Touching Texts : Adaptations of Australian Picture Books for Tablets

In order to explore some of the possibilities and constraints of picture books on tablets, this chapter addresses adaptations of contemporary Australian picture books for tablet devices. It considers how publishing technologies shape form and meaning of picture books, and attends particularly to the impact of interactivity and adaptation on such meaning. After discussing some contextual issues for electronic literature, this chapter explores the print and tablet versions of three picture books: Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood’s Look, A Book! (2011), Nick Bland’s The Wrong Book (2009), and Shaun Tan’s Rules of Summer (2013).

Teaching persuasive texts : building a language of evaluation through hedging and moderated intensification

We identify two persuasive writing techniques – hedging and intensification – that pose difficulty for students in the middle years. We use examples of student writing from 3000 work samples collected as part of a larger Australian Research Council Linkage Project, URLearning (2009–2013). To realise the effective power of rhetorical persuasion, students need to be explicitly taught a range of hedging techniques to use to their advantage, and an expanded lexicon that does not rely on intensifiers. Practical teaching tips are provided for teachers.

Analysing children’s persuasive texts : the use of hedging and intensification

Research Quality This is a dialogue between two Australian literacy scholars about two persuasive writing techniques that posed difficulty for the students in our research. This dialogue flows from the analysis of Year 6 writing samples from an ARC Linkage Project, URLearning (2009-2013) - the focus of the symposium. We use vivid examples of writing from students’ handwritten persuasive texts on topics that were chosen by teachers. The persuasive structure in the texts followed the Toulmin (2003) model: a thesis statement, three arguments with evidence, and a conclusion. The findings show that to realise the effective power of rhetorical persuasion, students need an expanded lexicon that does not rely on intensifiers, and which employs a greater range of advanced hedging techniques to use to their advantage. National & International Importance The study is potentially of national and international relevance, given that argumentation or persuasion is a key life skill in many professional, personal, and discourses. It is also a requirement in the International English Language Testing Systems (IELTS) tests, which are a critical gateway for tertiary studies in many English-speaking countries (Coffin, 2004). Timeliness The research is timely given the Australian Curriculum English, in which persuasive texts figure prominently from Preparatory to Year 10 (ACARA, 2014). The recommendations are also timely in the context of educational policies in other parts of the world. For example, in the United States, the Common Core Standards: English Language Arts, mandates the teaching of persuasive texts (Council of Chief State School Officers & National Governors Association, 2013) Implications for practice/policy The findings of the study have specific practical implications for teachers, who can address the persuasive writing techniques of hedging and intensification with which children need targeted support and explicit instruction. The presentation is positioned at the nexus of teacher practice to better address the national priorities of the Australian Curriculum: English (ACARA, 2014), while having implications for applied linguistics research by identifying common problems in students' persuasive writing.

Multilingual lexical resources to detect cognates in non-aligned texts

The identification of cognates between two distinct languages has recently start- ed to attract the attention of NLP re- search, but there has been little research into using semantic evidence to detect cognates. The approach presented in this paper aims to detect English-French cog- nates within monolingual texts (texts that are not accompanied by aligned translat- ed equivalents), by integrating word shape similarity approaches with word sense disambiguation techniques in order to account for context. Our implementa- tion is based on BabelNet, a semantic network that incorporates a multilingual encyclopedic dictionary. Our approach is evaluated on two manually annotated da- tasets. The first one shows that across different types of natural text, our method can identify the cognates with an overall accuracy of 80%. The second one, con- sisting of control sentences with semi- cognates acting as either true cognates or false friends, shows that our method can identify 80% of semi-cognates acting as cognates but also identifies 75% of the semi-cognates acting as false friends.

Ethical screening and financial performance : the case of Islamic equity funds

Whether ethical screening affects portfolio performance is an important question that is yet to be settled in the literature. This paper aims to shed further light on this question by examining the performance of a large global sample of Islamic equity funds (IEFs) from 1984 to 2010. We find that IEFs underperform conventional funds by an average of 40 basis points per month, consistent with the underperformance hypothesis. In line with popular media claims that Islamic funds are a safer investment, IEFs outperformed conventional funds during the recent banking crisis. However, we find no such outperformance for other crises or high volatility periods. Based on fund holdings-based data, we provide evidence of a negative curvilinear relation between fund performance and ethical screening intensity, consistent with a return trade-off to being more ethical.

Interrogating policy contradictions in literacy reforms about persuasive texts

Objectives Our overarching objective is to demonstrate the political contradictions about about how persuasive texts should be taught in the middle years of schooling, analysing two contradictory Australian wide educational reforms. We consider the complexities of power and access to literacy for students in relation to these reforms about the privileged genre of persuasion. Our work is framed by our appreciation of literacy as a social justice issue, and the notion of students’ pedagogic rights (Bernstein, 2000). Specifically, we introduce and analyse the knowledge and skills about persuasive text sanctioned by the Australian high-stakes test, the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), for students in the middle years of schooling (ACARA, 2013). We compare this to the contemporary emphasis on multimodal persuasive texts sanctioned by the recently released Australian Curriculum English (ACARA, 2014). We conclude our analysis by identifying biases in the structure of particular knowledges and the inherent threats to democracy.

