The Victorian bushfires and extreme weather events : media coverage, crisis and communication

The 2009 'Black Saturday' Victorian bushfires claimed the lives of 173 people and have become known as the worst fire event in Australian history. Victoria has been at the centre of two other significant Australian fire disasters - 'Black Friday' in 1939 and the 1983 'Ash Wednesday' fires in south-eastern Australia that claimed the lives of 47 people in Victoria. As media scholar and commentator Michael Gawenda has noted, the media not only report an 'event' - like the Victorian bushfires or the tsunami in the South Pacific - but in a sense create and define it. Print and electronic media coverage of extreme weather events therefore raises a multitude of issues about the media's role in serving the community before, during and after a crisis, while also trying to produce the best possible reportage in a competitive industry undergoing dramatic change. This issue of MIA provides a venue for critical, empirical engagement with media coverage and representation, and the role of journalism and journalists in reporting national and international bushfires, tsunamis, hurricanes and other extreme weather events, with a special focus on the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Its goal is to address the ramifications of an industry in flux - indeed, some may say crisis - driven by technological advances, staff reductions and media organisations under financial pressure, and to explore the ways in which such extreme weather events have impacted media practices and policy

Critical Indigenous pedagogy meets transformative education in a third space learning experience

This paper explores the philosophical and theoretical foundations of a first year unit in Aboriginal Studies offered at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle. It explains how the current approach is inclusive of transformative and critical Indigenous pedagogies and taught from an evolving ‘third space’. Each philosophical underpinning is considered briefly, with reference to informal feedback received from students in 2014. What is suggested is that AB100 is indeed transformational for students in ways that are potentially ongoing in both professional and personallives. Given the focus of the University of Notre Dame on training students for the professions this has implications for potential ways of teaching and learning that may require uncapping the usual teaching and learning frameworks to actively incorporate transformative and Indigenous pedagogies. Recommended is the need for further investigation and research into the impact of this approach to learning via an evaluation framework based upon the authors PhD outcomes

Balancing risk? First year performing arts students’ experience of a community arts event

This study examines participants’ responses to first year students’ street performances as a non-placement work-integrated learning (WIL) activity over a two year period. The purpose of the study was to determine: (1) community perception, (2) continuous improvement, and (3) future needs. Data was collected through surveying participants’ post-viewing of the street performances, students’ reflective notes, and a recorded focus group interview. The findings indicated that audience members require additional assistance to value the students’ street performances. The results revealed that students require more guidance around researching the sites of practice, understanding group work dynamics, relaxation methods, intra- and interpersonal skill development, conflict resolution and how to effectively build community relations with the local government Council. From the findings, specific recommendations for continual improvement are made. These include offering an explanation of the street performances’ historical and aesthetic connections to the building sites for audience members, affording battery operated body-microphones and light rostrum for improved sight lines, delivering group dynamics information and arranging opportunities for students to engage more effectively with the Council. While the recommendations in this study are intended to advance the field of research that evaluates non-placement WIL performing arts curriculum in higher education, the findings are relevant to any group-based performance activity in learning and teaching.

Does supply always come on the heels of demand? Matches and mismatches in e-learning

Developing sustainable e-learning requires a better understanding of the perceptions and preferences of e-learning providers and e-learners on the four crucial dimensions for elearning success including pedagogies, technologies, learning resources and management of learning resources. There is, however, little research on evaluating whether these critical dimensions are perceived as critical by e-learning providers and e-learners. To address this issue, this study investigates the gap between e-learners’ and e-learning providers’ perceptions and preferences on these critical dimensions for e-learning effectiveness. Such an investigation paves the way for developing appropriate measures to reduce the gap between the supply and the demand for sustainable e-learning.

Op-Objects

The work relates to Australian history in that it reconfigures the found objects - furniture, paintings and narratives - to move implicate the viewer in unexpected ways.

Education for productive futures: a white woman learning from Aboriginal voices

High incarceration rates of Aboriginal Western Australians leads to between 1800 and 2000 Aboriginal prisoners at any one time. Despite this little is written or noted in Australian peer reviewed academic literature about education provision to Aboriginal prisoners. "Closing the Gap: learning from and privileging Aboriginal voices to learn what helps and hinders educationin WA prisons" is a PhD project nearing submission. It has been conducted in partnership with the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee as we ll as with the support of a local community legalservice. The findings are relevant beyond a prison context.This paper specifically focuses on how understandings of the concept of productivity can differ. Itconsiders what might or might not be helpful in achieving productive educational and trainingoutcomes in Western Australian prisons for Indigenous individuals, families and communities. Itrelies heavily on the words of the author's teachers; the Aboriginal participants in the project alongside Indigenous authors and academics. The paper concludes by considering implications for developing and evaluating training programs in more flexible ways that respect diversity.

Faster than the speed of white (noise): potential pressure points in research partnerships and processes

White noise occurs in the thinking, decision making and communication of dominant Settler cultures. It inhibits clear reception of messages, somewhat like the indistinct, fuzzy static of an un-tuned radio. As much a systemic issue as an individual one, it results from assumed privilege and lack of knowledge of worldviews other than the dominant. Until white noise is acknowledged, development of partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups is likely to be limited by having to continually start at a point of inequality where nonIndigenous gaps in knowledge and understanding remain unrecognised. This paper/workshop considers challenges encountered while researching experiences of Aboriginal education in Western Australian prisons. Each pressure point occurred where the dominant world view prevailed without question. Discussion will focus on the specific pressure points of ethics approval, project development, informed consent and application of outcomes and findings. The paper asks the questions ‘Who decides what stories are created at these pressure points? What informs those stories?’ As individuals, we might not be able to crash through the white noise barrier but we can chip away and be transparent about its existence with the goal of eventually moving faster than the speed of white (noise).

War and private sentiment in Australia during 1915

This article investigates the development of a total war mentality in Australia during the First World War. Through a study of private letters and diaries, it observes the much greater level of popular commitment to the war that emerged in the middle of 1915, and an increasing acceptance throughout that year that the expanding war had taken on a life of its own, and that it would not end suddenly or without tremendous sacrifice. By the end of 1915, Australians were showing ever greater levels of dedication to a war offering increasingly less sense of how long it might continue.