‘Be yourself and have a ball’ : using a school and community based health education model to build young women’s resilience and connectedness

Recognition of the important role schools play in the promotion of student wellbeing can be seen in the growing number of polices and programs being implemented in schools across the Australia. This paper reports on some initial data from focus group interviews with year 9 and 10 girls involved in the pilot of a health and physical activity intervention designed to connect them to their local community and reconnect them with their school and their peers. The aim of the program was to build connectedness and resilience by engaging young women in non-traditional physical activities whilst providing them with a sound understanding of health issues relevant to adolescent girls. Situated in a relatively isolated rural community 200 kilometers south east of Melbourne the program was overwhelmingly delivered by regional and local agencies in conjunction with the local secondary school. The intervention was built on a partnerships model designed with the purpose of increasing participation and access for young women whilst building a sustainable program run in partnership between the school and local agencies and services. The initial data from this pilot indicates the program is having a positive impact on the young women’s sense of self and their bodies, their relationships with their peers and in reducing bullying behaviour amongst the girls. However the data raises some important questions around the adequacy of school-based health education, and the sustainability of approaches designed to be delivered by outside agencies rather than classroom teachers.

Analytical relationship between family history and genetic and environmental risks, with application to female breast cancer

It is well established in genetic epidemiology that family history is an important indicator of familial aggregation of disease in a family. A strong genetic risk factor or an environmental risk factor with high familial correlation can result in a strong family history. In this paper, family history refers to the number of first-degree relatives affected with the disease. Cui and Hopper (Journal of Epidemiology and Biostatistics 2001; 6: 331-342) proposed an analytical relationship between family history and relevant genetic parameters. In this paper we expand the relationship to both genetic and environmental risk factors. We established a closed-form formula for family history as a function of genetic and environmental parameters which include genetic and environmental relative risks, genotype frequency, prevalence and familial correlation of the environmental risk factor. The relationship is illustrated by an example of female breast cancer in Australia. For genetic and environmental relative risks less than 10, most of the female breast cancer cases occur between the age of 40 and 60 years. A higher genetic or environmental relative risk will move the peak of the distribution to a younger age. A more common disease allele or more prevalent environmental risk factor will move the peak to an older age. For a proband with breast cancer, it is most likely (with probability ge80%) that none of her first-degree relatives is affected with the disease. To enable the probability of having a positive family history to reach 50%, the environmental relative risks must be extremely as high as 100, the familial correlation as high as 0.8 and the prevalence as low as 0.1. For genetic risk alone, even the relative risk is as high as 100, the probability of having a positive family history can only reach about 30%. This suggests that the environmental risk factor seems to play a more important role in determining a strong family history than the genetic risk factor.

Research on school and community-based curriculum practice in aboriginal, multicultural and migrant education

This research studies some key problems in relation to curriculum reform in multicultural and migrant education: social concepts of multicultural education, divergent curriculum theories informing practice, the facilitation process in regard to project self-study and action research and the development of cultural perspectives in general curriculum pedagogy.

School and community partnerships in socially critical environmental education : research as environmental activism

Through a critical ethnography of a school and community, this study identifies and describes-in-action an approach to environmental education that supports the socially critical aspirations of many contemporary environmental education activists and examines its fate in the policy context of educational restructuring.  The study provides a critical analysis and exploration of environmental education and environmental activism within the context of social change.

Who cares about human relations? A selective and critical bibliography deeply concerned with the human relations of family, community, ethnic, and racial groups, religion, education, business, and industry.

Mode of access: Internet.

School and community.

Issues for <1985-> have title: School & community.

Schools for the Hobart community; a post-war school building program to serve school and community,

Mode of access: Internet.

Literacy grants : Workplace-family-community.

Title from cover.

School and community : partners in problem-solving /

Includes bibliographical references.

The David Bispham treasury of song : selected choruses for mixed voices for home, school and community singing and for choral societies /

Mode of access: Internet.

The handbell choir; a manual for church, school, and community groups.

Mode of access: Internet.

Home, school and community partnerships to support children's numeracy

Presents the findings of a study in Australia which focused on the collaboration between home, school and community that support numeracy development in children. Aims of the project; Framework used in the analysis of various partnerships between the social institutions; Ways in which the partnerships can be initiated; Concerns that are essential in building and sustaining long-term partnerships to support children's numeracy development.