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Identifying the Language of Children’s Rights in Early Childhood Settings
No full textThis thesis explores how early childhood educators interpret and enact the language of children’s rights in practice, with a specific focus on four key concepts that underpin the practical application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF): the image of the child, child participation, child voice, and consent. In response to persistent ambiguities surrounding the practical application of rights-based education in early childhood settings, a Toolkit (Identifying the Language of Children’s Rights Toolkit), a reflective professional learning resource aimed at supporting educators to embed rights-based concepts meaningfully into their daily pedagogical practices, was designed and implemented.
Using a qualitative single-site case study methodology, the study engaged educators from one early learning service in metropolitan Melbourne. Through participant interviews, reflective tasks and tools and critical reflection, participants explored how their beliefs, assumptions, and interactions shaped their ability to recognise and support children's rights, particularly in relation to child voice, consent, and protective behaviours. Data was analysed thematically, revealing four interconnected themes: Reimagining the Image of the Child, The Everydayness of Rights, Negotiating Power and Participation, and From Awareness to Advocacy. These themes illuminate how educators moved from abstract understanding to authentic, rights-informed action.
Central to this research was a commitment to ethical, relational methodology. Participants’ voices were honoured not merely as data points, but as co-constructors of knowledge whose insights offer powerful contributions to both policy and practice. The findings affirm that reflective, practitioner-led inquiry—supported by targeted professional tools—can empower educators to bridge the gap between theory and practice, develop a shared language of rights, and promote a more just, inclusive, and child-centred approach to early education.</p
YourGround New South Wales, Baseline Insights Report
No full textWhat is YourGround NSW? YourGround NSW is a crowdsourced social research project developed by Monash University XYX Lab and CrowdSpot for New South Wales. It captures safety perceptions by inviting women and gender diverse people to share their public space experiences through a web-based interactive map and survey. What were the goals of the project? The survey aimed to strengthen the evidence base regarding the safety of women and gender diverse people in public spaces across New South Wales. Previous research in the state indicates that women often experience feelings of unsafety in public spaces.3 Consequently, women and gender diverse individuals face barriers in accessing education, work, healthcare, and social engagement. Addressing these issues is crucial for fostering inclusive and safe public spaces for all individuals in New South Wales. What is the purpose and scope of this report? The purpose of this report is to provide a comprehensive analysis of safety perceptions in public spaces among women and gender diverse people in New South Wales drawn from YourGround NSW. It explores the impact of safe and unsafe experiences on the use of public space and conducts detailed data analysis, disaggregated by demographic groups, locations, and activities, to uncover patterns and trends. The report offers comprehensive insights into the factors influencing safety perceptions and outlines suggestions for enhancing safety and inclusivity in public spaces for women and gender diverse people. Methodology / How data was collected? The data for YourGround NSW was collected through an online spatial survey accessible to women and gender diverse people across New South Wales. Participants were invited to pinpoint public spaces where they felt either uneasy or safe and included. Through this platform, real-life stories and experiences were gathered to provide insights into safety perceptions. Additionally, the survey allowed for the collection of demographic information to enable analysis by various groups.</p
“My Heart is for Vietnamese, but i think and write in English”: Identity (Re)Construction of Third Culture Kids – The Interplay between Language, Culture and Identity.
No full textThe thesis uses a case study approach to investigate the bilingual/bicultural identity negotiation of six Vietnamese-English primary school children during their sojourn in Australia and after they return to Vietnam or become permanent residents. The research aims to provide an understanding of how these children perceive and negotiate their bilingual/bicultural identity in and between the two different contexts and how this process is influenced by surrounding family, school and societal factors. Driven by that objective, the study is informed by a poststructuralist approach to identity and draws on three theoretical frameworks for data analysis and discussion: Bronfenbrenner’s (1979; 1986) model of human development, Gee’s (2000-2001) identity framework, and Fielding’s (2015) bilingual identity negotiation framework.
Data were collected in two phases corresponding to the children’s stay in Australia and Vietnam though in the second stage, three of them were still residing in Australia and three had returned to Vietnam. Inspired by the Mosaic approach, the study incorporated findings from (1) questionnaire surveys delivered to parents and their children; (2) interviews with parents and children; (3) journal writing, (4) language portraits and (5) self-chosen artefacts provided by the children which they thought best represented their connection with Australia and Vietnam. Common themes were extracted from the dataset for the discussion of how the children’s bilingual/bicultural identification was perceived by themselves and their parents.
