A rede em ação intersetorial e comunitária como espaço de formação na abordagem ao usuário de drogas

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Psicologia, Psicologia Clínica e Cultura, 2015.

Co-creative expertise : Auran Games and Fury - a case study

This article discusses the ways in which the relations among professional and non-professional participants in co-creative relations are being reconfigured as part of the shift from a closed industrial paradigm of expertise toward open and distributed expertise networks. This article draws on ethnographic consultancy research undertaken throughout 2007 with Auran Games, a Brisbane, Australia based games developer, to explore the co-creative relationships between professional developers and gamers. This research followed and informed Auran’s online community management and social networking strategies for Fury (http://unleashthefury.com), a massively multiplayer online game released in October 2007. This paper argues that these co-creative forms of expertise involve co-ordinating expertises through social-network markets.

Characterising creativity : a holistic methodology for the assessment of creative works

This paper reports on the early stages of a design experiment in educational assessment that challenges the dichotomous legacy evident in many assessment activities. Combining social networking technologies with the sociology of education the paper proposes that assessment activities are best understood as a negotiable field of exchange. In this design experiment students, peers and experts engage in explicit, "front-end" assessment (Wyatt-Smith, 2008) to translate holistic judgments into institutional, and potentiality economic capital without adhering to long lists of pre-set criteria. This approach invites participants to use social networking technologies to judge creative works using scatter graphs, keywords and tag clouds. In doing so assessors will refine their evaluative expertise and negotiate the characteristics of creative works from which criteria will emerge (Sadler, 2008). The real-time advantages of web-based technologies will aggregate, externalise and democratise this transparent method of assessment for most, if not all, creative works that can be represented in a digital format.

The city is connections : Seoul as an urban network

With the rise of ubiquitous computing in recent years, concepts of spatiality have become a significant topic of discussion in design and development of multimedia systems. This article investigates spatial practices at the intersection of youth, technology, and urban space in Seoul, and examines what the author calls ‘transyouth’: in the South Korean context, these people are between the ages of 18 and 24, situated on the delicate border between digital natives and immigrants in Prensky’s (2001) terms. In the first section, the article sets out the technosocial environment of contemporary Seoul. This is followed by a discussion of social networking processes derived from semi-structured interviews conducted in 2007-8 with Seoul transyouth about their ‘lived experiences of the city.’ Interviewees reported how they interact to play, work, and live with and within the city’s unique environment. The article develops a theme of how technosocial convergence (re)creates urban environments and argues for a need to consider such user-driven spatial recreation in designing cities as (ubiquitous) urban networks in recognition of its changing technosocial contours of connections. This is explored in three spaces of different scales: Cyworld as an online social networking space; cocoon housing – a form of individual residential space which is growing rapidly in many Korean cities – as a private living space; and u-City (ubiquitous City) as the future macro-space of Seoul.

Digital kids, analogue students : a mixed methods study of students' engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation

