Teachers’ and parents’ perspectives of digital technology in the lives of young children

The pervasiveness of technology in the 21st Century has meant that adults and children live in a society where digital devices are integral to their everyday lives and participation in society. How we communicate, learn, work, entertain ourselves, and even shop is influenced by technology. Therefore, before children begin school they are potentially exposed to a range of learning opportunities mediated by digital devices. These devices include microwaves, mobile phones, computers, and console games such as Playstations® and iPods®. In Queensland preparatory classrooms and in the homes of these children, teachers and parents support and scaffold young children’s experiences, providing them with access to a range of tools that promote learning and provide entertainment. This paper examines teachers’ and parents’ perspectives and considers whether they are techno-optimists who advocate for and promote the inclusion of digital technology, or whether they are they techno-pessimists, who prefer to exclude digital devices from young children’s everyday experiences. An exploratory, single case study design was utilised to gather data from three teachers and ten parents of children in the preparatory year. Teacher data was collected through interviews and email correspondence. Parent data was collected from questionnaires and focus groups. All parents who responded to the research invitation were mothers. The results of data analysis identified a misalignment among adults’ perspectives. Teachers were identified as techno-optimists and parents were identified as techno-pessimists with further emergent themes particular to each category being established. This is concerning because both teachers and mothers influence young children’s experiences and numeracy knowledge, thus, a shared understanding and a common commitment to supporting young children’s use of technology would be beneficial. Further research must investigate fathers’ perspectives of digital devices and the beneficial and detrimental roles that a range of digital devices, tools, and entertainment gadgets play in 21st Century children’s lives.

Parameter estimation for a phenomenological model of the cardiac action potential

The action potential (ap) of a cardiac cell is made up of a complex balance of ionic currents which flow across the cell membrane in response to electrical excitation of the cell. Biophysically detailed mathematical models of the ap have grown larger in terms of the variables and parameters required to model new findings in subcellular ionic mechanisms. The fitting of parameters to such models has seen a large degree of parameter and module re-use from earlier models. An alternative method for modelling electrically exciteable cardiac tissue is a phenomenological model, which reconstructs tissue level ap wave behaviour without subcellular details. A new parameter estimation technique to fit the morphology of the ap in a four variable phenomenological model is presented. An approximation of a nonlinear ordinary differential equation model is established that corresponds to the given phenomenological model of the cardiac ap. The parameter estimation problem is converted into a minimisation problem for the unknown parameters. A modified hybrid Nelder–Mead simplex search and particle swarm optimization is then used to solve the minimisation problem for the unknown parameters. The successful fitting of data generated from a well known biophysically detailed model is demonstrated. A successful fit to an experimental ap recording that contains both noise and experimental artefacts is also produced. The parameter estimation method’s ability to fit a complex morphology to a model with substantially more parameters than previously used is established.

Large scale participatory acoustic sensor data analysis : tools and reputation models to enhance effectiveness

Acoustic sensors play an important role in augmenting the traditional biodiversity monitoring activities carried out by ecologists and conservation biologists. With this ability however comes the burden of analysing large volumes of complex acoustic data. Given the complexity of acoustic sensor data, fully automated analysis for a wide range of species is still a significant challenge. This research investigates the use of citizen scientists to analyse large volumes of environmental acoustic data in order to identify bird species. Specifically, it investigates ways in which the efficiency of a user can be improved through the use of species identification tools and the use of reputation models to predict the accuracy of users with unidentified skill levels. Initial experimental results are reported.

Society, history and research processes

In this reflection on research processes a humanities researcher begins to ask questions about the cultural materialist dimensions of research activities. At the center of this exploration are questions relating to the ways in which personal histories and experiences inform particular research processes and the ways in which a researcher's habits of collecting and working with data are regulated by cultural and social practice. The reflection on personal research processes is located in terms of the ethics work of Michel Foucault that provides reminders about the role of modern bureaucracy in governing what appear to be personal processes.

