Ways in which theory and practice are integrated in the pre-service teacher education practicum

This paper reports on a study into pre-service teachers’ perceptions about their professional development during practicum. The study examined to what extent, and how effectively, one group of pre-service teachers was able to integrate theory and practice during a three-week practicum in the first year of their degree. Data for this mixed methods study were drawn from one cohort of first-year students undertaking the Master of Teaching (MTeach), a graduate-level entry program in the Faculty of Education at an urban Australian university. Although there is a strong field of literature around the practicum in pre-service teacher education, there has been a limited focus on how pre-service teachers themselves perceive their development during this learning period. Further, despite widespread and longstanding acknowledgement of the “gap” between theory and practice in teacher education, there is still more to learn about how well the practicum enables an integration of these two dimensions of teacher preparation. In presenting three major findings of the study, this paper goes some way in addressing these shortcomings in the literature. First, opportunities to integrate theory and practice were varied, with many participants reporting supervision and scheduling issues as impacting on their capacity to effectively enact theory in practice. Second, participants’ privileging of theory over practice, identified previously in the literature as commonly characteristic of the pre-service teacher, was found in this study to be particularly prevalent during practicum. Third, participants overwhelmingly supported the notion of linking university coursework assessment to the practicum as a means of bridging the gap between, on the one hand, the university and the school and, on the other hand, theory and practice. The discussion and consideration of findings such as those reported in this paper are pertinent and timely, given the ratification of both the National Professional Standards for Teachers and the Initial Teacher Education Program Standards by the Australian Federal Government earlier this year. Within a number of the seven Professional Standards, graduate teachers are required to demonstrate knowledge and skills associated with both the theory and practice of teaching and with their effective integration in the classroom. To be nationally accredited, pre-service teacher education programs must provide evidence of enabling pre-service teachers to acquire such knowledge and skills.

Antecedents and organisational performance implications of internal audit effectiveness: Some propositions and research agenda

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to synthesize relevant theoretical and empirical literature to develop propositions and suggest a research agenda on the antecedents and organisational performance implications of internal audit effectiveness.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs institutional theory and Karl Marx's theory of the “circuit of industrial capital” to synthesize relevant internal audit literature to develop theoretically justifiable propositions and highlight an operational research agenda.

Findings – Propositions and a research agenda are provided on potential antecedents of internal audit effectiveness and its possible association with company performance measured as rate of return on capital employed. Also, key variables are identified and operationalisation issues discussed.

Originality/value – As the extant literature does not provide a canon of internal audit effectiveness, the paper's originality is its argument that a positive association between compliance with standards for the professional practice of internal auditors and organisational goal achievement could serve as an approach to assess internal audit effectiveness. Furthermore, the use of the two theories in combination provides additional insights into identifying the antecedents of internal audit effectiveness and its measurement.

Baozou manhua (rage comics), internet humour and everyday life

Wang Nima launched baozoumanhua.com in 2008 to introduce rage comics (baozou manhua) to China after noticing its popularity in the USA. The emergence of baozou manhua signifies a new form of expression for ordinary netizens where they move from simply being consumers of comics to producers, combining image and text in a humorous way and distributing them via a wide variety of communication tools. This paper examines how the genre of baozou manhua enables Chinese netizens to vent about their everyday experiences and frustrations of daily life. It also explores how computer software technology and the Internet have influenced contemporary Chinese visual humour by focusing on the baozoumanhua.com Internet community. Although baozou manhua is an Internet phenomenon emerging from the specific sociopolitical context of contemporary China, examining this form of expression not only sheds light on popular online culture in China and the issues Chinese netizens grapple with but also provides an understanding of how digital visual culture changes across time and space as North American rage faces circulate around the world and garner new meaning after being appropriated and reinterpreted in the ‘interpretative community’ of Chinese cyberspace.

Is there an app for that? Looking at possibilities and challenges of digital tools for literacy education

