The identity of civics in teacher education

This essay proposes that a precondition for considering how teacher education can address issues of citizenship requires clarification of the identity of a civically active teacher and the purposes of teacher education. I argue for the development of critically conscious teachers, and examine how the construction and pedagogies of teacher education can support this goal. Drawing on selected examples of current practices in teacher education programs in Australia, it is argued that the aim of teacher education is to re-orientate pedagogies inside the tertiary classroom, and reposition the pedagogies of teacher education beyond the tertiary classroom to generate the transformative learning experiences needed to develop critically conscious teachers who can nurture citizens of the future.

Reconstructing Aboriginal identity : a social-political case-study in curriculum change

This paper locates the development of Aboriginal Studies curricula within the context of Aboriginal political activism and 20th century reconstruction of Aboriginal identity in Australia. It is suggested that the incorporation of the reconstructed Aboriginal identity in Aboriginal Studies curricula institutionalised a radical conceptual change. Using the senior secondary Aboriginal Studies curriculum as an example, it is argued that unresolved tensions exist in the syllabus, the conceptualisation of community and the social process of identity formation inherent in recent reconstructions of Aboriginal identity. The question posed is whether these tensions will ultimately act as a form of oppression for Aboriginal people in the cross-cultural environment of contemporary Australia.

Simulating crowd phenomena in African markets

Crowd simulation is an important feature in the computer graphics field. Typical implementations simulate battle scenes, emergency situations, safety issues or add content to virtual environments. The problem stated in this paper falls in the last category. We present a crowd simulation behavioural model which allows us to simulate identified phenomena in popular local African markets such as narrow street flows and crowd formation around street performances. We propose a three-tier architecture model enable to produce intentions, perform path planning and control movement. We demonstrate that this approach produces the desired behaviour associated with crowds in an African market, which includes navigation, flow formation and circle creation.

'Unnatural', 'Unwomanly', 'Uncreditable' and 'Undervalued': the significance of being a childless woman in Australian society

Childlessness is an increasing trend, internationally and in Australia. The few studies exploring the lived experiences of childless women have been conducted in America, Canada and the United Kingdom; predominantly during the 1980s and 1990s. The experiences of childless women in contemporary Australia remain under-researched. This hermeneutic phenomenological study sought to enhance understanding of the lived experience of being a childless woman in contemporary Australia. In-depth interviews with five childless women revealed five key themes as significant facets of the experiences of childless women: notions of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’; woman = mother; childlessness as a discrediting attribute; feeling undervalued; and the significance of being childless. By privileging the experiences of childless women in a pronatalist society, it is apparent that misconceptions and stereotypes about childlessness continue to pervade. This study contributes to understanding this growing population group; highlighting that while childlessness is increasingly acknowledged, it is still not completely understood.

Cultural feelings and the making of meaning

Cultural feelings are an undertheorised area of the human experience which are recently gaining attention and which need to be understood in the context of museum visitor studies where they are largely ignored. Drawing on a long-term narrative study of global visitors to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), this paper unearths the conditions of meaning-making or hermeneutic foundations that facilitate the subsequent processes of meaning-making or interpretations. It argues that the engagement with a museum space starts on a sensory, emotive and embodied level. Visitors’ narrations of their visit to the museum reveal that emotions and feelings are not separate stages of the museum experience but are continuously interwoven with intellectual and interpretive processes. Importantly, the empirical evidence shows that certain meanings remain on an embodied level as an ‘internal understanding’ and resist any verbal ‘expressibility’. The conditions flow into the processes of meaning-making during cross-cultural encounters within the material museum world. Here, feelings enter into the realm of culture and thus into the experience of heritage.

Humanising contact zones : the stories and faces of cross-cultural dialogue

We live in a radically ‘cosmopolitanised’ world, facing a plethora of mostly unwanted or unforeseen cross-cultural encounters as side effects of global trade and global threats (Beck, 2006). The potentially positive role of both cultural tourism and museums in this context has been widely recognised and theorised. But what does cross-cultural dialogue mean for the person experiencing it, and how is it negotiated within time and space? Drawing on a long-term narrative study of global visitors to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), I explore cross-cultural meanings empirically through a hermeneutic interpretation embedded in Beck’s ‘cosmopolitan critical theory’. The evidence presented in this research suggests that the individual is the point of departure from which cross-cultural dialogue is humanised by giving it ‘faces’ and stories. I argue that the impact of any travel experience is best understood via the meanings tourists make and negotiate in the long-term.