Using complex network metrics to predict the persistence of metapopulations with asymmetric connectivity patterns

Almost all metapopulation modelling assumes that connectivity between patches is only a function of distance, and is therefore symmetric. However, connectivity will not depend only on the distance between the patches, as some paths are easy to traverse, while others are difficult. When colonising organisms interact with the heterogeneous landscape between patches, connectivity patterns will invariably be asymmetric. There have been few attempts to theoretically assess the effects of asymmetric connectivity patterns on the dynamics of metapopulations. In this paper, we use the framework of complex networks to investigate whether metapopulation dynamics can be determined by directly analysing the asymmetric connectivity patterns that link the patches. Our analyses focus on “patch occupancy” metapopulation models, which only consider whether a patch is occupied or not. We propose three easily calculated network metrics: the “asymmetry” and “average path strength” of the connectivity pattern, and the “centrality” of each patch. Together, these metrics can be used to predict the length of time a metapopulation is expected to persist, and the relative contribution of each patch to a metapopulation’s viability. Our results clearly demonstrate the negative effect that asymmetry has on metapopulation persistence. Complex network analyses represent a useful new tool for understanding the dynamics of species existing in fragmented landscapes, particularly those existing in large metapopulations.

The role of institutional rural property in diversified investment portfolios in NSW, Australia

The food and fuel crisis experienced in 2006 to 2008 has highlighted the importance of agricultural commodity production throughout developing and developed economies and has placed greater awareness and importance on rural property and rural property markets. These factors have led to an increased interest from major property investment institutions and property companies in the role of rural property in a mixed asset or mixed property investment portfolio. This paper will analyse rural property sales in New South Wales for the period 1990-2008, and will compare total return performance across a number of rural property sectors based on geographic location and land use type. These results show that the inclusion of rural property in an investment portfolio has benefits in relation to return and risk.

Valuers? Liability : the impact of torts reform in Queensland

Historically there has been a correlation between the economic cycles and litigation in the area of professional negligence relating to valuers. Negligence actions have principally been instigated by financiers for valuations prepared during more buoyant economic times but where there has been a subsequent loss due to a reduction in property value. More specifically during periods of economic downturn such as 1982 to 1983 and 1990 to 1998 there has been an increased focus by academic writers on professional negligence as it relates to property valuers. Based on historical trends it is anticipated that the end of an extended period of economic prosperity such as has been experienced in Australia, will once again be marked by an increase in litigation against valuers for professional negligence. However, the context of valuers liability has become increasingly complex as a result of statutory reforms introduced in response to the Review of the Law of Negligence Final Report 2002 (“the IPP Report”), in particular the introduction of Civil Liability Acts introducing proportionate liability provisions. This paper looks at valuers’ liability for professional negligence in the context of statutory reforms in Queensland and recent case law to determine the most significant impacts of recent statutory reform on property valuers.

Multiculturalism, education for sustainable development (ESD) and the shifting discursive landscape of social inclusion

Australia has a long and sometimes turbulent relationship with the migrant Other. This paper examines a component of this relationship via the window of contemporary multicultural policy. The paper begins with an analysis of the political and social conditions that enabled a national and bipartisan policy of multiculturalism to emerge as formalised federal policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper re-problematises the influences that helped shape Australia's articulation of race and ethnicity and argues that multiculturalism, within a post-September 11 environment, can no longer be framed solely within its traditional framework of social justice. The paper positions education for sustainable development (ESD) as an emerging discursive field that provides educators with an alternative road map for critiquing Australia's fluid relationship with the migrant Other. By linking the tenets of multiculturalism with ESD, this paper suggests pre-service teacher educators are presented with a productive, and at the same time politically palatable, means for regaining pedagogical traction for a semi-dormant agenda of social inclusion.

Using participatory action research in a community-based initiative addressing complex mental health needs

Objective: This paper describes the first phase of a larger project that utilizes participatory action research to examine complex mental health needs across an extensive group of stakeholders in the community. Method: Within an objective qualitative analysis of focus group discussions the social ecological model is utilized to explore how integrative activities can be informed, planned and implemented across multiple elements and levels of a system. Seventy-one primary care workers, managers, policy-makers, consumers and carers from across the southern metropolitan and Gippsland regions of Victoria, Australia took part in seven focus groups. All groups responded to an identical set of focusing questions. Results: Participants produced an explanatory model describing the service system, as it relates to people with complex needs, across the levels of social ecological analysis. Qualitative themes analysis identified four priority areas to be addressed in order to improve the system's capacity for working with complexity. These included: (i) system fragmentation; (ii) integrative case management practices; (iii) community attitudes; and (iv) money and resources. Conclusions: The emergent themes provide clues as to how complexity is constructed and interpreted across the system of involved agencies and interest groups. The implications these findings have for the development and evaluation of this community capacity-building project were examined from the perspective of constructing interventions that address both top-down and bottom-up processes.

