An exploration of national calls to Lifeline Australia: social support or urgent suicide intervention?
- Authors: Watson, Robert , McDonald, John , Pearce, Dora
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Guidance & Counselling Vol. 34, no. 4 (Nov 2006), p. 471-482
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- Description: Lifeline Australia Inc. provides a free 24-hour telephone counselling and referral service to all Australians. The trained telephone counsellors of the service record information on many of their calls in Lifeline's Client Service Management Information System (CSMIS). This paper presents a descriptive summary of a national CSMIS data set, which was compiled during a 3-month period in 2003. The CSMIS data provided a clear national profile of the callers to the service. The results of this study support the hypothesis that callers are generally seeking social support from the service. The discussion explores the implications of this finding for Lifeline and other generalist counselling and referral services and their capacity to offer suicide intervention to the community.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001998
The milk of humankind-ness : From a short (personal) history of the bra and its contents
- Authors: Spencer, Beth
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Feminist Studies Vol. 19, no. 45 (2004), p. 315-327
- Full Text: false
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000961
Dominant discourses and teacher education : Current curriculum or curriculum remembered?
- Authors: Johnston, Robbie
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 35, no. 4 (Nov 2007), p. 351-365
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- Description: Research findings from a longitudinal, classroom-based study of Bachelor of Education students in Tasmania suggest that three dominant discourses of schooling are powerful shapers of pre-service teachers' pedagogical decisions in relation to the teaching of SOSE (studies of society and environment). These discourses appear to inform teaching practices and contribute to uncritical SOSE learning experiences for children. The findings from this naturalistic research grounded in teacher education suggest that teacher preparation programs should encourage far greater critical reflection on curriculum documents. In particular, the findings highlight tensions for teacher educators in selecting between experiential and/or interdisciplinary, critical approaches to teacher education. These issues are illustrated in the teaching of SOSE as locality focused knowledge. What this means for the selection of fieldwork sites for children's learning and teacher education pedagogies is explored in this paper.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005007
Physical activity alone and with others as predictors of sense of belonging and mental health in retirees
- Authors: Bailey, Maria , McLaren, Suzanne
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Aging and Mental Health Vol. 9, no. 1 (2005), p. 82-90
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- Description: A high sense of belonging to the community and physical activity are associated with improved mental health in older people. The present study tested a model incorporating physical activities performed alone and with others as predictors of sense of belonging, depression and suicide ideation. One hundred and ninety four retired adults (87 males, 107 females, mean age 68 years) completed the Yale Physical Activity Survey, the Sense of Belonging Instrument, the Suicide Subscale of the General Health Questionnaire and the Zung Depression Inventory. Within the context of the model, neither participating in physical activities alone, nor with at least one other person, predicted sense of belonging, depression or suicide ideation. Having the abilities and motivation to belong was a predictor of participating in physical activities with others and actual feelings of belonging and contributed to predicting mental health in retirees. It was concluded that simply performing activities with others was not associated with a sense of belonging or mental health. Rather, sense of belonging may need to be facilitated in order for mental health to be enhanced.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001229
Extension and replication of an internet-based treatment program for panic disorder
- Authors: Richards, Jeffrey , Alvarenga, Marlies
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Vol. 31, no. 1 (2002), p. 41-47
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- Description: This study describes an internet-based intervention for people with panic disorder that consisted of a 5-module program. Participants accessed the program for 5-8 weeks and were then re-assessed 3 months later. Use of the program was associated with reductions in severity of panic disorder and in catastrophic misinterpretation of ambiguous panic body sensations in 9 people with this anxiety disorder. There were also non-significant trends for body vigilance to decrease over the course of the study. Further investigations of the efficacy of this medium for the treatment of panic disorder and the associated mechanisms of change are warranted.
