Eleven seasons : a creative writing journey through modern Australian football

This thesis offers a novel, 'Eleven seasons', that traces the physical and emotional journey of a young male footballer through the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. It also offers a comparative review of creative writing about Australian football, and a critical analysis of the book's creative gestation from idea to completed text.

Travel undertaken by women accessing private Victorian pregnancy termination services

Objective: To investigate the extent and cost of travel undertaken by women accessing Victorian termination of pregnancy services.

Design, setting and participants: This was a multi-centre, cross-sectional observational study of women receiving privately funded pregnancy termination services, conducted between November 2002 and June 2003 at eight major pregnancy termination service providers in Victoria.

Main outcome measures: Distance travelled, money and time expended undertaking travel, and reasons women chose particular clinics.

Results: Of the 1,244 Australian resident respondents who resided in Victoria, 9.3% travelled more than 100 km to access services. Teenagers were 2.5 times more likely than other respondents to travel further than 100 kilometres (km) (18.2% compared with 7.8%, OR=2.5, 95% CI 1.5-4.2, p<0.001). Women originated from all Australian States and Territories except South Australia and 13.7% were from Statistical Divisions other than Melbourne. More than one-third of respondents (41.3%) chose their clinic because they were referred by a doctor or general practitioner.

Conclusion: Many pregnancy termination patients face substantial and immediate costs beyond the service fee, as well as the diffculties associated with poor continuity of care and signifcant time away from home. Patients and service providers should be consulted further to determine appropriate clinical services, support services and subsidy schemes for the sizeable proportion of patients who undertake long-distance travel to access pregnancy termination services.

First-year law students’ construction of professional identity through writing

While there is a considerable body of research on law student identity construction based on interviews and transcripts of classroom talk, there is very little work based on student written texts. In this article two letters of advice written by beginning law students are analysed, using Ivanic and Camps’s (2001) framework, as an example of identity formation. Legal identity is argued to be formed by students’ attempts to accommodate a dynamic, partial, practitioner role of provider of advice to the traditional analytic focus of the law student. The process of accommodation is evident in the language of the letters, which show disfluencies resulting from attempts to combine different roles into a coherent legal identity. Comparison with a professionally written letter suggests that, rather than seeking to shape a coherent position, lawyers are able simultaneously to hold incompatible perspectives, concealing the tensions by foregrounding some perspectives and backgrounding others.

Creative pedagogies : "art-full" reading and writing

This paper reports on a small-scale research inquiry, designed to support teachers in a Melbourne primary school to bring together the arts, reading and writing in their classrooms in ways that create possibilities for "art-full" teaching and learning. The principal, concerned by underperformance on State literacy tests of the school’s largely working-class and NESB population, requested David Hornsby and other members of the project team from the Education Faculty at La Trobe University to offer whole-school professional development. The focus was on developing oral language as a foundation for literacy learning, enacting Britton’s claim that “reading and writing float on a sea of talk”. The project team introduced the teachers to a range of innovative classroom practices for using visual and performance arts, literature, music and crafts. Drawing on video, interviews and writing samples, a number of teachers worked collaboratively with the research team to develop case studies of individual students with a range of literacy aptitudes and social skills. A key research question was: "What do children take from their engagement in arts-based activities into reading of literary texts, and potentially into writing from the perspective of another character?" In this paper we ponder this from three vantage points: by outlining the informing principles in our research project; confirming insights from current interdisciplinary work about children learning to see, do, act and say in play; and analysing the research data from the initial phase.

Taking risks- experiential learning and the writing student

The role of a professional and creative writing degree is to provide resources, structured workshops, professional interactions - and the potential for creative risk. Opportunities for risk, within the structured environment of the university, challenge the individual's perspectives and judgements, as well as their ability to analyse and to reflect on their writing and creative practices.

From this starting point the authors, both writing industry practitioners and academics, have developed experiential projects with the aim of transforming their teaching practice from a model of narrative hierarchies of knowledge to learning through performativity, social correctedness and immersive workplace learning.

As the case studies illustrate, this transitional approach has enabled our millennial learners more confidently to take risks, accept challenges and transform their understanding of their own knowledge, skills and identities.

