Children re-read and re-write their neighborhoods : critical literacies and identity work

This chapter considers the complex literate repertoires of 21st century children in multicultural primary classrooms in Adelaide South Australia. It draws on the curricular and pedagogical work of two experienced primary school teachers who explore culture, race and class, by positioning children as textual producers across a variety of media. In particular we discuss two child-authored texts – A is for Arndale – a local alphabet book co-authored by children aged between eight and ten, and – Cooking Afghani Style - a magazine style film produced by a multi-aged class of children (aged eight to thirteen) recently arrived in Australia. In the process of making these texts, primary children engaged in reading as a cultural practice – re-reading and re-writing their neighbourhoods and identities (both individual and collective). This involved frequent excursions to local key sites, both familiar and unfamiliar to the children. They investigated how diverse children experienced and lived their lives in particular places within changing communities.

Socially adaptable housing new housing model for families living with disability

In Australia as far back as 1993, researchers such as Baladin and Chapmen reported that "18% of the total Australian population and 51% of the population over 60 years of age were identified as having a disability" (2001; p38.2). Statistics such as these are not by any means astonishing, even to members of the general public, and it is widely understood that these are only to increase significantly in our near future. What is particularly surprising however is, in the face of such statistics, the lack of new and creative responses to this demographic shift, particularly by the architecture and construction industries. The common response from a range of sectors seems to be the repetition of a series of models which offer limited, and often undesirable, housing options. It is this against this backdrop, characterized by a lack of original options from mainstream practitioners and relevant government bodies, that the need has arisen to develop alternative models at grass-roots level. This paper reports primarily on the work of one group comprising a not-for-profit organization, a pro-bono design practice group and a local university working together to design a more holistic, emotionally sustainable independent living model of housing for families where a member of the family has a disability. This approach recognizes the limitations of universal design in that it often does not " ... meet all the housing needs that arise for people with moderate to severe disabilities" (Scotts, Margie et al, 2007; p.17). It is hoped that by examining the work of such a collective which is not driven by profit or policy, but rather born with the aim to address first and foremost individual and community need, that better insight can be gained into the real requirements of individuals and families as well as open up a view to new ways of fulfilling them.

Expected values for pedometer-determined physical activity in older populations

The purpose of this review is to update expected values for pedometer-determined physical activity in free-living healthy older populations. A search of the literature published since 2001 began with a keyword (pedometer, "step counter," "step activity monitor" or "accelerometer AND steps/day") search of PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), SportDiscus, and PsychInfo. An iterative process was then undertaken to abstract and verify studies of pedometer-determined physical activity (captured in terms of steps taken; distance only was not accepted) in free-living adult populations described as ≥ 50 years of age (studies that included samples which spanned this threshold were not included unless they provided at least some appropriately age-stratified data) and not specifically recruited based on any chronic disease or disability. We identified 28 studies representing at least 1,343 males and 3,098 females ranging in age from 50–94 years. Eighteen (or 64%) of the studies clearly identified using a Yamax pedometer model. Monitoring frames ranged from 3 days to 1 year; the modal length of time was 7 days (17 studies, or 61%). Mean pedometer-determined physical activity ranged from 2,015 steps/day to 8,938 steps/day. In those studies reporting such data, consistent patterns emerged: males generally took more steps/day than similarly aged females, steps/day decreased across study-specific age groupings, and BMI-defined normal weight individuals took more steps/day than overweight/obese older adults. The range of 2,000–9,000 steps/day likely reflects the true variability of physical activity behaviors in older populations. More explicit patterns, for example sex- and age-specific relationships, remain to be informed by future research endeavors.

Show

Script for non-verbal performance. ----- ----- ----- Research Component: Silent Treatment: Creating Non-verbal Performance Works for Children ----- ----- ----- The research field of theatre for young people draws on theories of child development and popular culture. SHOW explored personal and social development, friendship and creative play through the lens of the experience of girls aged 8-12. This project consolidated and refined innovative approaches to creating non-verbal theatre performance, and addressed challenges inherent in the creation of a performance by adults for young audiences. A significant finding of the project was the unanticipated convergence of creative practice and research into child behaviour and development: the congruence of content (Female bullying) and theatrical form (non-verbal performance: “Within the hidden culture of aggression, girls fight with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives. In this world, friendship is a weapon, and the sting of a shout pales in comparison to a day of someone’s silence. There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away Simmons, Rachel (2002:3) Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture Of Aggression In Girls Schwartz Books The creative development and drafting process focussed on negotiating the conceptual design and practical constraints of incorporating diegetic music and video sources into the narrative. The authorial (and production) challenges of creating a script that could facilitate the re-mount a non-verbal work for a company specialising in text-based theatre . ----- ----- ----- Show was commissioned by the Queensland Theatre Company in 2003, toured into Queensland Schools by the Queensland Arts Council and in 2004 was performed at the Sydney Opera House.

