Reading students’ representations

Students’ text, symbols, and graphics give teachers a glimpse into mathematical thinking associated with investigating the Peas problem.

Do you see what I mean? charting changing representations and receptions of the disabled body in contemporary and pop cultural performance

The meaning of the body emerges through acts of seeing, looking and staring in daily and dramatic performances. Acts that are, as Maike Bleeker argues1, bound up with the scopic rules, regimes and narratives that apply in specific cultures at specific times. In Western culture, the disabled body has been seen as a sign of defect, deficiency, fear, shame or stigma. Disabled artists – Mat Fraser, Bill Shannon, Aaron Williamson, Katherine Araniello, Liz Crow and Ju Gosling – have attempted, via performances that co-opt conventional images of the disabled body, to challenge dominant ways of representing and responding such bodies from within. In this paper, I consider what happens when non-disabled artists co-opt images of the disabled body to draw attention to, affirm, and even exoticise, eroticise or beautify, other modalities of or desires for difference. As Carrie Sandahl has noted2, the signs, symbols and somatic idiosyncrasies of the disabled body are, today, transported or translated into theatre, film and television as a metaphor or "master trope" for every body’s experience of difference. This happens in performance art (Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s use of a wheelchair in Chamber of Confessions), performance (Marie Chouinard's use of crutches, canes and walkers to represent dancers’ experience of becoming different or mutant during training in bODY rEMIX /gOLDBERG vARIATIONS), and pop culture (characters in wheelchairs in Glee or Oz). In this paper, I chart changing representations and receptions of the disabled body in such contexts. I use analysis of this cultural shift as a starting point for a re-consideration of questions about whether a face-toface encounter with a disabled body is in fact a privileged site for the emergence of a politics, and whether co-opting disability as a metaphor for a range of difference differences reduces its currency as a category around which a specific group might mobilise a politics.

They Say You are a Danger But You Are Not: Representations and Construction of the Moral Self in Narratives of 'Dangerous Individuals'

This article is based on an analysis of narratives of 26 offenders with mental health problems living in the United Kingdom. It explores the impact of an ascribed dangerous status and the construction of the self as moral and responsible in response to this label with reference to the literature on denial, deviance disavowal and other “techniques of neutralization” and Goffman's presentation of self. Two dominant strands are identified in relation to the construction of moral self-hood: “Not my fault” and “Good at heart” narratives. “Techniques of neutralization” are widely drawn on, particularly denial of responsibility in the “Not my fault” narratives that seek to explain anti-social behavior with reference to external forces such as a hostile environment inhibiting their ability to control their lives. In contrast, “Good at heart” narratives draw on the essentially good and moral nature of the inner-self. Both are used as evidence of sharing and adhering to moral norms in order to present an acceptable and credible self.

The acquisition of an artificial logographic script and bilingual working memory : Evidence for L1-specific orthographic processing skills transfer in Chinese-English bilinguals

Studies of orthographic skills transfer between languages focus mostly on working memory (WM) ability in alphabetic first language (L1) speakers when learning another, often alphabetically congruent, language. We report two studies that, instead, explored the transferability of L1 orthographic processing skills in WM in logographic-L1 and alphabetic-L1 speakers. English-French bilingual and English monolingual (alphabetic-L1) speakers, and Chinese-English (logographic-L1) speakers, learned a set of artificial logographs and associated meanings (Study 1). The logographs were used in WM tasks with and without concurrent articulatory or visuo-spatial suppression. The logographic-L1 bilinguals were markedly less affected by articulatory suppression than alphabetic-L1 monolinguals (who did not differ from their bilingual peers). Bilinguals overall were less affected by spatial interference, reflecting superior phonological processing skills or, conceivably, greater executive control. A comparison of span sizes for meaningful and meaningless logographs (Study 2) replicated these findings. However, the logographic-L1 bilinguals’ spans in L1 were measurably greater than those of their alphabetic-L1 (bilingual and monolingual) peers; a finding unaccounted for by faster articulation rates or differences in general intelligence. The overall pattern of results suggests an advantage (possibly perceptual) for logographic-L1 speakers, over and above the bilingual advantage also seen elsewhere in third language (L3) acquisition.