The inquiry documented in this thesis is located at the nexus of technological innovation and traditional schooling. As we enter the second decade of a new century, few would argue against the increasingly urgent need to integrate digital literacies with traditional academic knowledge. Yet, despite substantial investments from governments and businesses, the adoption and diffusion of contemporary digital tools in formal schooling remain sluggish. To date, research on technology adoption in schools tends to take a deficit perspective of schools and teachers, with the lack of resources and teacher ‘technophobia’ most commonly cited as barriers to digital uptake. Corresponding interventions that focus on increasing funding and upskilling teachers, however, have made little difference to adoption trends in the last decade. Empirical evidence that explicates the cultural and pedagogical complexities of innovation diffusion within long-established conventions of mainstream schooling, particularly from the standpoint of students, is wanting. To address this knowledge gap, this thesis inquires into how students evaluate and account for the constraints and affordances of contemporary digital tools when they engage with them as part of their conventional schooling. It documents the attempted integration of a student-led Web 2.0 learning initiative, known as the Student Media Centre (SMC), into the schooling practices of a long-established, high-performing independent senior boys’ school in urban Australia. The study employed an ‘explanatory’ two-phase research design (Creswell, 2003) that combined complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve both breadth of measurement and richness of characterisation. In the initial quantitative phase, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to the senior school student population to determine adoption trends and predictors of SMC usage (N=481). Measurement constructs included individual learning dispositions (learning and performance goals, cognitive playfulness and personal innovativeness), as well as social and technological variables (peer support, perceived usefulness and ease of use). Incremental predictive models of SMC usage were conducted using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) modelling: (i) individual-level predictors, (ii) individual and social predictors, and (iii) individual, social and technological predictors. Peer support emerged as the best predictor of SMC usage. Other salient predictors include perceived ease of use and usefulness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals. On the whole, an overwhelming proportion of students reported low usage levels, low perceived usefulness and a lack of peer support for engaging with the digital learning initiative. The small minority of frequent users reported having high levels of peer support and robust learning goal orientations, rather than being predominantly driven by performance goals. These findings indicate that tensions around social validation, digital learning and academic performance pressures influence students’ engagement with the Web 2.0 learning initiative. The qualitative phase that followed provided insights into these tensions by shifting the analytics from individual attitudes and behaviours to shared social and cultural reasoning practices that explain students’ engagement with the innovation. Six indepth focus groups, comprising 60 students with different levels of SMC usage, were conducted, audio-recorded and transcribed. Textual data were analysed using Membership Categorisation Analysis. Students’ accounts converged around a key proposition. The Web 2.0 learning initiative was useful-in-principle but useless-in-practice. While students endorsed the usefulness of the SMC for enhancing multimodal engagement, extending peer-topeer networks and acquiring real-world skills, they also called attention to a number of constraints that obfuscated the realisation of these design affordances in practice. These constraints were cast in terms of three binary formulations of social and cultural imperatives at play within the school: (i) ‘cool/uncool’, (ii) ‘dominant staff/compliant student’, and (iii) ‘digital learning/academic performance’. The first formulation foregrounds the social stigma of the SMC among peers and its resultant lack of positive network benefits. The second relates to students’ perception of the school culture as authoritarian and punitive with adverse effects on the very student agency required to drive the innovation. The third points to academic performance pressures in a crowded curriculum with tight timelines. Taken together, findings from both phases of the study provide the following key insights. First, students endorsed the learning affordances of contemporary digital tools such as the SMC for enhancing their current schooling practices. For the majority of students, however, these learning affordances were overshadowed by the performative demands of schooling, both social and academic. The student participants saw engagement with the SMC in-school as distinct from, even oppositional to, the conventional social and academic performance indicators of schooling, namely (i) being ‘cool’ (or at least ‘not uncool’), (ii) sufficiently ‘compliant’, and (iii) achieving good academic grades. Their reasoned response therefore, was simply to resist engagement with the digital learning innovation. Second, a small minority of students seemed dispositionally inclined to negotiate the learning affordances and performance constraints of digital learning and traditional schooling more effectively than others. These students were able to engage more frequently and meaningfully with the SMC in school. Their ability to adapt and traverse seemingly incommensurate social and institutional identities and norms is theorised as cultural agility – a dispositional construct that comprises personal innovativeness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals orientation. The logic then is ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or’ for these individuals with a capacity to accommodate both learning and performance in school, whether in terms of digital engagement and academic excellence, or successful brokerage across multiple social identities and institutional affiliations within the school. In sum, this study takes us beyond the familiar terrain of deficit discourses that tend to blame institutional conservatism, lack of resourcing and teacher resistance for low uptake of digital technologies in schools. It does so by providing an empirical base for the development of a ‘third way’ of theorising technological and pedagogical innovation in schools, one which is more informed by students as critical stakeholders and thus more relevant to the lived culture within the school, and its complex relationship to students’ lives outside of school. It is in this relationship that we find an explanation for how these individuals can, at the one time, be digital kids and analogue students.

Bridging the gap : developing an innovative online resource for international graduate students

This paper describes the development of an innovative online website for international graduate students studying at universities in Australia. In 2008, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia identified as a key goal the development of its profile as a research intensive university. One of the performance indicators in realising this goal was to increase the proportion of international graduate students from 20% to 50% over a five-year period. To support these students, the University Research Students Centre (RSC) decided to develop an innovative interactive website called the ‘Doorway to Research’ to help prepare students for their arrival in Australia, by providing access to information and support between the period of their acceptance to their graduate programs and their arrival into the country.

Community engagement for sustainable urban futures : editorial preface

This special issue of Futures is concerned with community engagement strategies that help to inform medium and long-term futures studies in order to foster sustainable urban environments. Recent special issues of Futures, such as Human Extinction (41:10) and Utopian Thought (41:4), reflect the increasing significance of sustainability issues, which is why we present another crucial component of sustainability, community engagement. Responding to futurists’ long term concerns about climate change outlined in Futures 41(9) [1], Stevenson concluded that we can no longer support infinite growth, and that our goal should be to reshape the economy to let us live within our means. In the face of the continued and accelerated crisis in environmental, economic and social sustainability, a number of trends informed our call for papers on the possible role of community engagement in contributing to enhanced urban sustainability: • Changes in the public sphere in terms of participation, online deliberation systems, polity of urban futures; • The possible use of user-generated content for urban planning (paralleling the rise of user generated content elsewhere); • The related role of social networking, collective and civic intelligence, and crowd- sourcing in urban futures; • The rise of technologies such as wireless Internet and mobile applications, and the impact of neogeography, simulations and 3D virtual environments that reproduce and analyse complex social phenomena and city systems in urban futures, design and planning.

