Digital Commons Network^™

Signposts To Improved Test Scores In Literacy And Numeracy, Julie Mcmillan, Sheldon Rothman

Dr Sheldon Rothman

A recent study of year 9 students' results on reading comprehension and mathematics tests, by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) found that a positive school climate is associated with higher literacy and numeracy test scores. In other key findings, socioeconomic status, language background, Indigenous status, gender and educational aspirations were found to have significant effects on achievement in both literacy and numeracy. Parents' education had a significant effect on literacy but not on numeracy. This article gives an overview of the findings.

Gender Differences In Education And Labour Market Outcomes, Kylie Hillman, Sheldon Rothman

Kylie Hillman

Despite numerous changes in policy and legislation, issues of gender equity in the Australian education system and labour market remain a concern, particularly the poorer performance of males on tests of literacy and in rates of Year 12 completion. The results of research on the topic are summarised in this article. They suggest that although there is a statistically significant difference between the average levels of reading comprehension of male and female students, this difference may not extend beyond the classroom to seriously affect later outcomes. Males on average continue to progress, through both the education system and the labour …

Policy Issues For Australia's Education Systems : Evidence From International And Australian Research, Gary Marks, Julie Mcmillan, John Ainley

Dr John Ainley

This article discusses education policy issues in the context of empirical evidence. It notes that many commonly held beliefs about Australian education such as, the relative performance and participation levels of Australian students; the importance of socioeconomic background on educational outcomes both relative to other countries and changes over-time; gender differences in mathematics and science; and the labour market situation of early school leavers; are not supported by empirical research. Such findings have implications for government policies. The article also questions current policy directions toward increasing Year 12 participation, expanding both secondary and post-secondary vocational education and reducing class sizes. …

"We Did It For The Kids," Housing Policies, Race, And Class: An Ethnographic Case Study Of A Resident Council In A Public Housing Neighborhood, Tiffany Gayle Chenault

Tiffany Chenault

Innovation Education In Nsw Design And Technology Curriculum (With Seemann, K,W.), Angela Turner

Dr Angela Turner

INNOVATION EDUCATION IN NSW DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY CURRICULUM Angela Turner and Dr Kurt Seemann School of Education Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour NSW 2450, Australia Corresponding e-mail: angela.turner@scu.edu.au Abstract Do technology teachers in secondary schools and academic stakeholders share the national vision of knowledge and innovation when implementing Design and Technology curricula? Directions for an innovation climate have been endorsed by the federal government, and demanded by various industry groups, since 1996. This paper explores the extent to which education providers of secondary schooling have embraced the call for teaching and developing innovation capacities through technology curriculum. The Australian Science, …

Self Efficacy, Alcohol Expectancy And Problem-Solvingappraisal As Predictors Of Alcohol Use In College Students, Nancy Taylor, Michael Biscaro, Karen Broer

Nancy P. Taylor

This study updated that of Broer 1996 and re-examined self-efficacy, alcohol expectancy and problem-solving appraisal as predictors of alcohol use in undergraduate college students. Stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed that alcohol expectancy of Global Positive Changes and gender were significant predictors for both number of drinks and binge episodes.

Stressful Life Events As Predictors Of Functioning: Findings From The Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study, Maria E. Pagano, Andrew E. Skodol, Robert L. Stout, M. Tracie Shea, Shirley Yen, Carlos M. Grilo, Charles A. Sanislow, Donna S. Bender, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Mary C. Zanarini, John G. Gunderson

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

Objective:  Although much attention has been given to the effects of adverse childhood experiences on the development of personality disorders (PDs), we know far less about how recent life events influence the ongoing course of functioning. We examined the extent to which PD subjects differ in rates of life events and the extent to which life events impact psychosocial functioning. Method:  A total of 633 subjects were drawn from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS), a multi-site study of four personality disorders – schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD), obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) – and a comparison group of major depressive …

Defining The Feminine Impact On The Progression Of Japanese Language: An Inquiry Into The Development Of Heian Period Court Diaries, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

