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Inclusion of students who are blind or low vision in chemistry
Full text linkIn the School of Chemistry of The University of Sydney we aim to build an inclusive culture for all our staff and students. We have embraced changes in the undergraduate curriculum that offer diverse pathways for science students. In first-year chemistry, approximately half of all contact hours are spent in the chemistry laboratory. Laboratory work is particularly challenging for students who are blind or low vision. Historically, these students have worked with laboratory assistants that performed the experiments and informed them of the results and observations. While this allows students to adequately meet the requirements of the degree, it is not a satisfactory arrangement for them and restricts their learning potential in the laboratory. While the number of students with disabilities enrolling into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) continues to increase, they are still underrepresented as a result of technological and attitudinal barriers.
This project aims to empower blind and low vision students to be in command of their own learning, with wide-ranging beneficial effects of improving their self-efficacy, self-confidence, and laboratory skills, and building a highly inclusive learning culture. According to the World Blind Union, there are more than 285,000,000 blind and visionally impaired persons around the world today.
In this presentation we will discuss advanced technological developments (Supalo et al., 2016) that will help blind or low vision students to work independently in the Chemistry laboratory (Devi et al., 2023), including the use of commercially available talking scientific data loggers and braille embosser technologies to assist with data collection and analysis tasks. We aim to create a blueprint for other Schools in our own institution and beyond, and lead strategies in inclusive higher education for Australia. We have already mapped out a complete set of experiments that can be adapted, so that students who are blind or have low vision can carry them out independently. This presentation will discuss those experiments and our strategies towards implementing the whole laboratory program.
REFERENCES
Devi, P., Motion, A., Bhattacharya, J., Supalo, A. C., & Schmid, S. (2023) Unpublished results, The University of Sydney.
Supalo, C. A., Humphrey, J. R., Mallouk, T. E., Wohlers, H. D., & Carlsen, W. S. (2016). Examining the use of adaptive technologies to increase the hands-on participation of students with blindness or low vision in secondary-school chemistry and physics. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 17(4), 1174-1189
Ann-Marie Priest. My Tongue Is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood: La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc, 2022. 471 pages. AU$37.99 ISBN 9781760642341 (Paperback)
Full text linkNathan Hobby reviews Ann-Marie Priest's My Tongue Is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood (2022)
Listen Deep to Subterranean Kinfrastructures
Full text linkThis letter – addressed to the people of Sydney – contains an invitation. As a collection of reflections and thoughts it relates to four core ideas. (1) Urban undergrounds like tunnels, drains, and caverns, are vibrant and nourishing places. They are ecosystems and they are habitats. Undergrounds also present generous opportunities to consider parts of their city that are often made out-of-bounds. The cultural richness of the subterranean city can evoke a profound kind of connection for a city’s people. (2) I affirm that people can connect more meaningfully to a city by engaging in processes of listening to their city. More specifically, I refer to the practice of ‘deep listening’ to undergrounds. (3) Enacting this sonic connection can be mediated by planning that responds to the ‘cry for the right to the city’. (4) The infrastructures that thread into and amongst undergrounds often provide opportunities for nonhuman life to thrive and is so doing necessitate responsibility for humans to care for these infrastructures as kin especially when they are damaged by pollution or degradation. Water flows underneath cities. It flows through gutters into drains, pipes, and canals. It flows, often unseen, and even more often with voices unheard. This letter prompts stillness and reflection of these voices
The review of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content within an undergraduate paramedicine degree curriculum
Full text linkA review of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content within an accredited paramedicine degree curriculum was undertaken as part of major course review and ongoing evaluation of the program. The aim of which was to ensure the course content was appropriate and relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. All content and teaching activities were audited where specific content was explored and noted. Findings were presented to a review team where good practice was highlighted and areas for development were addressed. This has encouraged staff to seek opportunities to embed content in both clinical and non-clinical skills, knowledge teaching and experiences. In addition to encouraging further review of other diverse communities
Analysis of Chemical Representations in the Physical Sciences Textbooks for Grade 12 Learners in South Africa
