Digital Commons Network^™

Innovating Authentically: Cultural Differentiation In The Animation Sector, Susan Standing, Craig Standing

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper examines the concept of authentic innovation and the development of the animation industry in Malaysia. Authenticity is a concept that has been investigated from philosophical and institutional perspectives in the quest to explain the role of self-fulfillment and decision-making. It links with systems thinking because authenticity as a strategy requires a holistic approach since it is based upon values that influence action. The desire for authenticity can create expression outside the norms and produce innovation. We present interpretations of authenticity, explain the concept of authentic innovation and relate this to three case studies of Malaysian animation studios. We …

Fake It ‘Til You Make It: The Virtual Orchestra In New Electronic Music, Michael Terren

Sound Scripts

This paper describes a variety of audio technologies under the neologism “the virtual orchestra,” their relationship with neoliberal capitalism, and four electronic music works that utilise these technologies to highlight this relationship. The virtual orchestra comprises digital technologies that emulate orchestral performances, ranging from the ersatz sounds of General MIDI in the 1990s (often used in computer game soundtracks), to orchestral sample libraries, which can be virtually indiscernible from a well-recorded orchestral performance. It is suggested that the virtual orchestra emerged as part of a cultural movement that privileges individualism and control, and that this has precedence in the structure …

Wild Swans By Elena Kats-Chernin: The Journey From The Australian Ballet To The Uk Dance Charts, Helen Rusak

Sound Scripts

In 2003 composer Elena Kats-Chernin collaborated with choreographer Meryl Tankard to produce Wild Swans, a ballet based upon the theme of Hans Christian Anderson’s enduring tale evoking the sufferings of Eliza’s fate to save her brothers from the evil curse of their stepmother. It resulted in a score rich with a wide range of musical sources underscoring a tableaux of dance and images beautifully evocative of the tale. The work was premiered by the Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House on 29 April 2003. This paper looks at the unexpected journey that one of the musical movements from the …

Youth Matters: Shedding Light On Displacement In Syrian Girls' Memoirs, Alberta Natasia Adji

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In the face of war and political crisis, fleeing a country seems to be the best choice to get on with life. Among many refugee memoirs, so far young adult refugee texts have received little attention. This article analyses two young Syrian girls’ memoirs by Nujeen Mustafa and Yusra Mardini to investigate their experience of displacement. I argue that both Nujeen and Butterfly are prime specimens of young displacement memoir phenomena which act as a venue for identity negotiation. This point has much to do with their navigating the tensions between personal and collective selves to disclose their trauma and …

Coral Microbiome Database: Integration Of Sequences Reveals High Diversity And Relatedness Of Coral-Associated Microbes, Megan J. Huggett, Amy Apprill

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Coral-associated microorganisms are thought to play a fundamental role in the health and ecology of corals, but understanding of specific coral-microbial interactions are lacking. In order to create a framework to examine coral-microbial specificity, we integrated and phylogenetically compared 21,100 SSU rRNA gene Sanger-produced sequences from bacteria and archaea associated with corals from previous studies, and accompanying host, location and publication metadata, to produce the Coral Microbiome Database. From this database, we identified 39 described and candidate phyla of Bacteria and two Archaea phyla associated with corals, demonstrating that corals are one of the most phylogenetically diverse animal microbiomes. Secondly, …

Collaborative Coteaching (Cct): Practitioner Learning Through Shared Praxis, Joanne Yoo, Keith Heggart, Nina Burridge

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper explores the benefits of coteaching a philosophy and ethics subject for final year Australian primary preservice education students. It depicts the learning experiences of two early career academics, who were the coresearchers and coauthors of this article. A third author acted as a critical friend who facilitated reflective discussion around their coteaching practices. The coteachers adopt the living theory methodology to investigate collaborative coteaching as an effective model of instruction in higher education through a case study of their own practice. The primary data sources include both coteachers’ weekly journals, an interview discussion with a critical friend, informal …

