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Gender policy in Australian schools: a missed opportunity?
No full textThis paper describes the rise of boys' education as a substantial social and educational issue in Australia in the 1990s, mapping the changes in Australian discourses on boys' education in this period. Ideas and authors informed by the men's movement entered the discourses about boys' education, contributing to a wave of teacher experimentation and new ways of thinking about gender policies in schools. The author suggests that there is currently a policy impasse, and proposes a new multi-disciplinary approach bringing together academic, practitioner, policy, and public discourses on boys' education
Engaging university learning: the experiences of students entering university via recognition of prior industrial experience
No full textIn this study, the academic experiences of 33 male students from an industrial background were investigated as they completed a two-year education degree. The purpose of the study was to investigate the quality of student adjustment to an academic environment following extensive industrial training and experience. Students completed a series of questionnaires relating to learning as well as a series of open-ended questions relating to academic and social adjustment. Data indicated that while students had developed a positive learning profile, a continued belief in the structural simplicity of knowledge appeared to have a significant diminishing effect on the quality of adjustment and on the quality of learning outcomes. Open-ended responses revealed patterns of academic adjustment consistent with the restricted understanding of the nature of university learning. Implications of these data for both recognition of prior learning (RPL) entry and ongoing support are broached
Students' reasons for working or not working in class: aligning academic and social motivation
No full textThis study investigated the extent to which students worked or did not work in school for essentially social reasons rather than for academic reasons. Primary students in Year 6 (n = 253) and high school students in Year 7 (n = 231) completed a survey about reasons for working or not working in school. Students indicated that social motives encompassing parents, teachers, and peers were important to them, both as reasons to work and reasons not to work. ANOVA analyses produced interesting sex and level of schooling differences. Females students and primary students were more likely to hold social reasons for working hard (including to please the teacher, to make the teacher look good, and wanting to be like friends), while male students and high school students were more likely to hold social reasons for not working (including to annoy a disliked teacher, to make a disliked teacher look incompetent, wanting to be like friends, not wanting to look stupid, and not working because parents don’t care). These results are discussed in terms of the complexity of students’ motivation. Though it is desirable to have students working because they find tasks intrinsically interesting, it is unrealistic to imagine that this will occur for most students most of the time. Pedagogy that incorporates students’ social motives and fosters an awareness of future goals may increase learning
Integral input-to-state stability of interconnected iISS systems by means of a lower-dimensional comparison system
No full textWe consider arbitrarily many interconnected integral Input-to-State Stable (iISS) systems in an arbitrary interconnection topology and provide an (i)ISS comparison principle for networks. We show that global asymptotic stability of the origin (GAS) of a lower-dimensional system termed the comparison system, which is based on the individual dissipative Lyapunov iISS inequalities, together with a scaling condition implies the existence of an iISS Lyapunov function of the composite system. A sufficient (but not necessary) condition for 0-GAS of the interconnection is shown in this paper to be the generalized small-gain condition derived by Dashkovskiy et al., but this time in a dissipative Lyapunov setting. We also provide geometric intuition behind growth rate conditions for the stability of cascaded iISS systems
Securing an EHR in a health sector digital ecosystem
No full textThis paper examines the challenges in maintaining system security in the dynamic environment of eHealth where there are system components scattered among private and public organisations and used by a spectrum of professionals, each with different needs. The need for more interoperability between these systems has strained the ability of system administrators to maintain compliance with security protocols by staff working in these environments
Reliability and validity of the Workhab Functional Capacity Evaluation
No full textFunctional Capacity Evaluations (FCEs) are part of practice in occupational rehabilitation, and are designed to define an individual’s functional abilities in the context of safe, productive work tasks. The WorkHab Functional Capacity Evaluation is one of many currently available FCEs. It is commonly used in Australian occupational rehabilitation: however, there is a lack of evidence of its psychometric properties. This thesis reports on research that investigated reliability and aspects of validity of the WorkHab FCE.
The current practice of FCE use in the Australian occupational rehabilitation context was investigated. Qualitative and quantitative methodology were used to study the perceptions and practices of health professionals about the use and clinical utility of FCE’s. Results found health professionals use more than one FCE, with the WorkHab FCE the second most commonly used in NSW Australia. There was consistency and similarities in FCE use in practice, with participants adapting FCEs to suit the situation and completing parts rather than the whole of a FCE. Four studies subsequently investigated the measurement properties of the WorkHab FCE. The manual handling components were evaluated, including test-retest reliability in healthy adults, and intra-rater and inter-rater reliability using DVD footage of injured workers FCEs. Content validity was evaluated using a cross sectional survey of health professionals who use FCEs in practice. Construct validity of the bench to shoulder lift was explored using Electromyography (EMG) to study muscle activity in the upper body. Results found substantial levels of test-retest reliability and intra-rater and inter-rater reliability for the lifting components of the WorkHab FCE. The findings support content validity for the WorkHab FCE specifically in relation to manual work and vocational retraining; however, construct (convergent) validity of the safe maximal lift of the bench to shoulder lift of the WorkHab FCE was unable to be established using EMG physiological parameters. Future directions for research of the WorkHab FCE and implications for clinical practice are discussed.</p
An uncertain space: (dis-)locating the Frenchness of French and Australian detective fiction
