the community and randomly allocated to lateral wedge or control insole groups using concealed allocation. Participants will be blinded as to which insole is considered therapeutic. Blinded follow up assessment will be conducted at 12 months after randomisation. The outcome measures are valid and reliable measures recommended for OA clinical trials. Questionnaires will assess changes in pain, physical function and health-related quality-of-life. Magnetic resonance imaging will measure changes in tibial cartilage volume. To evaluate cost-effectiveness, participants will record the use of all health-related treatments in a log-book returned to the assessor on a monthly basis. To test the effect of the intervention using an intention-to-treat analysis, linear regression modelling will be applied adjusting for baseline outcome values and other demographic characteristics.

Discussion: Results from this trial will contribute to the evidence regarding the effectiveness of laterally wedged insoles for the management of medial knee OA.

Trial registration: ACTR12605000503628; NCT00415259.

Hope of a nation - experiences of social exclusion giving rise to spaces of inclusion for people living with HIV and AIDs in South Africa : a reflection

South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world. No one particular group is affected by the virus – rather, it is indiscriminate. Responses to HIV are diverse, and can be starkly contradictory. This author lived among the Xhosa people in rural Eastern Cape, working in community development. The program was a population-based youth empowerment program around HIV prevention. The work involved engaging youth in a range of civic participation activities, and networking with other community based groups and organisations, health and social services, and government departments. This reflection out a narrative of the lived experiences of social exclusion and social connectedness for people living with HIV/AIDS in rural Eastern Cape. It draws out the paradox of how the high prevalence of stigma and discrimination towards those with the illness, and their subsequent experience of social exclusion, actually creates opportunities for social connectedness through support group participation. This in turn is fashioning an emerging social movement breaking down barriers of stigma, and contributing to broader social change to support HIV action.

The reflection begins by outlining the current context and underlying determinants of the proliferation of HIV in the Eastern Cape, including a discussion of exclusion as a determinant. An exploration of how exclusion is also experienced as an outcome of positive HIV status follows. Finally, an explanation of how the experience of exclusion can be transformed into spaces of connectedness, and implications for health promotion practice in this context is also presented.

Selection of priority groups for obesity prevention current approaches and development of an evidence-informed framework

Resources for obesity prevention interventions are inevitably limited, necessitating the selection of priority groups to ensure effective and equitable use of funds. This paper aims to review published approaches to selection of priority groups ('target populations') for obesity prevention, and to present the development of a new systematic framework for organizing and assessing evidence for selecting priority groups. A review was conducted of the process and justification described for selecting priority groups in a sample of obesity prevention publications. Using the results of this review and adaptation of theory and frameworks in both the obesity prevention and health promotion priority-setting literature, a framework was developed for assessment of potential priority groups for obesity prevention. The published literature lacks discussion of and explicit processes for selection of priority groups for obesity prevention intervention. The new framework describes specific types of evidence that should be considered in the assessment of a potential priority group for obesity prevention and has applications for funding and implementing community-based or settings-level obesity prevention interventions and research. Application of this framework has the potential to enhance the effective use of limited obesity prevention resources and to identify areas in need of additional research evidence.

Online discussion in engineering education : student responses and learning outcomes

A ubiquitous and widely used feature of online learning environments is the asynchronous discussion board. This chapter presents a case study of the introduction and evaluation of student use of an online discussion in an engineering management study unit. We introduced an assessable assignment task based on student use of an online discussion, in response to falling student unit evaluation results after we initially moved the unit to wholly online delivery mode. Both quantitative and qualitative unit evaluation data suggest that students perceive value in the online discussion activities. A regression analysis based on discussion usage data suggests that students derived significant learning outcome benefit toward their final unit grade from making reflective postings in the online discussion.

Challenging capacity building : comparative perspectives

The focus of most capacity building programs is poor and disadvantaged communities. However, the appropriateness of capacity building for these groups, whether located in "developing" or "developed" countries, is always presented as self-evident. In much of the discussion of "how to" build capacity, critical questions regarding the determination of whose capacities are to be built, the methods by which capacity will be built and the consequences for wider relationships of those whose capacity is being built (and presumably for those whose capacity is being left to be built at another time!) are not investigated. A deeper understanding of the meaning, practice and potential of capacity building is required. This book challenges capacity building by critically interrogating its central ideas and practices. But it also considers the ways in which capacity building itself can challenge disadvantage and inequality, by offering a self-determining way forward for communities.