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‘Taking the router shopping’: How low-income families experience, negotiate, and enact digital dis/connections
No full textWithin digital media scholarship, there are significant bodies of literature investigating forced disconnection (‘digital exclusion’) and voluntary disconnection (‘digital disconnection’) but there is little research addressing entanglements between them. This article explores how bringing together these bodies of literature through an empirical study offers new pathways and considerations for both areas. In doing so, we draw on qualitative data about the forms of disconnection experienced, negotiated, and enacted by low-income families in regional Australia before and during their participation in a digital inclusion initiative that provided them with Internet connections and laptops. We argue that their experiences illustrate the complex interplay of voluntary and involuntary factors that shape socially situated practices of disconnection. We also identify further implications for inclusion and disconnection research, including the need to recognise that within digital inclusion initiatives, participants’ non-use of provided technologies does not necessarily indicate failure but may instead be a positive outcome
Narratives of high school teachers’ identity renewal through teaching a new intercultural curriculum subject
No full textAbstract
Contrary to popular myth, teachers do not simply deliver a ready-made curriculum. Rather, they interpret and make meaning of the curriculum. The introduction of a capabilities dimension in the formal curriculum in Australia invites a case study of curriculum innovation in action. Drawing on Clandinin and Connelly’s narrative inquiry approach, complemented by Aoki’s concept of curriculum-as-lived, we offer an analysis of the dilemmas three teachers confronted and the pedagogical decisions they made when implementing a new Intercultural Capabilities (IC) curriculum. We argue that one of the effects of negotiating the new curriculum was a destabilising of teachers’ professional identity. Through the process of re-storying classroom events, these early innovators were forced to confront their own cultural identity. Initially an unsettling or unmooring experience, it became a positive encounter. Teachers reported a sense of identity renewal in which they became more reflexive and flexible in their approach to IC pedagogy as a deliberate response to the unpredictable pedagogical challenges that emerged
The British (and International?) Music Society: Australian Identity and Musical Internationalism in Interwar Sydney
No full textAbstract
In the aftermath of the First World War, Henri Verbrugghen founded the first Australian branch of the British Music Society. The BMS – a product of post-First World War cultural renewal – was established in London to ‘champion the cause of British composers at home and abroad’. In Sydney, these aspirations extended to promoting music from Australia, and through affiliation with the International Society for Contemporary Music, music of the rest of the world. This article explores the activities of the Sydney BMS, situating these within contemporary discourses of nationalism and internationalism in the construction of interwar Australian cultural identity. It argues that the sometimes conflicting aims of the society reflect a wider political and social ambivalence about Australia's place in the international landscape. While its primary goal was to champion local composers, this was held in uneasy balance with a desire to promote British music ‘proper’
The reliability of remote diagnostic hearing assessment in school-entry-aged children
No full textOBJECTIVE: To explore the feasibility of remote diagnostic hearing testing within schools, for school-entry aged children (4-7 years). DESIGN: A prospective cross-sectional comparative study design was used to establish the reliability of remote hearing assessment by comparing traditional face-to-face pure tone audiometry (PTA) with remote PTA, traditional otoscopy with remote video otoscopy and interpretation of tympanograms in-person with remote analysis. STUDY SAMPLE: 464 school-entry year level children from 18 schools. RESULTS: Air conduction thresholds established by remote testing were within a clinically acceptable range of ±10 dB HL from traditional thresholds in 98% of cases at 1 kHz and 97.8% at 4 kHz. Bone conduction thresholds varied by ≤10 dB HL in 100% of cases at 1 kHz and 95.7% at 4 kHz. Remote otoscopy and tympanometry interpretation had 78.6% agreement (moderate; κ = 0.6) and 92.2% agreement (almost perfect; κ = 0.9), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: We found there to be good reliability between face-to-face PTA and remote PTA performed within the school environment. Furthermore, assessment of the outer and middle ear via video otoscopy and remote tympanometry classification were both viable. Remote diagnostic hearing tests in schools can extend reach of paediatric services in rural areas
‘Drifting’ Buchnera genomes track the microevolutionary trajectories of their aphid hosts
No full textEvolution of Buchnera-aphid host symbioses is often studied among species at macroevolutionary scales. Investigations within species offer a different perspective about how eco-evolutionary processes shape patterns of genetic variation at microevolutionary scales. Our study leverages new and publicly available whole-genome sequencing data to study Buchnera-aphid host evolution in Myzus persicae, the peach potato aphid, a globally invasive and polyphagous pest. Across 43 different asexual, clonally reproducing isofemale strains, we examined patterns of genomic covariation between Buchnera and their aphid host and considered the distribution of mutations in protein-coding regions of the Buchnera genome. We found Buchnera polymorphisms within aphid strains, suggesting the presence of genetically different Buchnera strains within the same clonal lineage. Genetic distance between pairs of Buchnera samples was positively correlated to genetic distance between their aphid hosts, indicating shared evolutionary histories. However, there was no segregation of genetic variation for both M. persicae and Buchnera with plant host (Brassicaceae and non-tobacco Solanaceae) and no associations between genetic and geographic distance at global or regional spatial scales. Abundance patterns of non-synonymous mutations were similar to synonymous mutations in the Buchnera genome, and both mutation classes had similar site frequency spectra. We hypothesize that a predominance of neutral processes results in the Buchnera of M. persicae to simply 'drift' with the evolutionary trajectory of their aphid hosts. Our study presents a unique microevolutionary characterization of Buchnera-aphid host genomic covariation across multiple aphid clones. This provides a new perspective on the eco-evolutionary processes generating and maintaining polymorphisms in a major pest aphid species and its obligate primary endosymbiont