From the split of the private and public lives of gender divides, men lived on the outside imbibing Chinese language styles, while women on the inside established and preserved a uniquely Japanese form of language. This paper asserts the theory that the Heian period was one of the first times in which the schism was produced through the female’s power to embody a written language which the Japanese could claim as their own independently of the effect from other cultures. In its focus this paper aspires to analyze the public/private, male/female origins by placing them within the Heian period, from …

Homosexuality In Fushigi Yuugi And Gravitation: An Investigation Into The Cultural Background Of Homosexuality In Japanese Animation, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

This paper will delve into the following issues: how the Japanese view homosexual males and how the agency of the reader and/or viewer impacts the depictions of visual displays of intimate behavior by homosexual males. The purpose of this paper will be an attempt to define some sort of answer to each question within the context of the Japanese cultural products of manga and anime. I am going to dissect shifting sexualities as they are represented in two different examples of Japanese anime aimed at slightly differing audience groups. The two shows that I will focus on are: Fushigi Yuugi …

Enjo Kosai: Brand Name Marketing, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Media is a contributing factor in creating a market for the prostitution of minors in Japan today. Media creates an image to which the girls aspire by placing the trendiest items in the hands of music and movie idols who the girls look up to . The drive to then own these trendy, and expensive, products forces the girls into marketing their bodies to strangers. Though in many ways media can be seen as the root of all evil through print and film advertisements, there are some forms of media which work as a caution instead of an encouragement to …

Ono No Komachi: Love And Desire, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

The poetry of Ono no Komachi can be read in many lights. The two ways in which I feel its message and context can be best appreciated are through feminine independence and masculine subjection. Ono no Komachi wrote poetry that was evocative of the feminine ideal of longing for a male, but she also wrote poetry which denigrated the need for a woman to rely on a male. Through a self-critical reader analysis of some of her poems, I will show that Komachi’s poetry can be read as comprising a longing for the world of men, and men in particular, …

Association Of Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease With Genetic Variation In Multiple Members Of The Gapd Gene Family, Yonghong Li, Petra Nowotny, Peter Holmans, Scott Smemo, John S. K. Kauwe, Anthony L. Hinrichs, Kristina Tacey, Lisa Doil, Ryan Van Luchene, Veronica Garcia, Charles Rowland, Steven J. Schrodi, Diane Leong, Goran Gogic, Joanne Chan, Anibal Cravchik, David Ross, Kit Lau, Shirley Kwok, Sheng-Yung Chang, Joe Catanese, John Sninsky, Thomas J. White, John Hardy, John Powell, Simon Lovestone, John C. Morris, Leon Thal, Michael Owen, Julie Williams, Alison Goate, Andrew Grupe

john a. powell

Although several genes have been implicated in the development of the early-onset autosomal dominant form of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the genetics of late-onset AD (LOAD) is complex. Loci on several chromosomes have been linked to the disease, but so far only the apolipoprotein E gene has been consistently shown to be a risk factor. We have performed a large-scale single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based association study, across the region of linkage on chromosome 12, in multiple case-control series totaling 1,089 LOAD patients and 1,196 control subjects and report association with SNPs in the glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPD) gene. Subsequent analysis of GAPD paralogs …

Association Of Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease With Genetic Variation In Multiple Members Of The Gapd Gene Family, Yonghong Li, Petra Nowotny, Peter Holmans, Scott Smemo, John S. K. Kauwe, Anthony L. Hinrichs, Kristina Tacey, Lisa Doil, Ryan Van Luchene, Veronica Garcia, Charles Rowland, Steven J. Schrodi, Diane Leong, Goran Gogic, Joanne Chan, Anibal Cravchik, David Ross, Kit Lau, Shirley Kwok, Sheng-Yung Chang, Joe Catanese, John Sninsky, Thomas J. White, John Hardy, John Powell, Simon Lovestone, John C. Morris, Leon Thal, Michael Owen, Julie Williams, Alison Goate, Andrew Grupe

Steven J Schrodi

Although several genes have been implicated in the development of the early-onset autosomal dominant form of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the genetics of late-onset AD (LOAD) is complex. Loci on several chromosomes have been linked to the disease, but so far only the apolipoprotein E gene has been consistently shown to be a risk factor. We have performed a large-scale single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based association study, across the region of linkage on chromosome 12, in multiple case-control series totaling 1,089 LOAD patients and 1,196 control subjects and report association with SNPs in the glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPD) gene. Subsequent analysis of GAPD paralogs …

From Diva To Deco Body: Visual Culture And The Daily Performance Of Gender In Mexico City, 1915-1935, Ageeth Sluis

Ageeth Sluis

No abstract provided.