 Portable electronic devices such as the iPad are increasingly taking a place in contemporary childhood experiences including those of schooling (O'Mara & Laidlaw, 2011). As digital media theorists suggest, such new tools invite both "hope and fear" (Gee and Hayes, 2011, p.4), consistent with literacy innovations across history. In both Canada and Australia, educational stakeholders are looking to touch screen devices as having much promise, particularly within literacy education. This paper presentation examines the possibilities as well as the challenges and imagines the future of such digital tools within literacy education, looking at experiences and perspectives in Canada and Australia.
We take a qualitative ecological mode of inquiry approach to our data collection and analysis, drawing on complexity thinking (Davis & Sumara, 2006) to bring our multiple points of view together as diversely positioned educators. Within our individual sites, each author has collected data as a part of longer-term research projects. In this paper presentation we compare and contrast these data sets, attending to significant intersections and juxtaposing issues of culture and globalization. Within this mode of inquiry we value the particularity of the individual contexts, and locate them alongside one another in a larger bricolage (Johnson, 2010).
We examined observational data, documents and artifacts using Freebody and Luke's (1990) four resources model and the further adaptions of this model (see e.g. Luke & Freebody, 1999) to understand how touch screen devices are being used and positioned as literacy tools. We have engaged in collaborative data analysis, often working 'together' using digital tools ourselves to enable collective conversations. For example, we have used Facetime on iPads and laptops, Skype and email to facilitate collective analyses. We applied iterative and recursive analyses to uncover reoccurring themes both within and across sites and artifacts.
As our paper will elaborate, mobile touch screen devices such as iPads are widely being taken up in educational settings, and regarded as having the possibility to shift teaching and learning in new directions, as "paradigm breakers" (p. 4, Gov't of AB, 2011). As personal, mobile devices, these tools present challenges that require educators to think differently about learning and teaching. Our paper also addresses the opportunities and affordances that iPads might offer to learners, as having the potential for students to engage in playful exploration, and in the role of designers, creators, and producers, rather than as passive recipients.

Place branding and cross-cultural visual communication : how do the theories and practices of place branding inform our understanding of cross-cultural visual communication design?

In a globalised environment, visual communication designers are now required to understand their audience’s needs, values and unique methods of communication, creating a new focus on the recipient. In a cross-cultural design context, the visual communication also needs to appeal to a broad range of stakeholders and multiple recipients who hold a strong emotional investment in the message being sent. Our understanding of the complexities of designing in this environment can be informed by recent developments in the research of place branding where the focus is on the increased possibility for failure, the strong potential for criticism and the issues associated with a broad range of stakeholders.

The outcomes of this connection are explored further in a case study involving eight countries as diverse as Australia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, Qatar, United States of America and Zimbabwe. More than 140 student and lecturer participants reviewed a student driven cross-cultural visual communication project that produced over 560 designs. The increased potential for failure and strong, emotional criticism raised questions about the role of images and symbols in cross-cultural visual communication. The impact these have on the reception of the design, challenge our views on the use of stereotypical imagery. This paper will discuss the movement towards designing visual images that are generic and lacking in cultural representation presenting the view that stereotypical imagery is important to the recipient who relies on these cultural references to effectively read the message.

Differential privacy and its application

 While the thesis reports our research in extending the theory of differential privacy to real world application, many interesting and promising issues remain unexplored. This thesis can be a starting point for new challenges because they precisely demonstrate how differential privacy can be extended in real-world scenarios.

Metrics to assess ecological condition, change, and impacts in sandy beach ecosystems

Complexity is increasingly the hallmark in environmental management practices of sandy shorelines. This arises primarily from meeting growing public demands (e.g., real estate, recreation) whilst reconciling economic demands with expectations of coastal users who have modern conservation ethics. Ideally, shoreline management is underpinned by empirical data, but selecting ecologically-meaningful metrics to accurately measure the condition of systems, and the ecological effects of human activities, is a complex task. Here we construct a framework for metric selection, considering six categories of issues that authorities commonly address: erosion; habitat loss; recreation; fishing; pollution (litter and chemical contaminants); and wildlife conservation. Possible metrics were scored in terms of their ability to reflect environmental change, and against criteria that are widely used for judging the performance of ecological indicators (i.e., sensitivity, practicability, costs, and public appeal). From this analysis, four types of broadly applicable metrics that also performed very well against the indicator criteria emerged: 1.) traits of bird populations and assemblages (e.g., abundance, diversity, distributions, habitat use); 2.) breeding/reproductive performance sensu lato (especially relevant for birds and turtles nesting on beaches and in dunes, but equally applicable to invertebrates and plants); 3.) population parameters and distributions of vertebrates associated primarily with dunes and the supralittoral beach zone (traditionally focused on birds and turtles, but expandable to mammals); 4.) compound measurements of the abundance/cover/biomass of biota (plants, invertebrates, vertebrates) at both the population and assemblage level. Local constraints (i.e., the absence of birds in highly degraded urban settings or lack of dunes on bluff-backed beaches) and particular issues may require alternatives. Metrics - if selected and applied correctly - provide empirical evidence of environmental condition and change, but often do not reflect deeper environmental values per se. Yet, values remain poorly articulated for many beach systems; this calls for a comprehensive identification of environmental values and the development of targeted programs to conserve these values on sandy shorelines globally.