- Description: 2003000077
Climbing over the rocks in the road to student engagement and learning in a challenging high school in Australia
- Authors: Smyth, John , Fasoli, Lyn
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Research Vol. 49, no. 3 (2007), p. 273-295
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0665569
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0208022
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- Description: Background There is increasing evidence that schools internationally are not meeting the needs of increasing numbers of young people, especially those at the secondary level, and whose backgrounds have placed them at disadvantage. The evidence is that significant numbers of young people are becoming disconnected from school. While the official term for this is 'disengagement', it seems that official educational policy responses to these tendencies, far from 'fixing' the problem, seem to be exacerbating it. Current policy preoccupations that emphasize accountability, greater parental choice of schools and a more prescriptive curriculum can present difficulties for young people, particularly those from challenging backgrounds. There may be a mismatch between formal educational policy, and the lived experiences at the level of the school and classroom for the most vulnerable young people. Purpose This paper reports on a single instance of a high school that embarked upon a process of reinventing itself in respect of the importance of relationships and 'relational power' for students over their learning. The paper examines what the teachers and students had to say about the efficacy of this school-based reform. Sample The case-study school was located in an area of extreme social disadvantage in which young people had diminished educational expectations. The research involved observations and interviews with a small sample of stakeholders and focus groups with students (13-16-year-olds). Design and method The study was an ethnographic case study of a single secondary school conducted over a five-week continuous period. It used 'embedded interviews' involving observation of in-class teaching prior to extensive 1-hour interviews with teachers and students' focus groups. All interviews were recorded. Detailed field notes were kept of classroom observations and other activities, including school assemblies, staff meetings and reflections on informal conversations held during teaching breaks in the staffroom. Results and conclusions Positive outcomes emerged from a context where fair boundaries were established and in which students could see school as a place where they could experience fun in their learning. The process was by no means complete, but the school felt that it had found a more efficacious way to move forward and the students made this clear in their statements about what the school was attempting to do with them. Key to these positive outcomes was a commitment to placing relationships between students, teachers and parents at the centre of everything the school did.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005579
Sense of belonging to the general and Lesbian communities as predictors of depression among Lesbians
- Authors: McLaren, Suzanne
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Homosexuality Vol. 56, no. 1 (2009), p. 1-13
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Research has indicated that a sense of belonging is important for mental health. This study investigated sense of belonging to the general community and sense of belonging to the lesbian community as predictors of depression among self-identified lesbians (n = 178). Participants completed the Psychological subscale of the Sense of Belonging Instrument and the Depression subscale of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales. Results showed that although sense of belonging to the general community and sense of belonging to the lesbian community were directly related to depression, only sense of belonging to the general community contributed significantly to the prediction of depression when they were entered together in a regression analysis. Sense of belonging to the general community and sense of belonging to the lesbian community interacted in the prediction of depression. Low sense of belonging to the general community buffered the association between sense of belonging to the lesbian community and depression, while high sense of belonging to the general community exacerbated the association between sense of belonging to the lesbian community and depression. Results also showed that sense of belonging to the general community mediated the relation between sense of belonging to the lesbian community and depression. Results imply that enhancing a sense of belonging to the general community should be a priority for lesbians who do not feel that they belong to the lesbian community.
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
The paradoxes of history in Crew and Woolman's 'Tagged' and Crew and Tan's 'Memorial'
- Authors: Mills, Alice
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Rethinking History Vol. 6, no. 3 (Win 2002), p. 331-343
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- Description: The publication of two illustrated books with verbal text by the Australian writer Gary Crew provides an opportunity to compare the presentation of war memories in picture story book and graphic novel format. Gary Crew and Shaun Tan's Memorial (1999) is a thought-provoking picture story book while Crew and Steven Woolman's Tagged (1997) is an idiosyncratic graphic novel. The picture story book illustrations depict the commemorative tree as more real, more present than the books' human beings. The verbal text asserts that memory will live on through generations of the war veterans' family, as in the tree, but the illustrations of the cutting down of the tree and the verbal text revealing a veteran's self-censorship reveal these claims to be at best tenuous, at worst, false. Nevertheless, despite the current town council's disrespect for the commemorative tree, the Anzac Day ceremony remains a socially sanctioned rite of remembering war. The illustrations to Tagged represent a war veteran's confused mind and his compulsive reliving of his past as confusing visual images with a lack of clear cues for the reader's eye to follow, as the boy observer moves more deeply into the labyrinthine building where the man hides. While Memorial's war memorials are complete, public, in good condition and easily accessible, the bewildering passages and openings of Tagged's building suggest the man's stuck memories, the boy's problems with interpreting war images and also a society's not altogether successful attempt to repress collective acknowledgement of its war past. In contrast with Memorial, Tagged is a memorial to the unknown soldier, offering a different kind of historical truth to any officials, public, empty tomb.