Finding A Place For Women In Australian Cultural History: Female Cultural Activism In Sydney, 1900-1940, Jane Hunt

Jane Hunt

With only a few exceptions, the endeavours of culturally active women appear as irrelevant or marginal to the history of Australian culture. Australian cultural historiography dwells on antithetic relationships, whether between cultural-political elites, gendered spaces and practices, or elitist and popular culture. However, this historical preoccupation with dichotomous notions of class, gender, and culture has deflected attention from other aspects of the struggle to define culture. Cultural definitions were far from fixed for most of the first half of the twentieth century in Australia. Negotiations on what constituted appropriate cultural form, content, and practice are apparent inside and outside establishment …

The Conservatism Of 1784: Georgiana, Duchess Of Devonshire And ‘Representative Publicness, Adrianne Wadewitz

Adrianne Wadewitz

The 1784 Westminster election has garnered a lot of attention because of the extraordinary contemporary reactions, both positive and negative, to the participation of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Historians such as Amanda Foreman, Elaine Chalus, Anne Stott, and Judith Lewis have used this election to illustrate the potential for female political involvement during the eighteenth-century. They also convincingly argue that the harsh criticism leveled at Georgiana was a consequence of her ‘democratic’ canvassing techniques and not a reaction to her sex, but their analyses lack a clear framework that accounts for the violence of the responses. I would like to …

Performing Racial And Ethnic Identity: Discrimination By Proxy And The Future Of Title Vii, Camille Gear Rich

Camille Gear Rich

No abstract provided.

Screening For Diabetes In An African American Community: The Project Direct Experience

Linda A. Treiber

AIM: To report the results of a community-based screening program associated with Project DIRECT, a multi-year diabetes mellitus prevention and control project targeting African-American residents of southeast Raleigh, NC. METHODS: Between December 1996 and June 1999, 183 screening events took place in community settings.Screening was by capillary glucose concentration. Participants with a positive screen were referred for confirmatory testing and physician follow-up. MAIN RESULTS: Risk factors for diabetes were prevalent, including ethnic minority race (88.2%), obesity (45.6%), and family history of diabetes (41.7%). In all, 197 persons had an elevated screening result; the prevalence of diabetes in the screened population …

The Next Era Of Sentencing Reform, Steven L. Chanenson

Steven L. Chanenson

Social Justice And Family Court Reform, Susan Brooks, Dorothy E. Roberts

Susan Brooks

Creating a unified family court, or any type of family court reform, may have only a minimal impact if it simply changes the structure of how judges do business rather than addresses the structure of the child welfare system itself.

The authors argue that family court reform must place social justice at its center. First, they discuss profound flaws in the child welfare system that make poor and minority families especially vulnerable to coercive state intervention. Second, they describe two approaches to child welfare cases-family systems theory and therapeutic justice that can help to guide reform efforts directed at addressing …

Two-Year Stability And Change Of Schizotypal, Borderline, Avoidant And Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorders, Carlos M. Grilo, M. Tracie Shea, Charles A. Sanislow, Andrew E. Skodol, John G. Gunderson, Robert L. Stout, Maria E. Pagano, Shirley Yen, Leslie C. Morey, Mary C. Zanarini, Thomas H. Mcglashan

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

he authors examined the stability of schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD) and obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) personality disorders (PDs) over 2 years of prospective multiwave follow-up. Six hundred thirty-three participants recruited at 4 collaborating sites who met criteria for 1 or more of the 4 PDs or for major depressive disorder (MOD) without PD were assessed with semistructured interviews at baseline, 6, 12, and 24 months. Lifetable survival analyses revealed that the PD groups had slower time to remission than the MDD group. Categorically, PD remission rates range from 50% (AVPD) to 61% (STPD) for dropping below diagnostic threshold on a …

Anthrax Hoaxes, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins

The Mismeasure Of Masculinity: The Male Body, ‘Race’ And Power In The Enumerative Discourses Of The Nfl Draft, Thomas Oates, Meenakshi Durham