News media representations of homelessness : do economic news production pressures prevent journalists from adequately reporting complex social issues

This study used both content and frame analyses to test news-media representations of homelessness in The Courier-Mail newspaper for evidence of restricted journalism practice. Specifically, it sought signs of either direct manipulation of issue representation based on ideological grounds, and also evidence of news organisations prioritising low-cost news production over Public Sphere journalistic news values. The study found that news stories from the earlier parts of the longitudinal study showed stereotypical misrepresentations of homelessness for public deliberation which might be attributed to either, or both of the nominated restricting factors. However news stories from the latter part of the study saw a distinct change in the way the issue was represented, indicating a journalistic capacity to thoughtfully and sensitively represent a complex social issue to the public. Further study is recommended to ascertain how and why this change occurred, so that journalistic practice might be further improved.

Framing sexual harassment through media representations

This article examines mainstream news media texts reporting sexual harassment in four industrialized countries. The study first identifies the aspects of sexual harassment cases considered newsworthy by asking how the media texts characterize such cases. Second, the study illuminates the discourses evident in these texts, which are theorized as a mode by which understandings of workplace gender (in)equality shape, and are shaped by, individuals, organizations and the community. The analysis reveals that the media most frequently reports “classic” sexual harassment and emphasizes scandalous allegations and overtly sexualized conduct. The hegemony of a discourse of sexual harassment as an individualized problem of inappropriate employee behavior is also evident. By contrast, discourses presenting sexual harassment as a systemic issue, or as symptomatic of broader gender inequality, are less frequent. We argue that these media representations limit opportunities to frame sexual harassment as dynamic, complex, and part of the practice of gendering in and beyond organizational boundaries.

Asian representations in films for the Australian Curriculum : an annotated guide

In this annotated guide we offer a reference list, with brief synposes, of possible films for inclusion in schools and linked to the Australian Curriculum: English (AC:E). These films meet one of the three cross curriculum priorities in the Australian Curriculum, which is Studies of Asia, specifically Australia’s contribution to Asia and Asia’s impact on Australia. This priority was recently introduced to curriculum policy in the 2008 Melbourne Declaration (Ministerial Council for Education Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, 2008). In this guide we include Australians films made by Asian Australian filmmakers, as well as films about people from Asian countries in Australia, where representations of Asia are a significant part of the film’s content.

Robots move : bootstrapping the development of object representations using sensorimotor coordination

This paper is concerned with the unsupervised learning of object representations by fusing visual and motor information. The problem is posed for a mobile robot that develops its representations as it incrementally gathers data. The scenario is problematic as the robot only has limited information at each time step with which it must generate and update its representations. Object representations are refined as multiple instances of sensory data are presented; however, it is uncertain whether two data instances are synonymous with the same object. This process can easily diverge from stability. The premise of the presented work is that a robot's motor information instigates successful generation of visual representations. An understanding of self-motion enables a prediction to be made before performing an action, resulting in a stronger belief of data association. The system is implemented as a data-driven partially observable semi-Markov decision process. Object representations are formed as the process's hidden states and are coordinated with motor commands through state transitions. Experiments show the prediction process is essential in enabling the unsupervised learning method to converge to a solution - improving precision and recall over using sensory data alone.

Exploring representations of Asian identities in films for the Australian Curriculum

In this paper we focus on one facet of Asia literacy and examine the potential of intercultural understanding through two films about Asians in Australia, as the basis for exploring Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia 'inside' and not through the more accepted mode of 'outside' the nation. In doing so we foreground how teachers’ critical and imaginative curriculum work can realise some of the promises of the framing document for the current national curriculum project, the Melbourne Declaration (MCEECDYA, 2008). In particular, we focus on opportunities for young people to develop an Asia-related cultural literacy that goes beyond instrumental notions of engagement with Asia and explore the evolving nature of contemporary Australian society; a society that continues to develop in response to regional flows and interactions with people and cultures. To this end we engage with the notion of “diasporic hybridity” as a dynamic cultural space through selected films and literature, about Asia in Australia, in particular, Bondi Tsunami (Lucas, 2004) and Footy Legends (Do, 2006) and selected prose works. Our paper introduces the policy background of the Australian Curriculum and suggests multimodal, English classroom applications for the films and literature under study.

