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Culture in context: the association between fit at work and staff outcomes
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 89-107.Chapter 1. Introduction : fitting the thesis into fit literature -- Chapter 2. Literature review : mapping the fit supermarket -- Chapter 3. Methods : "the best thing since sliced bread : a new product in the fit supermarket -- Chapter 4. Quantitative findings : hypothesis testing and the goodness-of-fit of fit models -- Chapter 5. Qualitative findings : "maybe stories are just data with a soul" : Dr Brené Brown -- Chapter 6. Discussion and conclusion : how the thesis fits within the research landscape -- References -- Appendices.Organisational and workplace cultures are important factors in health systems through their capacity to influence outcomes, both for patients and employees. One potentially promising method of studying organisational and workplace cultures in health care is through the lens of person-environment fit, which examines the individuals' perceptions of if, and in what way, they are compatible with aspects of their work context. This thesis focuses on fit in relation to two contextual aspects: the person's work group and their organisation (termed person-group (P-G) fit and person-organisation (P-O) fit,respectively). A two-part method was used to study the associations between fit and staff outcomes, including job satisfaction, burnout and work stress in primary mental health facilities across Australia. In Part 1, an online survey was developed and validated using confirmatory factor analysis, prior to hypothesis testing. Part 2 consisted of follow-up interviews analysed using thematic analysis. Part 1 yielded two valid and reliable sub-scales. The subsequent multiple regression analyses indicated that P-O fit accounted for asignificant proportion of variability in all staff outcomes, but the P-G fit results were less conclusive. Results of Part 2 provided a more holistic description of the associations between different components of fit and their relation to staff outcomes. Ultimately, this thesis contributes a deeper understanding of fit in the context of a workplace and organisation.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xxiv, 169 pages) diagrams, table
Imagining an African Community: African women in Western Sydney and the politics of sharing
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 188-210Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Sharing on the margins: race, gender and social support -- Chapter 3. Unsettling stories: the invisible spaces of arrival -- Chapter 4. "One hand cannot clap": creating spaces of welcome -- Chapter 5. Stumbling upon an institution -- Chapter 6. Brokering new social divisions -- Chapter 7. Sharing the burden: between the middle men of resettlement and a retreating state -- Chapter 8. Conclusion: from the local to the global: tracing unruly mobility.This thesis focuses on the sharing practices of women from different African backgrounds living in western Sydney. It takes as its starting point that sharing; the sharing of material resources, support, friendship and space can re-politicise functionalist explanations of migrant solidarity and social capital. How, what, where and with whom we share reveals a critical intersection between formal and informal support for migrant and refugee communities. I foreground the alternative imaginaries of community, social space, labour and belonging that African women share, in order to provide a more nuanced empirical and theoretical account of the lived experience of migrant resettlement under competitive forms of service delivery.The ground-up perspective of everyday multiculturalism is combined with feminist theories of political economy and citizenship, to help trace the struggles that women face 'entering the public' as they expand their informal practices of sharing to organise community events with public funds and within public spaces. Multi-sited and participatory ethnographic research was conducted in Sydney between 2012-2015 and 30 semi-structured interviews with service providers and community members were also recorded during that time. Faced with restricted funds and competing systems of value, accountability and risk, key community leaders speak to being caught between the sphere of unpaid work in informal community spaces and paid work with resettlement services. The woman who broker between these spaces are forced to enact an 'unruly mobility' to imagine and practice an African community on their own terms. Their mobility is unruly in that it draws on and contests,multiple norms of behaviour and action and creates a corresponding bricolage of public and private resources. The continued struggle to share social and material resources with one another allows African women in Sydney to reconfigure the boundaries, spaces and terms upon which they enter and move through the nation. Their community work troubles the distinctions between the informal and formal, unpaid and paid, public and private and generates new knowledge regarding how competitive forms of service provision influence collective processes of identification and belonging.1 online resource (210 pages
Dementia and driving: a cognitive test approach
