Torres Strait Island parents' involvement in their children's mathematics learning : a discussion paper

This paper is a beginning point for discussing what the literature states about parents’ involvement in their children’s mathematics education. Where possible it will focus on Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Little is known about how Torres Strait Islander parents approach their children’s learning of mathematics and how important early mathematics is to mothers. What is known is that is they are keen for their children to receive an education that provides them with opportunities for their present and future lives. However, gaining access to education is challenging given that the language of instruction in schools is written to English conventions, decontextualised and disconnected from the students’ culture, community and home language. This paper discusses some of the issues raised in the literature about what parents are confronted with when making decisions about their children’s education.

Identity, relationships and culture

The purpose of this paper is to consider contemporary developments in the knowledge area dealing with culture, relationships and individual identity. It has three main objectives: the first is to examme the ways in which knowledge is currently produced within the discipline; the second is to look at an alternative approach to the issues, an approach which stresses more piecemeal and contingent ways of understanding; finally, this paper looks at how this new theoretical knowledge is being applied, or can be applied, to areas which impact directly upon educational practices.

Whither culture? Australian horror films and the limitations of cultural policy

Cultural policy that attempts to foster the Australian film industry’s growth and development in an era of globalisation is coming under increasing pressure. Throughout the 2000s, there has been a substantial boom in Australian horror films led by ‘runaway’ horror film Saw (2004), Wolf Creek (2005), and Undead (2003), achieving varying levels of popularity and commercial success worldwide. However, emerging within a national cinema driven by public subsidy and valuing ‘quality’ and ‘cultural content’ over ‘entertainment’ and ‘commercialism’, horror films have generally been antithetical to these objectives. Consequently, the recent boom in horror films has occurred largely outside the purview and subvention of cultural policy. This paper argues that global forces and emerging production and distribution models are challenging the ‘narrowness’ of cultural policy – a narrowness that mandates a particular film culture, circumscribes certain notions of value and limits the variety of films produced domestically. Despite their low-culture status, horror films have been well suited to the Australian film industry’s financial limitations, they are a growth strategy for producers, and a training ground for emerging filmmakers.

Assessing organizational culture? value management to the rescue

As part of a Doctor of Business Administration degree programme jointly run by Curtin University, Perth, Australia and Lingnan University, Hong Kong, a research thesis relating organizational effectiveness to the organizational culture of Hong Kong construction firms involved in public housing is being undertaken. Organizational effectiveness is measured by the Housing Department (HD) Performance Assessment Scoring System (PASS) and organizational culture traits and strengths have been measured by using the Denison Organizational Culture Survey (OCS), developed by Daniel Denison and William S. Neale and based on 16 years of research involving over 1,000 organizations. The PASS scores of building contractors are compared with the OCS scores to determine if there is any significant correlation between highly effective companies and particular organizational strengths and traits. Profiles are then drawn using the Denison Model and can be compared against ‘norms’ for the industry sector on which the survey has been carried out. The next stage of the work is to present the results of the survey to individual companies, conduct focus group interviews to test the results, discover more detail on that company’s culture and discuss possible actions based on the results. It is in this latter stage that certain value management techniques may well prove very useful.

A Proposed Framework for Understanding Information Security Culture and Practices in the Saudi Context

An examination of Information Security (IS) and Information Security Management (ISM) research in Saudi Arabia has shown the need for more rigorous studies focusing on the implementation and adoption processes involved with IS culture and practices. Overall, there is a lack of academic and professional literature about ISM and more specifically IS culture in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the overall aim of this paper is to identify issues and factors that assist the implementation and the adoption of IS culture and practices within the Saudi environment. The goal of this paper is to identify the important conditions for creating an information security culture in Saudi Arabian organizations. We plan to use this framework to investigate whether security culture has emerged into practices in Saudi Arabian organizations.

