Renegade judgement : a study of madness in medicine and literature

Explores socio-historical understandings and treatments of madness, examining literary works alongside contemporary medical texts. Incorporating notions of scientific objectivity, individual subjectivity and social totality, the thesis shows conceptual overlaps between art and science, identifying continuities and conflicts between fictional, clinical and cultural investigations into madness.

Exploring the Australian Science Curriculum : A way forward?

There is considerable international concern about science education based on the number of students engaged with science and mathematics, and research showing student disenchantment with school science curricula. ln this presentation I will trace through a history of concerns with school science, and describe the recommendations and curriculum responses to these concerns internationally and particularly in Australia. The new Australian Science Curriculum is based around ideas related to scientific literacy and inquiry curriculum, and includes science inquiry skills and science as a human endeavour' as major strands. I will describe the features of the course and raise the question - does it represent a productive way forward? The various aspects of the course are related to current directions in science education research, and examples will be given of my own involvement in national curriculum initiatives, into school-community links, and Deakin research into a pedagogy that focuses on student generation of representations, as examples of ways forward for improving student engagement with learning science.

Proposal of a tiered conceptual framework for sustainable design and planning of large-scale development projects in the metropolitan context

The overwhelming threat posed by climate change means that increasingly, emphasis is being placed on the need to integrate sustainability considerations into all areas of policy making, planning and development. Actors in the built environment are progressively considering environmental and social issues alongside functional and economic aspects of development projects. However, to date in Australia and internationally, there have been few practical examples of integrated applications of sustainability principles in the built environment across design, planning, construction, operation and de-construction phases. Notable initiatives have tended to be narrow in scope, focusing on either mitigation or adaptation strategies. Integrated considerations of impacts from component and building scales to city and regional scales and across physical and socio-economic dimensions are urgently needed, particularly for long-life major infrastructure projects. This paper proposes a conceptual framework based on the principal that early intervention is the most cost-effective and efficient means of implementing effective strategies for mitigation and adaptation. A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) approach is forwarded as an umbrella analytical framework, assembled from analytical methods which are strategically ‘tiered’ to inform different stages of the planning and decision-making process. Techniques such as Ecological footprint, Life cycle costing and Risk analysis may be applied to integrate sustainable design, construction and planning considerations which address both mitigation and adaptation dimensions, results of each analysis ultimately being collated into the overall SEA. This integrated conceptual framework for sustainable, resilient and cost-effective infrastructure development will in practice be applied to assess selected case-studies of major development projects in Australia, focusing on the area of stadium development. Practically applied and timed accordingly, the framework would allow assessments to be targeted towards appropriate decision making levels and enable better decision-making and more efficient resource allocation for major infrastructure development projects.

Movement and force

How – and why – do things move? How do we describe how they move? This chapter looks at ideas and activities concerning movement and force. It deals with two major issues: firstly, ideas children have about motion and the strategies for teaching about motion in the primary school program. This will include some discussion of the different contexts in which movement and force can be studied. Secondly, it looks at the wider context of studying movement and force, linking it with technology and science as a human endeavour.

A Steinian approach to an empathic understanding of hope among patients and clinicians in the culture of palliative care

Aim. This article presents a discussion of empathy in the context of human person, reason and hopes in the clinical setting.

Background. Empathy was introduced to nursing as part of an ethical and philosophical foundation for caring. It helped to solve the tension and meet the demands that empathy placed upon nursing practice.

Data sources. This article is based on two studies undertaken between 2008 and 2010 to understand the concept of hope and empathy among people with terminal cancer and doctors who care for them. Doctoral dissertations and theses of Edith Stein (1916–1917), Marianne Sawicki [Body, Text and Science. The Literary of Investigative Practices and the Phenomenology of Edith Stein (1997) Kluwer Academic Publisher, Dordrecht], and Sister M. Judith Parsons (2005) have been used to examine: ‘the essence of acts of empathy’, ‘the constitution of the psycho-physical individual’ and ‘empathy as understanding of intellectual persons’. CINAHL, MEDLINE and PROQUEST have provided further supporting data.

