Building Relationships through Communities of Practice: Museums and Indigenous People

Abstract This paper explores the theory of “communities of practice” and how the ideas contained in it could be applied to museums, by demonstrating how a key stakeholder group, Indigenous people, have been involved with and engaged in the work of the Australian Museum, Sydney, over the past 30 years. It is suggested that the processes museums have developed in building relationships with Indigenous people, particularly at the practitioner level, could form a template for how museums make themselves relevant to broader communities through active engagement with multiple communities of practice.     

Averting a Recruitment Crisis in Educational Psychology Services: An investigation of psychology undergraduate perspectives on the profession

This paper describes a survey of psychology undergraduates' perceptions of educational psychology, and the factors most likely to motivate or deter them from joining the profession. Results suggest that interest in educational psychology as a career option is at its lowest level for thirty years or more. The paper presents evidence that the current recruitment crisis within the profession needs to be addressed at a number of levels, including: the promotion within first degree programmes of improved understanding of educational psychology as a discipline and a profession, and of the links between basic research and its applicability to educational psychology in practice; the further development of the role which educational psychologists (EPs) fulfil, and the accurate dissemination of information about the profession; stream-lining and rationalising post-graduate training routes for psychology graduates, in order to offer a more accessible career route, and maximising its direct relevance in supporting the acquisition of core professional skills; and attenting to pay and conditions within the profession, so that it competes on more equal terms with other career destinations considered by undergraduates.     

‘Sport was the centre of my memories’: the performance of sport in Australia’s Asian garrisons

ABSTRACT

For better or worse, sport mirrors and mediates much of everyday life. Within both the military and colonial spheres, the physical attributes of sport are especially prized as tangible representations of social and cultural hierarchies. In turn, this further enhances the prestige and influence of sport within these two particular environments. Sport becomes particularly potent in instances where military forces undertake garrison duties in overseas colonial and post-colonial environs. This paper highlights the centrality of sport to the lives of the Australian service personnel and their families who were posted to Australia’s garrisons in the decades after World War II. The myriad roles of sport within these overseas garrison environments – as comforter, connector, healer and reinforcer on the one hand, and as isolator, oppressor and subverter on the other – are explored. This paper suggests that, for a variety of reasons, participation in sports served as the central organising force for most Australian service personnel and their families in these Australian military communities.     

BBC Radio Ulster: Public Service Radio in Northern Ireland’s Divided Society

BBC radio has been broadcast in Northern Ireland since shortly after the establishment of the country in the early 1920s. Throughout this period it has been faced by the challenge of how to deliver public service radio in a divided society, one that has for many years experienced violent conflict. Today as BBC Radio Ulster, the station has the highest audience reach of any BBC network radio service or those nations services in Scotland and Wales. This article outlines how BBC policy serves to deliver this performance, by examining a BBC Trust Service Review in relation to culture and diversity.     

Computational auditory scene analysis: listening to several things at once

The problem of distinguishing particular sounds, such as conversation, against a background of irrelevant noise is a matter of common experience. Psychologists have studied it for some 40 years, but is is only comparatively recently that computer modelling of the phenomenon has been attempted. This article reviews progress made, possible practical applications, and prospects for the future.     

Towards a Foucauldian Methodology in the Study of Autism: Issues of Archaeology,Genealogy, and Subjectification

The remarkable increase in diagnoses of autism has paralleled an increase in scientific research and turned the syndrome into a kind of a new ‘trend’ within psychiatric and developmental conditions of childhood. At the same time, discursive technologies, such as DSM‐IV, autobiographies, movies, fiction, etc., together with ‘educational’ interventions, such as TEACCH, PECS, Makaton, etc., seem to anticipate a form of an apparatus built around the condition named autism. Starting from this premise, the article proposes a new approach within autism studies, which treats the condition in Foucauldian terms and focuses on the emergence of the autistic subjectivity following Foucault's methodology of archaeology, genealogy, and modes of subjectification.     

Features of Modeling-Based Abductive Reasoning as a Disciplinary Practice of Inquiry in Earth Science

Science & Education - The purpose of this study was to investigate the features of modeling-based abductive reasoning as a disciplinary practice of inquiry in the domain of earth science. The...