Scalable RFID security framework and protocol supporting Internet of Things

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is seen as one of the requirements for the implementation of the Internet-of-Things (IoT). However, an RFID system has to be equipped with a holistic security framework for a secure and scalable operation. Although much work has been done to provide privacy and anonymity, little focus has been given to performance, scalability and customizability issues to support robust implementation of IoT. Also, existing protocols suffer from a number of deficiencies such as insecure or inefficient identification techniques, throughput delay and inadaptability. In this paper, we propose a novel identification technique based on a hybrid approach (group-based approach and collaborative approach) and security check handoff (SCH) for RFID systems with mobility. The proposed protocol provides customizability and adaptability as well as ensuring the secure and scalable deployment of an RFID system to support a robust distributed structure such as the IoT. The protocol has an extra fold of protection against malware using an incorporated malware detection technique. We evaluated the protocol using a randomness battery test and the results show that the protocol offers better security, scalability and customizability than the existing protocols. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Supporting healthy communities through sports and recreation programs

There is some evidence, in the form of critical descriptions of programs and systematic reviews, on the benefits to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities from participation in sport and recreational programs. These include some improvements in school retention, attitudes towards learning, social and cognitive skills, physical and mental health and wellbeing; increased social inclusion and cohesion; increased validation of and connection to culture; and crime reduction.Although the effects of sports and recreation programs can be powerful and transformative, these effects tend to be indirect. For example, using these programs to reduce juvenile antisocial behaviour largely work through diversion, providing alternative safe opportunities to risk taking, maintenance of social status, as wellas opportunities to build healthy relationships with Elders and links with culture.Although Indigenous Australians have lower rates of participation in sport than non-Indigenous people, surveys suggest that around one-third of Indigenous people participate in some sporting activity (ABS 2010). That makes sports a potentially powerful vehicle for encouraging Indigenous communities to look at challenging personal and community issues.Within Indigenous communities, a strong component of sport and recreation is the link with traditional culture. Cultural activities such as hunting are generally more accepted as a form of sport and recreation than traditional dance. Therefore sport and recreation are integral in understanding ‘culture’ within Indigenous communities, as well as highlighting the culture within which sport and recreation operate.

North Korean human rights and the international community: responding to the UN Commission of Inquiry

Of all the difficult conversations to have with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) regime, the one over human rights has proven the most troubling for the international community. Once human rights issues are placed on the table, diplomatic efforts become quickly de-railed. Because of this, and because issues such as non-proliferation are seen as more pressing than human rights, there has been a conspicuous absence of any official, systematic response to the question of human rights violations in North Korea. Of course, most human rights campaigns experience some amount of politicisation. This is unsurprising, given the deeply political nature of the very concept of human rights. The North Korean human rights issue, however, suffers from this phenomenon more than most, tied up as it is with wider ideological battles that hark back to the circumstances of the division of the Korean peninsula. In this context, the 2014 report delivered by the United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry (COI) into North Korean human rights represents an effort to move above and beyond the politicisation of the issue and was largely successful in this regard.

Fog computing: a cloud to the ground support for smart things and machine-to-machine networks

Cloud services to smart things face latency and intermittent connectivity issues. Fog devices are positioned between cloud and smart devices. Their high speed Internet connection to the cloud, and physical proximity to users, enable real time applications and location based services, and mobility support. Cisco promoted fog computing concept in the areas of smart grid, connected vehicles and wireless sensor and actuator networks. This survey article expands this concept to the decentralized smart building control, recognizes cloudlets as special case of fog computing, and relates it to the software defined networks (SDN) scenarios. Our literature review identifies a handful number of articles. Cooperative data scheduling and adaptive traffic light problems in SDN based vehicular networks, and demand response management in macro station and micro-grid based smart grids are discussed. Security, privacy and trust issues, control information overhead and network control policies do not seem to be studied so far within the fog computing concept.

Food concerns and support for environmental food policies and purchasing.

