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The “Novel-Textbook”: Using a Novel as the Main Teaching Material in the Adult GFL Classroom
Get PDFAll rights reserved © 2017, Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.Much research in the field of Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) demonstrates that using literature as a teaching material in the Foreign Language (FL) classroom can contribute significantly to learning the target language. In particular, in the field of teaching Greek as a Foreign Language (GFL), the importance of using literature as a supplementary teaching material in the Greek language classroom and the practical considerations involved have been the focus of a number of papers in the last few years. The present paper wishes to suggest that the literary text and, in particular, the novel can also be used as an alternative to the traditional GFL textbook and, thus, form the central focus of instruction in a GFL course. It also suggests that the benefits of using literature in the GFL classroom can be fully exploited and extended when a “novel-textbook”1 is used as the main teaching material
The Gothic Elements in Grigorios Xenopoulos’ Novel Teresa Varma-Dakosta
Get PDFAll rights reserved © 2017, Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.The purpose of the paper is mainly to pinpoint, examine and elaborate on the Gothic elements that are disseminated in Grigorios Xenopoulos’ novel Teresa Varma-Dakosta. Teresa’s physical and mental transformation is connected to the Count Varmas’ old house because this place has a negative effect on her as it provokes a sense of fear and extreme anxiety. Moreover, the medieval environment of the house brings to the surface her latent abominable desires that can lead her to murder. The only thing that remains unchanged after living in the old palace is Teresa’s political and social beliefs. Being aristocrat by nature, she believes that the French Revolution was pointless and she is convinced that what is right by nature can be re-established. Teresa’s intricate personality, which is revealed in the Gothic ambience of the old house, concentrates several traits of the male villains of the traditional Gothic novels
Ευρωπαϊκές Ανθολογίες Ελληνικής Ποίησης την Περίοδο του Μεσοπολέμου. Μια Πρώτη Ανάγνωση
Get PDFAll rights reserved © 2017, Modern Greek Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.Please note: This article is in Greek.
European anthologies of Greek poetry during the interwar period. A first reading: During the Decade 1920–1930 the Greek poetry, specially represented by C. Palamas, whose poems had been translated in English, became widely known in Europe and overseas. So, some European literati edited anthologies of modern Greek poets. The French essayist and poet Jean Michel, the Austrian journalist Josef Kalmer and the German philologist and historian Karl Dieterich were among them. This paper presents the above anthologists and their anthologies, the more, unknown till now. Although these anthologists attempted to present a panorama of the modern Greek poetry from the first poetic collection of C. Palamas in 1886 till 1930, they are far beyond from their initial purposes, because of their very subjective criteria. Besides it becomes obvious that they do not know well C. Caryotakis and the neoromantismus, which prevailed in modern Greek literature of the period released their anthologies
Improving preventive health care in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander primary care settings
Get PDFThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background
Like other colonised populations, Indigenous Australians experience poorer health outcomes than non-Indigenous Australians. Preventable chronic disease is the largest contributor to the health differential between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, but recommended best-practice preventive care is not consistently provided to Indigenous Australians. Significant improvement in health care delivery could be achieved through identifying and minimising evidence-practice gaps. Our objective was to use clinical audit data to create a framework of the priority evidence-practice gaps, strategies to address them, and drivers to support these strategies in the delivery of recommended preventive care.
Methods
De-identified preventive health clinical audit data from 137 primary health care (PHC) centres in five jurisdictions were analysed (n = 17,108 audited records of well adults with no documented major chronic disease; 367 system assessments; 2005–2014), together with stakeholder survey data relating to interpretation of these data, using a mixed-methods approach (n = 152 responses collated in 2015–16). Stakeholders surveyed included clinicians, managers, policy officers, continuous quality improvement (CQI) facilitators and academics. Priority evidence-practice gaps and associated barriers, enablers and strategies to address the gaps were identified and reported back through two-stages of consultation. Further analysis and interpretation of these data were used to develop a framework of strategies and drivers for health service improvement.
Results
Stakeholder identified priorities were: following-up abnormal test results; completing cardiovascular risk assessments; timely recording of results; recording enquiries about living conditions, family relationships and substance use; providing support for clients identified with emotional wellbeing risk; enhancing systems to enable team function and continuity of care. Drivers identified for improving care in these areas included: strong Indigenous participation in the PHC service; appropriate team structure and function to support preventive care; meaningful use of data to support quality of care and CQI; and corporate support functions and structures.