Discussion. Steinian empathy requires that we use affective resonance, cognitive understanding and distance, as we grasp another person’s emotional and situational reality while in the caring role as nurses.

Implications for current nursing. Steinian empathy is about recognizing a lived experience and standing side-by-side with that person. Nurses can transmit this knowledge to enable and support courage and wisdom to reduce feelings of helplessness when caring for people with terminal illness.

Conclusion. Not only is empathy a safe and permissible emotion, it is the linchpin to a caring patient–nurse relationship and we must embrace this.

Attributes of champion female tennis players and challenges faced by aspirants

As part of a larger study on talent development in tennis1, 10 Australian top ranked Australian female professional tennis players responded to a questionnaire about the attributes of a champion recalling the major challenges faced in pursuing a tennis career and strategies adopted to address these challenges. To analyse the data, a series of three inductive content analyses were conducted. The results highlighted the importance of psychological attributes and skills in a player’s journey to become a champion. The study’s implications for coaches and sport psychologists are also highlighted.

Understanding, developing and maintaining mental toughness in tennis

Eighteen (10 female and 8 male) recently retired top world-ranked Australian professional tennis players responded to a questionnaire that was developed to address future directions by mental toughness researchers. A series of inductive content analyses was conducted to analyze the qualitative data obtained from participants’ responses. These analyses revealed that mental toughness is a most sought-after dynamic attribute that encompasses a range of abilities (e.g., focus, work ethic) to consistently perform well under pressure. Further, mental toughness is thought to be ‘taught’ and/or ‘acquired’ over many years and can be influenced by factors that include injury, changes in a player’s technique and match results. Examples of mentally tough players were cited and reasons given as to their selection as outstanding mentally tough competitors. Sport psychologists, coaches, parents and other mentors were identified as significant members of a support team to guide and equip players to be mentally tough competitors. This study’s value to the tennis community includes practical benefits from gaining a fuller understanding of what is arguably one of the most important psychological skills in achieving excellence and enjoyment in tennis, namely mental toughness.

The dynamic role of elite coach : player and coach perspectives

As part of a larger study on talent development, ten top ranked players and ten coaches (nominated by the player) responded to open-ended questionnaires. Players and coaches were asked them to recall their background in tennis, describe the role of the coach and any changes in this role, and offer suggestions to coaches for nurturing talent. A series of inductive content analyses was conduct to analyze the data. These analyses revealed significant, and changing, roles of the coach during a player’s development to professional status. Recommendations to coaches highlighted the importance of coach philosophy, communication, and planning. Implications for coach education programs are discussed.

Warming up and stretching for athletes : A meta-analysis of the research literature from 2000 to 2006 in light of current athletic practice

This review presents the methods used to investigate the effects of various stretching protocols on muscular force and performance, in light of current individual and elite athlete stretching practices in their warm-up routines. A meta-analysis of peer-reviewed articles between the years of 2000 and 2007 revealed the majority of studies support the notion that static stretching is detrimental to muscular force and performance. However, the meta-analysis also revealed that the protocols used do not necessarily match current practice with many elite athletes. This article proposes, based on the mismatch between research and practice, that further studies must address this issue in further exploring the role of stretching in pre-training and competition warm-up routines.

The influence of parents in identifying and developing Australian female tennis talent

This study investigated the role of parents in developing Australian female professional tennis players. Top WTA ranked Australian singles players (n=10) and their parents (n=10) responded to written questionnaires. Participants were asked to recall their tennis
background and describe the current role of parents and compare these to possible earlier roles. Further, participants were asked to make recommendations to parents who wanted to help a player develop her talent. A series of inductive content analyses was conducted to analyze the data. These analyses revealed a significant, and changing, role of parents in a development process extending over 10 years. Sacrifices were necessary in order to pursue a tennis career but positive benefits were generally reported by players and their parents. The importance of a caring and respectful home environment for aspiring players was highlighted.

