Showing items 14281 - 14300 of 17151

SME networks and innovation : Knowledge creation in small firms

Social capital and knowledge transfer

Social support or structural change? Social work theory and research on care-giving

  • Authors: McDonald, John , Dow, Briony
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Australian Social Work Vol. 56, no. 3 (2003), p. 197-208
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  • Description: Since 1980, national and international research knowledge on carers and care-giving has been accumulating. However, the theoretical bases of this research are usually unstated and implicit. Theory is vital in shaping social work research programs and types of social work intervention. This paper examines and critiques the social work theories influencing published social work research on care-giving. A search of key social work journals from 1980 to 2001 identified a total of 102 research articles about care-giving. The perspectives informing these articles fall into four groupings: positivist; interpretivist; systems; and feminist/radical. Building on the model developed by Howe (1987), which differentiates theories of radical change from those concerned with social regulation, each perspective is critically analysed for its underlying assumptions, level of analysis, research methodology and implications for policy and practice. Our review indicated that research on care-giving is dominated by a positivist approach that focuses on stress-coping and social support theories. These approaches are essentially individualistic, focus on the burden of care and prescribe interventions that assist carers to adjust to or cope with the care-giving role. Future social work research on care-giving should be informed by critical social work theories offering deeper structural analysis. This would be more consistent with our discipline's concern for social change and social justice.
  • Description: C1
  • Description: 2003000461

Social work in rural areas : A personal and professional challenge

  • Authors: Green, Rosemary
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Australian Social Work Vol. 56, no. 3 (2003), p. 209-219
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  • Description: Australians live in diverse areas, city and country, coast and hinterland, desert and rainforest, urban and remote areas. While much social work practice is located in large population centres, the problem of providing a social work service in rural and remote areas is a challenging one. This article examines some of the issues for rural social workers practicing where networks are small and multilayered, anonymity, privacy and safety for the social worker cannot be guaranteed, and a broad range of knowledge and skills are demanded. As a profession, it is important to acknowledge the complexity of delivering an ethical, responsive and appropriate service in rural areas. For rural social workers, this challenge impacts in both their professional and personal roles.
  • Description: C1

Soil and vegetable analysis from the Victorian goldfields : Characterization of a potential backyard hazard

Some relationships between shrink-swell index, liquid limit, plasticity index, activity and free swell index

Sport psychology

Strengthening regional communities through ICT and online capabilities – Getting beyond the regional development rhetoric

  • Authors: Thompson, Helen
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Paper presented at University of Ballarat Annual Research Conference: Our Research - Regional and National Significance, Ballarat, Victoria : 5th November 2003
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  • Description: Since the mid 1990s access to advanced communication and information systems has increasingly been seen as critical for economic and social well-being. Information communications technology (ICT) has been identified as having a virtually unlimited potential to enhance business competitiveness. For regional communities ICT has been identified as providing opportunities to ‘level the playing field’ with benefits espoused in terms of ‘location independence’ and for the end of the ‘tyranny of distance’. In terms of community well-being it has been argued that online capabilities can help to stimulate and reinvigorate both geographic communities and communities of interest. However in spite of the context where online capabilities are promoted as critical elements of regional and rural success, few attempts have been made to draw together various intellectual streams of research with examples of community practice, to gain a clear understanding of how regional Australia can grab its share of this wealth and use it to strengthen local communities. This paper reports on collaborative research which is directed towards these very issues. It responds to a call for research to be instigated to collect case studies of rural communities that have successfully developed community-based Internet services for socially and economically beneficial purposes. There are four industry partners supporting this research. They are Ararat Rural City, the Wimmera Development Association, AME Systems and the Shire of Hepburn. The broad research objective is to consider factors that underpin the sustainability of regional and rural communities with a particular focus on investing factors that affect the success of community informatics (CI) initiatives. CI is an overarching term and an emerging field of study that focuses on the use of ICT by communities for their betterment. It links the concepts of social, economic, political and cultural development with emerging opportunities from ICTs. A mixed methodology, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies has been used to achieve the study objectives. Findings indicate that where commitment, compatibility and a shared strategic intent are at the heart of collaborative relationships, success and learning is much more likely to occur. The research demonstrates the benefits and challenges of operationalising online initiatives in a regional and rural context. It also contributes to forming an evidence-based approach to public and private action required to underpin the sustainability of regional and rural communities in Australia.
  • Description: 2003004599

Strictly increasing positively homogeneous functions with application to exact penalization

  • Authors: Rubinov, Alex , Gasimov, Rafail
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Optimization Vol. 52, no. 1 (2003), p. 1-28
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  • Description: We study a nonlinear exact penalization for optimization problems with a single constraint. The penalty function is constructed as a convolution of the objective function and the constraint by means of increasing positively homogeneous (IPH) functions. The main results are obtained for penalization by strictly IPH functions. We show that some restrictive assumptions, which have been made in earlier researches on this topic, can be removed. We also compare the least exact penalty parameters for penalization by different convolution functions. These results are based on some properties of strictly IPH functions that are established in the article.
  • Description: C1
  • Description: 2003000357

Strikingly low circulating CRP concentrations in ultramarathon runners independent of markers of adiposity - How low can you go?