Assurance of learning : the role of work integrated learning and industry partners

In the partnering with students and industry it is important for universities to recognize and value the nature of knowledge and learning that emanates from work integrated learning experiences is different to formal university based learning. Learning is not a by-product of work rather learning is fundamental to engaging in work practice. Work integrated learning experiences provide unique opportunities for students to integrate theory and practice through the solving of real world problems. This paper reports findings to date of a project that sought to identify key issues and practices faced by academics, industry partners and students engaged in the provision and experience of work integrated learning within an undergraduate creative industries program at a major metropolitan university. In this paper, those findings are focused on some of the particular qualities and issues related to the assessment of learning at and through the work integrated experience. The findings suggest that the assessment strategies needed to better value the knowledges and practices of the Creative Industries. The paper also makes recommendations about how industry partners might best contribute to the assessment of students’ developing capabilities and to continuous reflection on courses and the assurance of learning agenda.

Work integrated learning : an industry partners’ perspective

In recent years the Australian tertiary education sector may be said to be undergoing a vocational transformation. Vocationalism, that is, an emphasis on learning directed at work related outcomes is increasingly shaping the nature of tertiary education. This paper reports some findings to date of a project that seeks to identify the key issues faced by students, industry and university partners engaged in the provision of WIL within an undergraduate program offered by the Creative Industries faculty of a major metropolitan university. Here, those findings are focussed on some of the motivations and concerns of the industry partners who make their workplaces available for student internships. Businesses are not universities and do not perceive of themselves as primarily learning institutions. However, their perspectives of work integrated learning and their contributions to it need to understand more fully at practical and conceptual levels of learning provision. This paper and the findings presented here suggest that the diversity of industry partner motivations and concerns contributing to WIL provision requires that universities understand and appreciate those partners as contributors with them to a culture of learning provision and support. These industry partner contribution need to be understood as valuing work as learning, not work as something that needs to be integrated with learning to make that learning more authentic and thereby more vocational.

Waist circumference cut-off values for the prediction of cardiovascular risk factors clustering in Chinese school-aged children : a cross-sectional study

Background: Waist circumference has been identified as a valuable predictor of cardiovascular risk in children. The development of waist circumference percentiles and cut-offs for various ethnic groups are necessary because of differences in body composition. The purpose of this study was to develop waist circumference percentiles for Chinese children and to explore optimal waist circumference cut-off values for predicting cardiovascular risk factors clustering in this population.----- ----- Methods: Height, weight, and waist circumference were measured in 5529 children (2830 boys and 2699 girls) aged 6-12 years randomly selected from southern and northern China. Blood pressure, fasting triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and glucose were obtained in a subsample (n = 1845). Smoothed percentile curves were produced using the LMS method. Receiver-operating characteristic analysis was used to derive the optimal age- and gender-specific waist circumference thresholds for predicting the clustering of cardiovascular risk factors.----- ----- Results: Gender-specific waist circumference percentiles were constructed. The waist circumference thresholds were at the 90th and 84th percentiles for Chinese boys and girls respectively, with sensitivity and specificity ranging from 67% to 83%. The odds ratio of a clustering of cardiovascular risk factors among boys and girls with a higher value than cut-off points was 10.349 (95% confidence interval 4.466 to 23.979) and 8.084 (95% confidence interval 3.147 to 20.767) compared with their counterparts.----- ----- Conclusions: Percentile curves for waist circumference of Chinese children are provided. The cut-off point for waist circumference to predict cardiovascular risk factors clustering is at the 90th and 84th percentiles for Chinese boys and girls, respectively.

