Ennui and Anomie : from existential dilemma to meaning

This background paper to a panel discussion by four QUT staff members explores depression, mood disorders, suicide and meaning in life.

Wilkins Hill : on the cusp of meaning

If contemporary artworks are often considered to be puzzles or riddles, then Wilkins Hill take this to a new level. Their recent exhibition Windows impersonating other windows, confronts viewers with an extremely ludic configuration: a spa bath full of almonds, towel racks placed before photos of Martin Heidegger distorted in neat grids, a video of a water tower in a Hamburg park, wooden cut-out speech bubbles and monitors that continuously play interviews with the artists themselves. What does it all mean?

“That you would post such a thing implies that you are a despicable human being”: spectatorship, social media, & the struggle for meaning in disability performance

Artists with disabilities working in Live Art paradigms often present performances which replay the social attitudes they are subject to in daily life as guerilla theatre in public spaces – including online spaces. In doing so, these artists draw spectators’ attention to the way their responses to disabled people contribute to the social construction of disability. They provide different theatrical, architectural or technological devices to encourage spectators to articulate their response to themselves and others. But – the use of exaggeration, comedy and confrontation in these practices notwithstanding – their blurry boundaries mean some spectators experience confusion as to whether they are responding to real life or a representation of it. This results in conflicted responses which reveal as much about the politics of disability as the performances themselves. In this paper, I examine how these conflicted responses play out in online forums. I discuss diverse examples, from blog comments on Liz Crow’s Resistance on the Plinth on YouTube, to Aaron Williamson and Katherine Araneillo’s Disabled Avant-Garde clips on YouTube, to Ju Gosling’s Letter Writing Project on her website, to segments of UK Channel 4’s mock reality show Cast Offs on YouTube. I demonstrate how online forums become a place not just for recording memories of an original performance (which posters may not have seen), but for a new performance, which goes well beyond re-membering/remediating the original. I identify trends in the way experience, memory and meaningmaking play out in these performative forums – moving from clarification of the original act’s parameters, to claims of disgust, insult or offense, to counter-claims confirming the comic or political efficacy of the act, often linked disclosure of personal memory or experience of disability. I examine the way these encounters at the interstices of live and/or online performance, memory, technology and public/private history negotiate ideas about disability, and what they tell us about the ethics and efficacy of the specific modes of performance and spectatorship these artists with disabilities are invoking.

Negotiating the meaning of achievement standards in the Australian curriculum

Planning for assessment using the achievement standards in the implementation of the Australian Curriculum presents a challenge for teachers. The achievement standards differ in appearance and function from current assessment practices. This research inquiry used qualitative focus group discussions to investigate how Year 6 teachers from three Queensland schools negotiated the meaning of the English and Mathematics achievement standards for their assessment practice. A sociocultural theoretical perspective was used to analyse the data. Three significant influences on the teachers’ understanding of the achievement standards were their understanding of the achievement standard text, their beliefs about learning and assessment, and the assessment culture of the school. The opportunity to learn through supported professional conversations with peers, and the need for a shared assessment discourse were identified as necessities to support teachers as they seek to implement the new practices inherent in the achievement standards in the Australian Curriculum.

THE meaning of effectiveness

As the Industry Commission prepares to engage in its examination of the Australian nonprofit sector as defined in its draft terms of reference, it confronts what it should regard as a fundamental dilemma; the meaning of the construct `effectiveness'. I should at this point state clearly that the potential difficulties are not unique to the task of the Commission, but have instead plagued human service evaluation for many a long year. At the level of human service or welfare practice, a favoured method of resolving the conundrum has been to dismiss it as irrelevant to the human services as it pursues its task of working for human betterment however understood. Such a response highlights a fundamental characteristic of the human services generally, not only in the nonprofit arena: their relative freedom from evaluation. While there are many reasons for this, some of which we will canvass later in this paper, one stems from a lack of clarity about the meaning of effectiveness coupled with a lack of consensus about its purpose.