The findings suggest that the children constantly negotiated their subject positionings in relation to other social agents and structures in order to achieve their desired identity. Regarding their bilingual identification, translanguaging was commonplace with the children actively selecting the language(s) appropriate for different interactional situations in both Australia and Vietnam. Having said that, the children tended to identify themselves as unbalanced bilinguals and to show a stronger identification with the English language than with the Vietnamese language in both stages. In Australia, their identification with Vietnamese was primarily based on its intrinsic value of familial and cultural connection while their identification with English was built upon its instrumental value to their life in the host country. Similarly, the children’s affiliation with Vietnam seemed to be primarily initiated by familial influences and the associated sense of Vietnamese ethnicity while their affiliation with Australia was gradually moulded by their firsthand experiences in the country, especially through their connection with peers and schooling. For those who returned to Vietnam, their identification with Vietnamese was fortified by their recognition of the utilitarian benefits of the language in the new context while their identification with English was sustained by the impact of elite bilingualism. Being aware of the cultural differences when the context shifted from Australia to Vietnam, the children also managed to develop a new sense of self by both acquiring and challenging sociocultural norms in the new context. The children’s bilingual/bicultural identification appeared to echo the influencing factors from the microsystem levels (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; 1986) (i.e., family, peers and schooling) they interacted with.
Parents functioned as a counterbalance against the significant impact from outside family settings (especially peer and school contexts) in sustaining a positive bilingual/bicultural identification for the children both during the sojourn and upon repatriation. Parents’ imagined communities (Norton, 2001) were a major factor in deciding how they perceived and supported their children’s bilingual identification through specific family language policies and practices. Intergenerational and cross-cultural conflicts were prevalent in both contexts, suggesting the misalignment between the children’s Western sense of self versus the parents’ and the home communities’ expectations of a Vietnamese sense of self from them and thus necessitating parental support for the preservation of the home culture while in Australia and for the children’s adaptation to the new sociocultural context back in Vietnam.
These findings were translated into recommendations for relevant stakeholders (i.e., community, school, and family) in both the host and home countries to facilitate a positive bilingual/bicultural identification process for sojourner children in particular, and for children of immigrant backgrounds, in general.</p
Neural Network System for Multimodal and Multilabel Classification: A Sleep Diagnosis Example
No full textMachine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), in particular, include robust and diverse data analysis techniques that allow us to extract information and make decisions. The accuracy of these decisions depends on the amount and quality of data used to train the ML models. Large numbers of expert-labelled data from a single source are not always available. Moreover, decisions based on a single source or type (modality) of information are often not as accurate as decisions considering multiple types of data coming from different sources. Information fusion integrates information from multiple sources to provide a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of a given problem.
Multiple studies indicated that incorporating information fusion into ML models can be beneficial and improve the quality of decisions. However, most existing ML works show only the benefits of cross-modality fusions crafted for specific applications. The study presented in this thesis undertakes a systematic and generalised approach to information fusion, allowing simultaneous fusion across different factors, such as cross-modality and cross-label. Given the extremely high complexity of the multi-fusion task, the methods proposed in this thesis were validated using a single database, the Cyclic Alternating Pattern (CAP) Sleep Database, which consists of a collection of 108 polysomnographic recordings taken at the Sleep Disorders Center of the Ospedale Maggiore of Parma, Italy. It included an extensive collection of sleep data recordings, and it is commonly used in automatic sleep diagnosis research.
In the context of the CAP Sleep Database, there were two possible types of information fusion. The first type was the fusion of information from different modality sensors such as electrocardiograms- (ECG), electroencephalogram- (EEG), and electromyogram (EMG), which is referred to as cross-modality fusion. The second type was the fusion of information provided by different types of labels, such as sleep stage (6 categories) and sleep disorder (8 categories). It is referred to as cross-label fusion. This thesis proposes a new Multimodal- and Multilabel Decision-Making System (MML-DMS). Two versions of the MML-DMS were tested: Multimodal- and Multilabel Decision-Making System, version 1 (MML-DMS1) and Multimodal- and Multilabel Decision-Making System, version 2 (MML-DMS2). The MML-DMS1 offered a cross-modality fusion of information, whereas the MML-DMS2 offered both cross-modality and cross-label fusion. Validation experiments conducted on the CAP Sleep Database showed that both methods, MMLDMS1 and MML-DMS2, outperform baseline single-modality CNN classifiers. It was also demonstrated that the MML-DMS2 outperformed the MML-DMS1 in terms of testing accuracy for both multimodal and multilabel classification, indicating that the combined cross-modality and cross-label fusion is more powerful than the cross-modality fusion only. A comparison with related sleep classification studies showed that the results outperformed existing state-of-the-art techniques. Future research will investigate how the proposed approach can be adapted to solve various problems in stock market predictions, pilot training, decision-making for autonomous vehicles, and medical diagnostics.</p
Understanding Information Technology Graduate Employability: A Comparison of Stakeholder Perceptions
No full textGraduate employability has been for some time a research topic well covered by various academic disciplines, government agencies and corporate organisations. Over the last decade the amount of published material along with the changing approach of Australian government education funding policies has put sizeable pressure on universities to take graduate employability seriously. The higher education sector now regularly publishes graduate employability statistics and is judged on the basis of this data. Although there is much research in the area of employability, little exists specifically in the field of information technology. As well as the technology specific elements of graduate employability, the IT discipline offers additional challenges because of the ever changing dynamics within this field. These rapid changes have a domino effect on employment requirements. The graduates need to be equipped well to handle these requirements.
