How style came to matter : do we need to move beyond the politics of representation?

In response to the increasing difficulties facing museums that attempt to work within a pluralist framework as a strategy for representing cultural diversity, this essay argues for the need to move beyond a characterisation of museum work as either progressive or conservative, pluralist or consensual. Central to my arguments is an attempt to extend our understanding of possible narrative structures in museums by focusing on questions of style as much as of content. I do this by looking back at two case studies in which questions around the political intent of narrative structures were determined as much by the form of the exhibition as by its content. This focus enables are cognition that fragmentary narrative styles are not by definition associated with alack of strong narratives. Quite the contrary. An alternative approach to exhibition making might therefore lie in an approach that moves away from eclecticism but does so not by returning to progressive, chronological narratives but by privileging an understanding of 'shared experience'. I attempt to open up what I mean by this term towards the end of the essay.

Intelligent agent technology within information warfare

Research into Intelligent Agent (IA) technology and how it can assist computer systems in the autonomous completion of common office and home computing tasks is extremely widespread. The use oflA's is becoming more feasible as the functionality moves Into line with what users require for their everyday computing needs. However, this does not mean that IA technology cannot be exploited or developed for use in a malicious manner, such as within an Information Waifare (IW) scenario, where systems may be attacked autonomously by agent system implem-entations. This paper will discuss tne cilrrenlStcite Ofmalicious use of lA's as well as focusing on attack techniques, the difficulties brought about by such attacks as well as security methods, both proactive and reactive, that could be instated within compromised or sensitive systems.

Information warfare and ethics

This paper examines the ethics of the practice of information warfare at both the national and corporate levels. Initially examining the present and past actions of individual hackers, it moves to the more organised, future military and economic warfare scenarios. It examines the lack of legal or policy initiatives in this area.

Plato's legacy : How to do philosophy

Although it has its origins earlier, philosophy as we know it in the West took its shape from the Socrates of Plato's Dialogues. It is not implausible to regard the Dialogues as heuristic devices designed for engaging in philosophical inquiry. As such, they would model the process of philosophical inquiry as well as illustrate the common pitfalls or errors to avoid when engaging in such inquiry. So it will not be surprising to see Socrates, the character of the Dialogues, modeling questionable, even poor, inquiry techniques as well as good; admonishing other characters for poor technique and reminding them of lessons they should have learned earlier in their tuition. Plato presumably would expect students reading and role-playing a Dialogue to recognise when and where such instances occur. It is instructive then to take a close look at one of the longer dialogues featuring Socrates engaging in such inquiry, not with an untutored interlocutor, but with a professional, the sophist Protagoras, in order to identify the features of the inquiry itself. For this will reveal something of what Plato conceived to be the activity of philosophy to which we are the heirs. The Protagoras can be read as an illustration (not a definition) of how to do philosophy. And to aid this reading, I propose to focus on the logical form of the inquiry, the moves made by the characters and the techniques displayed, rather than the adequacy of the substantive arguments they mount.

Media/ting change: the print media's role in mediating education policy in a period of radical reform in Victoria, Australia

This paper draws upon critical discourse analysis, cultural studies and communication theory, studies on media and educational reform, and the work of Bernstein, Bourdieu and Luhmann in particular, to explore how the print and media 'mediated' a period of educational change marked by moves to self-management in schools in Victoria, Australia. It considers how the media was mobilized by various education stakeholders, and in turn informed relations between schools and government, through policy discourses and texts. It considers why and how particular themes became media 'issues', how schools and teachers responded to these issues, and how the media was used by various stakeholders in education to shape policy debates. It is based on a year-long qualitative study that explored critical incidents and representations about education in the print media over a year in the daily press. It illustrates the ways in which a neo-liberal Victorian government mobilized the media to gain strategic advantage to promote radical education reform policies, considers the media effects of this media/tion process on schools and teachers, and conceptualizes how school and system performance is fed from and into media representations, public perceptions and community understandings of schools and teachers' work.

