Study on the visual performance of a traditional residential neighborhood in Old Cairo

Traditional dwellings located in the hot arid zone in Egypt are well known for their sensitive architectural response to the region's climatic conditions and socio-cultural norms. The majority of these dwellings are well recognized for their courtyard arrangement and perforated fenestration systems that evolved to control the harsh solar, climatic conditions without compromising the aesthetic quality of the space and the occupants' well-being. The unique visual characteristics of these structures cannot be fully appreciated by assessing the visual performance of buildings in isolation from their urban context. Much of the character of the traditional urban fabric of this region came from the collective visual perception of its architectural components as well as urban patterns. This paper examines daylight behavior of a well-known historic alleyway and of a courtyard house in the Old City of Cairo. Using the Radiance IES simulation modeling tool and a scaled model under an artificial sky dome, the paper investigates the visual comfort in a typical pedestrian street and a selected house. A comparative analysis between simulated results and measured values at target points was conducted. The results indicate a reasonable agreement with the simulation results. The paper gives an insight into the overall visual experience in the traditional settlements in the Old City of Cairo in relation to daylight components and hence their contribution to the unique sense of identity of the place.

Exploring the current status of call centre offshoring research : a research agenda and future directions

Call centres have become an important and growing part of the service industry, enabling firms to provide better customer service, extend sales capabilities and manage customer relationships. However, the methods taken by firms around recruitment, training and management of overseas call centre agents have been far more complex, leading to high failure rates with Call Centre Offshoring (CCO) practices. To better understand the current CCO practices, this study reviews a current research status. Through a literature review, we identified a number of themes spanning across disciplines related to CCO. We found that the current literature lacked of understanding of socio-cultural elements such as trust, language, communication, national and organisational culture that positively influenced the stakeholder relationships. We argue that a common link can be established among CCO-related studies across disciplines when approaching the topic from a socio-cultural perspective. Our findings discuss the implications and provide a useful reference for future CCO-related studies.

Introduction : In Australian educational researcher, v.39 v.4

This special issue can be situated in the ‘affective turn’ in education. It responds to the increasing significance of affect, emotions and creativity as the foci of contemporary educational research. The resurgence of interest in these issues is symptomatic of current educational reforms and their impact on how educators should think about, and practise, teaching andwhat students need to know and howthey should learn. It is not to say that the current reforms are radically dissimilar from the previous ones in terms of their general intention to bring about change.What is different, though, is theweight they put on standards, accountability, efficiency, performativity and valueaddedness. As a result, the economic, market-driven principles of reforms have subsumed all other dimensions of education, such as its socio-cultural and relational aspects. The turn to affect is driven by a recognition that the economic rationalisation of education is at odds with its emotional and creative dimensions. The turn is registering a change in how education is managed and, indeed, what counts as education today.

Ten canoes : engaging difference

In a reading of the Rolf de Heer film Ten Canoes this article explores the pervasive, contemporary challenge of culture difference and its representation. Focusing on notions of sacredness, as one node of extreme difference, the article argues that older formulations of sacredness which bifurcated spirit and flesh are now being replaced by more holistic understandings. As western film audiences engage with representations of difference in Indigenous cultures, a set of questions are raised: what is the nature of real dialogue between different cultures? Can such dialogues move beyond mute recording, or silent respect, or automatic celebration? Can they enter a new space of dialectical relationship in which different cultural perspectives can be fully investigated, without making the other culture a static, or oversimplified or iconic abstraction?

Elaborative relational structures in the research prose of sociology : an intercultural study

This paper investigates elaborative relational structures utilised by native English speaking and native Polish speaking scholars in sociology research articles written in English. The examined texts have been produced in American, Australian and Polish academic discourse communities. The study utilised the framework of the analysis of the rhetorical structure of tests (FARS) as an analytical tool (Golebiowski 2009, 2011). The following types of elaboration relations are discussed : amplification, extension, reformulation, explanation, instantiation and addition. Elaboration is analysed with respect to its textual function, frequency of employment, hierarchical location, recursiveness, discoursal prominence and explicitness. The elaborative systems in the examined texts are shown to be complex, with pervasive presence of multi-stage recursive structures. It is suggested that elaborativeness may be a general characteristic of the style of writing sociology, which, as a relatively new discipline, requires establishing of wide grounds for the proposed claims, where writers persuade their readers not only of the specific claims of their text, but also of frameworks of thought in which the claims are placed. It is hypothesized that the similarities in the elaborativeness across texts result from the shared stylistic conventions and traditions of the disciplinary research community of sociology, while differences in the mode of employment of elaboration relations are attributed to cultural norms and conventions as well as educational systems prevailing within the discourse communities constituting the social contexts of the studied texts.
Golebiowski, Z. (2011). Scholarly criticism across discourse communities. In Salager-Meyer, Françoise and Lewin, Beverly A. (eds), Crossed words : Criticism in scholarly writing, pp. 203-224, Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, Berlin, Germany.
Golebiowski Z. (2009). The use of contrastive strategies in a sociology research paper: A cross-cultural study. In Suomela-Salmi, Eija and Dervin, Fred (eds), Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives on academic discourse, pp. 165-186, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Philadelphia.