An integrated framework to assess financial reward systems in construction projects

Motivation is a major driver of project performance. Despite team member ability to deliver successful project outcomes if they are not positively motivated to pursue joint project goals, then performance will be constrained. One approach to improving the motivation of project organizations is by offering a financial reward for the achievement of set performance standards above a minimum required level. However, little investigation has been undertaken into the features of successful incentive systems as a part of an overall delivery strategy. With input from organizational management literature, and drawing on the literature covering psychological and economic theories of motivation, this paper presents an integrated framework that can be used by project organizations to assess the impact of financial reward systems on motivation in construction projects. The integrated framework offers four motivation indicators which reflect key theoretical concepts across both psychological and economic disciplines. The indicators are: (1) Goal Commitment, (2) Distributive Justice, (3) Procedural Justice, and (4) Reciprocity. The paper also interprets the integrated framework against the results of a successful Australian social infrastructure project case study and identifies key learning’s for project organizations to consider when designing financial reward systems. Case study results suggest that motivation directed towards the achievement of incentive goals is influenced not only by the value placed on the financial reward for commercial benefit, but also driven by the strength of the project initiatives that encourage just and fair dealings, supporting the establishment of trust and positive reciprocal behavior across a project team. The strength of the project relationships was found to be influenced by how attractive the achievement of the goal is to the incentive recipient and how likely they were to push for the achievement of the goal. Interestingly, findings also suggested that contractor motivation is also influenced by the fairness of the performance measurement process and their perception of the trustworthiness and transparency of their client. These findings provide the basis for future research on the impact of financial reward systems on motivation in construction projects. It is anticipated that such research will shed new light on this complex topic and further define how reward systems should be designed to promote project team motivation. Due to the unique nature of construction projects with high levels of task complexity and interdependence, results are expected to vary in comparison to previous studies based on individuals or single-entity organizations.

The geometric modelling of social frames and contexts

How do humans respond to their social context? This question is becoming increasingly urgent in a society where democracy requires that the citizens of a country help to decide upon its policy directions, and yet those citizens frequently have very little knowledge of the complex issues that these policies seek to address. Frequently, we find that humans make their decisions more with reference to their social setting, than to the arguments of scientists, academics, and policy makers. It is broadly anticipated that the agent based modelling (ABM) of human behaviour will make it possible to treat such social effects, but we take the position here that a more sophisticated treatment of context will be required in many such models. While notions such as historical context (where the past history of an agent might affect its later actions) and situational context (where the agent will choose a different action in a different situation) abound in ABM scenarios, we will discuss a case of a potentially changing context, where social effects can have a strong influence upon the perceptions of a group of subjects. In particular, we shall discuss a recently reported case where a biased worm in an election debate led to significant distortions in the reports given by participants as to who won the debate (Davis et al 2011). Thus, participants in a different social context drew different conclusions about the perceived winner of the same debate, with associated significant differences among the two groups as to who they would vote for in the coming election. We extend this example to the problem of modelling the likely electoral responses of agents in the context of the climate change debate, and discuss the notion of interference between related questions that might be asked of an agent in a social simulation that was intended to simulate their likely responses. A modelling technology which could account for such strong social contextual effects would benefit regulatory bodies which need to navigate between multiple interests and concerns, and we shall present one viable avenue for constructing such a technology. A geometric approach will be presented, where the internal state of an agent is represented in a vector space, and their social context is naturally modelled as a set of basis states that are chosen with reference to the problem space.

Academic faculty’s teaching social networks : what is the extent of library faculty’s inclusion?

Collaboration between academic and library faculty is an important topic of discussion and research among academic librarians. Partnerships are vital for developing effective information literacy education. The research reported in this paper aims to develop an understanding of academic collaborators by analyzing academic faculty’s teaching social network. Academic faculty teaching social networks have not been previously described through the lens of social network analysis. A teaching social network is comprised of people and their communication channels that affect academic faculty when they design and deliver their courses. Social network analysis was the methodology used to describe the teaching social networks. The preliminary results show academic faculty were more affected by the channels of communication in how they taught (pedagogy) than what they taught (course content). This study supplements the existing research on collaboration and information literacy. It provides both academic and library faculty with added insight into their relationships.