The e-learning cycle and continuous improvement for e-entrepreneurs

The purpose of this paper is to explore the integration of learning, continuous improvement and innovation theories as a basis for enhancing the education of e-entrepreneurs. Conceptual development of emerging interdisciplinary literature is combined with example analysis to develop the Circle of E-learning uniquely augmented by hermeneutics, action research and the creative destruction cycle of innovation using applied examples of e-entrepreneurship. Four R’s are discussed in the Circle of E-learning; Review, Revise, Reconstruct, and Reveal. Observations for each of the 4R’s are made regarding continuous improvement of the education of e-entrepreneurs. Findings are that the procedural pivot points indicated by the 4R’s can be helpful for administrators and educators to improve operations and outcomes in management and professional development situations.

Phenomenology and the online : the importance of studying experience

 Phenomenological research into the online experience offers real value to Internet Studies and Digital Humanities scholars for three key reasons. Firstly, as an explicitly qualitative approach, it offers a way to gain insights into the experience of going online that are not identified by those who study behaviour alone. Secondly, as phenomenological studies focus on the individual rather than the collective, the resulting small sample size means that the investment required in terms of time spent with participants is minimised. Finally, the interpretation that emerges through the phenomenological research process produces categorisations that could form the basis on which larger scale, Big Data, quantitative research projects could be built.
This paper will explore the above ideas through the lens of my doctoral research, which uses hermeneutic phenomenology to investigate the experience of persona construction by artists on the fringes of the traditional art world, specifically craftivists, tattoo artists, street artists, and performance poets. By incorporating the interpretive categorisations that have come from my early discussions, I will demonstrate the strength of a phenomenological approach to investigating the experience of using the world and social media to present the self to the world.

Working at the nexus between public health policy, practice and research : dynamics of knowledge sharing in the Netherlands

Background
Joining the domains of practice, research and policy is an important aspect of boosting the quality performance required to tackle complex public health problems. “Joining domains” implies a departure from the linear and technocratic knowledge-translation approach. Integrating the practice, research and policy triangle means knowing its elements, appreciating the barriers, identifying possible cooperation strategies and studying strategy effectiveness under specified conditions.
This article examines the dynamic process of developing an Academic Collaborative Centre for Public Health in the Netherlands, with the objective of achieving that the three domains of policy, practice and research become working partners on an equal footing.
Method
An interpretative hermeneutic approach was used to interpret the phenomenon of collaboration at the nexus between the three domains. The project was explicitly grounded in current organizational culture and routines, applied to nexus action. In the process of examination, we used both quantitative (e.g. records) and qualitative data (e.g., interviews and observations). The data were interpreted using the Actor-Network, Institutional Re-Design and Blurring the Boundaries theories.
Results
Results show commitment at strategic level. At the tactical level, however, managers were inclined to prioritize daily routine, while the policy domain remained absent. At the operational level, practitioners learned to do PhD research in real-life practice and researchers became acquainted with problems of practice and policy, resulting in new research initiatives.
Conclusion
We conclude that working at the nexus is an ongoing process of formation and reformation. Strategies based on Institutional Re-Design theories in particular might help to more actively stimulate managers’ involvement to establish mutually supportive networks.

The hermeneutics of transpacific assemblages

This paper introduces the hermeneutics of globalisation to venture beyond political and economic overdetermination. More specifically, I set out to inspect the interpretive complexity of the hermeneutics of transpacific assemblages, namely the surplus of interpretations in a transforming world, which entangles linguistic, cultural, historical and political dimensions in a complex web of negotiations. This paper sets the theoretical and methodological scene for future research on particular empirical realities. The ultimate goal outlined here is the development of an understanding, explanation and critique of actually existing transpacific assemblages as lived and interpreted phenomena. I conclude by introducing the theme ‘cultural heritage’ and its ongoing construction, deconstruction and reconstruction within and beyond museums to dissect the endless hermeneutic becoming, emerging and making of transpacific forms of life.

Globalisation, television and developmental agenda

Theorising the impact of foreign and private television in India since 1991, does not neatly fit into the old debates about one way flow of news and information as reflected in the demand for the New World Information and Communication Order in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1990s, Indian society was invaded from the skies by a number of satellite television signals. However, did this advent of satellite television, vis à vis foreign and private television channels, lead to one way flow of information and entertainment programs from the Western world? Or, did it lead to rapid growth of Indian television industry, resulting in exponential increase in quality and quantity of television programs available to audience?

This paper argues that the de facto de-regulation of the television media since 1991 has led to an enviable growth in local production of programs for more than 450 channels, estimated to be worth Rs30 billion (AS$1 billion), thereby providing an increased level of opportunity for articulation of Indian local stories and culture. This way, the Indian television industry seems to have come full circle – where television, which was launched in the country as a means of development and education but became complacent and the government’s mouth-piece, finally in the past decade-and-a-half has grown sufficiently to potentially provide an outlet for diverse local expressions thereby revitalising democracy in India.