No full textTheoretical thesis.Includes bibliographical references.Chapter 1. General Introduction -- Chapter 2. A survey: investigating the practitioner's -- Chapter 3. Systematic review: determining an approach to developing a clinical tool -- Chapter 4. Meta-Analysis: developing the cognitive assessment tool -- Chapter 5. Pilot testing: evaluating the cognitive assessment tool -- Chapter 6. General discussion.The deleterious effect of dementia on driving performance has been well established. Whilst all individuals with this disease will eventually need to cease driving, simply having a diagnosis of dementia is not sufficient for preclusion from driving. Instead, determinations regarding fitness to drive are left to medical practitioners. Whilst there are medical fitness to drive guidelines to support practitioners in their decision-making, there is currently no standardised objective in-office assessment which can be used to reliably make judgements regarding driving capacity for individuals with dementia. Due to the relationship between dementia and declining cognitive function, and cognitive function and driving, cognitive tests have been proposed as an appropriate tool to fill this gap.This thesis aimed to examine the current method of determining fitness to drive in Australia, and develop an evidence based alternative form of assessment that could be utilisedin-office by front line clinicians. These aims were achieved through four studies, which examined 1) practitioners'perspectives on the current system, 2) a systematic review of the literature into cognitive testing and driving in dementia, 3) a meta-analysis to provide empirical evidence for the formation of a potential composite cognitive test battery and, 4) a pilot experimental study investigating the validity of the proposed assessment. The results of the survey study suggested that front line practitioners did not find the current guidelines adequate, with the majority calling for a more objective assessment to assist with making decisions on driving capacity for individuals with dementia. The systematic review demonstrated that there is insufficient evidence to support the clinical use of either a single cognitive test or tests from a single cognitive domain. The review did, however, provide evidence for the use of composite batteries which combine multiple cognitive tests from the various domains important to driving. To date there has been little consensus on which tests should be included in this battery. Building on the results of the systematic review, the meta- xviii analysis provided empirical support for a proposed fitness to drive battery for individuals specifically with Alzheimer's Disease which included:the Mini Mental Status Examination, all conditions of the Rey Complex FigureTest, and the Trail Making Test Part A and Part B. This proposed battery also aimed to take into account practical considerations relevant to front line clinical practice. Finally, the results from the pilot study provided promising preliminary evidence that the battery proposed by the meta-analysis is able to differentiate between safe and unsafe drivers with Alzheimer's. Significant differences between safe and unsafe drivers were found in scores on four of the eight of recommended tests, with a potential pattern of scores that differentiate these drivers emerging. The research reported in the current thesis achieved its aim of exploring the current system for assessing fitness to drive, and determined that the guidelines and resultant subjective approach taken by medical practitioners is not sufficient for making reliable determinations of fitness to drive. Building from this, determining driving capacity needs to be in the form of a composite battery, and an evidence based practical, composite battery for clinical use has been proposed. Finally, preliminary empirical results support the use of this battery in making decisions regarding driving capacity for individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Overall the findings from this thesis provide a strong evidence base for future large scale, multi-site, on-road studies to validate the findings presented herein.1 online resource (291 pages
Analyzing classroom teacher-student consultations: a systemic-multimodal perspective
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography pages: 449-480Section I: Orientation to the research -- Section II Conclusion: Multimodality in the Individual Feedback Consultation (IFC) genre -- Section III: Language in the Individual Feedback Consultation (IFC) genre -- Section III Conclusion: Language in the Individual Feedback Consultation (IFC) genre -- Section IV: ConclusionThis study explores the multimodal and linguistic contours of the individual feedback consultation classroom curriculum genre (Amundrud, 2015), which is comprised of five stages: Opening, Conferring, Advice, Scoring, and Closing. This genre was found through the examination of audiovisual classroom observation data collected from two separate Japanese tertiary EFL courses. Examination of 49 consultations collected from both courses found the stable, social, and goal-oriented use of this genre by teachers to ascertain problems with student work and provide feedback. Through the systemic-functional multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) of classroom discourse (e.g. Christie, 2002; Eggins & Slade, 1997; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Hood, 2011; Kress et al., 2005; Martin, 1992; Martin & Rose, 2007 & 2008), these consultations were examined for the use of spatial position,gaze,gesture,and language. This study extends prior work on classroom spatiality (Lim, 2011), refines metafunctionally-based systems for describing gestures(e.g. Lim, 2011; Martinec 2000), and develops a novel system for describing and analyzing the interpersonal content of gaze. It also develops upon prior work in SF-MDA on the language contextualization of gesture (e.g. Lim, 2011; Liu & O'Halloran, 2009). Regarding the linguistic content of individual-feedback consultations, this study also makes a number of contributions. For instance, it found 10 stratally and metafunctionally consistent pedagogic strategies that occurred in different stages of the consultation genre, such as pedagogic strategies of corrective feedback that utilized resources of heteroglossic Engagement in APPRAISAL. However, its main contribution is the finding that while teacher-student consultations comprise a significant portion of class time in both courses, their pedagogic potential was underexploited due to a lack of an informing explicit, language-oriented pedagogy.From this analysis, it makes suggestions for the improved usage of in-class xiv consultations that would enhance their pedagogic value for current and future language teachers and their students.1 online resource (524 pages
Shifting US-China Policy Postures: options for Australia
