The study of design elements and people’s behaviour in campus public space : how design shapes user’s behaviour

A growing body of researches provided evidence of the successful design in particular focus on design elements, ranging from colour, lighting, technology, landscape and spatial arrangement. However, no example or literature investigates the opportunities for linking these design elements in a practical base. Drawing upon existing architectural design theory, this paper investigates the relationship between design elements regards to public’s behavioural response to the public space. The aims of this paper are two-fold: first to examine whether there is a direct relationship between the two, and second to find out how the design elements could be coordinated together to influence not only the activities but also the environment, function and experience. To meet this objective, observation, behavioural mapping, interview and cognitive mapping methodologies are used. The present study involves two local case studies to find out the relationship between design elements in order to assist the design of a better public space for public activities. Correlation between the design elements shows that public activities is more likely to happen in relatively space with well balance of design. These finding provide a better understanding of public space design by gaining deeper perceptive between design and user’s behaviour, consequently improving social activities and interactions in public space. Moreover, it focuses on campus public areas which can be a vital aspect of university campus and play a valuable role in the overall success of public space design.

Attitudinal, normative, and control beliefs underlying people’s curbside household waste recycling decisions

This study examined the beliefs underlying people’s decision-making, from a theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework, in the prediction of curbside household waste recycling. Community members in Brisbane, Australia (N = 148) completed a questionnaire assessing the belief based TPB measures of attitudinal beliefs (costs and benefits), normative beliefs (important referents), and control beliefs (barriers) in relation to engaging in curbside household waste recycling for a 2-week period. Two weeks later, participants completed self report measures of recycling behaviour for the previous fortnight. The results revealed that the attitudinal, normative, and control beliefs for people who performed higher and lower levels of recycling differed significantly. A regression analysis identified both normative and control beliefs as the main determinants of recycling behaviour. For normative beliefs, high level recyclers perceived more approval from referents such as partners, friends, and neighbours to recycle all eligible materials. In addition, the strong results for control beliefs indicated that barriers such as forgetfulness, lack of time, and laziness were rated as more likely to hamper optimal recycling performance for low level recyclers. These findings provide important applied information about beliefs to target in the development of future community recycling campaigns.

Living with the Legacy of Conquest and Culture : Social Justice Leadership in Education and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia and America

Indigenous peoples have survived the most inhumane acts and violations against them. Despite acts of genocide, Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans have survived. The impact of the past 500 years cannot be separated from understandings of education for Native Americans in the same way that the impact of the past 220 years cannot be separated from the understandings of Australian Aboriginal people’s experiences of education. This chapter is about comparisons in Aboriginal and Native American communities and their collision with the dominant, white European settlers who came to Australia and America. Chomsky (Intervention in Vietnam and Central America: parallels and differences. In: Peck J (ed) The Chomsky Reader. Pantheon Books, New York, p 315, 1987) once remarked that if one took two historical events and compared them for similarities and differences, you would find both. The real test was whether on the similarities they were significant. The position of the coauthors of this chapter is in the affirmative and we take this occasion to lay them out for analysis and review. The chapter begins with a discussion of the historical legacy of oppression and colonization impacting upon Indigenous peoples in Australia and in the United States, followed by a discussion of the plight of Indigenous children in a specific State in America. Through the lens of social justice, we examine those issues and attitudes that continue to subjugate these same peoples in the economic and educational systems of both nations. The final part of the chapter identifies some implications for school leadership.

Why do Indigenous Australians drink and drive? A qualitative exploration of self-reported influences on drink driving behaviours of Indigenous peoples from remote communities

Drink driving contributes towards high injury rates for Indigenous populations in Canada and Australia, particularly in more isolated regions. At present there is limited research on the cultural and psychosocial factors that underpin Indigenous peoples’ drink driving. This study is part of a broader project aiming to inform a culturally sensitive program. Qualitative interviews with 29 convicted Indigenous drink drivers (aged 20-51 years) from a remote region of Queensland, Australia were used to explore their cognitions about, and underlying motivation for, drink driving as well as the factors that might facilitate or impede it. Although a number of themes were identified, this paper will focus on the first theme, respondents’ self-perceived rationale for their behaviour. Two subthemes were identified: ‘being the hero’ referred to situations where respondents were motivated by a bravado mentality to drive after drinking despite having, on some occasions, the opportunity to avoid this (e.g. another person offering to drive); and ‘family obligations’ which referred to situations where respondents described pressure from members of their extended families to drive after drinking. The underlying responsibility for transporting family members appeared to be difficult to avoid and related to cultural values. Findings indicate the social and individual characteristics for younger drink drivers are similar to mainstream populations. However, the reinforcers for Indigenous drink drivers may be different for this population, consistent with findings on other Indigenous populations outside Australia. Specific programs should contain a family-centred approach and explore the kinship value system to build strategies around these strong relationships.

Governing young people’s drug use: Crime, harm and contemporary drug use practices

Since the nineteenth century, drug use has been variously understood as a problem of epidemiology, psychiatry, physiology, and criminality. Consequently drug research tends to be underpinned by assumptions of inevitable harm, and is often directed towards preventing drug use or solving problems. These constructions of the drug problem have generated a range of law enforcement responses, drug treatment technologies and rehabilitative programs that are intended to prevent drug related harm and resituate drug users in the realm of neo-liberal functional citizenship. This paper is based on empirical research of young people’s illicit drug use in Brisbane. The research rejects the idea of a pre-given drug problem, and seeks to understand how drugs have come to be defined as a problem. Using Michel Foucault’s conceptual framework of governmentality, the paper explores how the governance of illicit drugs, through law, public health and medicine, intersects with self-governance to shape young people’s drug use practices. It is argued that constructions of the drug problem shape what drug users believe about themselves and the ways in which they use drugs. From this perspective, drug use practices are ‘practices of the self’, formed through an interaction of the government of illicit drugs and the drug users own subjectivity.