This research explores the area of graduate employability from the perspectives of four key stakeholders: academics, students, graduates and the technology industry. The specific context for this research is undergraduate programs in computer science and information technology. It systematically addresses three research questions:
What does the term employability mean for current academics, students and recent graduates in information technology?
What do information technology employers look for in a graduate? and
Which factors should be considered when looking to enhance the employability of information technology graduates?
The research follows theory of pragmatism to employ a mixed methods approach to find the gaps in the understanding of the above stakeholders. The study sample included 20 academics, 151 current students, and 55 graduates from a single research-intensive university. Semi-structured interviews and online questionnaires were used to understand stakeholder perceptions of graduate employability within the given context, supported by AI-fuelled data mining tools to gather published information on industry requirements. In this way the research could examine the skills required and the differences in stakeholder perceptions.
Graduate employability in the area of information technology is complex. Its various stakeholders have different understandings. The published research and government white papers talk a lot about industry requirements and the gap between academia and these requirements. However, this gap represents just one of many dimensions that lead to differences in this area. The research explores six significant models of graduate employability, revealing both unique insights and common themes among them. Despite differences in terminology, there is substantial overlap, enabling the creation of an integrated set of employability dimensions. Indeed, there are seven integrated dimensions identified in this study.
Comparing stakeholder perceptions across the integrated dimensions identified makes a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion on enhancing the employability of technology graduates. These stakeholders bring unique perspectives and priorities to the table. However, a central finding of the research is that stakeholders often discuss employability within their own specific contexts, leading to a situation where they are talking at each other rather than with each other. This lack of cohesive communication results in fragmented efforts and missed opportunities to address the core issues comprehensively.
Despite being conducted at a single Australian Technical Network (ATN) educational institution, which limits its representation of all higher education views, the research underscores the significance of fostering a mutually beneficial exchange of information among stakeholders. This approach involves establishing open channels of communication, fostering collaboration and aligning objectives across the different groups. By doing so, a better balanced and more integrated understanding of employability can be developed, ensuring that the skills and competencies of technology graduates are aligned with the needs of industry. This scholarly approach aims to discuss strategies to bridge the gap between education and employment to improve the job readiness and career readiness of graduates.
This scholarly approach not only clarifies the employability landscape for information technology graduates but also provides actionable strategies to bridge the educational-employment gap. The study identifies critical alignment points between graduate skills and industry expectations, offering a scholarly strategy that can be adopted by ATN institutions to enhance curricular effectiveness. Importantly, it extends the discourse on stakeholder engagement in defining employability, thereby enriching the ecosystem that supports graduate transition into the workforce. This research contributes to the field by systematically illustrating how multi-stakeholder insights can be integrated to better prepare graduates for professional success, ensuring that educational institutions can adapt to the evolving demands of the technology sector.</p
Determination of the Mechanisms Regulating Mental Health Disorders in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
No full textChronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) encompasses a range of chronic respiratory conditions characterised by progressive and irreversible obstruction of the airways. COPD represents a significant global health challenge, associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. It affects approximately 12% of the global population and is the 3rd leading cause of death worldwide, resulting in about 3 million deaths annually. A significant contributor to the COPD disease burden is the chronic inhalation of cigarette smoke (CS) particularly in industrialised countries. Given the irreversible nature of COPD, research predominantly concentrates on strategies to prevent or manage symptoms associated with the disease, with much of the burden comprising of the secondary extra-pulmonary comorbid conditions. These systemic comorbidities are believed to result from the "spill-over" of inflammatory mediators from the lungs into the bloodstream, thereby impacting other organs such as the brain.