Exploring Indigenous representations in Australian film and literature for the Australian Curriculum

The Australian Curriculum: English, v.5 (ACARA, 2013) now being implemented in Queensland asks teachers and curriculum designers to incorporate the cross curriculum priority (CCP)of Indigenous issues through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. In the Australian Curriculum English, (AC:E) one way to address this CCP is by including texts by and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. With the rise of promising and accomplished young, Indigenous filmmakers such as Ivan Sen, Rachael Perkins, Wayne Blair and Warwick Thornton, this guide focuses on the suitable films for schools implementing the Australian Curriculum in terms of cultural representations. This annotated guide suggests some films suitable for inclusion in classroom study and suggests some companion texts (novels, plays, television series and animations, documentaries, poetry and short stories) that may be studied alongside the films. Some of these are by Indigenous filmmakers and writers, and others features Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island representations in character and/or themes.

Children's understanding of graphic representations of quantitative data

Children are encountering more and more graphic representations of data in their learning and everyday life. Much of this data occurs in quantitative forms as different forms of measurement are incorporated into the graphics during their construction. In their formal education, children are required to learn to use a range of these quantitative representations in subjects across the school curriculum. Previous research that focuses on the use of information processing and traditional approaches to cognitive psychology concludes that the development of an understanding of such representations of data is a complex process. An alternative approach is to investigate the experiences of children as they interact with graphic representations of quantitative data in their own life-worlds. This paper demonstrates how a phenomenographic approach may be used to reveal the qualitatively different ways in which children in Australian primary and secondary education understand the phenomenon of graphic representations of quantitative data. Seven variations of the children’s understanding were revealed. These have been described interpretively in the article and confirmed through the words of the children. A detailed outcome space demonstrates how these seven variations are structurally related.

It's just an old apron : aprons, artefacts and art - representations of personal and private 'her-stories', as public histories

This paper examines art and artefact in the representation and recollection of deeply personal WWII women’s experiences as POW’s under the Japanese. This kind of treatment of internees in the Tjideng Women and Children’s internment camp (and others) in Batavia under the Japanese in WWII, stands in stark and brutal contrast to the idyllic life lived by many families up to that time in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The deprivation and brutality of the Japanese incarceration of these women and children evoked responses - not military, but certainly militant, if muted. Representations of those responses – as both art and artefact - may be found in the most unlikely places and unexpected forms - and are still being unearthed to this day. However close we might personally be to these artists and artisans, can we, as observers from a distance, ever truly comprehend through spoken or written words alone, the day-today realities of those extraordinary times?

Analysis of terrain geometry representations for traversability of a Mars rover

For a planetary rover to successfully traverse across unstructured terrain autonomously, one of the major challenges is to assess its local traversability such that it can plan a trajectory to achieve its mission goals efficiently while minimising risk to the vehicle itself. This paper aims to provide a comparative study on different approaches for representing the geometry of Martian terrain for the purpose of evaluating terrain traversability. An accurate representation of the geometric properties of the terrain is essential as it can directly affect the determination of traversability for a ground vehicle. We explore current state-of-the-art techniques for terrain estimation, in particular Gaussian Processes (GP) in various forms, and discuss the suitability of each technique in the context of an unstructured Martian terrain. Furthermore, we present the limitations of regression techniques in terms of spatial correlation and continuity assumptions, and the impact on traversability analysis of a planetary rover across unstructured terrain. The analysis was performed on datasets of the Mars Yard at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, obtained using the onboard RGB-D camera.