Conclusion
The framework should be useful for guiding development and implementation of barrier-driven, tailored interventions for primary health care service delivery and policy contexts, and for guiding further research. While specific strategies to improve the quality of preventive care need to be tailored to local context, these findings reinforce the requirement for multi-level action across the system. The framework and findings may be useful for similar purposes in other parts of the world, with appropriate attention to context in different locations
ac.care, Murraylands, Aspire Children’s Development and Wellbeing Program, Communities for Children: Final Report
Get PDFIntroduction: The evaluation of one of the programs provided by the Communities for Children initiative (CfC) is presented here. This ac.care Murraylands commissioned report is divided into five sections. The first section presents the background information on the CfC Initiative including an outline of the demographic and epidemiological outcomes for children in the Murraylands Rural Region. Additionally, the introduction outlines some of the theoretical basis for the models of care and the therapeutic models of care that are common in all the programs provided. Subsequent sections provide the therapeutic models of care specific to the program provided by the organisation or service. The report also provides a conclusion for each program type; i.e. the program provided to parents and children, and the program provided to staff/workers in the Murraylands Rural Region, and the conclusion for the evaluation research project
Interprofessional teamwork in comprehensive primary healthcare services: Findings from a mixed methods study
No full text© 2018 Taylor & FrancisThis article draws on data from a 5-year project that examined the effectiveness of Comprehensive primary healthcare (CPHC) in local communities. A hallmark of CPHC services is interprofessional teamwork. Drawing from this study, our article presents factors that enabled, or hindered, healthcare teams working interprofessionally in Australian primary healthcare (PHC) services. The article reports on the experiences of teams working in six Australian PHC services (four managed by state governments, one non-government sexual health organisation, and one Aboriginal community-controlled health service) during a time of significant health sector restructure. Findings are drawn from two key methods: an online survey of practitioners and managers (n = 154), and interviews with managers and practitioners (n = 60) from the six study sites. The majority of survey respondents worked with other health professionals in their service to provide interprofessional care to clients. Processes included formal team meetings, case conferencing, referring clients to other health professionals if needed, informal communication with other health professionals about clients, and team-based delivery of care. A range of interrelated factors affected interprofessional work at the services, from contextual, organisational, processual, and relational domains. Funding cuts and policy changes that saw a reorientation and re-medicalisation of South Australian services undermined interprofessional work, while a shared CPHC culture and commitment among some staff was helpful in resisting some of these effects. The co-location of services was a factor in PHC teams working interprofessionally and not only enabled some PHC teams to work more interprofessionally but also created barriers to interprofessional teamwork through disruption resulting from restructuring of services. Our study indicates the importance of decision makers taking into account the potential effects of policy and structural changes on interprofessional teamwork. Decision makers should strive to minimise unintended negative effects of changes on the functioning of interprofessional teams
Health in All Policies in South Australia-Did It Promote and Enact an Equity Perspective?
Get PDF© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Mobilising cross-sectoral action is helpful in addressing the range of social determinants that contribute to health inequities. The South Australian Health in All Policies (SA HiAP) approach was implemented from 2007 to stimulate cross-sector policy activity to address the social determinants of health to improve population wellbeing and reduce health inequities. This paper presents selected findings from a five year multi-methods research study of the SA HiAP approach and draws on data collected during interviews, observation, case studies, and document analysis. The analysis shows that SA HiAP had dual goals of facilitating joined-up government for co-benefits (process focus); and addressing social determinants of health and inequities through cross-sectoral policy activity (outcomes focus). Government agencies readily understood HiAP as providing tools for improving the process of intersectoral policy development, while the more distal outcome-focused intent of improving equity was not well understood and gained less traction. While some early rhetorical support existed for progressing an equity agenda through SA HiAP, subsequent economic pressures resulted in the government narrowing its priorities to economic goals. The paper concludes that SA HiAP’s initial intentions to address equity were only partially enacted and little was done to reduce inequities. Emerging opportunities in SA, and internationally, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals, may revive interest in addressing equity
Wine tax reform needed to unwrap red tape strangling struggling industry
Get PDFCopyright © 2017 LexisNexis. This article is made available per the publisher's Content Sharing policy.The wine tax and its accompanying rebate are outdated and they distort the Australian wine industry. The tax is encouraging the production of cheap wines resulting in oversupply at a time when the industry is struggling to compete internationally.