Business service management : understanding business models

One of the prominent topics in Business Service Management is business models for (new) services. Business models are useful for service management and engineering as they provide a broader and more holistic perspective on services. Business models are particularly relevant for service innovation as this requires paying attention to the business models that make new services viable and business model innovation can drive the innovation of new and established services. Before we can have a look at business models for services, we first need to understand what business models are. This is not straight-forward as business models are still not well comprehended and the knowledge about business models is fragmented over different disciplines, such as information systems, strategy, innovation, and entrepreneurship. This whitepaper, ‘Understanding business models,’ introduces readers to business models. This whitepaper contributes to enhancing the understanding of business models, in particular the conceptualisation of business models by discussing and integrating business model definitions, frameworks and archetypes from different disciplines. After reading this whitepaper, the reader will have a well-developed understanding about what business models are and how the concept is sometimes interpreted and used in different ways. It will help the reader in assessing their own understanding of business models and that and of others. This will contribute to a better and more beneficial use of business models, an increase in shared understanding, and making it easier to work with business model techniques and tools.

Adapting, renewing, subverting : what place the performing arts in the creative industries?

Creative Industries was adopted as a platform in the 90s by the Blair government in the UK to describe the convergence of the arts, media, communication and information technologies as a newly formed cluster, providing economic and cultural capital for the knowledge economy. The philosophy and rhetoric which has grown around this concept (Leadbeater 2000, Castells 2000, Florida 2000, Caves 2000, Hartley 2000) has been influential in re-contextualising culture and the arts in the 21st century. Where governments and educational institutions have embraced the context of the creative industries, it is having a profound effect on the way arts are being positioned, originally as ‘creative content’ for the new economy. Countries and regions which have actively targeted the Creative Industries as an important economic growth factor in a post-industrial environment are numerous, but it is interesting to note that North and South East Asia and Australia have been at the forefront of developing the Creative Industries in its various guises. It could be argued that the initial phase of Creative Industries concentrated on media and communication technologies to provide commercial outcomes in small incubator business models; developing, for example, products for the games industry. Creative Industries is now entering a second phase of development; one in which the broader palette of the arts, though still not at the forefront of debate, is being re-examined. Both phases of Creative Industries have emphasised creativity and innovation as key drivers in the success and effectiveness of this sector, and although the arts by no means has a monopoly on these drivers, it is where they have an important part to play in the creative industries context. Arguably, the second wave of the creative industries acknowledges to a greater extent that commercialisation works in tandem with government and other support in a complex mixed economic model. In relation to the performing arts, the global market has seen an increase in large-scale cultural events such as festivals which are providing employment for the arts industry and multiplier effects in other parts of the economy. Differentiated product is important in this competitive arena and the use of mediated and digitised environments has been able to increase the amount of arts product available to an international market. This changed environment requires the development of new skills for our artists and producers and has given rise to a reappraisal of approaches to arts training and research in the Higher Degree Education sector (Brown 2007, Cunningham 2006). This paper examines pedagogical changes which took place in the first Creative Industries Faculty in the world at Queensland University of Technology as well as the increased opportunities for leading research initiatives. It concludes with the example of an interdisciplinary artwork produced in a creative industries precinct, exemplifying the convergence of arts and communication technologies and that of artistic practice and research.

Developments in measuring the “creative” workforce

This article outlines the contribution the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation has made to the project to improve statistical parameters for defining the “creative” workforce. This is one approach which addresses the imprecision of official statistics in grasping the emergent nature of the creative industries. The article discusses the policy implications of the differences between emphasizing industry and occupation or workforce. It provides qualitative case studies that provide further perspectives on quantitative analysis of the creative workforce. It also outlines debates about the implications for the cultural disciplines of an evidence-based account of creative labour. The “creative trident” methodology is summarized: it is the total of creative occupations within the core creative industries (specialists), plus the creative occupations employed in other industries (embedded) plus the business and support occupations employed in creative industries who are often responsible for managing, accounting for and technically supporting creative activity (support). The method is applied to the arts workforce in Australia. An industry-facing spin-off from the centre's mapping work, Creative Business Benchmarker, is discussed. The implications of this approach to the creative workforce is raised and exemplified in case studies of design and of the health industry.

Performing the unutterable : mapping the experiential in contemporary dance

This research project looks to engage audiences in a variety of experiential ways by reexamining and manipulating the traditional presentation paradigm for viewing Western contemporary dance. It considers how the audience may be situated in the creation and presentation of contemporary dance generally, and specifically in the work The Voyeur, which researched these issues in action. By situating the body of the audience member as a site of understanding and meaning making, this practice-based research considers the audience within the artists’ creative process from the inception of a creative work, rather than after the work has been created. The research questions how a ‘lived experience’ of contemporary dance could be deepened for the audience. It presents a series of ‘tools’ to create alternative frameworks of presentation that challenge the dominant modes of creation, presentation and meaning making in contemporary dance. The five tools established and applied in this research are: site, liminality, agency, proximity and performer authenticity. These tools are framed as a series of calibrated scales that allow choreographers to map decisions made in the studio in relation to potential audience engagement. These scales have the ability to house multiple presentation formats from the traditional to the avant garde and open up possibilities for broad analysis of a wide range of artistic dance works.

