Missing in Action? New Perspectives on the Origins and Diffusion of Women's Football in Australia during the Great War

Previous work on female participation in Australian Rules football has highlighted the seemingly discontinuous character of the women's game as it spread from Western Australia to Victoria during the period of the Great War. In this paper, an overview of the current literature on the topic is provided, and there is a focus on hitherto ‘missing links’ in the existing sequence of events – the knowledge of which has the potential to create a more integrated narrative of the code. In particular, the photographic, filmic and textual evidence for matches of women's football played in South Australia during the Great War is discussed. These games, with proceeds directed to such charities as the ‘Workers' Memorial Fund’ as well as ‘comforts for the Anzacs’, attracted sizeable crowds and were sometimes played under the patronage of the governor of the state, the mayor of Adelaide and senior military officers. The paper concludes with a reflection on how the availability (or unavailability) of particular digitised sources, and the serendipitous nature of research itself, can have a problematic influence on investigations associated with marginalised sports such as women's football.     

A subject-based shared approval plan for consortia purchasing of U.S. university press books

While consortia have been successful in cooperating among members for the purpose of sharing electronic resources, they have struggled to extend that level of cooperation to print materials. OhioLINK is investigating methods to accomplish this goal. This paper expands on that initiative and presents a method for creating a shared approval plan for purchasing U.S. university press titles. It presents a subject-based solution stemming from a prior research initiative with OCLC for establishing financial commitments and randomized ownership of materials to be shared among consortium member libraries. This study projects results of this method by applying a prior year's publication output. The results do not describe a perfect plan but one worth exploring as a means to cooperatively purchase and share print books.     

Narrative Pedagogies in Science, Mathematics and Technology

Despite years of research, there remains serious concern regarding the engagement of students in science, mathematics and technology education. In this paper, the authors explore how narrative pedagogies are used in science, mathematics and technology in order to make the subjects meaningful. The paper focuses specifically on the role and aesthetic nature of narrative as a pedagogical approach in these school subjects and between school sectors. Case study methodology was used to compare the findings of two independent studies investigating the role of narrative-based pedagogies in mathematics and science (first author) and technology (second author). Based on this comparison, this paper proposes two perspectives on narrative-based pedagogies that deal with the connection of students with the subject: inward-looking that situated the learner within the story generated around artefact creation, and outward-looking that situated the stories of the content into students’ lifeworlds. The use of this comparative lens enabled a higher level of analysis that could not have been achieved by each research programme, generating a broader narrative that provided deeper insight into the teaching and learning experience.