Meaning or measurement? Researching the social contexts of health and settlement among newly-arrived refugee youth in Melbourne, Australia

What are the most appropriate methodological approaches for researching the psychosocial determinants of health and wellbeing among young people from refugee backgrounds over the resettlement period? What kinds of research models can involve young people in meaningful reflections on their lives and futures while simultaneously yielding valid data to inform services and policy? This paper reports on the methods developed for a longitudinal study of health and wellbeing among young people from refugee backgrounds in Melbourne, Australia. The study involves 100 newly-arrived young people 12 to 18 years of age, and employs a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods implemented as a series of activities carried out by participants in personalized settlement journals. This paper highlights the need to think outside the box of traditional qualitative and/or quantitative approaches for social research into refugee youth health and illustrates how integrated approaches can produce information that is meaningful to policy makers, service providers and to the young people themselves.

The ethnographer as community manager : language translation and user negotiation

This article investigates the ethnographic methodological question of how the researcher observes objectively while being part of the problem they are observing. It uses a case study of ABC Pool to argue a cooperative approach that combines the roles of the ethnographer with that of a community manager who assists in constructing a true representation of the researched environment. By using reflexivity as a research tool, the ethnographer engages in a process to self-check their personal presumptions and prejudices, and to strengthen the constructed representation of the researched environment. This article also suggests combining management and expertise research from the social sciences with ethnography, to understand and engage with the research field participants more intimately - which, ultimately, assists in gathering and analysing richer qualitative data.

Exploring the process of meaning making in healing after childhood sexual assault : a case study approach

Childhood sexual assault (CSA) is one of the most devastating of all traumatic experiences with population studies documenting survivors experiencing higher levels of pathology than general trends in survivors of other traumatic experiences. Yet recent research has demonstrated that far from being permanently crippled by their experiences, many adult survivors of CSA manage to heal and move forward in their lives to experience a rich and fulfilling existence. In this paper two case studies are presented to provide a detailed account of how a person who has experienced CSA may find a pathway to healing. Moreover, data demonstrates that meaning making, spiritual or otherwise, is a pivotal part of acceptance of CSA and ensuing growth. The case studies highlight the unique journeys of two women and the underlying similarities in their pathway to healing. Clinical implications of the research are discussed and specific strategies for encouraging healing and growth are outlined.

Legal Profession Act 2007 : entitlement to itemised bill – meaning of “client” – meaning of “third party payer”

In Legal Services Commissioner and Wright [2010] QSC 168 and Amos v Ian K Fry & Company, the Supreme Court of Queensland considered the scope of some of the provisions of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), including the definition of “third party payer” in s 301 of the Act.

Australian Aboriginal words in English : their origin and meaning [Second edition]

Australian Aboriginal Words in English records the Aboriginal contribution to Australian English and provides a fascinating insight into the contact between the first Australians and European settlers. The words are grouped according to subject, and for each one there is information on the Aboriginal language from which it derives, the date of its first written use in English, and its present meaning and pronunciation. This book brings them together and provides the fullest available information about their Aboriginal background and their Australian English History.

Australian Aboriginal Words in English : their Origin and Meaning [First edition]

This extensive reference provides authoritative information about the history of over 400 words from Aboriginal languages, offering the fullest available information about their Aboriginal background and Australian English history. The book begins with a general history of the 250 Australian aboriginal languages, including profiles of the languages that have been most significant as sources for borrowing. The words are then grouped according to subject: birds, fish, edible flora, dwellings, etc., with each work listed in a dictionary-style entry. The book concludes by addressing how words changed in English, and discusses English words that have since been adopted into Aboriginal languages.

Finding out about children's meaning making through drawing together

When I was seven I worked on a science project about caterpillars and moths. I was completely immersed in this project, fascinated by caterpillar body markings, the rhythmical, semi-circular pattern caterpillars adopt to eat leaves, their spiral construction of the chrysalis, and their transformation into moths or butterflies. I demonstrated my fascination, my research and study through carefully executed and detailed drawings. I could read and write well, but I wasn’t as interested in writing and produced a half-page summary to support my visual work.

A tensor encoding model of word meaning : theory and application to information retrieval

This project was a step forward in developing and evaluating a novel, mathematical model that can deduce the meaning of words based on their use in language. This model can be applied to a wide range of natural language applications, including the information seeking process most of us undertake on a daily basis.