Editorial : Global 21st century professionals : developing capability to work with Indigenous and other traditionally-oriented peoples

International agreement on the framework for protecting the rights of Indigenous populations within nation states has occurred alongside unprecedented levels of globalisation of other previously nation-based activities such as economic and social provision and planning. As the idea of the postcolonial democratic state emerges, this collection undertakes an international and comparative examination of the role of higher education in educating globally aware professionals who are able to work effectively and in cultural safety with Indigenous Peoples...

Raising awareness of Australian Aboriginal peoples reality : Embedding Aboriginal knowledge in social work education through the use of field experiences

Effective social work practice with Aboriginal peoples and communities requires knowledge of operational communication skills and practice methods. In addition, there is also a need for practitioners to be aware of the history surrounding white engagement with Aboriginal communities and their cultures. Indeed, the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) acknowledges the importance of social workers practising cultural safety. Engendering knowledge of cultural safety for social work students is the opportunity to listen and talk with Aboriginal people who have experienced the destructive impacts of colonisation and the subsequent disruption to family and community. This article discusses the use of field experiences within a Masters of Social Work (Qualifying) Program (MSW) as an educational method aimed at increasing student awareness of contemporary Aboriginal issues and how to practice effectively and within a culturally safe manner.

Concealed texting while driving : what are young people’s beliefs about this risky behaviour?

Making a conscious effort to hide the fact that one is texting while driving (i.e., concealed texting) is a deliberate and risky behaviour involving attention diverted from the road. As the most frequent users of text messaging services and mobile phones while driving, young people appear at heightened crash risk from engaging in this behaviour. First, several small focus group discussions (N = 12) were carried out to elicit the underlying salient beliefs regarding this behaviour, in accordance with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Findings from these discussions, in conjunction with available prior evidence regarding general mobile phone use while driving, then informed questionnaire items that assessed young peoples’ beliefs regarding this behaviour, as well as intention to engage in this behaviour in the next week. In the questionnaire phase of the study, participants (N = 171) were aged 17–25 years, owned a mobile phone, and held a current driver’s licence. Results showed that there were significant differences between low and high intenders (to engage in concealed texting while driving) on the behavioural, normative, and control beliefs investigated. Specifically, high intenders were more likely to believe that concealed texting while driving would result in sharing information with others, using time effectively, and were less likely to think that free-flowing traffic would prevent their engagement in this behaviour. By targeting these beliefs, these findings may potentially inform the development of advertising and other public intervention strategies, aimed at ensuring young drivers reconsider their engagement in this risky behaviour.

Literary prosumers : young people’s reading and writing in a new media landscape

The production of culture is today a matter of ‘user generated content’ and young people are vital participants as ‘prosumers’, i.e. both producers and consumers, of cultural products. Among other things, they are busy creating fan works (stories, pictures, films) based on already published material. Using the genre fan fiction as a point of departure, this article explores the drivers behind net communities organised around fan culture and argues that fan fiction sites can in many aspects be regarded as informal learning settings. By turning to the rhetoric principle of imitatio, the article shows how in the collective interactive processes between readers and writers such fans develop literacies and construct gendered identities.

People’s perceptions about the importance of forests on Borneo

We ascertained villagers’ perceptions about the importance of forests for their livelihoods and health through 1,837 reliably answered interviews of mostly male respondents from 185 villages in Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. Variation in these perceptions related to several environmental and social variables, as shown in classification and regression analyses. Overall patterns indicated that forest use and cultural values are highest among people on Borneo who live close to remaining forest, and especially among older Christian residents. Support for forest clearing depended strongly on the scale at which deforestation occurs. Deforestation for small-scale agriculture was generally considered to be positive because it directly benefits people’s welfare. Large-scale deforestation (e.g., for industrial oil palm or acacia plantations), on the other hand, appeared to be more context-dependent, with most respondents considering it to have overall negative impacts on them, but with people in some areas considering the benefits to outweigh the costs. The interviews indicated high awareness of negative environmental impacts of deforestation, with high levels of concern over higher temperatures, air pollution and loss of clean water sources. Our study is unique in its geographic and trans-national scale. Our findings enable the development of maps of forest use and perceptions that could inform land use planning at a range of scales. Incorporating perspectives such as these could significantly reduce conflict over forest resources and ultimately result in more equitable development processes.

The importance of science fiction and other STEM-related mass media in young people’s decisions to enrol in university STEM courses

This paper presents Australian results from the Interests and Recruitment in Science (IRIS) study with respect to the influence of STEM-related mass media, including science fiction, on students’ decisions to enrol in university STEM courses. The study found that across the full cohort (N=2999), students tended to attribute far greater influence to science-related documentaries/channels such as Life on Earth and the Discovery Channel, etc. than to science-fiction movies or STEM-related TV dramas. Males were more inclined than females to consider science fiction/fantasy books and films and popular science books/magazines as having been important in their decisions. Students taking physics/astronomy tended to rate the importance of science fiction/fantasy books and films higher than students in other courses. The implications of these results for our understanding of influences on STEM enrolments are discussed.