Boarding schools: A longitudinal examination of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous boarders’ and non-boarders’ wellbeing

Improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australian students is a key strategy to helping Indigenous people reach their full potential. This has resulted in well-intentioned efforts by Australian educators and governments to ensure Indigenous children have positive school experiences. However, Indigenous students still lag behind their non-Indigenous counterparts in educational outcomes. This is particularly so for Indigenous students living in rural and remote parts of Australia where educational opportunities are limited, especially in high school. One solution to this problem has been to enrol these students in boarding schools in urban and metropolitan centres. While research on the success of boarding schools for Indigenous students is scarce, what little that does exist is not encouraging. The focus of this research was to examine the effects of boarding for Indigenous (n = 11) and non-Indigenous students’ (n = 158) wellbeing (N = 1423) in two large private boys’ schools. Participating students aged 12–18 years old completed a survey measuring wellbeing constructs on two occasions, 12 months apart. Non-Indigenous boys were generally higher in wellbeing compared with Indigenous boys. There was also evidence of improved social wellbeing beyond that of non-Indigenous boarders over time. Overall, while evidence of merit was weak, boarding schools may benefit their Indigenous students’ development in social wellbeing.     

Teaching anti-racist counseling theories: Black liberation narrative therapy

Counseling theories created by White theorists have traditionally failed to consider the religious or spiritual experiences of Black clients. Integration of Black liberation theology and narrative therapy provides a novel approach to support counseling trainees in meeting the needs of Black clients. Decolonizing therapeutic strategies are presented along with counselor educator recommendations.     

Code-switching 101: Black women counselor educators’ personal and professional identity development

The perceptions of personal and professional identity development from four Black women counselor educators were examined through a collaborative autoethnography methodology. Themes identified include (a) intentionality of code-switching, (b) inextricable identities, (c) fight for and with authenticity, and (d) mutual development of personal and professional identities.     

‘They think it’s all Dover!’ Popular newspaper narratives and images about the English football team and (re)presentations of national identity during Euro 2012

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship (‘Euro 2012’) – Europe’s quadrennial football bonanza was held in Poland and the Ukraine between June 8th and July 1st. Occurring between Elizabeth II’s Diamond jubilee and the London 2012 Olympic Games, the eyes of the media were fixated on the pride and joy of English football, its men’s national team. With national consciousness at an all-time high, articles in England’s tabloid, ‘red-top,’ daily national newspapers The Sun and Daily Mirror were tracked for three weeks as they lavished their attentions on the national pastime. Their coverage of the English team reflected a heightened consciousness of English national identity. Drawing on Guibernau’s strategies for creating and uniting citizens around a collective national identity, this study examined how England’s popular media presented and represented England’s national identity to reflect the real and imagined versions of Englishness during this major sporting event.¹1. Montserrat Guibernau, The Identity of Nations (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). By focusing on The Sun and Daily Mirror’s narratives about, and images of, the English team during the Euro 2012 tournament, this paper focuses on how English national identity ebbed and flowed during a time of seismic change within the country. Shaped by an inductive textual analysis, this paper shows how the press fluctuated between optimistic notions of the present and future English national identity and traditional ‘olde England’ in an almost formulaic fashion.     

Hooligans,Casuals, Independents: Decivilisation or Rationalisation of the Activity?

If there is one phenomenon which highlights the lack of role distance of certain sport actors, it is obviously hooliganism. In the mid-1980s, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning became interested in the role played by modern sports in the ‘civilising process’ and, analysing the violence of sport crowds, introduced a culturalist interpretation of the actions. They were considered to be the work of members of the ‘rough working class’, who were less advanced in the ‘civilising process’ and had still not achieved sufficient self-control. In these groups, characterised by social functioning in the form of a segmentary bond, violence was thought to be a traditional way of resolving conflicts, a significant aspect and essential part of their ethos. This is an over-determined interpretation of the violence of sports crowds which naturalises and socialises this violence. This vision poses a problem, that of the negation of any logic on the part of the actors involved. This viewpoint leads us to consider violence as a social product and a ‘practical accomplishment’, the result of the way in which supporters interpret and live in the world that surrounds them, and, as such, it is the individual and collective motives and purposes that should be investigated.     

Effects of swing-weight on swing speed and racket power

Abstract

Measurements are presented of the speed at which six different rods could be swung by four male students. Three of the rods had the same mass but their swing-weight (i.e. moment of inertia) differed by large factors. The other three rods had the same swing-weight but different masses. Our primary objective was to quantify the effects of mass and swing-weight on swing speed. The result has a direct bearing on whether baseball, tennis, cricket and golf participants should choose a heavy or light implement to impart maximum speed to a ball. When swinging with maximum effort, swing speed (V) was found to decrease as swing-weight (I _o) increased, according to the relation V?=?C/I _o ⁿ , where C is a different constant for each participant and n?=?0.27 when I _o >?0.03 kg?·?m². Remarkably similar results were obtained previously with softball bats (where n?=?0.25) and golf clubs (where n?=?0.26). Swing speed remained approximately constant as swing mass increased (when keeping swing-weight fixed). The implications for racket power are discussed.     

Navigating Cyberspace: Vision, Textuality and the World Wide Web

This article is an examination of the language, structure and imagery of the World Wide Web. It argues that the Web is not just a rich source of information but offers new ways of seeing and engaging with the world. As well as a consideration of the nature of electronically mediated texts, it looks at the World Wide Web as a kind of meta-text itself which has mythopoeic resonances.