Description:
What does sport mean to young people in Australia? How does it affect their social, personal, moral and physical growth and development? What is the relationship between elite level 'media-sport' and the range of informal games children play for fun and friendship? Can children learn how to play fairly, when televised sport shows them that hurting opponents and 'bending the rules' are not only acceptable but celebrated as part of the game? Sport in the lives of young Australians offers an informative look into the practice of sport, the nature of children's and young people's experiences of it, and the significance of this for their development. Drawing on original close-focus studies conducted in schools and sports clubs in Australia, it provides valuable insight into youth sport from the perspective of the children and young people engaged in it. Recent advocacy for physical education and sport has highlighted their benefits in the fight against lifestyle diseases, but the research presented in this book reminds us not to lose sight of the other ways in which they contribute to the development of young people. The book also examines new approaches to teaching and coaching and the possibilities they offer for improving children's experiences of sport and physical education. For anyone involved in youth sport - from coaches, teachers and parents, to researchers and policy-makers - this book will provide invaluable understanding of the place and meaning of sport in the lives of young Australians
Description:
When I first wrote the dissertation that was reconstructed as this book, the arena of Pagan Studies and Wicca, as one of a plethora of New Religious Movements emerging into the cultural mainstream during the 1980s, was still somewhat a fringe area of study. Indeed, neo-Pagan revivalist movements, of which Wicca is the most predominant, were still very much the target of vitriol and scare mongering particularly by religiously inspired political conservatives. Republican congressman in the United State for example, after discovering that many self-proclaimed witches served in the U.S army at military basein Fort Hood made the claim, "We believe they are satanic and that they do not deserve to have any place in Fort Hood". Republican politician Storm Thurmond asked in the senate "What's next? Will armored divisions be forced to travel with sacrificial animals for satanic rituals?" "From Introduction"
Description:
This report examines the ways in which Australian employers retain skilled staff and the ways in which employers enhance their ability to use the skills of their people. The study found that while strategies such as increasing wages and family friendly policies may increase an employee's job satisfaction, the key driver in employee retention is if they feel they are learning and progressing in their careers.
Description:
"This toolkit contains men's stories of hope and motivation to change. It is designed to be used by men, to fix the vehicle of their relationships, so that their family is safer. The toolkit also contains some reminders of what happens when warning signs, on the road of life, are ignored by men who choose to continue using abuse to threaten and control their family ... This book is for any man to find ways of confronting abusive beliefs and behaviour, whether his own or other's."--Back jack
Description:
This book presents an alternative way of perceiving both formal schooling and teacher education. It challenges the educational community to examine the current practice of education and suggests a transforming alternative. Using the methodology and writing style of auto ethnography, the author has investigated an internship, in which interns were given room to negotiate their role, make mistakes, form relationships, and come to know the work of teachers. They were encouraged to become thinkers and were nurtured in their state of 'becoming' by mentors. As a result of this study a new model of teacher education, known as 'The Transformism model',is suggested. This involves the evolution of student teachers from a 'me view' perception to a 'worldview' perception. This model is not about training people to be teachers but is about the education of teachers through the adoption of adult learning and the incorporation of "Choice Theory". A new form of educational politics and practice is proposed where people come together in community; share their beliefs and knowledge, their likes and dislikes, their differences and their similarities in openness and with hope for a better world. " From publisher site"
Description:
This text is primarily concerned with the meanings that are produced when women become visible amongst the homeless through photographic representations. While there have always been homeless women, unlike their male counterparts, they have remained largely invisible to the public and government policy- makers. Social documentary photography has acted as one of the main avenues through which homeless women have, literally, been rendered visible. As an evidence producing technology, photography has exercised considerable influence in the construction of meaning about homelessness by employing concepts of the feminine and the masculine in various, and oppositional ways. Driven by, and implicated in complex sociocultural and political circumstances, socially concerned photographs draw on the real and the fictional to generate truth/power effects. Thus, this inquiry re/traces the representation of ?homeless woman? in a range of visual texts and ask how this construct has been discursively produced and deployed.