  • Authors: Tomaszewski, Maciej , Charchar, Fadi , Przybycin, Malgorzata , Crawford, Lynne , Wallace, A. Michael. , Gosek, Katarzyna , Lowe, Gordon. D. , Zukowska-Szczechowska, Ewa , Grzeszczak, Wladyslaw , Sattar, Naveed , Dominiczak, Anna
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Vol. 23, no. 9 (2003), p. 1640-1644
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  • Description: Objective-This study was undertaken to evaluate to what extent C-reactive protein (CRP) can be reduced by exercise by examining its circulating concentrations in male ultramarathon runners and to determine if low leptin as a robust circulating marker of fat mass could account for low CRP in such men. Methods and Results-Sixty-seven male ultramarathon runners and 63 sedentary male controls of similar age and body mass index were recruited. CRP and leptin were measured by ELISA and radioimmunoassay, respectively. Median CRP concentration in lean (body mass index <25 kg/m(2)) marathon runners was less than half control median (0.4 [0.2 to 0.9] mg/L versus 0.9 [0.5 to 2.7] mg/L, P=0.0013) and, more strikingly, in nonlean runners was approximately 26% of control median (0.4 [0.3 to 0.8] mg/L versus 1.5 [0.9 to 2.5] mg/L, P=0.0002). Circulating leptin levels were also substantially lower in lean (45% less) and nonlean (63% less, both P=0.0001) ultramarathon runners. However, interleukin-6 levels were not different. Furthermore, leptin adjustment only minimally attenuated the case-control difference in CRP, suggesting that mechanisms other than fat mass reduction contribute to low concentrations of CRP in marathon runners. Conclusions-This study suggests that circulating CRP concentrations can be markedly suppressed, independently of total adiposity or indeed fat mass, by intense regular physical exercise.

Succession planning in Australian family business

Surface stickiness of drops of carbohydrate and organic acid solutions during convective drying : Experiments and modeling

  • Authors: Adhikari, Benu , Howes, Tony , Bhandari, Bhesh , Troung, V.
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Drying Technology Vol. 21, no. 5 (2003), p. 839-873
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  • Description: Drying kinetics of low molecular weight sugars such as fructose, glucose, sucrose and organic acid such as citric acid and high molecular weight carbohydrate such as maltodextrin (DE 6) were determined experimentally using single drop drying experiments as well as predicted numerically by solving the mass and heat transfer equations. The predicted moisture and temperature histories agreed with the experimental ones within 6% average relative (absolute) error and average difference of +/- 1degreesC, respectively. The stickiness histories of these drops were determined experimentally and predicted numerically based on the glass transition temperature (T-g) of surface layer. The model predicted the experimental observations with good accuracy. A nonsticky regime for these materials during spray drying is proposed by simulating a drop, initially 120 mum in diameter, in a spray drying environment.

Swingtum- A computational theory of fractual dynamic swings and physical cycles of stock market in a quantum price-time space

Tackling school leaving at its Source: A case of reform in the middle years of schooling

  • Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter , Hattam, Robert
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: British journal of sociology of education Vol. 24, no. 2 (2003), p. 177-193
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  • Description: One of the most pervasive educational issues confronting Australia, and other countries, at the moment is the declining completion rates in high schools. While a period of success was experienced after the Second World War, there is now a pressing need to reform high schools in the ways they connect with young lives. In this paper, we present a 'sociology of the high school' as a way of encapsulating the high school as an institution that: is still largely stuck in a 'continuity of practice' (Elmore, 1987); has an 'attachment to familiar pedagogical routines' (Eisner, 1992); fails to listen to students; is hierarchically structured; treats students in immature ways; is hung up with passing on content; and seems more concerned with insulating itself from, rather connecting with or appropriating, young lives into the curriculum. As an alternative, we examine the notion of middle schooling that requires a version of whole school reform that engages with structures, cultures and changing pedagogy in ways more resonant with, and respectful of, young lives. We examine the tensions and dilemmas experienced at Investigator [1] High School in Australia, and conclude that the centerpiece has to be breaking the mold of the 'scripted' teacher and its replacement by the 'teacher-as-improviser'.