Meenakshi Gigi Durham

The athletic male body has long been idealized in western culture, and its dimensions are a key aspect of its iconic status. Oates and Durham examine the discourses of the athletic male body as it is presented in media discourses surrounding the NFL Draft. They focus specifically on the enumerative strategies used to define and delimit the racialized bodies of football draftees. Through a close textual analysis of publications that deal with the Draft, they uncover three main themes in the discursive construction of the athletes' bodies: the delineation of the body in terms of its dimensions; the assessment of …

Introduction: Los Angeles Studies And The Future Of Urban Cultures, Raul Villa, George J. Sanchez

Raul Villa

This special issue of American Quarterly focuses on Los Angeles as an emblematic site through which the scholarship of American studies can be examined. As a city shaped by eighteenth-century European colonization, nineteenth-century U.S. territorial expansion, and twentieth-century migration, Los Angeles has come to embody both the hopes and fears of Americans looking to the future. It is a city in which the local is deployed in complex practices of identity and community formation within the broader networks of globalization that continue to define and redefine what constitutes America. The articles in this volume address the complexities of the city's …

Reconceptualizing East German Popular Literature Via The Science Fiction Niche, Sonja Fritzsche

Sonja Fritzsche

No abstract provided.

Rhetoric Or Rights?: When Culture And Religion Bar Girls' Right To Education, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Women account for almost two-thirds of the world's illiterates. In the year 2000, the World Education Forum met in Dakar, Senegal and set goals to (1) eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and (2) achieve gender equality in education by 2015. Two months before 2004, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that sixty percent of the 128 countries that attended the Dakar Conference would not meet these goals. The report attributed the failure to sharp discrimination against girls in social and cultural practices. The report failed to mention that social and cultural …

Signposts To Improved Test Scores In Literacy And Numeracy., Sheldon Rothman, J Mcmillan

Dr Sheldon Rothman

A recent study of year 9 students' results on reading comprehension and mathematics tests, by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) found that a positive school climate is associated with higher literacy and numeracy test scores. In other key findings, socioeconomic status, language background, Indigenous status, gender and educational aspirations were found to have significant effects on achievement in both literacy and numeracy. Parents' education had a significant effect on literacy but not on numeracy. This article gives an overview of the findings.

Gendering The "Turk" In Management Literature From Postcolonial Perspectives, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

In this paper, I provide an analytic framework based on postcolonial theories for addressing gender within management and organization literatures. Specifically, this paper offers a ‘non-Western’ theoretical intervention into ‘Western’ management texts that address gender and organizational issues as they relate to non-Western people and cultures. In order to highlight the contributions of postcolonial theories to feminist concerns around gender within management and organization literatures, in this paper, I do the following: Firstly, I discuss concerns raised by ‘Third World’ feminist scholars in regards to Western feminist theories as they relate to gender and knowledge production. Secondly, I highlight the …

Best Practices To Address The Demand Side Of Sex Trafficking, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

Each year, hundreds of thousands of women and children around the world become victims of the global sex trade. They are recruited into prostitution, often using tactics involving force, fraud, or coercion. Criminals working in organized networks treat the victims like commodities, buying and selling them for profit. This modern-day form of slavery is called sex trafficking.

This report will describe efforts to address the demand side of sex trafficking. It will define the demand and describe its different components. It will describe laws, policies, and programs aimed at reducing the demand for prostitution in communities and entire countries. It …

Selecting Tagging Snps For Association Studies Using Power Calculations From Genotype Data, Xiaolan Hu, Steven J. Schrodi, David A. Ross, Michele Cargill

Steven J Schrodi

Recent studies have indicated that linkage disequilibrium (LD) between single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers can be used to derive a reduced set of tagging SNPs (tSNPs) for genetic association studies. Previous strategies for identifying tSNPs have focused on LD measures or haplotype diversity, but the statistical power to detect disease-associated variants using tSNPs in genetic studies has not been fully characterized. We propose a new approach of selecting tSNPs based on determining the set of SNPs with the highest power to detect association. Two-locus genotype frequencies are used in the power calculations. To show utility, we applied this power method …