- Description: 2003000178
Writers and biographical cinema - Hysteria and the domestic everyday
- Authors: Sim, Lorraine
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Feminist Studies Vol. 21, no. 51 (Nov 2006), p. 355-368
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003002825
Contestability and social justice : The limits of competitive tendering of welfare services
- Authors: McDonald, John
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Social Work Vol. 55 , no. 2 (2002), p. 99-108
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- Description: This paper critically analyses competitive tendering as a model for the provision of welfare services. Competitive tendering, driven by National Competition Policy and other imperatives for greater efficiency and a smaller public sector, is now used extensively by governments to fund welfare services. However, the suitability of this funding model to welfare services generally, and specifically welfare services in non·metropolitan areas, can be criticised on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Competitive tendering is grounded in economic rationalist, urbo-centric assumptions that are largely inappropriate for welfare provision, and have limited validity in rural areas. There is lillie rigorous empirical evidence of improved efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery under this model. Conversely, there is mounting evidence about the negative impacts. In rural areas this includes the erosion of community service obligations, less collaboration and greater secrecy between agencies, the reduction of choice, limited opportunities for local planning, cost shifting, and threats to continuity of care. This paper concludes with a call for greater application of the 'public benefit' test under the provisions of the National Competition Policy, and the development of more sophisticated frameworks for assessing the contestability of welfare services. Social workers have a leading role to play in challenging the dominant ideology of competition·orientated welfare reforms.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000195
Teacher development against the policy reform grain : An argument for recapturing relationships in teaching and learning
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Teacher Development Vol. 11, no. 2 (2007), p. 221-236
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0665569
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP0560339
- Full Text: false
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- Description: As public schools in countries like the UK, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand continue to suffer from the damaging effects of poorly conceptualized educational reforms, educators struggle to come up with alternatives with which to reclaim schools. While acknowledging the situational, contextual and temporal differences between these countries, this paper presents a rationale for reinserting the relational work of schools at the centre of a teacher development-led form of recovery. The central claim advanced herein is that teacher development in schools must have a central and demonstrable concern with the primacy of relationships in teaching and learning. Schools and teachers have the collective capacity to reclaim the ground that has been severely eroded by managerialist and marketizing agenda that have been allowed to intrude on schools and subjugate the importance of relational forms of knowing. Placing students at the centre is crucial to creating the direction necessary for re-establishing the relational complexity of schools.
- Description: 2003005582
Addressing literacy in secondary schools : Introduction
- Authors: May, Stephen , Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Language and Education Vol. 21, no. 5 (2007), p. 365-369
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005591
Intelligent finance - An emerging direction
- Authors: Pan, Heping , Sornette, Didier , Kortanek, Kenneth
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Quantitative Finance Vol. 6, no. 4 (2006), p. 273-277
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Intelligent finance represents a new direction recently emerging from the confluence of several distinct disciplines in financial market analysis, investing and trading, removing any historical or artificial barrier between them. It is conceived as the science, technology and art of the comprehensive, predictive, dynamic and strategic analysis of global financial markets, towards a unification and integration of academic finance and professional finance. As a comprehensive approach, it is a quest for absolute positive and non-trivial returns in investing and trading by exploiting complete information about financial markets from all general perspectives, drawing ideas, theories, models and techniques from many related academic disciplines, such as macroeconomics, microeconomics, academic finance, financial mathematics, econophysics, behavioural finance and computational finance, and from professional schools of thought, such as macrowave investing, trend following, fundamental analysis, technical analysis, mind analysis, active speculation, etc. In terms of risk management, intelligent finance is expected to minimize the very last risk-the incompleteness of an investing or trading method or system. The theoretical framework of intelligent finance consists of four major components: financial information fusion, multilevel stochastic dynamic process models, active portfolio and total risk management, and financial strategic analysis. We first provide the background from which intelligent finance has recently emerged as a new direction in finance research and industry, and then provide a brief theoretical review of the predictability of financial markets since Bachelier. After these background discussions, we clarify the major research directions of intelligent finance.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001613
G-coupling functions
- Authors: Morales-Silva, Daniel , Rubinov, Alex , Sosa, Wilfredo
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Optimization Vol. 58, no. 2 (2009), p. 193-211
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- Description: GAP functions are useful for solving optimization problems, but the literature contains a variety of different concepts of GAP functions. It is interesting to point out that these concepts have many similarities. Here we introduce G-coupling functions, thus presenting a way to take advantage of these common properties.