Teacher research and democratic educational reform

  • Authors: Lankshear, Colin , Knobel, Michele
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Mexican Journal of Educational Research Vol. 8, no. 19 (2003), p. 705-731
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  • Description: In Teachers as Researchers (2003: Ch 1), Joe Kincheloe advocates teacher research as a means by which teachers can resist and overcome a trend emanating from the United States toward domination of curriculum and pedagogy by ‘technical standards’ based on ‘expert research’ and imposed in a ‘top-down’ manner by educational administrators and policy makers. This is a trend where curriculum has become highly standardized. Teachers within the same subject areas in the same grades are required to ‘cover the same content, assign the same importance to the content they cover, and evaluate it in the same way’ regardless of the diversity of school communities, school settings, student needs and backgrounds, and so on (Marzano and Kendall 1999; Kincheloe 2003: 4). Teachers are strongly encouraged to teach to the tests that are used to measure student outcomes because schools are compared on the basis of the scores their students achieve. This regime of measuring and reporting outcomes is promoted in the name of ‘accountability,’ and is very difficult for schools to resist. On one hand, if schools do not make an effort to compete they are likely to lose students to other schools whose achievement scores impress parents/caregivers. On the other hand, if schools can show their scores are improving—by teaching more and more rigorously to the content-laden tests and enlisting parents/caregivers in this culture as overseers of student homework and preparation for tests, they can maintain and improve their enrolments.
  • Description: C1
  • Description: 2003000531

Teaching organisational theory in undergraduate management programmes : An exercise in facilitated theory testing for active experimentation

  • Authors: McEachern, Steven , Blunsdon, Betsy , Reed, Ken , McNeil, Nicola
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Further and Higher Education Vol. 27 , no. 1 (2003), p. 3-14
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  • Description: This paper argues that there is an opportunity to improve the way that social science theory is taught by introducing an exercise in facilitated theory testing through active experimentation. This paper describes a learning experience that enables students to discover the dynamic nature of theoretical discoveries. This idea is grounded in the notion that students will gain much from learning about and testing theory experientially using real world data. A data based exercise is outlined and illustrated to reveal a learning experience that provides an opportunity to improve the way social science is taught by linking theory to empirical data. We argue that this provides an opportunity to offer a more holistic learning experience for theory teaching. The paper will be of special interest to those teaching theory in management, commerce, business and organisational studies courses. It will also be of interest to a more general audience because it provides a framework that can be modified whenever forging a connection between theory and ‘the real world’ is a primary learning objective.
  • Description: C1
  • Description: 2003000605

Tertiary Undergraduate Literacy Integration Program (TULIP) : An innovative approach to tertiary teaching and learning

  • Authors: Cartwright, Patricia , Noone, Lynne
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Paper presented at Seventh Pacific Rim - First Year in Higher Education Conference: Enhancing Transition to Higher Education: Strategies and Policies that Work, Brisbane, Queensland : 9th - 11th July, 2003
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  • Description: Increased access to university by students with different backgrounds and capabilities from those in the past has posed, and continues to pose, dilemmas for lecturers who seek effective ways of addressing the challenge of undergraduate literacy and learning. To this end, we have been engaged on a Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development (CUTSD) funded program that we call TULIP (Tertiary Undergraduate Literacy Integration Program) which focuses on the integration of tertiary literacy within content teaching as a means of enhancing student literacy. The broad aim of the TULIP Project was to build on collaborative and reflective teaching and learning partnerships between lecturers and students, between lecturers across two universities, and between lecturers in disparate disciplines. The project developed, trialed and evaluated a suite of learner-centred literacy strategies that comprise the TULIP Resource Kit which foregrounds the embeddedness of tertiary literacy within content teaching.
  • Description: 2003000500

The adoption of ICT by SMEs in Australia

The adoption of security technologies by SMEs in Australia

The agenda for change among female rural general practitioners

  • Authors: Schwarz, Imogen
  • Date: 2003
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Paper presented at the 7th National Rural Health Conference, Canberra : 1st - 4th March, 2003
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  • Description: This paper presents the preliminary results of a qualitative study examining the agenda for change being pursued by key influential women in Australia to address male-centred rural general practitioner (GP) workforce policies. Many current recruitment and retention programs do not reflect the needs of female GPs as they are based on the traditional notions of a country GP — that is a full-time, on call doctor with a supporting spouse. As women become the majority in medicine, key women influentials in the rural general practice field are advocating for the restructuring of medicine so that women GPs can be part of the solution to rural health care issues. Previous empirical research and theoretical analyses have suggested that medicine and rural communities are patriarchal. To date data collection for this explorative study consists of 5 in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of key women activists across the spectrum of organised medicine. Preliminary results show how women are pressuring for change but also the sources of resistance they encounter from the dominant medical culture. Key women players use particular collective and individual strategies to advocate for female GP issues. These results reflect some research findings on women leaders and female rural GPs. In conclusion, it is important that women are given equal access to decision-making positions to enable their input into the structure and culture of rural general practice. The recommendation put forward is to build inclusive recruitment and retention rural workforce strategies for female rural GPs.
  • Description: E1
  • Description: 2003000514