Towards developing an integrated model of information behaviour

This paper presents the results from a study of information behaviors in the context of people's everyday lives undertaken in order to develop an integrated model of information behavior (IB). 34 participants from across 6 countries maintained a daily information journal or diary – mainly through a secure web log – for two weeks, to an aggregate of 468 participant days over five months. The text-rich diary data was analyzed using a multi-method qualitative-quantitative analysis in the following order: Grounded Theory analysis with manual coding, automated concept analysis using thesaurus-based visualization, and finally a statistical analysis of the coding data. The findings indicate that people engage in several information behaviors simultaneously throughout their everyday lives (including home and work life) and that sense-making is entangled in all aspects of them. Participants engaged in many of the information behaviors in a parallel, distributed, and concurrent fashion: many information behaviors for one information problem, one information behavior across many information problems, and many information behaviors concurrently across many information problems. Findings indicate also that information avoidance – both active and passive avoidance – is a common phenomenon and that information organizing behaviors or the lack thereof caused the most problems for participants. An integrated model of information behaviors is presented based on the findings.

Communicating with first year students ; so many channels but is anyone listening? A practice report

Communicating with first year students has become a far more complex prospect in the digital age. There is a lot of competition for limited attentional resources from media sources in almost endless channels. Getting important messages to students when there is so much competing information is a difficult prospect for academic and professional divisions of the university alike. Students’ preferences for these communication channels are not well understood and are constantly changing with the introduction of new technology. A first year group was surveyed about their use and preference for various sources of information. Students were generally positive about the use of social networking and other new online media but strongly preferred more established channels for official academic and administrative information. A discussion of the findings and recommendations follows.

Film, cinema, screen

Screen industries around the globe are evolving. While technological change has been slower to take effect upon the Australian film industry than other creative sectors such as music and publishing, all indications suggest that local screen practices are in a process of fundamental change. Fragmenting audiences, the growth of digital video, distribution and exhibition, the potential for entirely new forms of cultural expression, the proliferation of multi-platforms, and the importance of social networking and viral marketing in promoting products, are challenging traditional approaches to ‘film making’. Moreover, there has been a marked transition in government policy rationales and funding models in recent years, resulting in the most significant overhaul of public finance structures for the film industry in almost 20 years. Film, Cinema, Screen evaluates the Australian film industry’s recent development – particularly in terms of Australian feature film and television series production; it also advocates new approaches to Australian film, and address critical issues around how screen production globally is changing, with implications for local screen industries.

Designing ePortfolios for music postgraduate study : a practice-led inquiry

In this research I have examined how ePortfolios can be designed for Music postgraduate study through a practice led research enquiry. This process involved designing two Web 2.0 ePortfolio systems for a group of five post graduate music research students. The design process revolved around the application of an iterative methodology called Software Develop as Research (SoDaR) that seeks to simultaneously develop design and pedagogy. The approach to designing these ePortfolio systems applied four theoretical protocols to examine the use of digitised artefacts in ePortfolio systems to enable a dynamic and inclusive dialogue around representations of the students work. The research and design process involved an analysis of existing software and literature with a focus upon identifying the affordances of available Web 2.0 software and the applications of these ideas within 21st Century life. The five post graduate music students each posed different needs in relation to the management of digitised artefacts and the communication of their work amongst peers, supervisors and public display. An ePortfolio was developed for each of them that was flexible enough to address their needs within the university setting. However in this first SoDaR iteration data gathering phase I identified aspects of the university context that presented a negative case that impacted upon the design and usage of the ePortfolios and prevented uptake. Whilst the portfolio itself functioned effectively, the university policies and technical requirements prevented serious use. The negative case analysis of the case study found revealed that Access and Control and Implementation, Technical and Policy Constraints protocols where limiting user uptake. From the semistructured interviews carried out as part of this study participant feedback revealed that whilst the participants did not use the ePortfolio system I designed, each student was employing Web 2.0 social networking and storage processes in their lives and research. In the subsequent iterations I then designed a more ‘ideal’ system that could be applied outside of the University context that draws upon the employment of these resources. In conclusion I suggest recommendations about ePortfolio design that considers what the applications of the theoretical protocols reveal about creative arts settings. The transferability of these recommendations are of course dependent upon the reapplication of the theoretical protocols in a new context. To address the mobility of ePortfolio design between Institutions and wider settings I have also designed a prototype for a business card sized USB portal for the artists’ ePortfolio. This research project is not a static one; it stands as an evolving design for a Web 2.0 ePortfolio that seeks to refer to users needs, institutional and professional contexts and the development of software that can be incorporated within the design. What it potentially provides to creative artist is an opportunity to have a dialogue about art with artefacts of the artist products and processes in that discussion.