The role of management consultation, support, and coping on nurses` health during the stress of restructuring

This study examined the impact of hospital restructuring moves on a sample of Australian nurses' health. The role of organizational support, assessed via levels of consultation with staff, social support, and nurses coping were examined as further contributors or mediators of the relationship between the impact of restructuring and nurses' health. Data from 201 hospital nurses indicated that the factors in the model explained 41% of the variance in nurses' health. “Top-down” communication style by management contributed negatively to nurses' health and increased their perceptions of the impact of restructuring. Support from peers, supervisors, and family together with seeing the demands of impact of restructuring as a challenge, contributed positively to nurses' health and reduced the level of avoidance strategies used. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Problems experienced by students on field placement: using research findings to inform curriculum design and content

Recent recognition of workplace learning from within the University sector has resulted in more emphasis being placed on including field experiences in course curriculum across a range of disciplines. This article begins with a short review of the literature relating to the current context in which work-based learning occurs. Next, selected findings from a survey of 39 Victorian social work students on their experiences of placement learning are reported. The survey focused on problems encountered by students on placement. A number of the problems students faced suggested the need for additional opportunities both before and during the placements to engage with material on safety in the field, and ways to deal with workplace stress and conflict. In response to these issues the article summarises some pedagogical strategies that may be used to enhance student learning in these areas both leading up to and during their field placements. In addition to matters relating to safety and stress, financial pressures were evident for students endeavouring to complete field placements. The recent moves from universities to embrace industry based learning, clearly has implications for funding support made available to students undertaking this type of education.

Restructuring educational leadership in changing contexts: a local/global account of restructuring in Australia

The 1990s saw considerable structural reform in school education in many Anglophone nation states, marked by trends towards school-based, site-based, self-managing and self-governing schools. This article illustrates through a case study of educational restructuring in Victoria, Australia, how leadership, as a discursive practice, is redefined in the context of spatial and cultural restructuring. Restructuring produced a spatial redistribution of educational provision and individual opportunities as a result of structural adjustment reforms. These same policy moves towards post-welfarism also produced cultural shifts in attitudes to education with the rise of the new instrumentalism and entrepeneurialism. For school principals at the forefront of self managing schools, this meant shifts in resource distribution through new policy mechanisms of managerial and market accountability, and also new priorities impacting on leadership practices with a move from dialogic to decisional modes of management. The question is how recent policy moves towards learning networks and reinventing systematic support with a focus on locational disadvantage are addressing what were increased educational disparities between schools and students. Does this provide scope for more equity-driven leadership practices?

Flexible learning in teacher education: myths, muddles and models

While there has been widespread take-up of the concept 'flexible learning' within various educational environments—and equally frequent references to the flexible 'natures' of the computer and communication technologies that often underpin flexible learning initiatives—the relationship between technologies and flexibility is not a simple one. In this paper we examine some of the more persistent myths about technologies that are intertwined with discourses of flexibility. We highlight some of the more common 'muddles' that these myths can lead us in to and argue that the 'mess' that so often results from well-intentioned moves to 'be more flexible' is largely a result of the ways that CCTs, or indeed any new educational technology or strategy, is theorized. Drawing on a recent study of online teaching and learning in higher education, we outline a new framework for examining these and related issues as they apply to teacher education.

Positive psychology and the demise of defamation

Defamation is one of the more complex and fluid areas of the law and varies considerably across the Australian jurisdictions. There are moves to unify defamation law. The threshold issue that is raised in any such process is whether there is in fact a justification for continuation of defamation law. Recent advances in happiness studies and positive psychology suggest that the chief interest protected by defamation law, reputation, is over-rated and is not in fact conducive to human well-being. What others think of us is not relevant to our well-being. Anecdotally it seems that people spend much time and energy in a bid to impress others in the hope that they will grow in the estimation of others and the world at large. Hence, the results of the studies into human well-being so far as reputation is concerned may appear counter-intuitive. Nevertheless, the studies are far more convincing than lay assumptions. People are often wrong about what is in their interests. This is recognised in the concept of regret. Individuals yearn for some things, but sometimes when they acquire them they discover that the journey was wasted. Reputation is one such thing. Defamation law perpetuates the myth that reputation is intrinsically important. Defamation should be abolished. In its place, a new cause of action should be introduced whereby damages are awardable for misleading and deceptive communications which cause damage to the individual who is the subject of the communication. This cause of action should be modelled on the misleading and deceptive conduct provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth).