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 102-126Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Background and literature review -- Chapter 3. Trump administration policies: implications for Australia -- Chapter 4. China's policy overtures: implications for Australia --International relations are passing through a crucial phase, specifically since the end of the Cold War in which the post-Second World War institutions and alliances are being increasingly challenged by the rising powers, particularly China. The rules-based order, mainly championed by the United States through its alliance system is being challenged externally by the countries like China and internally by the new administration of Donald John Trump.In a sense, a situation is arising in which China is challenging the existing world order by forwarding its sovereignty claims over the South China Sea and impinging on freedom of navigation, exerting pressure against the US alliance system as well as leveraging its relation with trade and investment. This thesis identifies and examines Trump's postures that could most affect Australia and the Asia-Pacific, focusing on the South China Sea Dispute, the US-led alliance system, and trade. It then examines China's resultant postures and the possible implications to Australia, before concluding with a look at Australia's responses and the possible options Canberra might employ in its relationship with China moving forward. Through a descriptive analysis within an offensive realist framework, this study concludes that Australia ultimately needs to take a much firmer stance towards China in areas it has traditionally remained more ambivalent. Particularly with the convening/supporting of increased security dialogues between Australia and other regional states, while simultaneously displaying understanding of China's cultural sensitivities, by supporting and advocating for a less confrontational approach in other areas, especially concerning Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs).1 online resource (126 pages
Knowledge, experiences, perceptions and attitudes of the receiving society to international students
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 269-338INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH METHODS -- Key research questions -- The study site and the participants -- Conceptual frames -- Research methods -- Reflecting on my time in the field -- Data analysis -- Embedding validity and trustworthiness into the findings -- Chapter outlines -- A HISTORY AND BACKGROUND TO THIS STUDY -- Successive immigration policies post World War II -- Underlying shifts: assimilation, integration to multiculturalism -- Parallel paths: immigration policy and international education in Australia -- The intersection of parallel paths -- Macquarie University and its neighbourhood -- Conclusion -- A LITERATURE REVIEW: INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA -- The political, social and personal status of international students in Australia -- A complex journey of becoming -- Contact zones: 'real' and virtual -- Obstacles and barriers that divide -- Conclusion -- FUELLING FIRES: MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS -- Representations of international students in the Australian media -- Challenging familiar discourses -- Conclusion -- EVERYDAY ENCOUNTERS: INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND THE RECEIVING SOCIETY -- Living with strangers -- Conviviality: it's the little things -- Student lives and the university campus -- Conclusion -- THE GLOBAL FORCE OF NEOLIBERALISM AND ITS EFFECTS ON EVERYDAY RELATIONS -- A local response to universities' marketing 'successes' -- Care and responsibility for student well-being -- Bodies that represent deficit, limitation and burden -- Reworking local spaces -- Conclusion -- CONCLUSION -- Fuelling the fire: media representations of international students in Australia -- Everyday encounters between international students and the receiving society -- The global force of neoliberalism and its effects on everyday relations -- Implications for theoretical debates -- Issues raised for further research -- Signposts: towards a finer future.International education is a global growth phenomenon. In Australia tertiary international students number practically 300,000, with the rate of growth within the sector twice that of other areas. International education is not only an important export industry for Australia, but one that significantly affects local residents as they perform everyday routines and practices. Bringing together literature from the fields of international education, mobilities and diversity studies, this thesis interrogates how the receiving society recognises, perceives and experiences international students. It analyses the intersection of global and local forces; neoliberalism and student mobilities; and the negotiation of difference in a highly diverse context. Its analysis offers an alternative to conventional intercultural studies that examine relations between seemingly disparate groups by measuring levels of integration, in that it applies a more complex approach and frame of analysis to explore relations in a mixt and rapidly transforming area of Sydney. The research uses a broad mix of ethnographic methods, including ethnographic observations concentrated in three sites, opportunistic discussions, extensive field-notes, focus groups, individual interviews and anonymous questionnaires. Drawing on this rich empirical data, this study argues that global and local phenomena are intricately entwined to affect how everyday relations are constructed and enacted. This approach provides critical, ambiguous, complex and indeed often contradictory insights into relations between international students and the receiving society, as well as offering possibilities for generating new distinctive imaginings for the City of Ryde, New South Wales. Additionally the findings include potential for scaling up into broader political debates that can translate into new policy directions.1 online resource (350 pages) colour illustration
Fostering sustainablity in initial teacher education primary programs at Macquarie University