The effectiveness of a short-term group music therapy intervention for parents who have a child with a disability

The relationship between the quality of parent-child interactions and positive child developmental trajectories is well established (Guralnick, 2006; Shonkoff & Meissels, 2000; Zubrick et al., 2008). However, a range of parental, family, and socio-economic factors can pose risks to parents’ capacity to participate in quality interactions with their children. In particular, families with a child with a disability have been found to have higher levels of parenting stress, and are more likely to experience economic disadvantage, as well as social isolation. The importance of early interventions to promote positive parenting and child development for these families is widely recognised (Shonkoff & Meissels, 2000). However, to date, there is a lack of evidence about the effectiveness of early parenting programs for families who have a young child with a disability. This thesis investigates the impact of a music therapy parenting program, Sing & Grow, on 201 parent-child dyads who attended programs specifically targeted to parents who had a young child with a disability. Sing & Grow is an Australian national early parenting intervention funded by the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and delivered by Playgroup Queensland. It is designed and delivered by Registered Music Therapists for families with children aged from birth to three years. It aims to improve parenting skills and confidence, improve family functioning (positive parent-child interactions), enhance child development, and provide social networking opportunities to socially isolated families. The intervention targets a range of families in circumstances that have the potential to impact negatively on family functioning. This thesis uses data from the National Evaluation Study of Sing & Grow from programs which were targeted at families who had a young child with a disability. Three studies were conducted to address the objectives of this thesis. Study 1 examines the effects of the Sing & Grow intervention on parent reported pre and post parent mental health, parenting confidence, parenting skills, and child development, and other parent reported outcomes including social support, use of intervention resources, satisfaction with the intervention and perceived benefits of and barriers to participation. Significant improvements from pre to post were found for parent mental health and parent reported child communication and social skills, along with evidence that parents were very satisfied with the program and that it brought social benefits to families. Study 2 explored the pre to post effects of the intervention on children’s developmental skills and parent-child interactions using observational ratings made by clinicians. Significant pre to post improvements were found for parenting sensitivity, parental engagement with child and acceptance of child as well as for child responsiveness to parent, interest, and participation in the intervention, and social skills. Study 3 examined the nature of child and family characteristics that predicted better outcomes for families while taking account of the level of participation in the program. An overall outcome index was calculated and served as the dependent variable in a logistic regression analysis. Families who attended six or more sessions and mothers who had not completed high school were more likely to have higher outcome scores at post intervention than those who attended fewer sessions and those with more educated mothers respectively. The findings of this research indicate that the intervention had a positive impact on participants’ mental health, parenting behaviours and child development and that level of attendance was associated with better outcomes. There was also evidence that the program reached its target of high risk families (i.e., families in which mothers had lower educational levels) and that for these families better outcomes were achieved. There were also indications that the program was accessible and highly regarded by families and that it promoted social connections for participants. A theoretical model of how the intervention is currently working for families is proposed to explain the connections between early parenting, child development and maternal wellbeing. However, more research is required to further elucidate the mechanisms by which the intervention creates change for families. This research presents promising evidence that a short term group music therapy program can elicit important therapeutic benefits for families who have a child with a disability.

Fear and danger in nocturnal urban environments

At the centre of this research is an ethnographic study that saw the researcher embedded within the fabric of inner city life to better understand what characteristics of user activity and interaction could be enhanced by technology. The initial research indicated that the experience of traversing the city after dark unified an otherwise divergent user group through a shared concern for personal safety. Managing this fear and danger represented an important user need. We found that mobile social networking systems are not only integral for bringing people together, they can help in the process of users safely dispersing as well. We conclude, however, that at a time when the average iPhone staggers under the weight of a plethora of apps that do everything from acting as a carpenter’s level to a pregnancy predictor, we consider the potential for the functionality of a personal safety device to be embodied within a stand alone artifact.