Walking and talking with living texts: Breathing life against static standardisation

Current educational reform, policy and public discourse emphasise standardisation of testing, curricula and professional practice, yet the landscape of literacy practices today is fluid, interactive, multimodal, ever-changing, adaptive and collaborative. How then can English and literacy educators negotiate these conflicting terrains? The nature of today’s literacy practices is reflected in a concept of living texts which refers to experienced events and encounters that offer meaning-making that is fluid, interactive and changing. Literacy learning possibilities with living texts are described and discussed by the authors who independently investigated the place of living texts across two distinctly different learning contexts: a young people’s community arts project and a co-taught multiliteracies project in a high school. In the community arts project, young people created living texts as guided walks of urban spaces that adapt and change to varying audiences. In the multiliteracies project, two parents and a teacher created interactive spaces through co-teaching and cogenerative dialoguing. These spaces generate living texts that yield a purposefully connected curriculum rich in community-relevant and culturally significant texts. These two studies are shared with a view of bringing living texts into literacy education to loosen rigidity in standardisation.

Teachers-as-writers: Writing information texts in English and vernacular

Our contribution to this volume is not on the work of the teacher who inspires the child writer, but the teacher as the writer and illustrator of multilingual texts for classroom use that inspires the child reader. This chapter focuses on a first time teacher writer from Fiji, Bereta , who participated in a two day writing workshop known as the Information Text Awareness Project (hereafter ITAP). This chapter commences with an overview of the ITAP which was conducted in Nadi, Fiji, in 2012 with Bereta and 17 teachers from urban, semi-urban and rural contexts within the Nadi educational district. The politics of presenting Western ways of knowing to teachers from diverse cultural and linguistic contexts via a Western pedagogical approach is explored in the second section. We believe that this work involves a moral dimension that needs careful consideration. The third section outlines the eight stages of ITAP where teacher writers such as Bereta produced an English and a vernacular information text for use in their classrooms. The outline of the eight stages of ITAP is justified with links to the research literature. The final section recounts Bereta’s interview data where she talks about using the newly created English and vernacular information texts in the classroom and the community’s response to her inaugural publications. The findings may be of interest to those seeking to establish an adult writing cooperative to produce English and vernacular information texts for classroom use.

Catering for cultural and linguistic diversity: Using teacher created information texts

Teachers in the Pacific region have often signalled the need for more locally produced information texts in both the vernacular and English, to engage their readers with local content and to support literacy development across the curriculum. The Information Text Awareness Project (ITAP), initially informed by the work of Nea Stewart-Dore, has provided a means to address this need through supporting local teachers to write their own information texts. The article reports on the impact of an ITAP workshop carried out in Nadi, Fiji in 2012. Nine teacher volunteers from the project trialled the use of the texts in their classrooms with positive results in relation to student learning and belief in themselves as writers.

The opportunity for implementing Islamic project financing to the Indonesian infrastructure development

Purpose: This chapter discusses the opportunity of Islamic project financing implementation for public infrastructure development in Indonesia. Design/Methodology/Approach: This chapter, firstly, reviewed existing literature on Islamic finance to explore the applicability of Islamic financing in infrastructure development. Interviews were conducted as the first stage of Delphi method approach. This was then followed by reviewing Indonesia’s government policies and regulations in infrastructure industry and Islamic financing. Findings: This chapter enlightens the implementation of Islamic financing on infrastructure project financing in Indonesia. The findings indicate that the government policies and regulations on both infrastructure investment and Islamic financing support the implementation of Islamic project financing, whereas, an improvement is still needed in order to overarch infrastructure business and Islamic financing investment. Research: Financing framework development for Indonesia infrastructure projects. Limitations/Implications: The result reported comprises the preliminary study of Islamic project paper written based on published research papers and interviews. Furthermore, the data collected for the study are limited to the case of Indonesian infrastructure projects. Practical Implication: Islamic financing in Indonesia infrastructure projects development has not been optimally implemented. Therefore, this chapter serves as a catalyst to explore alternative financial scheme such as Islamic financing for infrastructure development. Originality/Value: This chapter highlights possibilities and obstacles in applying Islamic scheme to infrastructure project financing. This provides a framework to analyse the steps to implement Islamic financing successfully in infrastructure development.