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 54-59.1. Introduction -- 2. Literature Review -- 3. Methodology -- 4. Results -- 5. Discussion -- 6. Conclusion.This case study explores how the initial teacher education primary programs at Macquarie University foster the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority. The study investigates the extent to which Sustainability is included in The Programs, as well as how confident initial teacher education students in The Programs feel to teach Sustainability. The study uses document analysis of Unit Guides to evaluate how Sustainability is fostered and follow-up semi-structured interviews with Educators to verify findings. Semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire to the 3rd and 4th year Students in The Programs are used to evaluate their confidence to teach Sustainability. The Educators and Students are asked about their perception of the relevance and importance of Sustainability and experiences in The Programs. Students are also asked about their perceived confidence to teach Sustainability. The evaluation of Unit Guides reveals limited explicit Sustainability included in the Bachelor of Education (Primary) program, though elements of teaching about Sustainability emerge as described by some Educators. The findings reveal that Students in The Programs perceive Sustainability as relevant, but most feel less than fully confident to teach Sustainability.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (viii, 70 pages) illustration
Reliable communications in wireless body area networks
No full textEmpirical thesis.A co-tutelle program between Aarhus University, Denmark, and Macquarie University, Australia.Bibliography: pages 165-180.1. Introduction -- 2. Link adaptation in IEEE 802.15.6 WBANs -- 3.Frame length optimization in IEEE 802.15.6 WBANs -- 4. Energy-delay tradeoffs in IR-UWB systems -- 5. Generalized nonuniform sampling of band-limited signals -- 6. Partial packet recovery for Efficient transmission -- 7. Coding techniques based on polar codes -- 8. Conclusion and future work -- A. calculation of energy Efficiency -- References.This thesis investigates the problem of reliability in wireless body area networks(WBANs). WBANs constitute a class of wireless networks that are composed of miniaturized wearable or implantable nodes inside or in the vicinity of human body, with diverse applications in medicine, personal care, and entertainment, or more broadly Internet of Things (IoT).Since WBANs can potentially convey sensitive health-related signals,high reliability of the wireless links is a necessity. Typically, reliability of communications can be increased by leveraging node resources such as energy or computational complexity. Nonetheless strict limitation of such resources in small battery-operated WBAN nodes to overcome severe channel conditions unique to WBANs pose a significant challenge that demand high transmission effciency with low complexity. A key idea in this thesis is that achieving an optimal transmission effciency can relax the constraint on node resources such that the node's expected lifetime is increased and it can allocate more energy and computational power to countering harsh noise and fading conditions.The thesis studies different types of WBANs and propose novel techniques across different layers of the communication protocol to achieve high transmission effciency. The proposed methods rely on statistical signal processing, adaptation, error control coding, and optimization. However, maintaining a low computational demand at the transmitter node is a key requiremen tthat has been considered in all methods.The main problem is addressed in two different parts of this thesis. The first part deals with the problem of optimization of WBANs based on the IEEE 802.15.6 recommendations, which is the state-of-the-art communication protocol for WBANs. Novel MAC-level adaptation and optimization schemes are proposed for impulse-radio ultra-wide band systems and a theoretical framework to achieve the optimal energy-delay trade off for reliable communications is provided. Simulations confirm that the transmission efficiency can be improved by up to a factor of two by link adaptation. Also the energy efficiency is maximized with respect to the frame length and a closed formula is derived.In the second part, a more general system is considered and the problem of optimal transmission efficiency in a typical WBAN/IoT device is addressed. The thesis proposes novel coding techniques based on random linear coding (RLC) as well as capacity-achieving low-complexity polar codes to outperform the state-of-the-art error control techniques. Specifically, novel hybrid-ARQ schemes based on systematic polar codes are proposed that are designed for low complexity and short code-length implementations that can achieve about 4 dB gain at low SNR. It is also proposed to leverage the available receiver-side computational power to fix partially corrupted packets without asking for any further redundancy from the transmitter which relies on transmitter-side RLC, combined with receiver-side sparse recovery. This technique can lead to performance gain in point-to-point RLC coded systems and improves transmission efficiency typically by 50% in multicast.This thesis also proposes a novel joint sampling-quantization architecture with nonuniform sampling time and numbers of bits per sample that can represent a segment of a band-limited signal with the smallest number of bits, compared to the state-of-the-art previously known techniques, without performing any transform coding compression. In this way, it is shown that node resources are utilized efficiently and the resources required for quantization, compression, and transmission are saved since fewer bits are produced and transmitted assuming a given segment of signal acquired by the sensor. Simulations show that the proposed sub-Nyquist sampling scheme leads to only 12% of total number of bits compared to the conventional uniform Nyquist sampling.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (x, 180 pages
Improved PCA-based techniques for face and finger-vein recognition systems