While Australian wine drinkers might not care too much about drinking non-premium wine, this comes at the expense of Australia’s reputation as a premium wine producer to overseas markets.1
The wine tax was originally established in 1930 as a wholesale sales tax, at a rate of 2.5%. Over time, it was repealed and then reintroduced, steadily increasing to 41% by 1997.
With the advent of the 10% GST in 2000, the wine tax was reduced to 29% (and renamed as the wine equalisation tax (WET)) so as not to alter the overall tax burden. Australian producers (and New Zealanders) can claim an annual rebate off the wine tax of up to $500,000
Exploring status and determinants of prenatal and postnatal visits in western China: in the background of the new health system reform
Get PDFThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background
Prenatal and postnatal visits are two effective interventions for protection and promotion of maternal health by reducing maternal mortality and improving the quality of birth. There is limited nationally representative data regarding the changes of prenatal and postnatal visits since the latest health system reform initiated in 2009 in Shaanxi, China. The aim of this study was to explore the current status and determinants of prenatal and postnatal visits in the background of new health system reform.
Methods
Data were drawn from two waves of National Health Service Surveys in Shaanxi Province which were conducted prior and post the health system reform in 2008 and 2013, respectively. A concentration index was employed to measure the degree of income-related inequality of maternal health services utilization. Multilevel mix-effects logistic regressions were applied to study the factors associated with prenatal and postnatal visits.
Results
The study sample consists of 2398 women aged 15-49 years old. The data of the 5th National Health Services Survey in 2013 showed in the criterion of the World Health Organization (WHO), the percentage of women receiving ≥4 prenatal visits was 84.79% for urban women and 82.20% for rural women, with women receiving ≥3 postnatal visits were 26.48 and 25.29% for urban and rural women respectively. In the criterion of China’s ≥ 5 prenatal visits the percentages were 72.25% for urban women and 70.33% for rural women; 61.69% of urban women and 71.50% of rural women received ≥1 postnatal visits. As for urban women, the concentration index of postnatal visit utilization was −0.075 (95% CI:-0.148, −0.020) after the health system reform. The determinants related to prenatal and postnatal visits were the change of reform, women’s education, parity and the delivery institution.
Conclusions
This study showed the utilization of prenatal and postnatal visits met the requirement of the WHO, higher than other areas in China and other developing countries after the new health system reform. The new health system reform increased the utilization of postnatal visits in poor urban women and improved the frequency of prenatal and postnatal visits in rural women
Net ecosystem carbon exchange of a dry temperate eucalypt forest
Get PDFThis work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.Forest ecosystems play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle by sequestering a considerable fraction of anthropogenic CO2, thereby contributing to climate change mitigation. However, there is a gap in our understanding about the carbon dynamics of eucalypt (broadleaf evergreen) forests in temperate climates, which might differ from temperate evergreen coniferous or deciduous broadleaved forests given their fundamental differences in physiology, phenology and growth dynamics. To address this gap we undertook a 3-year study (2010–2012) of eddy covariance measurements in a dry temperate eucalypt forest in southeastern Australia. We determined the annual net carbon balance and investigated the temporal (seasonal and inter-annual) variability in and environmental controls of net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE), gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER). The forest was a large and constant carbon sink throughout the study period, even in winter, with an overall mean NEE of −1234 ± 109 (SE) g C m−2 yr−1. Estimated annual ER was similar for 2010 and 2011 but decreased in 2012 ranging from 1603 to 1346 g C m−2 yr−1, whereas GPP showed no significant inter-annual variability, with a mean annual estimate of 2728 ± 39 g C m−2 yr−1. All ecosystem carbon fluxes had a pronounced seasonality, with GPP being greatest during spring and summer and ER being highest during summer, whereas peaks in NEE occurred in early spring and again in summer. High NEE in spring was likely caused by a delayed increase in ER due to low temperatures. A strong seasonal pattern in environmental controls of daytime and night-time NEE was revealed. Daytime NEE was equally explained by incoming solar radiation and air temperature, whereas air temperature was the main environmental driver of night-time NEE. The forest experienced unusual above-average annual rainfall during the first 2 years of this 3-year period so that soil water content remained relatively high and the forest was not water limited. Our results show the potential of temperate eucalypt forests to sequester large amounts of carbon when not water limited. However, further studies using bottom-up approaches are needed to validate measurements from the eddy covariance flux tower and to account for a possible underestimation in ER due to advection fluxes