Necessary but not Sufficient: reconceptualizing primary teacher education

Initial primary teacher education should be designed to cater for the socially, culturally and linguistically diverse populations found in schools. They rarely are. As a result they tend to promote social reproduction rather than social transformation. Using vignettes drawn from our work on the New South Wales Ministerial Advisory Council for the Quality of Teaching we demonstrate the need to re‐explore the fundamental purposes and goals of preparing teachers to meet the needs of all children in our primary schools. We propose a reconceptualization of teacher education around a cultural studies perspective as a productive way forward which would allow integration rather than compartmentalization of knowledge and which encourages a search for truth in which tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty feature such that knowledge is understood as relative and fallible.     

Some institutional influences on secondary mathematics teachers' use of computers

This paper discusses the manifestations of both schools' IT policies and available technical support as reported by thirty-eight secondary teachers from different schools. Two categories of whole school policy were identified. The first insisted that IT should be taught by specialist teachers whilst the second devolved this responsibility to subject areas. For a variety of reasons both were viewed as problematic. A minority of schools appeared to have no coherent policy. Departmental policies, which were generally a consequence of the enthusiasms of an individual or an impending school inspection, were rarely indicative of coherent views on the impact of computers on teaching and learning. Teachers' computer usage was frequently dependent upon a willing and able IT coordinator although few such colleagues had sufficient time to offer support in systematic and consistent ways. A similar story emerged in respect of IT technicians.     

Parents' comprehension of psychological reports

The purpose of this study was to investigate parents' comprehension of psychological reports, employing the same method used by Wiener (1985) in a similar study of teachers. Forty-five parents of handicapped children completed questionnaires and semantic differentials to assess their comprehension of and preference for three formats of psychological reports. As in the earlier study with teachers, it was found that parents comprehended better reports that organize information by functional domain, that describe strengths and problems in clear behavioural terms, that describe the child's learning style fully, and that state specific and elaborate program recommendations. Parents preferred these reports over shorter reports that did not have the above features. They especially liked reports that explicitly respond to the referral questions.     

Indigenous Digital Art as Politics in Australia

This essay contributes to discussions about Indigenous politics and debates about contemporary democracy. It uses a case study of video art produced by young indigenous people and a community development organisation in the Pilbara, Australia. Those involved in the project use digital media under the auspices of the Big hART Yijala Yala Project to produce an interactive comic series. The essay addresses the following questions: Do contemporary community development projects play a conservatising role serving the interests of a neoliberal polity? Given the long-standing practice of representing modern media as a vehicle for western domination what, if anything, do these projects imply about the political relations between Aboriginal and non-indigenous Australians? Are Indigenous media and cultural work inherently political? What conceptions of the political are at stake in such arguments? We focus on how certain groups of young people use new media, and how their activities are political. The argument is that Indigenous media like these are ‘inherently political’ because they are about efforts to reclaim the images of indigenous peoples for themselves.     

Emotional Maltreatment and Adolescent Depression: Mediating Mechanisms and Demographic Considerations in a Child Welfare Sample

Emotional maltreatment is a risk factor for adolescent depression. Yet, it remains unclear whether commissions and omissions of emotional maltreatment (a) confer vulnerability via distinct mechanisms and (b) demonstrate similar risk across adolescent subpopulations. The present, multiwave study examined whether school engagement and peer relationships explain the depressive effects of distinct emotional maltreatment subtypes in an at-risk child welfare sample (N = 657; ages 11–14, Age_Mean = 12.49). The findings indicated that commission subtypes of emotional maltreatment predicted increasing depressive symptoms via increasing peer relationship problems, especially for girls. Meanwhile, decreasing school engagement was a depressogenic risk pathway for Hispanic adolescents reporting omission subtypes of emotional maltreatment. The results emphasize the importance of distinguish between emotional maltreatment subtypes to identify specific risk pathways for adolescent depression.     

The entanglement of trust and knowledge on the Web

In this paper I use philosophical accounts on the relationship between trust and knowledge in science to apprehend this relationship on the Web. I argue that trust and knowledge are fundamentally entangled in our epistemic practices. Yet despite this fundamental entanglement, we do not trust blindly. Instead we make use of knowledge to rationally place or withdraw trust. We use knowledge about the sources of epistemic content as well as general background knowledge to assess epistemic claims. Hence, although we may have a default to trust, we remain and should remain epistemically vigilant; we look out and need to look out for signs of insincerity and dishonesty in our attempts to know. A fundamental requirement for such vigilance is transparency: in order to critically assess epistemic agents, content and processes, we need to be able to access and address them. On the Web, this request for transparency becomes particularly pressing if (a) trust is placed in unknown human epistemic agents and (b) if it is placed in non-human agents, such as algorithms. I give examples of the entanglement between knowledge and trust on the Web and draw conclusions about the forms of transparency needed in such systems to support epistemically vigilant behaviour, which empowers users to become responsible and accountable knowers.     

Garlic Oil and Vitamin E Prevent the Adverse Effects of Lead Acetate and Ethanol Separately as well as in Combination in the Drinking Water of Rats

Daily feeding of drinking water containing lead acetate (160 mg/l) or 10% alcohol by volume or a combination of both to rats for a month produced certain deleterious effects through oxidative stress. Both heavy metal lead and alcohol are capable of doing such damages. The deleterious alterations observed were in the parameters of blood, serum and tissues, viz; Hb, Pb, proteins, lipids, lipid per oxidation, Vitamins C and E levels and enzyme activities of AST, ALT, and catalase. Simultaneous feeding of either of the two antioxidants garlic oil (GO) and vitamin E at equal doses of 100 mg/kg/day, to the rats counteracted the deleterious effects of the above two chemicals significantly. The maximum damage was brought about by feeding of drinking water containing both lead acetate and alcohol. The protective effects of GO and Vitamin E were not significantly different. The mechanism of actions of the Vitamin E and GO is probably due to their efficiency as detoxifying agents and antioxidants, to scavenging free radicals as well as an independent action of GO on the removal of lead salt as lead sulfide.     

Preparing Professionals to Face Ethical Challenges in Today's Workplace: Review of the Literature,Implications for PI,and a Proposed Research Agenda

Ethics is very much in the news today and on the minds of those who teach and/or train current and future professionals to work successfully in today's workplaces. While there seems to be agreement that organizations need to address the topic of ethics, there is also a concern about how best to proceed. Ethics and compliance offices, professional codes, ethics conferences, institutes, and centers, formal and informal ethics courses, and ethics hotlines are only some of the ways in which organizations have responded to the need for ethics preparedness. The diversity of our organizations and the global nature of our economy demands attention to multicultural/international issues as well. In this review, we examine the diverse body of literature research that explores teaching and training practices used to address ethical issues in corporations and institutions of higher education and include a special focus on multicultural environments. We discuss implications for PI professionals and propose a research agenda.