Time-to-Degree : Students' Abilities, University Characteristics or what else? : Evidence from Italy. 'Tiempo del grado: habilidades de los estudiantes, características de la universidad o qué más? : situación de Italia.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación

Where else have you been? The effects of diaspora consciousness and transcultural mixtures on ethnic identity

In social science research, the demographic categories of ethnicity are linked to what the census bureau considers as a person’s ethnic heritage. However, these categories are based on the societal assumption that members of a given category share the same characteristics and life experiences, even though the heterogeneity between members within a category may be as diverse as between categories. The paper examines the 15 interview subjects of a research study drawn from 10 minority migrant groups, where seven of them indicated significant transcultural experiences before migrating to Australia. It argues that their lived experiences and subjectivity vary from others who migrated directly from their native countries. The formers’ diaspora consciousness and transcultural mixtures may introduce an artifact to a research study’s design, affecting the validity of the data collected. The paper examines other situations where this anomaly can occur and proposes precautions
to minimize its negative effects.

'I don't really care about what someone else's studied' : Drinking guidelines and the government of pleasure

This paper examines data from a Drinkwise Australia funded research project that investigated the cultural drivers of drinking in 14-24 year-old Australians. The research included two studies. In one we conducted interviews and focus groups with administrators and young people in a range of sporting clubs and in the other we interviewed 60 young people aged 20-24 about their drinking biographies. The drinking biographies study is the focus of this paper. At the time of interviewing the draft guidelines on low-risk drinking were released by the NH&MRC and we asked our participants what they knew about them and if they would affect their drinking patterns. The responses to these questions are examined in light of O’Malley and Valverde’s claim that pleasure is silenced and/or deployed strategically in liberal governance discourses about drugs and alcohol (2004: 25). This is despite the fact that research indicates that pleasure is an important motivation for drinking.

I’m not like everybody else - online forums and PLT

This paper reports some of the findings from a study undertaken as part of the research component for a master of professional education and training degree.
The objectives of the study were to investigate students’ perceptions and satisfaction regarding CMC activities, including community of inquiry framework elements and self-system factors, and to frame recommendations that might improve the use of online discussions as a teaching medium in practical legal training.
A literature review identified themes arising from previous studies concerning the use of CMC in adult learning. The elements of the Community of Inquiry framework and Marzano and Kendall’s concept of students’ Self System were used as reference points to frame the study.
An online questionnaire was used to collect data from students who had undertaken online discussion activities as part of their practical legal training in the professional responsibility in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. The data included the students’ opinions, attitudes and perceptions regarding the online discussions. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics that tended to indicate the participants were satisfied with online discussions as teaching medium for PLT. Tests for association between certain variables conducted using Barnard’s Exact Test disclosed 30 possible associations.
This paper focuses on part of the findings, namely associations between the participants’ attributes and contexts, student-student interactions, and satisfaction with the learning experience.
Further research specifically concerning the design and delivery of blended programs of practical legal training would be beneficial. Further study involving quantitative and qualitative methods and regarding the use of computer-mediated communications in PLT is recommended.

‘Else-where’ : essays in art, architecture, and cultural production 2002-2011

“Else-where”: Essays in Art, Architecture, and Cultural Production 2002–2011 is a synoptic survey of the representational values given to art, architecture, and cultural production at the closing of the twentieth century and the opening of the twenty-first. Written primarily as a critique of what is suppressed in architecture and what is disclosed in art, the essays are informed by the passage out of post-structuralism and its disciplinary analogues toward the Real (denoted over the course of the studies as the “Real-Irreal,” or “Else-where”). The essays collected in “Else-where” cross various disciplines (inclusive of landscape architecture, architecture, and visual art) to develop a nuanced critique of a renascent formal regard and elective exit from nihilism in art and architecture that is also an invocation of the highest coordinates given to the arts – that is, formal ontology as speculative intelligence itself, or the return of the universal as utopian thought “here-and-now.”