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Music of Place introduces the communities of three very different Australian festivals: the proudly multicultural City of Moreland in inner Melbourne; the 'Top Enders' who travel each Queen's birthday weekend for their annual gathering of Australian folk music; and Sydney's diverse Asian musical cultures. Each festival has its own underlying notions that structure the relationship between place, community and identity. These individual community festivals are used to promote each community's identity, created through certain musical styles or genres that are linked to certain identities, lifestyles and ideologies. These festivals appear to be about an ideal notion of community, and the music of these festivals inherently about how each community's 'home' is imagined. Yet, each community draws on the musical repertoire of its members, and in doing so, helps shape and give meaning to that particular community's histories, cultures and everyday spaces. This book explores these festival moments, capturing the ways in which music, geography and culture intersect and interact within specific locales, so bringing into being what may be experienced as distinct Australian communities.
Description:
Places of Pain and Shame is a cross-cultural study of sites that represent painful and/or shameful episodes in a national or local community's history, and the ways that government agencies, heritage professionals and the communities themselves seek to remember, commemorate and conserve these cases - or, conversely, choose to forget them. Such episodes and locations include: massacre and genocide sites, places related to prisoners of war, civil and political prisons, and places of "benevolent" internment such as leper colonies and lunatic asylums.
Description:
Traditional financial theories see capital structure as a result of mainly financial, tax and growth factors (Modigliani & Miller, 1958). But corporate governance theories (Jensen & Meckling, 1976) and business strategy theories (Barton & Gordon, 1988) suggest that ownership structure and ownership concentration, product diversification and asset specificity may also influence capital structure. Focusing on the examination of the determinants of capital structure in Chinese listed companies, this research goes beyond financial factors and considered business strategy and corporate governance approaches, and their impact on capital structure, in a transitioning Chinese context where institutions, expertise and regulatory processes are different to, but converging on, Western approaches. A panel data set of 1,098 Chinese listed companies for the period of 1991 to 2000 was collected from published sources, and conventional and innovative econometric methodologies were used to model a range of relationships between capital structure and its financial and non-financial determinants. The statistical approaches used in this study included Ordinary Least Squares Model and also Linear Mixed Model, which is a powerful tool to examine panel data where independence of explanatory variables is not assumed. The analysis also involved Hox’s model building procedures to measure model fit. The capital structure of listed companies in both the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Securities Exchange is positively related to a firm’s tax rate, growth and capital intensity and negatively related to a firm’s profit and size. Other financial factors such as tangibility, risk and duration are non-significant. The capital structure of listed companies, particularly in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, is positively related to product diversification and negatively related to asset specificity. The capital structure of listed companies in the Shanghai Securities Exchange is positively related to government ownership and ownership concentration of the largest shareholder and negatively related to legal person ownership and ownership concentration of the ten largest shareholders. The data and modelling support financial and non-financial determinants of capital structure. In particular, information asymmetry, business diversity and asset specificity have a significant impact on capital structure. In addition the empirical work in the study supports agency cost explanations of debt and equity. Finally the research demonstrates that the two main financial markets in China, Shenzhen and Shanghai, have operated differently but are converging towards a common norm. The research contributes to the general field of capital structure and provides valuable insights into the nature of the Chinese firm and the evolution of the Chinese financial system.
Description:
The Multiplicities of Internet Addiction contests the claim that computers - specifically Internet use - are addictive, arguing that the use of the Internet is now a form of everyday leisure engaged in by many people in Western society and one which is reflective of the benefits and employment of computers within society. Offering an analysis of the nature of addiction alongside the evaluation of the current day usage of computers, this volume explains how new learning spaces have developed which are also sites of leisure."."Book Jacket"
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The faithful dog has the ability to become an Australian legend, as has Simpson's Donkey of Gallipoli. The true, heartrending tale of a devoted terrier's reaction to the death of his master, a pikeman at the ill-fated and brutal Eureka Stockade, is what legends are made of.
Description:
Synopsis - This book brings a unique, innovative and refreshing perspective to one of the most protracted issues affecting young lives - disengagement from schooling. Rather than continuing to blame young people, as most educational policies do, this book examines disengagement from the vantage point of the lives, experiences, interests and aspirations of the communities from which young people come, and within which they are embedded. It uses a narrative and representational approach that gives detailed insights into the wider context of poverty, class, power, relationships and identity. A major and defining hallmark of the book is the emphasis it places upon a number of 'doings', - including community voice, identity formation, critical work education and education policy - all of which provide a very different set of scripts with which to reinvent the institution of high school.