A declaration and remonstrance of the distressed and bleeding frontier inhabitants of the province of Pennsylvania, : presented by them to the Honourable the governor and Assembly of the province, shewing the causes of their late discontent and uneasiness and the grievances under which they have laboured, and which they humbly pray to have redress'd.

Signatures: A-B⁴ C² (C2 blank).

Tadeuskund, the last king of the Lenape. An historical tale.

Microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. University Microfilms (n.d.) (American Culture Series, Reel 332.9)

Boys 'doing' and 'undoing' media education : new possibilities for theory and practice

The purpose of this study is to investigate how secondary school media educators might best meet the needs of students who prefer practical production work to ‘theory’ work in media studies classrooms. This is a significant problem for a curriculum area that claims to develop students’ media literacies by providing them with critical frameworks and a metalanguage for thinking about the media. It is a problem that seems to have become more urgent with the availability of new media technologies and forms like video games. The study is located in the field of media education, which tends to draw on structuralist understandings of the relationships between young people and media and suggests that students can be empowered to resist media’s persuasive discourses. Recent theoretical developments suggest too little emphasis has been placed on the participatory aspects of young people playing with, creating and gaining pleasure from media. This study contributes to this ‘participatory’ approach by bringing post structuralist perspectives to the field, which have been absent from studies of secondary school media education. I suggest theories of media learning must take account of the ongoing formation of students’ subjectivities as they negotiate social, cultural and educational norms. Michel Foucault’s theory of ‘technologies of the self’ and Judith Butler’s theories of performativity and recognition are used to develop an argument that media learning occurs in the context of students negotiating various ‘ethical systems’ as they establish their social viability through achieving recognition within communities of practice. The concept of ‘ethical systems’ has been developed for this study by drawing on Foucault’s theories of discourse and ‘truth regimes’ and Butler’s updating of Althusser’s theory of interpellation. This post structuralist approach makes it possible to investigate the ways in which students productively repeat and vary norms to creatively ‘do’ and ‘undo’ the various media learning activities with which they are required to engage. The study focuses on a group of year ten students in an all boys’ Catholic urban school in Australia who undertook learning about video games in a three-week intensive ‘immersion’ program. The analysis examines the ethical systems operating in the classroom, including formal systems of schooling, informal systems of popular cultural practice and systems of masculinity. It also examines the students’ use of semiotic resources to repeat and/or vary norms while reflecting on, discussing, designing and producing video games. The key findings of the study are that students are motivated to learn technology skills and production processes rather than ‘theory’ work. This motivation stems from the students’ desire to become recognisable in communities of technological and masculine practice. However, student agency is not only possible through critical responses to media, but through performative variation of norms through creative ethical practices as students participate with new media technologies. Therefore, the opportunities exist for media educators to create the conditions for variation of norms through production activities. The study offers several implications for media education theory and practice including: the productive possibilities of post structuralism for informing ways of doing media education; the importance of media teachers having the autonomy to creatively plan curriculum; the advantages of media and technology teachers collaborating to draw on a broad range of resources to develop curriculum; the benefits of placing more emphasis on students’ creative uses of media; and the advantages of blending formal classroom approaches to media education with less formal out of school experiences.

Functional communication training for the treatment of multiply determined behaviour in two boys with autism

Functional communication training was used to replace multiply determined problem behaviour in two boys with autism. Experiment 1 involved a functional analysis of several topographies of problem behaviour using a variation of the procedures described by Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, and Richman. Results suggested that aggression, self-injury, and disruption were multiply determined (i.e., maintained by both attention and access to preferred objects). Experiment 2 involved a multiple-baseline design across subjects. The focus of intervention was to replace aggression, self-injury, and disruption with functionally equivalent communicative alternatives. Both boys were taught alternative “mands” to recruit attention and request preferred objects. Acquisition of these alternative communication skills was associated with concurrent decreases in aggression, self-injury, and disruption. Results suggest that multiply determined challenging behaviour can be decreased by teaching an alternative communication skill to replace each assessed function of the problem behaviour.

A discrete-trial approach to the functional analysis of aggressive behaviour in two boys with autism

Intervention to reduce challenging behaviour may be enhanced when based on a prior functional analysis. The present study describes a discrete-trial approach for the functional analysis of aggressive behaviour in two boys with autism. Twenty brief assessment trials were conducted in the classroom by the teacher under each of three conditions (i.e., attention, task and tangible). The results showed a clear pattern to each child's aggressive behaviour and suggested logical intervention strategies, although the study is limited because it involved only two children. The discrete-trial approach would appear to represent a practical and ecologically valid technique for conducting a functional analysis of challenging behaviour in applied settings

Three little boys and their literacy trajectories

There has been escalating concern about the comparative literacy standards of boys and girls in Australia for some time now. Benchmark testing reveals that girls outperform boys in standardised forms of literacy, with more fine-grained analyses of the results indicating that it is particular groups of boys who are not doing well on these tests. This paper considers this issue, and makes several observations about students, literacy and literacy development and educational futures.

The lost boys : creating appealing and engaging fiction for adolescent male reluctant readers & Duende a young adult novella

Reading plays an important role in establishing lifelong learning and providing the reader with an avenue to new experiences and a language with which to express their ideas and feelings (Owen 2003; Hamston & Love 2005). In particular adolescents need a language that allows them to 'play with their identities in a safe and controlled manner to explore who they want to be in this ever changing world' (Koss & Teale 2009, 569). Block (1995) advances that there is a distinct correlation between what we read and how we live in the world, and argues 'if what we read influences our identity in the world, the ways we are able to imagine and live in the world, then there is some responsibility to address these various texts, their readers and possible reading experiences' (Koss & Teale 2009, 569). Within my research I attempt to take on this responsibility by establishing a connection between reluctant adolescent male readers, and their reading experiences and by using their opinions to create a novella that seeks to more fully engage them. Centred within the larger debate about boys and books are two central discussions: why don't boys read and what should boys read? While a number of reasons why adolescent boys don't read are mentioned in this paper and it might not be possible to fully account for why many are reluctant readers, it is possible to argue that specific forms of literature addressing certain themes and topics relevant to the age group might appeal to reluctant readers. The conceptual framework for this research was structured using a mixed-method approach consisting of four phases. In positioning my research for determining literature that reluctant readers may want to read I draw on a variety of material which tends to support the longevity of S.E Hinton's (1967) argument that 'teenagers today, want to read about teenagers today' (cited in Smith & Wilhelm 2002, 6). My practice-based research was conducted within a high school in Brisbane, Australia. Six participants were selected and required to read three recently published Australian Young Adult novels, and opinion was collected via semi-structured interviews on these case studies. Grounded Theory (Charmaz 2003; Charmaz 2006; Glaser & Strauss 2011) informed the design of the questions, and the process of concurrent interviews and analysis of opinion. This analysis led to construction of my theory: adolescent male reluctant readers want to read about female relationships and family conflict within a story that consists of an adventure that, although unlikely to happen, could happen. From this study there are two main contributions, which have theoretical and practical implications for stakeholders with a vested interest in the discussion regarding boys and books. First, this study, through the research methodology, presents key findings that indicate that reluctant readers are interested in realistic texts addressing themes that will help with the construction of, and understanding of, their own lives. Secondly, the grounded theory derived from these findings is applied to my own praxis and my creative artefact (Duende) is included with this exegesis as a text intended to create a connection between engaging texts and adolescent male reluctant readers.