Information security culture : a behaviour compliance conceptual framework

Understanding the complex dynamic and uncertain characteristics of organisational employees who perform authorised or unauthorised information security activities is deemed to be a very important and challenging task. This paper presents a conceptual framework for classifying and organising the characteristics of organisational subjects involved in these information security practices. Our framework expands the traditional Human Behaviour and the Social Environment perspectives used in social work by identifying how knowledge, skills and individual preferences work to influence individual and group practices with respect to information security management. The classification of concepts and characteristics in the framework arises from a review of recent literature and is underpinned by theoretical models that explain these concepts and characteristics. Further, based upon an exploratory study of three case organisations in Saudi Arabia involving extensive interviews with senior managers, department managers, IT managers, information security officers, and IT staff; this article describes observed information security practices and identifies several factors which appear to be particularly important in influencing information security behaviour. These factors include values associated with national and organisational culture and how they manifest in practice, and activities related to information security management.

Australian Media and Culture

-

Framing Culture : Criticism and Policy in Australia

How is contemporary culture 'framed' - understood, promoted, dissected and defended - in the new approaches being employed in university education today? How do these approaches compare with those seen in the public policy process? What are the implications of these differences for future directions in theory, education, activism and policy? Framing Culture looks at cultural and media studies, which are rapidly growing fields through which students are introduced to contemporary cultural industries such as television, film and video. It compares these approaches with those used to frame public policy and finds a striking lack of correspondence between them. Issues such as Australian content on commercial television and in advertising, new technologies and new media, and violence in the media all highlight the gap between contemporary cultural theories and the way culture and communications are debated in public policy. The reasons for this gap must be investigated before closer relations can be established. Framing Culture brings together cultural studies and policy studies in a lively and innovative way. It suggests avenues for cultural activism that have been neglected in cultural theory and practice, and it will provoke debates which are long overdue.

Rethinking the notion of culture in the national history curriculum

Major global changes are placing new demands on the Australian education system. Recent statements by the Prime Minister, together with current education policy and national curriculum documents available in the public domain, look to education’s role in promoting economic prosperity and social cohesion. Collectively, they emphasise the need to equip young Australians with the knowledge, understandings and skills required to compete in the global economy and participate as engaged citizens in a culturally diverse world. However, the decision to prioritise discipline-based learning in the forthcoming Australian history curriculum without specifically encompassing culture as a referent, raises the following question. How will students acquire the cultural knowledge, understandings and skills necessary for this process? This paper addresses this question by situating the current push for a national history curriculum, with specific reference to the study of Indigenous history and the study of Asia in Australia.

Creativity, culture and tourism : the case of Istanbul and London film industries

During the last decade many cities have sought to promote creativity as a driver for economic growth. They have done this by encouraging specific sectors of creative industries. This paper focuses on the film industry as one of these sectors which also has a high level of interaction with place. Film industry, has had an important role in incubating the creativity potential. It can be a powerful magnet for creative people, fostering indigenous creativity and attracting outside talent, and might thus contribute to the formation of creative cities. This recent research suggests that the film industry has positively effect on tourism by increasing place recognition through the locations used in films and for cities that host film festivals. Film festivals provide events, workshops and experiences that allow visitors to express themselves through interaction with the place and its living culture. This paper examines the importance of creative industries for both urban development and sustainable tourism. To explore the relation between creative tourism, culture and the film industry and its effect on successful tourism planning this paper presents the preliminary findings of case studies of the film industry in Beyo

Socio-cultural dimensions of Active Futures : Importance of studying migrants’ perspectives of wellness

In this paper we provide a migrant perspective on how women and men from a different culture perceive wellness while settling down in a new country. We are discussing the texts of research interviews with Indian migrant women and men that illuminate their perception of lifestyle enhancement in their adopted country Australia. Our purpose is to show how socio-cultural factors influence the migrants‟ perspective of lifestyle enhancement, and to what extent they direct their wellness. Personal development, both in theory and practice, is a huge concept in Australia. Concerted efforts are made towards increasing public awareness about health literacy leading to a better understanding and practice of wellness. However, as research studies have pointed out, lifestyle enhancement leading to holistic wellness is not void of socio-cultural factors. The number of women and men migrating to Australia from India has increased greatly in the present decade. As migrants their participation in developing Australian society is significant. So what is their socio-cultural perception of wellness including nutrition and physical exercises as active citizens? How do young Indian migrants participate in lifestyle enhancement programmes? As parents what are their socio-cultural beliefs, attitudes, practices and values, and how do they influence their children‟s participation in personal development and PE progammes? To what extent gender differences exist in such participation levels? What is the space available in State school curriculum to learn from the migrants‟ cultures towards enhancing lifestyles including nutrition and personal development?The findings may sensitise Australian researchers, academics, school teachers and practitioners of wellness therapies. Long term research studies may inform the governments and HPE practitioners of the changes occurring in such values, beliefs and practices as they incorporate nutrition and lifestyles of Australian society.