A systematic approach to writing and rating entrepreneurial business plans

This investigation provides the predicate for an intended series of studies in the field of Venture Capital deal screening. At issue is the use of theory-based standards for systematic creation and assessment of entrepreneurial business plans. A systems based approach guided synthesis of research-based principles contained in the literature. Results culminated in the formal articulation and operationalization of 10 principles in the form of a questionnaire (entitled EBPAR, for ‘entrepreneurial business plan evaluation regime’). The instrument can serve dual duty as a guide for writing and a regime for rating Entrepreneurial Business Plans. Discussion focused on utility of the assessment regime and future research directions.

Gender differences in personal, social and environmental influences on active travel to and from school for Australian adolescents

Active travel (walking or cycling for transport) is an important contributor to adolescents overall physical activity (PA). This study examines associations between personal, social and environmental variables and active travel to and from school using data from a large observational study to examine active travel in 2961 year 6 and 8 students (48.7% male), aged 10–14 years (M = 11.4, SD = 0.8 yrs) from 231 schools. Participants completed an on-line survey and all reported living within 2 km of school. Data collected included mode of travel to and from school, self-reported health, and PA variables. Social environmental variables included having playgrounds, parks or gyms close by, feeling safe to walk alone, barriers to walking in the neighbourhood (e.g. traffic, no footpaths), peer and family support for PA, existence of sports teams/scout groups, community disorder and perceived neighbourhood safety. Results showed that while more girls (44.3%) than boys (37.4%) walked to school, lower proportions rode bikes (8.3% vs 22.4%) and hence fewer were active travellers overall. Logistic regression models, adjusted for age, location and socio-economic status were conducted for active travel to/from school, separately for boys and girls. Predictors for boys and girls being ‘active travellers’ to/from school included recreational facilities close to home, higher perceived safety of the neighbourhood and higher community disorder. For boys, social support from friends, scout groups available and higher enjoyment of physical activity was also important. These findings suggest areas for future research and may be used to guide strategies to increase active travel to and from school.

Representation and judgement : 'privileged' Jews in Holocaust writing and film

This thesis analyses the ways in which moral judgements of so-called privileged Jews are constructed in Holocaust representations. ‘Privileged’ Jews include those prisoners in the camps and ghettos who held positions which gave them access to material and other benefits. Subject to extreme levels of coercion, these victims were compelled to act in ways that have often been judged as both self-serving and harmful to fellow inmates. Such controversial figures constitute an intrinsically important, frequently misunderstood and hastily judged facet of the Holocaust. Scholars have neglected the problem of judgement in relation to ‘privileged’ Jews; nonetheless, Holocaust texts frequently portray these liminal figures.

Of crucial importance to the thesis is Primo Levi’s paradigmatic essay entitled ‘The Grey Zone,’ which directly engages with the complex and sensitive issue of ‘privileged’ Jews. Levi argues that due to the extreme ethical dilemmas that ‘privileged’ Jews confronted, any judgement of these victims needs to be suspended. However, if, as Levi suggests, judgement is at times impossible, the thesis challenges Levi’s assumption by contending that representations of ‘privileged’ Jews inevitably take a moral position. In this way, the thesis conceptualises judgement as a ‘limit’ of representation. Indeed, it is shown that Levi himself cannot abstain from judging those for whom he argues judgement should be suspended.

The thesis takes Levi’s concept of the ‘grey zone’ as a point of departure in order to examine the problems of judgement and representation in relation to ‘privileged’ Jews. Analysis focuses on Raul Hilberg’s influential historical work and examples of documentary and fiction films. The thesis examines how Hilberg and several filmmakers employ conventions as a means of conveying judgement. It is argued that self-reflexive representations of ‘privileged’ Jews in film, particularly fictional dramatisation, have the potential to provide a nuanced representation of ‘privileged’ Jews, which engages with Levi’s ideas by questioning the possibility of judgement.

Black and white : in search of an ‘apt’ response to Indigenous writing

‘The good editor,’ suggests Thomas McCormack in his Fiction Editor, the Novel and the Novelist, ‘reads, and … responds aptly’ to the writer’s work, ‘where “aptly” means “as the ideal appropriate reader would”.’ McCormack develops an argument that encompasses the dual ideas of sensibility and craft as essential characteristics of the fiction editor. But at an historical juncture that has seen increasing interest in the publication of Indigenous writing, and when Indigenous writers themselves may envisage a multiplicity of readers (writing, for instance, for family and community, and to educate a wider white audience), who is the ‘ideal appropriate reader’ for the literary works of the current generation of Australian Indigenous writers? And what should the work of this ‘good editor’ be when engaging with the text of an Indigenous writer? This paper examines such questions using the work of Margaret McDonell and Jennifer Jones, among others, to explore ways in which non-Indigenous editors may apply aspects of McCormack’s ‘apt response’ to the editing of Indigenous texts.