Alternative Teacher Certification Students’ Motivations Of Teaching, Ebru Öztürk Akar

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The legal studies teaching methodology IRAC (issue, rule, application, conclusion) is widely used in universities by both law and business schools. This paper examines the effectiveness of IRAC from a teaching perspective and its usefulness for business students. Data is generated from an Australian university case study using teacher interviews and a student survey. The findings suggest that, because of its flexibility and logical structure, the practice of IRAC has become normalised. However it is only effective if teachers disseminate these features consistently in their teaching. Students in the study understood the usefulness of IRAC for classwork, but encountered application …

Democratic Contribution Or Information For Reform? Prevailing And Emerging Discourses Of Student Voice, Jennifer Charteris, Dianne Smardon

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

While a range of typologies frame and critique the scope, purpose and power relations of different student voice approaches, it is timely to look at the direction that student voice literature has taken in recent years and map dominant discourses in the field. In the article the following questions are addressed: (a) What are the dominant discourses in student voice literature? (b) What are the ways forward, to ensure there is both systemic quality assurance and democratic (if not radical) student participation? The discourses named and interrogated in this article include: governmentality; accountability; institutional transformation and reform; learner agency; personalising …

Does A “Science, Technology And Social Change” Course Improve Scientific Habits Of Mind And Attitudes Towards Socioscientific Issues?, Muammer Çalik, Faik Özgür Karataş

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The study aimed at exploring whether a “Science-Technology-Social Change” course improved pre-service social studies teachers’ (PST) scientific habits of mind and attitudes towards socio-scientific issues. Within a pre- and post-course experimental design, the study was conducted with 135 second-year PST (68 males and 67 females) from two classes at Department of Social Studies Teacher Education in a large-size university, Turkey. Two different Likert type scales, Scientific Habits of Mind Scale and Attitudes towards Socioscientific Issues Scale, were employed to collect data before and after the course. The data were imported to SPSS 15^TM for descriptive and inferential statistics in …

Exploring Intersections Of Work Intensity And Professional Learning: Female Teachers’ Responses To Research Engagement As Professional Learning, Jennifer Mitton-Kukner

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Much research has focused upon the promise of teacher research engagement as a form of professional learning. Yet, little scholarship has looked closely at how female teachers juggle research engagement alongside personal and professional responsibilities. This inquiry into the research experiences of two mid-career teachers provides an up-close look at the ways they attempted to sustain engagement over a three-year period. Attending closely to participants’ accounts of time use, as they engaged in research activities, sheds light upon the presence of socio-cultural expectations, in these instances, constraining their efforts and, arguably, impacting the depth of their professional learning.

New Approaches To Literacy Problems: Multiliteracies And Inclusive Pedagogies, Rachel J. Drewry, Wendy M. Cumming-Potvin, Dorit Maor

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This paper is based on a qualitative study examining multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996, 2000) and inclusivity. Underpinned by a socio-cultural approach, the study examined ways to facilitate meaningful literacy learning for students experiencing challenges in print-based, classroom activities. Key to this research was an analysis of how scaffolding was used to bridge home and school communities. This paper focuses on one of the study’s students, Hannah, who exhibited extensive engagement with multiliteracies at home - driven through the Arts (e.g. graphic design, singing and music). In contrast, Hannah’s literacy experiences in the classroom were, at times, challenging and …

Anecdotes, Experience, And ‘Learning By Osmosis’: The Role Of Professional Cultures In Preparing Teachers For Parent-School Engagement, Sue Saltmarsh, Amy K. Mcpherson, Sayan Chakrabarty, Stephen Winn, David Saltmarsh

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Initial teacher education and experiences of the professional cultures of teaching contribute to teachers’ understandings about how to engage with parents. Drawing on qualitative research data, and informed by Michel de Certeau’s theory of culture and everyday life, this paper explores how everyday beliefs and professional practices that shape relationships between teachers and parents can remain relatively stable despite changing expectations of policy-makers and communities. The paper argues that equipping pre-service, beginning and experienced teachers and school leaders with research-based understandings about these cultural dynamics is crucial to informing professional practices that support meaningful and effective parent-school engagement.

