Eucharistic rituals in Catholic primary schools in the Archdiocese of Brisbane : a study of administrators' conceptions

The focus of this study is the celebration of Eucharist in Catholic primary schools within the Archdiocese of Brisbane. The context of the contemporary Australian Catholic primary school embodies certain 'problematical realities' in relation to the time-honoured way in which school Eucharistic rituals have been celebrated. These contemporary realities raise a number of issues that impact on school celebrations of Eucharist. The purpose of this study is to explore administrators' differing conceptions of school Eucharistic rituals in an attempt to investigate some of these issues and assist members of individual school communities as they strive to make celebrations of Eucharist appropriate and meaningful for the group gathered. The phenomenographic research approach was adopted, as it is well suited to the purpose of this study and the nature of the research question. Phenomenography is essentially a study of variation. It attempts to map the 'whole' phenomenon under investigation by describing on equal terms all conceptions of the phenomenon and establishing an ordered relationship among them. The purpose of this study and the nature of the research question necessitate an approach that allows the identification and description of the different ways in which administrators' experience school Eucharistic rituals. Accordingly, phenomenography was selected. Members of the Administration Team, namely the principal, the APRE (Assistant to the Principal Religious Education) and, in larger primary schools, the AP A (Assistant to the Principal Administration) share responsibility for leading change in Catholic primary schools in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. In practice, however, principals delegate the role of leading the development of the school's religion program and providing leadership in the religious life of the school community to the APRE (Brisbane Catholic Education, 1997). Informants in this study are nineteen APREs from a variety of Catholic primary schools in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. These APREs come from schools across the archdiocese, rather than from within one particular region. Several significant findings resulted from this study. Firstly, the data show that there are significant differences in how APREs' experience school Eucharistic rituals, although the number of these qualitatively different conceptions is quite limited. The study identifies and describes six distinct yet related conceptions of school Eucharistic rituals. The logical relationship among these conceptions (the outcome space) is presented in the form of a diagram with accompanying explication. The variation among the conceptions is best understood and described in terms of three dimensions of the role of Eucharist in the Catholic primary school and is represented on the model of the outcome space. Individual transcripts suggest that individual APREs tend to emphasise some conceptions more than others. It is the contention of the present study that change in the practice of school Eucharistic rituals is unlikely to occur until all of a school community's conceptions are brought out into the open and articulated. As leaders of change, APREs need to be alerted to their own biases and become aware of alternative ways of conceiving school Eucharistic ritual. It is proposed that the different categories of description and dimensions, represented by the model of the outcome space, can be used to help in the process of articulating a school community's conceptions of Eucharist, with the APRE as facilitator of this process. As a result, the school community develops a better understanding of why their particular school does what it does in relation to school Eucharistic rituals.

Safety-restraint use rate as function of law enforcement and other factors : preliminary analysis

Persistent use of safety restraints prevents deaths and reduces the severity and number of injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes. However, safety-restraint use rates in the United States have been below those of other nations with safety-restraint enforcement laws. With a better understanding of the relationship between safety-restraint law enforcement and safety-restraint use, programs can be implemented to decrease the number of deaths and injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes. Does safety-restraint use increase as enforcement increases? Do motorists increase their safety-restraint use in response to the general presence of law enforcement or to targeted law enforcement efforts? Does a relationship between enforcement and restraint use exist at the countywide level? A logistic regression model was estimated by using county-level safety-restraint use data and traffic citation statistics collected in 13 counties within the state of Florida in 1997. The model results suggest that safety-restraint use is positively correlated with enforcement intensity, is negatively correlated with safety-restraint enforcement coverage (in lanemiles of enforcement coverage), and is greater in urban than rural areas. The quantification of these relationships may assist Florida and other law enforcement agencies in raising safety-restraint use rates by allocating limited funds more efficiently either by allocating additional time for enforcement activities of the existing force or by increasing enforcement staff. In addition, the research supports a commonsense notion that enforcement activities do result in behavioral response.

Digital constitutionalism and the role of the rule of law in the governance of virtual communities

This project proposes a new conceptual framework for the regulation of social networks and virtual communities. By applying a model based upon the rule of law, this thesis addresses the growing tensions that revolve around the public use of private networks. This research examines the shortcomings of traditional contractual governance models and cyberlaw theory and provides a reconstituted approach that will allow public constitutional-type interests to be recognised in the interpretation and enforcement of contractual doctrine.

NAPLAN, a high priority or . . . ? Statements about its purpose in Queensland schools

This paper reports on statements from Professional Development participants who were asked to comment on NAPLAN. The participants were involved in a project designed by the YuMi Deadly Centre (YDC) for implementation into 25 Queensland School to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and low SES students. Using an action research framework and a survey questionnaire, the preliminary data obtained from participating principals is mixed, with statements indicating that NAPLAN is a high priority for some schools while others indicated that it does not “tell” the whole story of student learning.