Full text linkTextbooks play a prominent role in the teaching and learning of chemistry. It is the major organiser and the intended curriculum teachers adapt for their instructional practices. Although chemistry is abstract in nature, the use of visuals or images in textbooks to depict chemical phenomena at different levels remains a meaningful approach to help facilitate students’ understanding of chemistry. Therefore, this study analysed chemical representations in the chemistry components of the Physical Sciences textbooks for grade 12 learners in South Africa. Three textbooks were selected and analysed using the five criteria developed by Gkitzia, Salta and Tzougraki (2011). The findings revealed that the chemical representations in the textbooks were largely at the macroscopic and hybrid levels, with surface features that are ambiguous or explicit and representations that are unlinked to text. In addition, there were few sub-microscopic, multiple, and mixed representations in the textbooks. An interesting result is that a majority of the chemical representations had appropriate captions. The implications of these findings for textbook authors or publishers were discussed
To the City of Murky Dreams
Full text linkThis letter is addressed to the quintessential city, an urban imaginary that encompasses the hopes of planners, writers, and those entangled nature-cultures who populate them. From Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow that set off the garden cities movement, to fiction such as Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and Antoni Jach’s Layers of the City that explore the socio-historical construction of urban imaginaries and more recently Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book set in a climate changed future, cities can be seen as places of abundant resources or destructive development. A swell of these voices build throughout the letter as the many idealistic versions of the city entangle and prevent any one vision from solidifying. This letter will explore these contested imaginaries, particularly the way these imaginaries impact those who are welcomed, fed and allowed to prosper and those who are chased out, excluded, and destroyed. But this letter is also about particular cities: Jach’s Paris, Calvino’s Venice and Wright’s Southern Australian City but also the Kombumerri country (Gold Coast), the city I live in and onto which I inevitably read these imaginaries. How might cities such as those built on Kombumerri country and Naarm be reimagined through critical posthumanism? Drawing on the work of Karen Barad, Astrida Neimanis, Donna Haraway and Val Plumwood, this letter meanders through the murky waters, entangled buildings and constructed garden spaces of literary urban imaginaries as I unsettle the quintessential city
Intervention, ideology, strategic imperatives: An examination of fluctuating relations between Russia/USSR and sub-Saharan Africa
Full text linkThroughout the duration of the Cold War and its aftermath, sub-Saharan Africa has been a hotbed of geopolitical contestation. This article examines the role of the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, as a major regional actor. Beginning with Soviet intervention in the Congo in the 1950s, the article posits that sub-Saharan Africa was an initially marginal region for Soviet strategists which became increasingly significant as the Cold War progressed. Soviet strategy was driven by both raw questions of geopolitical clout and a broader attempt to export its ideology to the Third World. The article elucidates the consequences of intervention from both Soviet and local perspectives, emphasising the agency of African states who were able to leverage superpower competition in pursuit of their own interests. However, the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in a complete retreat from Africa as strategic priorities in Moscow changed rapidly. Recent Russian re-engagement with the region has continuities with Soviet strategy, but there are marked shifts in its underlying rationale. Under Putin, there has been a concerted attempt to form salutary economic and security relationships with regional autocracies, predicated on transactional realpolitik. 
Protecting Australian democracy: From attempting to ban the Communist Party to resisting foreign interference
Full text linkThe article analyses the shift of the limits of democratic tolerance in Australia. In 1950, the Australian Parliament passed an Act under which the activities of the Australian Communist Party were outlawed, and the party had to be dissolved. One year later, the High Court of Australia struck down the Dissolution Act and indicated that the "militant democracy" concept had never been a part of the Commonwealth Constitutional architecture. Thus, the interpretation of the judicial system of Australia went contrary to the findings, for instance, of the German Federal Constitutional Court, which dissolved the Communist Party of Germany in 1956. The latest developments in Oceania, such as a ban on foreign donations and the threat of foreign interference through political parties, require a new examination of the status quo of the limits of democratic tolerance in Australia and whether it has been subject to changes since the establishment of a highly liberal pathway to democratic competition