The Role Of Culture In Theory Of Mind, Leslie Linares Pava

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Theory of Mind (ToM) is defined as the ability to understand our own and otherpeople’s mental representations, characterised by individual perspectives and motives,with potential for directing human behaviour (Kuntoro, Saraswati, Peterson & Slaughter,2013). Over the past 30 years this concept has captured the attention of cognitive anddevelopmental psychologists and it has been established that typically developed childrenfrom individualistic, mainly from Anglo (English-speaking) countries are most likely toacquire this ability at the age of four.

In the past decade, a growing interest in differences between children fromindividualistic and collestivistic cultural orientations led researchers to question the extentto which ToM is influenced …

Cultural Diversity And Children’S Literature: Kindergarten Educators’ Practices To Support Principles Of Cultural Diversity Through Book Sharing, Helen Joanne Adam

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Since Australia became a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, the importance of recognising, valuing and respecting a child’s family, culture, language and values has been increasingly articulated in education policy. Diversity and inclusion are now central themes guiding the principles and quality measures of early childhood education and care as encompassed by the National Quality Framework, including both the National Quality Standard and the Early Years Learning Framework (Early Childhood Development Steering Committee, 2009). Children’s literature can be a powerful tool for extending children’s knowledge and understandings of themselves and others …

The State Of Dancingness: Staying With Leaving, Jo Pollitt

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Borrowing from Cixous’ ‘State of Drawingness’ (1993), this article proposes a ‘State of Dancingness’ as method of inhabiting the practice of writing as dancing. Understanding the dancing body as a place of virtuosic attention, the practice of writing is activated as a ‘continuation’ of dancing; neither as creative response or description but as frame for housing (staging) emergent content. The work proposes that the dancer begin on the page from the vantage and experience of entering the stage as solo improvising performer. These words come with this body tucked and pressing inside them. Pressing. The State of Dancingness …

Barriers To Grassroots Innovation: The Phenomenon Of Social-Commercial-Cultural Trilemmas In Remote Indigenous Art Centres, Janice Jones, Pi-Shen Seet, Tim Acker, Michelle Whittle

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Despite substantial research on grassroots innovation, there is a lack of understanding on the barriers to grassroots innovation. We examine paradoxes that arise as a consequence of multiple, often conflicting, objectives in remote art centres, social enterprises that are key sites for grassroots innovations. We investigate how social, commercial and cultural logics in remote Indigenous art centres contribute to an on-going trilemma that acts as a barrier to the development of grassroots innovation. We also explore the challenges and opportunities managers encounter in reconciling these multiple, often conflicting, logics. The results indicate that although art centres have dual social and …

The Composer, The Musicologist, His Wife, And Her Lover: On Lacan’S Relevance To Music, Thomas Reiner

Directions of New Music

This paper asks what it is to write about music. When we ask students or colleagues to write about music are we asking them to describe music structurally, or to cope with music’s ever-shifting signifieds? The paper attempts to answer this question by clarifying the relationship between composition, musicology, and music “itself” by way of a Lacanian reading of Peter Greenaway's film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Lacan’s existential concepts of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real are first introduced in relation to music with reference to music by Hans Werner Henze, Lady Gaga, …

The Legendary Topography Of The Viking Settlement Of Iceland, Verena Höfig

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

From the time of their earliest texts in the vernacular, Icelanders were interested in the semioticization of their landscape, the mapping of nature into culture by inscribing it with memories from the settlement of the island during the Viking Age. Such a de-scription and in-scription of landscape with meaning occurs most prominently in The Book of Settlements or Landnámabók, a thirteenth century prose text preserved in several versions. This paper focuses on Icelanders' myth of origin as presented in the various Landnámabók redactions, and explores how a largely fictional medieval text can assert ownership and control over territory, and ultimately …