Science students' perceptions of engaging pedagogy

During their years of schooling, students develop perceptions about learning and teaching, including the ways in which teachers impact on their learning experiences. This paper presents student perceptions of teacher pedagogy as interpreted from a study focusing on students' experience of Year 7 science. A single science class of 11 to 12 year old students and their teacher were monitored for the whole school year, employing participant observation, and interviews with focus groups of students, their teacher and other key members of the school. Analysis focused on how students perceived the role of the teacher's pedagogy in constructing a learning environment that they considered conducive to engagement with science learning. Two areas of the teacher's pedagogy are explored from the student perspective of how these affect their learning: instructional pedagogy and relational pedagogy. Instructional pedagogy captures the way the instructional dialogue developed by the teacher drew the students into the learning process and enabled them to “understand” science. How the teacher developed a relationship with the students is captured as relational pedagogy, where students said that they learned better when teachers were passionate in their approach to teaching, provided a supportive learning environment and made them feel comfortable. The ways in which the findings support the direction for the middle years and science education are considered.

Medication adherence self-report instruments : implications for practice and research

Background: After an acute cardiac event, adhering to recommendations for pharmacologic therapy is important in achieving optimal health outcomes. Considering the impressive evidence base for cardiovascular pharmacotherapy, strategies for promoting adherence are less well developed. Furthermore, accessing reliable, valid, and cost-effective mechanisms of monitoring adherence in the research and clinical settings is challenging. Aim: The aim of this article was to review published self-report measures assessing and monitoring medication adherence in cardiovascular disease and provide recommendations for research into medication adherence. Methods: The electronic databases CINAHL, Medline, and Science Direct were searched using the key search terms medication adherence and/or compliance, cardiovascular, self-report measures, and questionnaires. The World Wide Web was searched using the Google and Google Scholar search engines, and reference lists of retrieved documents were reviewed. The search strategy was verified by a health librarian. Instruments were included if they specifically addressed medication adherence as a discrete construct rather than a disease-specific or a generic health status measurement. Findings: Despite of the problems with medication adherence identified in the literature, only 7 instruments met the search criteria. There was limited use of instruments across studies and settings to enable comparison across populations and extensive psychometric evaluation. Conclusions: Medication adherence is a complex, multifaceted construct dependent on a range of physical, social, economic, and psychological considerations. In spite of the importance of adherence in ensuring optimal cardiovascular outcomes, conceptual underpinnings and methods of assessing medication adherence require further discussion and debate.

Report of Captain A. B. Thomas, naval commandant on the Victorian Navy : from 1883 to 1886, together with regulations for permanent naval forces and naval brigade

Details the operations of the Victorian Navy for the period 1883 to 1886, including information on ships, training, stores, list of officers on the active and unattached list, list of ships including their armament, and the regulations under which the navy ran.

Cultural pedagogies in the museum: walking, listening and feeling

Pedagogy is often glossed as the ‘art and science of teaching’ but this focus typically ties it to the instructional practices of formalised schooling. Like the emerging work on ‘public pedagogies’, the notion of cultural pedagogies signals the importance of the pedagogic in realms other than institutionalised education, but goes beyond the notion of public pedagogies in two ways: it includes spaces which are not so public, and it includes an emphasis on material and non-human actors. This collection foregrounds this broader understanding of pedagogy by framing enquiry through a series of questions and across a range of settings. How, for example, are the processes of ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ realised within and across the pedagogic processes specific to various social sites? What ensembles of people, things and practices are brought together in specific institutional and everyday settings to accomplish these processes? This collection brings together researchers whose work across the interdisciplinary nexus of cultural studies, sociology, media studies, education and museology offers significant insights into these ‘cultural pedagogies’ – the practices and relations through which cumulative changes in how we act, feel and think occur. Cultural Pedagogies and Human Conduct opens up debate across disciplines, theoretical perspectives and empirical foci to explore both what is pedagogical about culture and what is cultural about pedagogy.