What you need to know to work in television

During a three-month stint at a production company, Alan McKee discovered that some of the knowledge required to work in television can only be acquired through practical experience. Here he offers some tips to help students successfully transition into the industry

Sonic loom (Volume 1)

Sonic Loom is a purpose built classroom tool for teachers and students of drama that will enable them to explore the use of music in live performance in theory and practice. It’s intended as a resource for drama classrooms, to encourage communication and exchange about the way music works on us so we can find new ways we can make it work for us. Working to consciously attend to music and how it’s used, particularly in cinema (as a popular way in to styles of western theatre and live performance) will allow students and teachers to use music in more subtle and complex ways an aid to narrative in performance. Sonic Loom encourages active listening, (aided but not encumbered by traditional musicology) so students (and teachers) can develop a ‘critical ear’ in the transformation and adaptation of music for their own artistic purposes, whether it’s soundtracking existing scene work, or acting as a pre-text for scenes which have yet to be created.

Development and pilot test of a peer-support based Cardiac-Diabetes Self-Management program : a study protocol

Background: People with cardiac disease and type 2 diabetes have higher hospital readmission rates (22%)compared to those without diabetes (6%). Self-management is an effective approach to achieve better health outcomes; however there is a lack of specifically designed programs for patients with these dual conditions. This project aims to extend the development and pilot test of a Cardiac-Diabetes Self-Management Program incorporating user-friendly technologies and the preparation of lay personnel to provide follow-up support. Methods/Design: A randomised controlled trial will be used to explore the feasibility and acceptability of the Cardiac-Diabetes Self-Management Program incorporating DVD case studies and trained peers to provide follow-up support by telephone and text-messaging. A total of 30 cardiac patients with type 2 diabetes will be randomised, either to the usual care group, or to the intervention group. Participants in the intervention group will received the Cardiac-Diabetes Self-Management Program in addition to their usual care. The intervention consists of three faceto- face sessions as well as telephone and text-messaging follow up. The face-to-face sessions will be provided by a trained Research Nurse, commencing in the Coronary Care Unit, and continuing after discharge by trained peers. Peers will follow up patients for up to one month after discharge using text messages and telephone support. Data collection will be conducted at baseline (Time 1) and at one month (Time 2). The primary outcomes include self-efficacy, self-care behaviour and knowledge, measured by well established reliable tools. Discussion: This paper presents the study protocol of a randomised controlled trial to pilot evaluates a Cardiac- Diabetes Self-Management program, and the feasibility of incorporating peers in the follow-ups. Results of this study will provide directions for using such mode in delivering a self-management program for patients with both cardiac condition and diabetes. Furthermore, it will provide valuable information of refinement of the intervention program.

An obsession with storytelling : conducting oral history interviews for creative writing

Anna Hirsch and Clare Dixon (2008, 190) state that creative writers’ ‘obsession with storytelling…might serve as an interdisciplinary tool for evaluating oral histories.’ This paper enters a dialogue with Hirsch and Dixon’s statement by documenting an interview methodology for a practice-led PhD project, The Artful Life Story: Oral History and Fiction, which investigates the fictionalising of oral history. ----- ----- Alistair Thomson (2007, 62) notes the interdisciplinary nature of oral history scholarship from the 1980s onwards. As a result, oral histories are being used and understood in a variety of arts-based settings. In such contexts, oral histories are not valued so much for their factual content but as sources that are at once dynamic, emotionally authentic and open to a multiplicity of interpretations. How can creative writers design and conduct interviews that reflect this emphasis? ----- ----- The paper briefly maps the growing trend of using oral histories in fiction and ethnographic novels, in order to establish the need to design interviews for arts-based contexts. I describe how I initially designed the interviews to suit the aims of my practice. Once in the field, however, I found that my original methods did not account for my experiences. I conclude with the resulting reflection and understanding that emerged from these problematic encounters, focusing on the technique of steered monologue (Scagliola 2010), sometimes referred to as the Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (Wengraf 2001, Jones 2006).