Children's healthful eating : from research to practice

This paper provides a brief overview of some of the challenges facing the world community in promoting the nutrition status of schoolchildren. It begins by describing the main objectives and aims of children's nutrition promotion and then moves to consider the needs and environments of schoolchildren, the purposes of education and food and nutrition promotion, and the domains of schools and teachers. In the second part of the paper the evidence bases for food and nutrition promotion are considered, especially the gaps in current knowledge. This leads to a discussion of useful practice models as well as a case study of a school health promotion program in Australia. The final part of the paper examines some proposals for schoolchildren's food and nutrition policies, which might be implemented in local schools as well as nationally and internationally. The main theme underlying these proposals is that policies must be created and their effectiveness monitored regularly and reported back to schoolteachers, health workers, school communities, and governments.

Older Australians : involvement in civil society in the 1990s

As Australia’s population continues to age, questions about how older individuals use their time holds increasing interest and significance for scholars and policy makers. As individuals near the end of their paid working life, and family roles and responsibilities diminish, the type of activities that will fill this time void have important implications for the health and wellbeing of older Australians and for the strength of civil society. In Australia, there have been sustained moves at all levels of government to encourage the more active engagement in community services of this group of citizens, given the size and significant amount of human capital of this cohort. However, international research suggests that this enthusiasm has not translated into increased volunteer activity for seniors, and that older citizens tend to spend their expanding discretionary time pursuing leisure activities, such as watching television or listening to the radio (Robinson & Godbey 1997; Wilson & Musick 1997; Thoits & Hewitt 2001). This study builds on a broader interest in how people choose to utilise time across the life course and how the experience of ageing shapes such decisions. This aim of this paper is twofold – first, to investigate how older Australians allocated their time in the 1990s, and how these time use patterns changed over a 5-year period, using nationally representative, longitudinal data from two waves of the Australian Time Use Survey. Second, the time use characteristics of those individuals who devote more time to social participation activities are examined, to investigate trends in volunteering across age cohorts, with a focus on those above the age of fifty.

Implemetation of electronic commerce and human resource strategies in an Australian retail banking context

As organisations deploy eCommerce and internet technologies for competitive advantage and to satisfy increasingly demanding customers, they will need to develop human resource (HR) strategies that prepare their employees to work with these technologies effectively. Little systematic investigation has been undertaken to discover how companies manage their HR functions to achieve these outcomes. In the retail banking sector these issues have become very important with increased competition, industry changes and heightened competition. This paper examines HR management strategy in one Australian bank as it moves towards online service provision and adopts other eCommerce applications. The paper draws on theoretical insights from Porter’s (2001) views of competitive advantage from the internet and writers discussing the informational society (Castells, 2001) and post-fordist organisations (Clegg, 1990). An analysis of interview data from this case study shows the issues that one bank is dealing with as it seeks competitive advantage from its customer service offerings while it revises its HR strategies.

Toward highly available, self-healing, adaptable, grid-like and user friendly nondedicated clusters

The human body was used to illustrate an Autonomic Computing system that possesses self-knowledge, self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing, and self-protection, knowledge of its environment and user friendliness properties. Autonomic Computing was identified by IBM as one of the Grand Challenges. Many researchers and research groups have responded positively to the challenge by initiating research around one or two of the characteristics
identified by IBM as the requirements for Autonomic Computing. One of the areas that could benefit from the comprehensive approach created by the Autonomic Computing vision is parallel processing on nondedicated clusters. This paper shows a general design of services and initial implementation of a system that moves parallel processing on clusters to the computing mainstream using the Autonomic Computing vision.

Deconstructing power within a strategic information system

Strategy is a political act, and yet that has received very little attention in IS strategy research. The purpose of this paper is to explore the mixes between politics, power and strategy using a case study of implementation of a Student Administration System. This takes Strategic Information Systems out of the realm of the purely socia-technical view of information systems and moves it into a dimension which deals with the real social interactions that occur within organisations as a result of the implementation of a strategy in the form of a Student Administration System. This case study shows the power struggles, primarily by two Senior Executives and the users of the information system. The discourse behind this project was initially to create uniformity across a system therefore enabling more than 30 universities around Australia to move from a diversified system to a centralized system. It was through this resistance and through their positions that the two Senior Executives were able to create the discourse that framed many of the decisions and implementation of the system. There eventually became an acceptance that it was for the social good of the University that the Student Administration System was adopted across the University of Australia.