Planning of distribution networks for medium voltage and low voltage

Determination of the placement and rating of transformers and feeders are the main objective of the basic distribution network planning. The bus voltage and the feeder current are two constraints which should be maintained within their standard range. The distribution network planning is hardened when the planning area is located far from the sources of power generation and the infrastructure. This is mainly as a consequence of the voltage drop, line loss and system reliability. Long distance to supply loads causes a significant amount of voltage drop across the distribution lines. Capacitors and Voltage Regulators (VRs) can be installed to decrease the voltage drop. This long distance also increases the probability of occurrence of a failure. This high probability leads the network reliability to be low. Cross-Connections (CC) and Distributed Generators (DGs) are devices which can be employed for improving system reliability. Another main factor which should be considered in planning of distribution networks (in both rural and urban areas) is load growth. For supporting this factor, transformers and feeders are conventionally upgraded which applies a large cost. Installation of DGs and capacitors in a distribution network can alleviate this issue while the other benefits are gained. In this research, a comprehensive planning is presented for the distribution networks. Since the distribution network is composed of low and medium voltage networks, both are included in this procedure. However, the main focus of this research is on the medium voltage network planning. The main objective is to minimize the investment cost, the line loss, and the reliability indices for a study timeframe and to support load growth. The investment cost is related to the distribution network elements such as the transformers, feeders, capacitors, VRs, CCs, and DGs. The voltage drop and the feeder current as the constraints are maintained within their standard range. In addition to minimizing the reliability and line loss costs, the planned network should support a continual growth of loads, which is an essential concern in planning distribution networks. In this thesis, a novel segmentation-based strategy is proposed for including this factor. Using this strategy, the computation time is significantly reduced compared with the exhaustive search method as the accuracy is still acceptable. In addition to being applicable for considering the load growth, this strategy is appropriate for inclusion of practical load characteristic (dynamic), as demonstrated in this thesis. The allocation and sizing problem has a discrete nature with several local minima. This highlights the importance of selecting a proper optimization method. Modified discrete particle swarm optimization as a heuristic method is introduced in this research to solve this complex planning problem. Discrete nonlinear programming and genetic algorithm as an analytical and a heuristic method respectively are also applied to this problem to evaluate the proposed optimization method.

The contribution of leadership attributes to large scale, complex project success

Mismanagement of large-scale, complex projects has resulted in spectacular failures, cost overruns, time blowouts, and stakeholder dissatisfaction. We focus discussion on the interaction of key management and leadership attributes which facilitate leaders’ adaptive behaviors. These behaviors should in turn influence adaptive team member behavior, stakeholder engagement and successful project outcomes, outputs and impacts. An understanding of this type of management will benefit from a perspective based in managerial and organizational cognition. The research question we explore is whether successful leaders of large-scale complex projects have an internal process leading to a display of administrative, adaptive, and enabling behaviors that foster adaptive processes and enabling behaviors within their teams and with external stakeholders. At the core of the model we propose interactions of key attributes, namely cognitive flexibility, affect, and emotional intelligence. The result of these cognitive-affective attribute interactions is leadership leading to enhanced likelihood of complex project success.

An innovative approach to reducing risks associated with infant feeding : the use of technology

Infant feeding is a complex behavior enacted in a risk adverse society. Despite ongoing communication and education strategies, breastfeeding rates in countries like Australia, the US, and the UK remain static, thus increasing the risk of short and long-term health problems. Health professionals and non-profit organizations recognize social marketing as an appropriate strategy for increasing breastfeeding duration since it addresses the shortfalls of education-only campaigns. Technology as an innovative alternative to mass media and education has the potential to reduce the social price of breastfeeding by assisting women to manage the identity and health risks associated with infant feeding. This paper reports findings from six focus groups that explored the risks associated with breastfeeding and the potential role of technology in ameliorating these risks. A key finding of this research was that technology has the potential to negate the impact of perceived uncertainty and lack of control associated with breastfeeding. The results indicated that future breastfeeding campaigns that are innovative in their approach and use technology may be more effective in changing breastfeeding behavior.