Ourplace : the convergence of locative media and online participatory culture

The trans-locative potential of the Internet has driven the design of many online applications. Online communities largely cluster around topics of interest, which take precedence over participants’ geographical locations. The site of production is often disregarded when creative content appears online. However, for some, a sense of place is a defining aspect of creativity. Yet environments that focus on the display and sharing of regionally situated content have, so far, been largely overlooked. Recent developments in geo-technologies have precipitated the emergence of a new field of interactive media. Entitled locative media, it emphasizes the geographical context of media. This paper argues that we might combine practices of locative media (experiential mapping and geo-spatial annotation) with aspects of online participatory culture (uploading, file-sharing and search categorization) to produce online applications that support geographically ‘located’ communities. It discusses the design considerations and possibilities of this convergence,making reference to an example, OurPlace 3G to 3D, which has to date been developed as a prototype.1 It goes on to discuss the benefits and potential uses of such convergent applications, including the co-production of spatial- emporal narratives of place.

Monopoly, monopsony, and the value of culture in a digital age: An axiology of two multimedia resource repositories

Broadly speaking, axiology is the study of values. Axiologies are expressed materially in patterns of choices that are both culture-bound and definitive of different cultures. They are expressed in the language we use; in the friends we keep; in the clothes we wear; in what we read, write, and watch; in the technologies we use; in the gods we believe in and pray to; in the music we make and listen to—indeed, in every kind of activity that can be counted as a definitive element of culture. In what follows, I describe the axiological underpinnings of two closely related multimedia repository projects— Australian Creative Resources Online (ACRO) and The Canadian Centre for Cultural Innovation (CCCI)—and how these are oriented towards a potentially liberating role for digital repositories.

Queering cyberspace : fan fiction communities as spaces for expressing and exploring sexuality

The social construction of sexuality over the past one hundred and fifty years has created a dichotomy between heterosexual and non-heterosexual identities that essentially positions the former as “normal” and the latter as deviant. Even Kinsey’s and others’ work on the continuum of sexualities did little to alter the predominantly heterosexist perception of the non-heterosexual as “other” (Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin 2007; Esterberg 2006; Franceour and Noonan 2007). Some political action and academic work is beginning to challenge such perceptions. Even some avenues of social interaction, such as the recent proliferation of online communities, may also challenge such views, or at least contribute to their being rethought in some ways. This chapter explores a specific kind of online community devoted to fan fiction, specifically homoerotic – or what is known colloquially as “slash” – fan fiction. Fan fiction is fiction, published on the internet, and written by fans of well-known books and television shows, using the characters to create new and varied plots. “Slash” refers to the pairing of two of the male characters in a romantic relationship, and the term comes from the punctuation mark dividing the named pair as, for example, Spock/Kirk from the Star Trek television series. Although there are some slash fan-fiction stories devoted to female-female relationships – called “femmeslash” – the term “slash” generally refers to male-male relationships, and will be utilized throughout this chapter, given that the research discussed focuses on communities centered around one such male pairing.

Divining the martyr : a multimedia installation presentation on contemporary makeover surgery

Divining the Martyr is a project developed in order to achieve the Master of Arts (Research) degree. This is composed of 70% creative work displayed in an exhibition and 30% written work contained in this exegesis. The project was developed through practice-led research in order to answer the question “In what ways can creative practice synthesize and illuminate issues of martyrdom in contemporary makeover culture?” The question is answered using a postmodern framework about martyrdom as it is manifested in contemporary society. The themes analyzed throughout this exegesis relate to concepts about sainthood and makeover culture combined with actual examples of tragic cases of cosmetic procedures. The outcomes of this project fused three elements: Mexican cultural history, Mexican (Catholic) religious traditions, and cosmetic makeover surgery. The final outcomes were a series of installations integrating contemporary and traditional interdisciplinary media, such as sound, light, x-ray technology, sculpture, video and aspects of performance. These creative works complement each other in their presentation and concept, promoting an original contribution to the theme of contemporary martyrdom in makeover culture.