Imaginative Geographies: Visualising The Poetics Of History And Space, Clive Barstow

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This essay presents a visual dialogue about our relationship to place. I adopt Henri Lefebvre’s model of cumulative trialectics (1991) as a new thirdspace that more accurately represents the complexities of modern day geographies and hybrid communities by extending the binary analysis of the past and present and beyond the real and the imagined. Trialectics expand our understanding beyond physical geographies by suggesting a cerebral space that searches for new meaning and is therefore more radically open to additional otherness and toward a continuing expansion of [human] spatial knowledge and imagination.

Julia Lossau describes thirdspace as a space that ‘…tends …

Becoming Human In The Land: An Introduction To The Special Issue Of Heritage: Landscapes, Drew Hubbell

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This introduction to the special issue of Landscapes theorizes the questions suggested by the theme, "Landscape: Heritage." Weaving personal narrative with literary criticism, cultural studies, human geography, and ecology, the essay examines the way humans become human by developing complex relationships with landscapes over time. As landscapes contain the physical traces of human habitation and development, certain narratives of human inhabitants are written and memorialized in and by those landscapes. The monumentalization of specific heritages leads to contests between human groups who require certain heritages to be memorialized, but not others. Greater awareness of one's humanity requires recovery of polyphonic …

Exploring Professional Knowing, Being And Becoming Through Inclusive Pedagogical Approach In Action (Ipaa) Framework, Sunanta Klibthong, Joseph S. Agbenyega

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Despite extensive changes in early childhood inclusive education policy and practice, various barriers continue to inhibit access and participation of children with special needs in inclusive schools. Often mentioned barriers include negative beliefs, lack of understanding of inclusive pedagogy and the effectiveness of professional development to improve teacher knowledge to reduce these barriers. This study reports on a Thai Bureau of Special Education professional development partnership program with an Australian inclusive school in which 16 early childhood teachers from Thailand participated. This community of practice inquiry project generated qualitative data from pre- and post-professional workshops semi-structured interviews and analysis of …

An Unapologetic Feminist Response, Bidisha Banerjee, Mindy Blaise

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In the spirit of reformulating notions of critique, this response builds on the creative research experimentation that the authors enacted to consider air differently. The authors continue to be lured by generosity, curiosity, surprise, and wonder and suggest two feminist responses that relate to and generate knowledge in alternative ways. Two experimentations (collective experimental story writing and erasure poetry) are offered to readers with the aim of activating new thinkings, doings, and relations with air.

Interculturality And Teacher Education. A Study From Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspective, Eva F. Hinojosa Pareja, M. Carmen López López

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Due to the multicultural nature of society and the failure of some of the educational models adopted to respond to cultural diversity, there is a need to pay greater attention to teachers’ training. This study examines Teacher Education students’ beliefs about cultural diversity and their relationship with pre-service teacher training as key aspects in designing intercultural teacher training proposals and improving educational practice. This quantitative, descriptive study was carried out with 1464 participants enrolled in teacher training programs. The results show that future teachers have positive beliefs about cultural diversity in general terms, but their positions diverge when dealing with …

Meeting Place An Exhibition – And – Locating The Country: An Australian Bricoleuse’S Inquiry An Exegesis, Annette Nykiel

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This practice-led PhD research investigated alternate forms of articulation to relate stories of place-making, as narrative or object, and added threads to the complex meshwork and herstory of the Country. The research was conducted in ‘The Country’, of the north-eastern Goldfields and Yalgorup Lakes in Western Australia. These two non-urban sites provided unique experiences of the bush, local people’s stories and understandings of time. The research investigated the implications of non-urban spaces as studios in relation to the concepts of place, time and narrative.