Professional distance and social work
- Authors: Green, Rosemary , Gregory, Raeleene , Mason, Robyn
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Social Work Vol. 59, no. 4 (2006), p. 449-465
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- Description: Professional distance and the parallel concept of models of practice reliant on professional objectivity have been major platforms in professional education. In social work, these ideas are often seen as contentious, unreasonable and, in some cases, unrealistic. Radical, feminist and rural social work approaches, for example, suggest that the expert role is not only inappropriate, but can be counter-productive and disrespectful of the people with whom we work. Postmodern approaches call for a deconstruction of professionalism in favour of context-specific partnerships between worker and client. How can workers ensure good, professional practice within a more flexible approach to professional distance and expertise? What are the issues and how may they be resolved? Are the boundaries of the professional relationship elastic and, if so, what are the consequences for practice and the individual worker? The present article explores the notion of flexible, elastic boundaries using literature and research from radical, postmodern, feminist and rural social work approaches.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001993
Social work and social justice : What are we fighting for?
- Authors: Solas, John
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Social Work Vol. 61, no. 2 (2008), p. 124-136
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- Description: A cardinal value of social work practice is social justice. Social justice ranks as the second of five values that underpin the Code of Ethics of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW. However, although social work's commitment to promoting social justice is laudable and, indeed, may even be a distinguishing feature of the profession, precisely what kind of social justice does social work espouse? The answer to this question remains unclear. Views about the nature and scope of social justice stem from broader conceptions of justice that not only differ from, but may also conflict with, each other. Therefore, it is important not only for social work to be clear about the type of social justice that it currently advocates, but also to ensure that it is one that the profession seeks to defend and maximise. It is argued that the choice must be as egalitarian as possible. Indeed, it must be radically so. Otherwise, what is social work fighting for?
- Description: C1
Neo-liberalism and the pathologising of public issues: The displacement of feminist service models in domestic violence support services
- Authors: McDonald, John
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Social Work Vol. 58 , no. 3 (2005), p. 275-284
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- Description: Using domestic violence support services as a case study, this paper examines how the ascendancy of neo-liberalism has individualised and pathologised public issues. Four perspectives are identified that have been influential in understanding the causes of domestic violence, determining responses to it and measuring the effectiveness of support services. These four perspectives may be categorised as: (i) victim-blaming; (ii) social movement; (iii) empowerment; and (iv) pathologising. From analysing the standard outcome measures currently used for government-funded accommodation programs, the author contends that the pathologising perspective dominates. This is partly attributable to the inherent methodological and ethical issues in evaluating programs of this nature. However, it is primarily driven by the ascendancy of a neoliberal, managerialist ideology that has depoliticised and clinicalised domestic violence. This has effectively silenced structural analyses of domestic violence and displaced feminist service models.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001234
From supervising practica to mentoring professional experience : Possibilities for education students
- Authors: Zeegers, Margaret
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Teaching Education Vol. 16, no. 4 (2005), p. 349-357
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- Description: This paper explores the possibilities presented in examining taken for granted aspects of pre-service teacher practicum practices, especially in terms of naming and positioning within teacher education, as they present at a regional university in Ballarat, Australia. The University of Ballarat has introduced a new P-10 teacher education course which is about to enter its fourth year. The course has focused some of its attention on traditional aspects of paid supervisory and assessment roles of practising teachers in relation to student teachers. As a result, changes have been made, with reconfigured foci on the roles of both practising teachers and undergraduate students, as well as those of other staff who support the new programme. One such focus is on what Schön described as "indeterminate zones of practice," and the result has been a research programme exploring those zones as part of mentorship in relation to mandated supervision and assessment requirements for graduate registration. Examination of data provided by transcripts of focus groups conducted with the students, mentors, community coordinators, and university teachers involved in the programmes suggests possibilities that may serve to inform efforts to meet a major part of the challenge to better prepare pre-service teachers in finding innovative and relevant ways to improve practicum experience from the outset of undergraduate education. Those involved in the programme at the University of Ballarat have examined assumptions underlying participants' roles in relation to partnerships within communities of practice in relation to the roles of university and educators in the field, as well as critically examining concepts of mentoring that guide reflection on practice and scaffold student learning. Such considerations go beyond concerns of individual pre-service teacher classroom performances, focusing on the generalizability of pre-service teacher experience in relation to the profession as a whole. © 2005 School of Education, University of Queensland.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001329
Is equity just enough for social work? A response to those who think it is!
- Authors: Solas, John
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Social Work Vol. 61, no. 2 (2008), p. 146-149
- Full Text: false
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- Description: C1