Informal Assessment of Preschool Children’s Concepts of Zero
No full textAbstract
There is growing interest in mathematics learning progressions in early childhood education. Counting is a skill usually developed early in life. The application of the counting principles in early childhood typically entails counting objects. This poses challenges for learning about zero. Indeed, the word “zero” is seldom used in the context of early childhood education. Early childhood educators could purposefully introduce children to zero as a concept and facilitate children’s understanding that zero is a number and more than just the absence of something. “Zero” is introduced in school, but little guidance is provided to teachers within the Australian Curriculum for Mathematics in the Foundation year. This study contributes to a small corpus of research that has investigated preschool children’s understanding of the concept of zero. Unlike other studies, the method employed to elicit children’s knowledge was informal and more similar to educator-child conversations that occur within a playbased curriculum and contribute to formative assessment. Data are presented from 20 children, aged from three to five years, participating in a regional early learning centre. Six children demonstrated familiarity with the symbol for zero (“0”) and/or the concept that zero describes a numerical quantity. Asking a follow-up question encouraged children to share their thinking. The importance of early childhood educators purposefully supporting children’s familiarity with the word zero along as well as the concept of zero is proposed
Physiotherapists often encounter clients disclosing suicidal thoughts and behaviors: a cross-sectional survey of Australian physiotherapists
No full textBACKGROUND: All health professionals have a role in suicide prevention, although little is known about physiotherapists' contact with clients experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to investigate physiotherapists' self-reported frequency of contact with clients who disclose suicidal thoughts and behaviors and to identify potential factors associated with frequency of contact. METHODS: Three-hundred and thirty-eight Australian physiotherapists were surveyed using an online questionnaire, with an estimated response rate of 6.1%. Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis and logistic regression. RESULTS: Over half the respondents (52.1%) reported encountering clients at least once a year who disclosed suicidal thoughts, and nearly half (49.4%) reported having received at least one disclosure of a suicide plan at some point in their career. Among those working in the public sector, 67.5% of respondents reported having received a disclosure of a suicide plan, and almost all physiotherapists working in pain management reported having received such a disclosure (93.8%). The binary logistic regression model explained approximately 39.7% of the variance in whether a physiotherapist had a client disclose a plan for suicide at some point in their career or not. CONCLUSION: The results highlight that all physiotherapists should receive training in suicide prevention
The role of online crisis actors in teachers’ work and lives
No full textIt is not surprising that various sources have recently described the teaching profession in Australia as ‘in crisis’. The consequences of pandemic policy have provided opportunities for groups to exploit the cascading crises facing teachers. We argue the online political ecosystem recognises teachers as a trope useful for retaining or gaining power. Astroturfing is the process by which political actors seek to present policy platforms emerging in an organic way from ‘the people’. We detail how teachers were targeted as political leverage, within political frames that centred vaccinated teachers. We examine theTeachers’ Professional Association of Australia (TPAA), an example of an astroturfed member group. Using a qualitative approach to digital sociology we analysed the strategies used by the TPAA to manufacture a crisis associated with teacher vaccinations and answer this research question: in what ways was digital astroturfing present in the TPAA campaign against mandatory vaccinations? We find sufficient evidence to indicate that astroturfing did occur, and was employed by the TPAA in an effort to weaken traditional union movements in Australia producing a form of union uberfication. Such a development poses an existential risk to existing teacher associations and trade unions and more broadly to the health of democracies
Social hotspots in the automotive industry’s aluminum value chains—combining primary and generic data
No full textA Preliminary Trial of an Early Surveillance Program for Autism and Developmental Delays within General Practices
No full textAbstract
There are inequities in engagement with established early childhood developmental surveillance programs, eclipsing disadvantaged families. The current study sought to address this by dovetailing developmental surveillance with immunization visits and other opportunistic contacts with children at general practices). While 53 General Practices were recruited, significant COVID-19 disruptions resulted in only 81 children being screened (both parent-administered and GP completed). Of the 81 children, 11 screened positive and all of them along with 5% of screen negatives (i.e. 4 children) received clinician-administered reference-standard assessment for autism and developmental delay (DD) using Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), Autism Diagnostic Interview Schedule –Revised (ADI-R), and Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). All children found by reference-standard assessment to have probable autism and/or DD had screened positive during the screening process, and 90.9% of children who screened positive were found by reference-standard assessment to have probable DD or autism. The findings provide early evidence for the feasibility and usefulness of parent completed and GP administered developmental measures during opportunistic contacts with GPs as a promising method to facilitate early identification of DD or autism