Writing as tribal practice : revisiting online collaborative writing

Many teachers encourage sharing ideas and knowledge through collaborative group writing to build self-confidence in developing writers. However, some students do not appear to gain a sense of belonging in the collaborative experience. This evolving study explores online collaborative writing with the purpose of creating a 'third author' - the group (tribal) voice. One aim is to reclaim writing as a conscious collaborative act where meaning is attained only at the end of the thought-sharing process. Therefore, the process of writing is seen as more important than the product. A further aim is to observe how intensive writing collaboration will affect both the writers and the writing during the process. A group of language teachers from Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the USA meet every two weeks in cyberspace for a two-hour intensive writing session. The group has met for the past three months. Different discourses appear to be fusing into a metamorphosed new hybrid author - the tribal group voice. These early findings suggest that such practices may assist learners who experience difficulty entering or contributing to collaborative writing or group-work tasks. Additionally, online group work may benefit, as no physical human contact exists to gain a sense of 'group'.

Language, technology and the law : anti-plagiarism software and students' academic writing

Plagiarism is of grave concern for academic institutions in the twenty-first
century. Institutions utilise plagiarism policies, honour codes and regulations to ensure students develop a sense of educational integrity. Technology has recently afforded new methods for staff to detect plagiarism – through antiplagiarism software. This paper explores perspectives of seven teachers across five faculties to Turnitin.com (an anti-plagiarism software package) at a large Australian university. The findings indicate that software such as Turnitin.com may assist in the quest to detect text-matching, and perhaps reduce plagiarism. It should not, however, be considered the panacea for plagiarism. Plagiarism policies should also reflect cognisance of the existence of a 'plagiarism continuum' (Sutherland-Smith, 2003) through the use of technology. This research highlights the broader need for institutions to reformulate plagiarism policies in light of cross-cultural perspectives of authorship and attribution of text.

Global education : travel and new imaginaries for teachers' work

This workshop reports on Learning across Latitude - a trans-national collaborative project that joined teacher education students from Australia, Denmark and Malaysia. The project offered a unique opportunity for students to explore concepts and dialogue with their teacher education peers in three countries. Over a two week period, 116 students in 13 forums posted 365 messages into a forum space hosted by Deakin University. 
During week 1, students introduced themselves to each other and discussed their reasons to become teachers, qualities of a good teacher and the issues facing teaching in their country. Because many students life experiences are local in experience such a project expands notions of being a teacher in a global world. Student’s responses to qualities of a good teacher were analysed to build knowledge of global teacher identities.
During week 2 students discussed what it means to be a good citizen in their country. How is citizenship as a concept explained across three countries? In the virtual discussions for Malaysian and Danish students, English was a second language. These forums opened new awareness for all students of the challenges of conversing with English as second language students.
This project illustrated that the changing contexts of education and globalisation means new opportunities and challenges for teacher education at local and global levels. Implications from Learning across Latitudes suggest possibilities for teacher education to build global citizenship, and teacher identities as technology enables such possibilities.

Shifting constructs of global education : the role of travel in meeting new challenges for teachers

Globalisation is driving the impetus for change by teachers, and in classrooms, schools and education in countries across the world. This phenomenon has bought global education from the fringes to prominence in the curriculum. Although global education is a fixture in education discourse today, it has not always occupied such a position. This paper reviews global education from its early beginnings to the present in the United Kingdom, USA and Australia and reports on research that focuses on how teachers' travel experiences further their confidence to teach global education.
Approaches to global education have moved from primarily content approaches to include an emphasis on teachers as agents of implementation. With global education positioned centrally within schools and curriculum policy, teachers' knowledge and skills to implement global education are called into question. This paper reports on research that focuscs on how teachers' travel experiences further their confidence to
teach global education. The implications from this research suggest that teachers should emphasise their lived travel experience in global education.

Critique and creativity : the pedagogical nexus between literary studies and creative writing

This paper will explore the nexus between literary studies and creative writing on the basis of Stanley Aronowitz’s and Henry Giroux’s work on the democratic potential embedded in a critical literacy education, which provides ‘a language of critique’ and ‘a language of possibility’ (1993: 46). This paper argues that literary studies and
creative writing, as cognate disciplines focused precisely on languages of critique and possibility, are uniquely positioned to cooperatively enact this pedagogical agenda.