This research was, in part, experiential and drew on an absorbed embodied awareness of notions of …

Vital Performance: Culture, Worldview, And Romanticist Performance Practice With Application In Franz Liszt’S Consolations And Années De Pèlerinage Première Année, Andrew John Snedden

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines issues of historical performance in the piano music of Franz Liszt, positing cultural exegesis as an overlooked source of evidence. Philosophical biases underlying mainstream C20th performance approaches (and their inhibiting potential) are discussed. A detailed reconstruction of Romanticist style is made with attention to primary sources, including historical recordings. A nomenclature for score annotation and an analytical paradigm for identification and application of Romanticist performance characteristics are proposed. These are experimentally applied, referencing exegetical insights, in Liszt’s Consolations and Années de Pèlerinage: Première Année through annotated scores and studio recordings on an 1860’s Érard grand

Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio: A Case Study Of ‘Tactics’ And Teenage Identity In Perth, Wa, 1955-1960, Lorna Baker

Theses : Honours

Post-war Australia was a time of celebration, of prosperity, abundance and consumerism. The booming economic and technological forces within Australia propelled the rise of popular culture and led to a transformation of traditions and identities. Most notable of these transformations was that of youth culture. The rise of the teenager, as a category of person and a consumer of culture, had an impact on the social interactions of many communities. At the same time, new technologies combined with newfound prosperity meant that popular culture, such as music, was available to all and radio became a prominent feature of everyday life. …

Reimagining The Cultural Significance Of Wetlands: From Perth’S Lost Swamps To The Beeliar Wetlands, Danielle Brady, Jeffrey Murray

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The history of Perth, Western Australia, has been characterised by the incremental loss of its wetlands. While disputes about wetlands are often framed solely in terms of the environment, they are places of cultural significance too. The extensive wetlands of central Perth, food gathering and meeting places for Noongar people are now expunged from the landscape. Urban dwellers of Perth are largely unaware that the seasonal lakes and wetlands of the centre of the city were the larders, gardens, hideouts, dumps and playgrounds of previous generations; both Noongar and Settler. The loss of social memory of these lost cultural/natural places …

Robotic Telescopes And Student Research In The School Curriculum Around The Oecd Countries, Saeed Salimpour, Sophie Bartlett, Michael Fitzgerald, Ross Cutts, C. Renee James, Scott Miller, Lena Danaia, Sergio Cabezon, Michel Faye, Cyrille Baudouin, Diana Birkenbauma, Sara Anjos, Qixuan Wu, Hye-Eun Chu, Eileen Slater

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The aim of this paper is to explore the presence and possible incorporation of inquiry-based learning approaches using Robotic Telescopes and Student Research in the regular science curriculum. This study uses preliminary findings from an extensive ongoing study, which is currently reviewing the extent of astronomy content in the school curriculum of the 35 member countries from the OECD in addition to two emerging nations in modern astronomy – China and South Africa, which are not part of the OECD. Analysis of curriculum documents from 28 OECD countries, including China and South Africa, reveals that although there is a prevalence …

Some Approaches To Representing Sound With Colour And Shape, Lindsay Vickery

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In recent times much of the practice of musical notation and representation has begun a gradual migration away from the monochrome standard that existed since the emergence of printed Non-Western music in the 16th century, towards the full colour pallet afforded by modern printers and computer screens. This move has expanded the possibilities available for the representation of information in the musical score. Such an expansion is arguably necessitated by the growth of new musical techniques favouring musical phenomena that were previously poorly captured by traditional Western musical notation. As time-critical form of visualisation there is a strong imperative for …

Selling The Modern Day Tribe: The Commodification Of Rave Culture, Duncan Martin Barnes

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines youth and rave culture from the late 1980s to the present. It considers the history as well as the global and local impact of rave. I provide a visual ethnographic study from 1999-2014, based on my work as a commercial photographer of the Perth, Western Australian scene. While critically reflecting on existing subcultural research this thesis adds another dimension – the effect that global corporations have had in reshaping subcultural practices, specifically the commodification of rave culture in the form of the contemporary electronic dance festival.

The research incorporates both qualitative and quantitative data to interrogate media …