Among various comorbidities of COPD, anxiety disorders including generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic disorder (PD) are prevalent in 35% to 68% of people with COPD, compared to just 4% in the general population. This heightened prevalence of anxiety is associated with increased mortality risk and a reduced quality of life for those with COPD. Furthermore, anxiety has been linked to a worsened disease prognosis, higher rates of acute exacerbations, increased hospitalisations, and non-compliance with treatment. Despite its significant impact and high prevalence, anxiety disorders in COPD often remain undiagnosed and untreated. This is largely attributed to a limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying mental health impairments in COPD. Consequently, there is a pressing need to address these gaps in knowledge to improve the diagnosis and management of anxiety disorders in this population. This Thesis investigates whether the "spill-over" of pulmonary inflammation into the systemic circulation can initiate neuroinflammation within the central nervous system and induce anxiety-like behaviours following CS exposure in a preclinical model of COPD. We next sought to determine the therapeutic potential of interventions aimed at targeting oxidative stress to alleviate anxiety-like behaviours associated with CS exposure. We first demonstrated that following 8 weeks of CS exposure, excessive lung inflammation was associated with systemic inflammation and anxiety-like behaviours, accompanied by increased microglial activation in brain regions implicated in anxiety circuits, such as the amygdala and hippocampus of male mice. Subsequently, we investigated whether inhibiting inflammation and oxidative stress with the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase 2 (NOX2) inhibitor, apocynin, could prevent these behavioural abnormalities. Our results showed that apocynin treatment reduced lung and systemic inflammation, exhibited an anxiolytic effect and preserved microglial morphology in the amygdala and hippocampus. These neuroprotective effects of apocynin were likely mediated through alterations in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling pathway in the microglia.
Beyond its established benefits in exercise capacity and overall quality of life, pulmonary rehabilitation shows promise in alleviating anxiety symptoms associated with COPD. In Chapter 4, we explored the therapeutic potential of combining aerobic exercise with an antioxidant treatment in CS-exposed male mice. As apocynin is not an FDA-approved treatment for medical use in individuals with COPD, we chose to use a natural antioxidant supplement, carnosine for the purpose of this study. Carnosine alone partially mitigated lung inflammation and anxiety-like behaviours, whereas the combination therapy showed broader benefits including attenuated weight loss, improved systemic inflammation, and restoration of social recognition memory impairments, potentially by mitigating neuroinflammation and oxidative stress in the amygdala. However, anxiety-like behaviours were not significantly improved by combination treatment potentially due to a transient stress response induced by involuntary exercise.
In Chapter 5, we explored gender differences in COPD by investigating the effects of 8 weeks of CS exposure and a prophylactic combined intervention of carnosine supplementation and aerobic exercise in female mice. Female mice exhibited hallmark features of COPD, including weight loss, lung inflammation, and systemic oxidative stress. However, CS exposure was not associated with anxiety-like behaviours and social recognition memory impairments. While aerobic exercise alone partially improved lung inflammation, it also induced anxiety-like behaviours and social recognition memory deficits, associated with increased pro- inflammatory cytokines gene expression in the amygdala. The combination therapy alleviated these adverse effects, suggesting that when combined with aerobic exercise, carnosine supplementation can mitigate exercise-induced stress responses and neuroinflammation. These findings suggested that the synergistic effects of carnosine and aerobic exercise could offer a comprehensive therapeutic strategy for COPD management, particularly for female patients with comorbid anxiety disorders.