You say security, we say safety : speaking and talking ‘security’ in Kyrgyzstan

The Copenhagen School's notion of securitization is widely recognised as an important theoretical innovation in the conceptualisation of security, not least for its potential for including a range of actors and spatial scales beyond the state. However, its empirical utility remains more open to question due to a lack of reflexivity regarding local socio-cultural contexts, narrow focus on speech and inherently retrospective nature. Drawing on fieldwork conducted by the author in Kyrgyzstan between September 2005 and June 2006, this paper will examine the implications of these limitations for conducting empirical research on "security" logistically and methodologically. Centrally, the question of how “security” can be researched in the field will be discussed. Consideration will be given to the researcher’s role in talking “security” and how “security” can effectively be located and explicated through the creation of ethnomethodological “thick description”. Issues of contingency, multiple voices and power loci, and inter-cultural translation will be addressed. The paper will conclude with a consideration of how local knowledge can be used to inform our research and help find ways to bridge the divide between the field and theory.

School and individual-level characteristics are associated with children's moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity during school recess

Objective: The objective of this study was to identify school environmental characteristics associated with moderate to vigorous physical activity during school recess, including morning and lunch breaks.

Methods: Accelerometry data, child-level characteristics and school physical activity, policy and socio-cultural data were collected from 408 sixth grade children (mean age 11 years) attending 27 metropolitan primary schools in Perth, Western Australia. Hierarchical modelling identified key characteristics associated with children's recess moderate to vigorous physical activity (RMVPA).

Results: Nearly 40% of variability in children's RMVPA was explained by school environment and individual characteristics identified in this study. Children's higher daily RMVPA was associated with newer schools, schools with a higher number of grassed surfaces per child and fewer shaded grassed surfaces, and the physical education coordinator meeting Australian physical activity guidelines.

Conclusions: Characteristics of the school physical and social environments are strongly correlated with children's MPVA during recess.

Early peer play interactions of resilient children living in disadvantaged communities

Resilience for children is positive adaptation and a capacity to thrive despite challenging circumstances. Children demonstrating resilience are seen to have strong cognitive skills and have developed positive peer relationships. The ‘Supporting Resilience’ project is exploring the conditions and characteristics of resilience of young children and their families who live in rural, regional and metropolitan communities that are economically and socially disadvantaged. The aim of this paper was to report on pretend play and social competence within the early years’ cohort of the ‘Supporting Resilience’ project. Twenty-six children aged 4–6 years who were identified as resilient by their preschool teacher were involved in the study. Results obtained from the Child Initiated Pretend Play Assessment and the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale when the children were at pre-school found significant relationships between object substitution and social interaction (r = .414, p < .05). Children who could elaborate play with unstructured objects were less likely to be socially disconnected (r = –.49, p < .05). There was no significant difference between geographical locations for play ability. Significant difference for social competence was found between geographical locations. By situating play as individual development within a socio-cultural environment the relationship between children's pretend play ability and social peer play interactions are considered within early childhood development and resilience literature.

Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox’s Fern Gully (1992)

 Informed by ecocriticism, this article conducts a comparative examination of two contemporary animated children’s films, Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fern Gully (1992). While both films advocate for the prevention of deforestation, they are, to varying degrees, antithetical to environmentalism. Both films reject the principles of deep ecology in displacing responsibility for environmental destruction on to ‘supernatural’ forces and exhibit anthropocentric concern for the survival of humans. We argue that these films constitute divergent methodological approaches for environmental consciousness-raising in children’s entertainment. The western world production demonstrates marked conservatism in its depiction of identity politics and ‘cute’ feminization of nature, while Hayao Miyazaki’s film renders nature sublime and invokes complex socio-cultural differences. Against FernGully’s ‘othering’ of working-class and queer characters, we posit that Princess Mononoke is decidedly queer, anti-binary and ideologically bi-partisan and, in accord with the underlying principle of environmental justice, asks child audiences to consider compassion for the poor in association with care for nature.

Myths and absent signifiers in representations of Aboriginal identity in Australian cinema

This article examines how meaning is always articulated in the ideological and political structures of society. This becomes apparent when evidencing articulated Aboriginal representation in Australian cinema, which signifies a representation on screen expressive of the ideological and political structures of the historical time periods in which the films were produced. Meaning, which is the relationship between the signifier and its signified, includes both denotation and connotation. Specific connotators can load a sign with multiple meanings leading to a chain of connotations.  The connotations of Aboriginal identity in Australian filmic narratives are influenced by a chain of additional signified, those of: socio-cultural variables and dominant discourses. This article analyses these chains of connotations through an examination of myths and absent signifiers in filmic representations of Aboriginal identity. The films investigated are: Jedda (Charles Chauvel 1955), Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg 1971), Night Cries (Tracey Moffatt 1990) and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce 2002).

Developing graduate knowledge and skills for the world of work: The case of the translation curriculum in Vietnam

National and global challenges have given rise to the need to prepare Vietnamese graduates for effective adaptation to the increasingly changing professional field, their community, their society and the globalised world. The tertiary education curriculum thus needs to take into account the employment market, socio-cultural demands and students’ individual needs in order to develop highly educated populations for the world of work and for the current knowledge economy.

Based on a case study of the translation curriculum in a B.A. (Bachelors of Arts) language program, this paper addresses the mismatch between the demands of the translation employment market and the curriculum within the context of Vietnamese tertiary education. It raises a number of important issues related to the tensions between the centralised curriculum, learner-centred education, the actual demands of the employment market as well as the issue of capacity building in response to the socialist-oriented market economy and the changing workplace context in Vietnam. Implications are drawn not only for the translation curriculum, but also for the reform of the Vietnamese tertiary education curriculum as a whole, in order to enhance graduate employability.