Contextualising the teaching and learning of measurement within Torres Strait Islander schools

A one year mathematics project that focused on measurement was conducted with six Torres Strait Islander schools and communities. Its key focus was to contextualise the teaching and learning of measurement within the students’ culture, communities and home languages. There were six teachers and two teacher aides who participated in the project. This paper reports on the findings from the teachers’ and teacher aides’ survey questionnaire used in the first Professional Development session to identify: a) teachers’ experience of teaching in Torres Strait Islands, b) teachers’ beliefs about effective ways to teach Torres Strait Islander students, and c) contexualising measurement within Torres Strait Islander culture, Communities and home languages. A wide range of differing levels of knowledge and understanding about how to contextualise measurement to support student learning were identified and analysed. For example, an Indigenous teacher claimed that mathematics and the environment are relational, that is, they are not discrete and in isolation from one another, rather they interconnect with mathematical ideas emerging from the environment of the Torres Strait Communities.

The Conceptual Basis of Personal Information in Australian Privacy Law

Australian privacy law regulates how government agencies and private sector organisations collect, store and use personal information. A coherent conceptual basis of personal information is an integral requirement of information privacy law as it determines what information is regulated. A 2004 report conducted on behalf of the UK’s Information Commissioner (the 'Booth Report') concluded that there was no coherent definition of personal information currently in operation because different data protection authorities throughout the world conceived the concept of personal information in different ways. The authors adopt the models developed by the Booth Report to examine the conceptual basis of statutory definitions of personal information in Australian privacy laws. Research findings indicate that the definition of personal information is not construed uniformly in Australian privacy laws and that different definitions rely upon different classifications of personal information. A similar situation is evident in a review of relevant case law. Despite this, the authors conclude the article by asserting that a greater jurisprudential discourse is required based on a coherent conceptual framework to ensure the consistent development of Australian privacy law.

The role of the rule of law in virtual communities

There is a severe tendency in cyberlaw theory to delegitimize state intervention in the governance of virtual communities. Much of the existing theory makes one of two fundamental flawed assumptions: that communities will always be best governed without the intervention of the state; or that the territorial state can best encourage the development of communities by creating enforceable property rights and allowing the market to resolve any disputes. These assumptions do not ascribe sufficient weight to the value-laden support that the territorial state always provides to private governance regimes, the inefficiencies that will tend to limit the development utopian communities, and the continued role of the territorial state in limiting autonomy in accordance with communal values. In order to overcome these deterministic assumptions, this article provides a framework based upon the values of the rule of law through which to conceptualise the legitimacy of the private exercise of power in virtual communities. The rule of law provides a constitutional discourse that assists in considering appropriate limits on the exercise of private power. I argue that the private contractual framework that is used to govern relations in virtual communities ought to be informed by the values of the rule of law in order to more appropriately address the governance tensions that permeate these spaces. These values suggest three main limits to the exercise of private power: that governance is limited by community rules and that the scope of autonomy is limited by the substantive values of the territorial state; that private contractual rules should be general, equal, and certain; and that, most importantly, internal norms be predicated upon the consent of participants.

Aggression in Sexually Abused Trafficked Girls and Efficacy of Intervention

The broad objective of this study was to understand the incidence and severity of aggression among sexually abused girls who were trafficked and who were then further used for commercial sexual exploitation (referred to subsequently as sexually abused trafficked girls). In addition, the impact of counseling for minimizing aggression in these girls was investigated. A group of 120 sexually abused trafficked Indian girls and a group of 120 nonsexually abused Indian girls, aged 13 to 18, participated in the study. The sexually abused trafficked girls were purposively selected from four shelters located in and around Kolkata, India. The nonsexually abused girls were selected randomly from four schools situated near the shelters, and these girls were matched by age with the sexually abused trafficked girls. Data were collected using a Background Information Schedule and a standardized psychological test, that is, The Aggression Scale. Results revealed that 16.7% of the girls were first sexually abused between 6 and 9 years of age, 37.5% between 10 and 13 years of age, and 45.8% between 14 and 17 years of age. Findings further revealed that 4.2% of the sexually abused trafficked girls demonstrated saturated aggression, and 26.7% were highly aggressive, that is, extremely frustrated and rebellious. Across age groups, the sexually abused trafficked girls suffered from more aggression (p < .05), compared with the nonvictimized girls. Psychological interventions, such as individual and group counseling, were found to have a positive impact on the sexually abused trafficked girls. These findings should motivate counselors to deal with sexually abused children. It is also hoped that authorities in welfare homes will understand the importance of counseling for sexually abused trafficked children, and will appoint more counselors for this purpose.

Identifying child sexual abuse within school contexts : policy problems and solutions, and a landmark case

As a strategy to identify child sexual abuse, most Australian States and Territories have enacted legislation requiring teachers to report suspected cases. Some Australian State and non-State educational authorities have also created policy-based obligations to report suspected child sexual abuse. Significantly, these can be wider than non-existent or limited legislative duties, and therefore are a crucial element of the effort to identify sexual abuse. Yet, no research has explored the existence and nature of these policy-based duties. The first purpose of this paper is to report the results of a three-State study into policy-based reporting duties in State and non-State schools in Australia. In an extraordinary coincidence, while conducting the study, a case of failure to comply with reporting policy occurred with tragic consequences. This led to a rare example in Australia (and one of only a few worldwide) of a professional being prosecuted for failure to comply with a legislative duty. It also led to disciplinary proceedings against school staff. The second purpose of this paper is to describe this case and connect it with findings from our policy analysis.