In conclusion, our data suggests that 8 weeks of CS exposure is associated with anxiety-like behaviours and social recognition memory impairments in male mice. Targeting oxidative stress holds promise as a therapeutic strategy for alleviating anxiety disorders in individuals with COPD.</p
Electrostatic
No full text"Electrostatic" is a mesmerizing one-shot motorbike journey through the vibrant streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The film immerses viewers in a continuous, uninterrupted sequence that transcends linear time, creating a rich sensory experience that responds dynamically to color of the lived spaces and enveloping darkness surrounding them. In an era dominated by continuous 24 hour light, "Electrostatic" explores the power of color and light enhanced by the absence of light that are woven into the night time streetscapes of the city.This film, illuminated by ever-present shop lights, celebrates the presence and absence of light as a realm of the unknown and the unpredictable. It creates a space that challenges the rational illuminated world by inviting viewers to consider the surrounding darkness. Developed in collaboration with sound artist Thierry Bernard, "Electrostatic" combines evocative visuals and immersive soundscapes to draw the audience into a contemplative exploration of light, color, and the enigmatic beauty of the night time city.</p
More than just ‘working from home’: domestic space, economies and living infrastructures during and beyond pandemic times
No full textThis article draws on an ethnographic study of employees working from home in 13 Australian households in Sydney, New South Wales and Melbourne, Victoria during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Conducting interviews and household walk throughs via video conferencing software, supplemented by diaries and pictures from householders, we were initially interested in how people managed working from home via digital technology. As the project evolved however, we were struck by the reconfigured role of home life more broadly. During this time, many people found themselves not only restricted to their homes but having to experiment with new modes of living as households became hubs for economic, social, and infrastructural flows and the circulation of goods and services. The households in our study engaged in an array of practices related to self-managing employment from home. What we might think of as the ‘work of working from home’ practices included everything from managing workspaces, utilities and energy use, to the emotional atmosphere of the home. This reconfiguration of the home as a central hub of social, cultural, and economic life can be productively understood via two complementary approaches: what feminist planners Gilroy and Booth ([1999]. Building an infrastructure for everyday lives. European planning studies, 7 (3), 307–324) have termed ‘the infrastructure of everyday life’, and Gibson and Graham's ([2008] Diverse economies: performative practices for ‘other worlds’. Progress in human geography, 32 (5), 613–632) work on alternative economies. While the practices we studied could be seen as representing a privileged (in terms of class and race) pandemic response, following Gibson-Graham we frame our findings in terms of (re)imagining future social realities. We identify 3 categories: new domesticities; the ‘living infrastructures’ of work–home life; and everyday economies. In doing so we highlight the hidden and often feminized elements of civic and domestic life–the‘ foundational economy’(Barbera, F., Negri, N., and Salento, A., 2018. From individual choice tocollective voice. Foundational economy, local commons and citizenship.Rassegna Italiana di sociologia, 2, 371–398.) of care and service provision andbeyond–to emphasize just how central this foundational economy hasbecome to our post-vaccination futures
Analysis of Agile project manager competencies from recruitment signals
No full textAs Agile project management has become increasingly popular as a project management methodology, Agile project managers (AgPM) are important in leading and managing Agile projects. However, professional project management bodies and the academic literature lag behind industry practices in articulating competency frameworks for understanding the requirements of AgPM. This study examines the organizational expectations for AgPM competencies as signaled to the job market through advertisements. Using an integrated framework of Agile project competencies, we conduct a content analysis of AgPM job advertisements from the Australian and New Zealand job market. Our results identified the frequently signaled personal, practice and perspective competencies, including the co-occurrences of these competencies, for recruiting AgPM. Additionally, we identified the more frequently utilized individual personal and project-related practice competencies, as well as the less utilized Agile-focused perspective competencies. The findings of this study will help the Agile movement consider the competencies that are more important for organizations to learn; allow employers to articulate their competency requirements for potential jobs; and enable job seekers to understand and develop the required competencies for successful application to AgPM roles. Overall, this study provides an empirical grounding in the specific competencies required for the AgPM role in industry
Effect of a physiotherapy-directed rehabilitation programme on patients with multidirectional instability of the glenohumeral joint: a multimodal interventional MRI study protocol
No full textAltered neuromuscular control of the scapula and humeral head is a typical feature of multidirectional instability (MDI) of the glenohumeral joint, suggesting a central component to this condition. A previous randomised controlled trial showed MDI patients participating in the Watson Instability Program 1 (WIP1) had significantly improved clinical outcomes compared with a general shoulder strength programme. The aim of this paper is to outline a multimodal MRI protocol to identify potential ameliorative effects of the WIP1 on the brain. Methods and analysis Thirty female participants aged 18–35 years with right-sided atraumatic MDI and 30 matched controls will be recruited. MDI patients will participate in 24 weeks of the WIP1, involving prescription and progression of a home exercise programme. Multimodal MRI scans will be collected from both groups at baseline and in MDI patients at follow-up. Potential brain changes (primary outcome 1) in MDI patients will be probed using region-of-interest (ROI) and whole-brain approaches. ROIs will depict areas of functional alteration in MDI patients during executed and imagined shoulder movements (MDI vs controls at baseline), then examining the effects of the 24-week WIP1 intervention (baseline vs follow-up in MDI patients only). Whole-brain analyses will examine baseline versus follow-up voxel-wise measures in MDI patients only. Outcome measures used to assess WIP1 efficacy will include the Western Ontario Shoulder Index and the Melbourne Instability Shoulder Score (primary outcomes 2 and 3). Secondary outcomes will include the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia, Short Form Orebro, Global Rating of Change Score, muscle strength, scapular upward rotation, programme compliance and adverse events. Discussion This trial will establish if the WIP1 is associated with brain changes in MDI