No full textMuch about detective fiction is uncertain. There are, for example, all the various genres and sub-genres of which it is composed. It is often difficult to find agreement on what would appear the most basic generic distinctions, such as those between detective and crime fiction, and the whodunit and the thriller; and there are those who would argue that other closely related categories - such as noir, which has become, for others, synonymous with crime/detective fiction, and particularly the hard-boiled variety - do not constitute genres at all. On the other hand, there are also the certainties, which it has become de rigueur to mention at the beginning of volumes such as this. It is, for example, quite certain that critical interest in this literary 'genre' has flourished in recent years; it is also clear that, in spite of its continued categorization in bookshops as separate from 'literature', 'crime fiction' sits comfortably amongst the most popular types of fiction read today. In France, this genre (new or otherwise, genre or not) has a new valeur sûtre: Fred Vargas, whom Éditions Viviane Hamy are proud to present as the undisputed queen of the French detective novel (la reine du polar français). And, for the purposes of the present study, Vargas's latest best-selling novel has an intriguingly reflexive-sounding title: Un lieu incertain
Her old Ayah: the transcolonial significance of the Indian domestic worker in India and Australia
No full textThe historical representation of white women in India and Australia bears a striking similarity: on the one hand, we find the 'memsahib' and, on the other, the 'missus', with both of them designated by their role not only of wife and mother to white men, but as mistress to native workers. In the case of the former, this designation as mistress is paramount, for, in the nostalgic construction of the British Raj, perhaps no one figure looms quite so large as the cherished ayah or lady's maid. This paper is a rumination on the significance of this image of the Indian domestic worker in imagined women's relationships of (Anglophone) colonialism. Sparked by the recollections of my Australian born great-grandmother, Joan Kingsley-Strack, reflecting on the life of her Anglo-Indian grandmother, Maggie Hobbes (and in her case the term 'Anglo-Indian' is fittingly ambiguous), my discussion tentatively traces the constitution of an ideology of white colonial womanhood, through the systems of circulation of cultural ideas and attitudes that emerged in Anglophone colonialism. In a transcolonial culture, the figure of the ayah was significant, in a way that the very banality of the women's work she performed tends to obscure
An EPID based method for efficient and precise asymmetric jaw alignment quality assurance
No full textThe aim of this work was to investigate the use of amorphous silicon electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs) for regular quality assurance of linear accelerator asymmetric jaw junctioning. The method uses the beam central axis position on the EPID measured to subpixel accuracy found from two EPID images with 180° opposing collimator angles. Individual zero jaw position (“half-beam blocked”) images are then acquired and the jaw position precisely determined for each using penumbra interpolation. The accuracy of determining jaw position with the EPID method was measured by translating a block (simulating a jaw) by known distances, using a translation stage, and then measuring each translation distance with the EPID. To establish the utility of EPID based junction dose measurements, radiographic film measurements of junction dose maxima/minima as a function of jaw gap/overlap were made and compared to EPID measurements. Using the method, the long-term stability of zero jaw positioning was assessed for four linear accelerators over a 1–1.5 yr time period. The stability at nonzero gantry angles was assessed over a shorter time period. The accuracy of determining jaw translations with the method was within 0.14 mm found using the translation stage [standard deviation (SD) of 0.037 mm]. The junction doses measured with the EPID were different from film due to the nonwater equivalent EPID scattering properties and hence different penumbra profile. The doses were approximately linear with gap or overlap, and a correction factor was derived to convert EPID measured junction dose to film measured equivalent. Over a 1 yr period, the zero jaw positions at gantry zero position were highly reproducible with an average SD of 0.07 mm for the 16 collimator jaws examined. However, the average jaw positions ranged from −0.7 to 0.9 mm relative to central axis for the different jaws. The zero jaw position was also reproducible at gantry 90° position with 0.1 mm SD variation with the mean jaw position offset from the gantry zero position consistently by 0.3–0.4 mm for the jaws studied. The EPID based method is efficient and yields more precise data on linear accelerator jaw positioning and reproducibility than previous methods. The results highlight that zero jaw positions are highly reproducible to a level much smaller than the displayed jaw resolution and that there is a need for better methods to calibrate the jaw positioning
Studies into the microbiological safety of poultry processing in New South Wales, Australia
No full textThe NSW poultry processing industry has gone through an evolution of regulatory change over the past 100 years from an inspection system through to a HACCP-based food safety system audited by the NSW Food Safety Authority (FSA). This required the restructuring of legislation and an understanding of the appropriate microbiological standards by which the FSA could judge the effectiveness of the operator’s processing operation. This microbiological standard was developed following two surveys of the vast majority of registered poultry processors in NSW. These surveys demonstrated the microbiological outcomes that could be achieved by the processors. From this knowledge, a new standard for the levels of Escherichia coli (E. coli) on product were established that were to be used by the operator and the regulator to judge the effectiveness of the operator’s program. Studies into the carriage of Salmonella species on raw poultry in the plant and on the reliability of the microbiological tests being used within the survey and by industry were carried out. They found that there had been a significant reduction in carriage of Salmonella species on raw poultry from 48.6% to 34.2% over two years. The test method utilised in the survey and one utilised by the Australian industry were shown to be able to detect Salmonella Typhimurium at 1-3 CFU per ml of carcase rinse fluid. An examination of E. coli by PCR to determine the likelihood that E. coli carried by NSW poultry were capable of inducing Haemorrhagic Uraemic Syndrome (HUS) found no evidence of shigatoxin producing genes (stx1 or stx2) or enterohaemorrhagic E. coli specific plasmid (ehxA). The attachment factor, intimin (eaeA) was found in E. coli from 93 of 430 carcases (21.6%). Campylobacter species were found on 94% of all carcases in the first survey. A count of Campylobacter species on a series of carcases from one plant found an average of 163 CFU per cm2 on the broiler chickens tested. Because raw poultry carry pathogens from the processing plant into the wider community, the use of two post-chill sanitisers was examined. This study found that it is possible to significantly reduce the number of pathogens being carried by raw poultry. The use of post-chill sanitisers provides a potential means of reducing the risk of foodborne illness arising from the handling of raw poultry and eating undercooked poultry meat