A review of efficiency measures for REITs and their specific application for Malaysian Islamic REITs

Purpose This paper aims to present a conceptual model on the efficiency of Islamic Real Estate Trusts (I-REITs) available in Malaysia. The key difference between the Islamic and their conventional investment vehicle part is mainly its own Shariah framework. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews and synthesises the relevant literature on the performance analysis and efficiency measurements of Real Estate Investment Trusts. The paper then develops and proposes a conceptual model to measure the efficiency of Malaysian Islamic REITs. Findings The paper identifies and examines the appropriate methods and instruments to measure the efficiency in relation to the risk and profitability of Islamic REITs. The efficiency measure is important for the fund managers in order to maximise the shareholders’ return in an investment of property portfolio as well as proposing the best way to allocate resources efficiently. Research limitation/implications This is a preliminary review of current work that identifies the issues that will be addressed in future empirical research. The authors will be undertaking this future empirical research in measuring the efficiency of Malaysian REITs particularly the Islamic REITs using the non-parametric approach of Data Envelopment Analysis. Originality/value To date, there has been very limited research on the efficiency measurement of Islamic REITs. The current analysis of REIT has been focused on traditional non-Islamic funds. This paper will review and discuss the current literature on efficiency measurement to determine the most appropriate approaches and methodologies for future application in performance analysis of efficiency measure for Malaysian Islamic REITs.

Islamic fund and asset management: The opportunities and challenges of Islamic REITs

Purpose This paper aims to present a review on the issues and challenges for Islamic Funds and Asset Management, particularly the Islamic Real Estate Trusts (I-REITs) available in Malaysia. The key difference between the Islamic and the conventional investment vehicle is mainly the fund needs to adhere to the Shariah framework. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews and synthesises the relevant literature on the framework of Islamic Asset and Fund Management, particularly the Islamic Real Estate Investment Trusts. The paper then provides insights for further research to address the issues and consider the Shariah framework applicable to other further research works. Findings The paper highlights the opportunities and challenges of Islamic REITs globally. There is a lack of the standardisation in the screening methodology used by the Malaysian I- REITs and Singapore I-REITs as the latter follows the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) guideline to capture the investors mainly from the Gulf countries. In term of tenants’ selection, there is similarity between I-REITs and the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) or ethical investment. The gap between the investments can be bridged if the Islamic funds skewed the investment portfolio towards the social and ethical investment. Even though there is a limitation in the investment universe, I-REITs provide better diversification option and show better performance compared to the equity market during the economic crisis. The introduction of the Shariah-compliant REITs index for Asia Pacific allows the fund managers to benchmark the performance of either the funds or the sector with other investment vehicles. This will encourage more investors to consider I-REIT in the decision making of the asset allocation portfolio and broadening the horizon of the investment. Originality/value The contribution of the study is the examination and analysis of the Shariah framework currently adopted for Islamic REITs. This will assist in the identification of specific issues associated with Islamic REITs that will need to be addressed in the development and application of further research in the aspect of the management and operations to increase the efficiency level and better performance in order to capture more investors in this specific and promising market.

But if you desire God and His Messenger : The concept of choice in Sahih al-Bukhari

The aim of this dissertation is to discuss the concept of choice in the most important collection of Islamic traditions, Sahih al-Bukhari. The author of the collection, Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari, lived between 810-870. My starting point is the collection of texts as it is now in its normative, established form. I read the hadiths as pieces of reality, not as statements about reality. The historicity of the texts has no role at all in my analysis. Part I sketches out the hagiography of the life and work of the author and provides a short history of the development of hadith literature and the processes of collecting and classifying the texts are discussed briefly. Part one ends with the presentation of my way of using rhetorical analysis as a methodological tool. Part II introduces my analysis of the concept of choice. It is divided into ten chapters, each concentrating on one hadith cluster. Part II ends with a discussion of the philosophy of free will and predestination in early Islam. Hadith literature is often considered as a representative of predestinarian theology compared to the Qur'an which emphasises the reponsibility of people of their own acts. In my conclusions I suggest that accoding to the texts in Sahih al-Bukhari, people do deal with real choices in their lives. The collection includes both strictly predestinarian texts but it also compises texts which claim that people are demanded to make real choices, even choices concerning life and death.

Text and Intensification of Its Impact in Chishti Samā`

In my master’s thesis I analyse mystical Islamic poetry in ritualistic performance context, samā` , focusing on the poetry used by the Chishti Sufis. The work is based on both literary sources and ethnographic material collected in India. The central textual source is Surūd-i Rūhānī, a compilation of mystical poetry. Textual sources, however, can be understood properly only in relation to the living performance context and therefore I also utilise interviews of Sufis and performers of mystical music and recordings of samā` assemblies along with texts. First part of the thesis concentrates on thematic overview of the poems and the process of selecting a suitable text for performance. The poems are written in three languages, viz. in Persian, Urdu and Hindi. Among the authors are both Sufis and non-Sufis. The poems, mystical and non-mystical alike, share the same poetic images and they acquire a mystical meaning when they are set to qawwali music and performed in samā` assemblies. My work includes several translations of verses not previously translated. Latter part of the thesis analyses the musical idiom of qawwali and the ways in which the impact of text on listeners is intensified in performance. Typically the intensification is accomplished in the level of a single poem through three different techniques: using introductory verses, inserting verses between the verses of the main poem and repeating individual units of text. The former two techniques are tied to creating a mystical state in the listeners while the latter aims at sustaining it. It is customary that a listener enraptured by mystical experience offers a monetary contribution to the performers. Thus, intensification of the text’s impact aims at enabling the listeners to experience mystical states.