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 285-295.1 Introduction -- 2 Background -- 3 Databases -- 4 Kernel Principal Component Analysis -- 5 Kernel Entropy Component Analysis in Face Recognition -- 6 Kernel Entropy Component Analysis in Finger-Vein Recognition -- 7 Proposed New Dimensionality-Reduction Method -- 8 New Image Transformation Method (FDGDA) -- 9 Feature Dependent Kernel Entropy Component Analysis -- 10 Finger-Vein Extraction -- 11 Overall Conclusion and Future Work.Biometrics refers to metrics related to human characteristics and biometric technologies use physical or behavioural characteristics of people to identify and recognize an individual. With the ever increasing growth in cybercrimes, biometric technologies have become increasingly important in this digital information age. The focus of this thesisis on the design ans application of new techniques for image based biometrics recognition systems using faces and finger veins. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a way of identifying patterns in data, and expressing the data in such a way as to highlight their similarities and differences. The PCA technique plays an important role in feature extraction and dimensionality reduction. In this thesis, we propose a variety of extensions of PCA technique using kernel and entropy based extensions. We have proposed new algorithms to face and finger vein recognition systems and show that these extensions can yield better results in terms of accuracy and performance.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xxvi, 295 pages) illustrations (some colour
Multilingualism and occluded diversities within the superdiverse conditions of the United Arab Emirates: a study of the multiple language resources, practices and ideologies of young Emirati women
No full textThesis by publication.Includes bibliographical references.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. 'Just a natural move towards English' - Gulf youth attitudes towards Arabic and English literacy ( O'Neill, 2014A) -- Chapter 3. Heritage, heteroglossia & home - multilingualism in Emirate families (O'Neill, 2016) -- Chapter 4. 'It's not comfortable being who I am' - multilingual identity in superdiverse Dubai (O'Neill, 2017) -- Chapter 5. Conclusion -- References -- Appendices.This thesis by publication explores multilingual language choices in oracy and literacy in a superdiverse context, the Emirate of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Much of the literature to date on multilingualism in superdiverse societies has been based on research conducted in contexts in which migration has risen rapidly in the last twenty years (e.g. London, UK or Antwerp, Belgium), bringing the opportunities and perceived threats of languages and cultures in contact, even though the traditional inhabitants of these countries represent the majority of the population, and their languages continue to be used and valorized. There is relatively little literature focusing on contexts in which recent accelerated migration has led to the minoritization of the resident dominant population and the marginalization of its language or dialect. One such context is the UAE, which is a quintessential superdiverse society in that the traditional inhabitants of the region are now a minority in their own country, albeit a powerful minority, and their variety of Arabic, Emirati Arabic, has become just one of many languages and dialects that are in daily use in its cities, including Dubai.The study examines how this superdiversity manifests itself in the language choices of young Emirati women. It employs an ethnographically-inspired methodology, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods, in order to describe the choices made by female Emirati undergraduates and graduates of a national university, in (varieties of) Arabic, English and other languages, and the reasons for these choices. It also explores the opportunities and tensions inherent in these language choices in an increasingly superdiverse context.The thesis consists of three main parts. Firstly, there is an analysis of Emirati women’s reported preferences with regard to reading and writing for pleasure in Arabic and English, along with their preferences regarding languages of university study. The study finds that predispositions developed in the home and at school significantly influence these women’s orientations towards Arabic or English, but also that leisure time interests developed through either language can influence their preferences. The second part of the thesis examines changes in language and literacy across three generations and then goes on to examine language choices in Emirati homes. It finds that there have been significant changes in terms of first and second languages used by Emiratis, along with a major change in literacy levels. With regard to languages of the home, the study finds that a variety of language ideologies affect home language policy. For some families, Emirati Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic index their identities as Arabs, Muslims and Emiratis, while English may be seen as an invasive force, necessary for economic development and personal success, but appropriate only outside the home. In contrast, other families adopt a language ideology, and home language policy, that sanction drawing on wider language repertoires while still identifying as Arab, Muslim and Emirati. The third part of the thesis is a case study of the language choices of one Emirati woman in her early thirties. The study finds that factors influencing language choice are complex and individual, and that while superdiversity may present many opportunities for Emirati citizens, there are also tensions, particularly for those Emiratis with links to other communities. Such Emiratis must constantly negotiate their identities using the linguistic choices at their disposal, either by aligning with the key indexicalities and ‘performing’ their Emirati identity, or by deliberately constructing other identities.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (219 pages