Consumer support for pro environmental food policies and food purchasing are important for the adoption of successful environmental policies. This paper examines consumers' views of food policy options as their predisposition to purchase pro environmental foods along with their likely demographic, educational and cognitive antecedents including food and environmental concerns and universalism values (relating to care for others and the environment). An online survey to assess these constructs was conducted among 2204 Australian adults in November 2011. The findings showed strong levels of support for both environmental food policies (50%-78% support) and pro environmental food purchasing (51%-69% intending to purchase pro environmental foods). Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling showed that different cognitive mediators exist along pathways between demographics and the two outcome variables. Support for food policy was positively related to food and environment concerns (std. Beta = 0.25), universalism (0.41), perceived control (0.07), and regulatory issues (0.64 but negatively with food security issues (-0.37). Environment purchasing intentions were positively linked to food and nutrition concerns (0.13), food and environment concerns (0.24), food safety concerns (0.19), food and animal welfare concerns (0.16), universalism (0.25), female gender (0.05), education (0.04), and perceived influence over the food system (0.17). In addition, health study in years 11 and 12 was positively related to the beginning of both of these pathways (0.07 for each). The results are discussed in relation to the opportunities that communications based on the mediating variables offer for the promotion of environmental food policies and purchasing.

Cost effectiveness of childhood obesity interventions: Evidence and methods for CHOICES

INTRODUCTION: The childhood obesity epidemic continues in the U.S., and fiscal crises are leading policymakers to ask not only whether an intervention works but also whether it offers value for money. However, cost-effectiveness analyses have been limited. This paper discusses methods and outcomes of four childhood obesity interventions: (1) sugar-sweetened beverage excise tax (SSB); (2) eliminating tax subsidy of TV advertising to children (TV AD); (3) early care and education policy change (ECE); and (4) active physical education (Active PE). METHODS: Cost-effectiveness models of nationwide implementation of interventions were estimated for a simulated cohort representative of the 2015 U.S. population over 10 years (2015-2025). A societal perspective was used; future outcomes were discounted at 3%. Data were analyzed in 2014. Effectiveness, implementation, and equity issues were reviewed. RESULTS: Population reach varied widely, and cost per BMI change ranged from $1.16 (TV AD) to $401 (Active PE). At 10 years, assuming maintenance of the intervention effect, three interventions would save net costs, with SSB and TV AD saving $55 and $38 for every dollar spent. The SSB intervention would avert disability-adjusted life years, and both SSB and TV AD would increase quality-adjusted life years. Both SSB ($12.5 billion) and TV AD ($80 million) would produce yearly tax revenue. CONCLUSIONS: The cost effectiveness of these preventive interventions is greater than that seen for published clinical interventions to treat obesity. Cost-effectiveness evaluations of childhood obesity interventions can provide decision makers with information demonstrating best value for the money.

Corporate social responsibility, economic globalization and developing countries: a case study of the ready made garments industry in Bangladesh

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the state of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in labour-intensive industries in developing countries in the context of economic globalization. Using the ready-made garments’ (RMG) industry in Bangladesh as a case study, challenges and key issues relating to CSR are highlighted. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws from the review of existing literature, and the content analysis of two leading newspapers in Bangladesh for a period of one year (July 2012-June 2013) to identify the key and contemporary issues related to CSR in the RMG industry. Findings – Findings identify the contemporary issues of concerns associated with CSR in the RMG industry, relating them to the debate on the applicability of Carroll’s CSR pyramid to developing countries. The findings suggest that non-compliance of CSR in labour-intensive industries is a function of the nature of economic globalization. The need for a stakeholder approach towards CSR for the profitability and sustainability of this industry is also highlighted. Practical implications – This paper makes contributions to two different but important interrelated discourses on CSR and economic globalization. It also provides insights into the complexity involved in CSR in labour-based export industries in developing countries and acts as a springboard for further research. Originality/value – The paper is the first to look at all major issues of concern regarding CSR in theRMG industry in Bangladesh. As Bangladesh is an exemplar of developing countries andRMGis a typical starter industry, the findings are generalizable to similar industries in other developing countries.

Student opportunities in materials design and manufacture: Introducing a new manufacturing with composites course

The shift towards strong and lightweight fibre reinforced polymer-matrix composites for many high performance applications has resulted in an increasing need to expose students to composite design and manufacture courses in the undergraduate curriculum. In contrast, student exposure to composite materials is often still limited to a topic within a materials or manufacturing related course (unit). This paper presents the initial offering of a composite materials elective at Griffith University in Australia. The course also addresses environmental concerns through the inclusion of natural fibre composites. An evaluation of student perceptions is considered from Griffith’s Student Experience of Course (SEC) and separate Student Experience of Teaching (SET) surveys. These evaluations demonstrate the high level of student engagement with the course, but also highlighted areas for improvement, including the need to incorporate even more hands-on practical work. Interestingly, the inclusion of natural fibre composites and the related discussion surrounding environmental and societal issues are not focused on in student feedback.