Educating teachers about human rights: building a rights based culture in Australian schools

© 2016 Australian Teacher Education Association. A well-educated active citizenry is the primary aim of our education systems. An essential component of a well-educated citizenry in a civil society is its understanding of the value of human rights and what it means to live with dignity in a community, where rights and freedoms are protected. This paper uses evidence from international and national reports and programmes to argue that HRE should be an essential component of the curriculum in Australian schools. It draws on data from the first national cross-sectoral Australian study investigating the place of HRE in the school curriculum. There is a need for both pre-service and in-service teachers to have focused professional training, in order to better engage students to be critically aware of the importance of developing a human rights culture within a school; also, to adopt a transformative “whole school” approach linked to local, national, and global communities

Human Rights and History Education: An australian study

The place of education for and about human rights within the school curriculum remains contested and this paper reports on the first national crosssectoral investigation of its place in Australian curricula and more specifically in national and state History curriculum documents. Opportunities for the inclusion of human rights based studies were examined across school learning stages, taking into account explicit and implicit, compulsory or elective, as well as curricular and extra-curricular dimensions. Given the continued importance of History as a learning area, there is a need to strengthen the available explicit and mandatory opportunities for students to learn about human rights issues, working closely with key teacher associations, non-government agencies and supportive networks, drawing on available educational technologies

Developing early literacies in informal settings: The importance of cultural representation in an aboriginal playgroup

© Common Ground Research Networks, Criss Jones Diaz, Liam Morgan, Andrew Chodkiewicz. This paper presents the results of a yearlong study within an Aboriginal playgroup on the outskirts of Western Sydney. Using a methodology that was collaborative and iterative and gathering data through a participant ethnographer who was herself Aboriginal, enabled a clear view of the impact of literacy strategies that were implemented in consultation with mothers and the playgroup leader. It was found that Aboriginal texts, stories, songs, and dance, arranging for children to experience various Aboriginal cultural events, as well as talking about and modeling language interactions, led to increased and regular child and child-adult literacy interactions. Longer-term impacts relating to home literacy practices and transition to school were also reported

Human Rights Education in the School Curriculum

Human Rights Education centres; Professional Teachers Associations; Australian Human Rights Commissio

Risk homeostasis theory - A study of intrinsic compensation

Risk homeostasis theory (RHT) suggests that changes made to the intrinsic risk of environments are negated in one of three ways: behavioural adjustments within the environment, mode migration, and avoidance of the physical risk. To date, this three-way model of RHT has little empirical support, whilst research findings on RHT have at times been diametrically opposed. A reconciliation of apparently opposing findings might be possible by suggesting that extrinsic compensation fails to restore previously existing levels of actual risk in cases where behavioural adjustments within the environment are incapable of negating intrinsic risk changes. This paper reports a study in which behavioural adjustments within the physical risk-taking environment are capable of reconciling target with actual risk. The results provide positive support for RHT in the form of overcompensation for the intrinsic risk change on specific driver behaviours

Range extension of Great Grey Owl in Europe.

publishedVersio

Covariation in population trends and demography reveals targets for conservation action

Wildlife conservation policies directed at common and widespread, but declining, species are difficult to design and implement effectively, as multiple environmental changes are likely to contribute to population declines. Conservation actions ultimately aim to influence demographic rates, but targeting actions towards feasible improvements in these is challenging in widespread species with ranges that encompass a wide range of environmental conditions. Across Europe, sharp declines in the abundance of migratory landbirds have driven international calls for action, but actions that could feasibly contribute to population recovery have yet to be identified. Targeted actions to improve conditions on poor-quality sites could be an effective approach, but only if local conditions consistently influence local demography and hence population trends. Using long-term measures of abundance and demography of breeding birds at survey sites across Europe, we show that co-occurring species with differing migration behaviours have similar directions of local population trends and magnitudes of productivity, but not survival rates. Targeted actions to boost local productivity within Europe, alongside large-scale (non-targeted) environmental protection across non-breeding ranges, could therefore help address the urgent need to halt migrant landbird declines. Such demographic routes to recovery are likely to be increasingly needed to address global wildlife declines.Peer reviewe

An assessment of relative habitat use as a metric for species' habitat association and degree of specialization

Corrigendum: Ecological Indicators, Volume 137, April 2022, Article number 108627, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.108627.In order to understand species' sensitivity to habitat change, we must correctly determine if a species is associated with a habitat or not, and if it is associated, its degree of specialization for that habitat. However, definitions of species' habitat association and specialization are often static, categorical classifications that coarsely define species as either habitat specialists or generalists and can fail to account for potential temporal or spatial differences in association or specialization. In contrast, quantitative metrics can provide a more nuanced assessment, defining species' habitat associations and specialization along a continuous scale and accommodate for temporal or spatial variation, but these approaches are less widely used. Here we explore relative habitat use (RHU) as a metric for quantifying species' association with and degree of specialization for different habitat types. RHU determines the extent of a species' association with a given habitat by comparing its abundance in that habitat relative to its mean abundance across all other habitats. Using monitoring data for breeding birds across Europe from 1998 to 2017; we calculate RHU scores for 246 species for five habitat types and compared them to the literature-based classifications of their association with and specialization for each of these habitats. We also explored the temporal variation in species' RHU scores for each habitat and assessed how this varied according to association and degree of specialization. In general, species' RHU and literature-derived classifications were well aligned, as RHU scores for a given habitat increased in line with reported association and specialization. In addition, temporal variation in RHU scores were influenced by association and degree of specialization, with lower scores for those associated with, and those more specialized to, a given habitat. As a continuous metric, RHU allows a detailed assessment of species' association with and degree of specialization for different habitats that can be tailored to specific temporal and/or spatial requirements. It has the potential to be a valuable tool for identifying indicator species and in supporting the design, implementation and monitoring of conservation management actions.Peer reviewe

Effects of Natura 2000 on nontarget bird and butterfly species based on citizen science data

ABSTRACT The European Union's Natura 2000 (N2000), is one of the largest international networks of protected areas. One of its aims is to secure the status of a pre-determined set of (targeted) bird and butterfly species. However, also non-target species may benefit from N2000. We evaluated how the terrestrial component of this network relates to the abundance of non-targeted, more common bird and butterfly species using data from long-term volunteer-based monitoring programs in 9,602 sites for birds and 2,001 sites for butterflies. In almost half of the 155 bird species assessed, and particularly among woodland specialists, abundance increased with the proportion of N2000 sites in the landscape. The corresponding positive relationship was found for 27 of the 104 butterfly species, although most of these species were generalists. These positive relationships disappeared for most of the species when land-cover covariates were taken into account, hinting that land-cover is a primary factor defining the positive effects of the N2000 network. The increase in abundance with N2000 was correlated with the specialization index for bird species, but not for butterfly species. Although the N2000 network supports higher abundance of a large spectrum of species, the low number of specialist butterfly species showing a positive association stresses the need to implement management plan improving the quality of habitats of N2000 areas potentially harboring openland butterfly specialists. For a better understanding of the processes involved, we advocate for a standardized collection of data on N2000 sites. Article impact statement: Across Europe the abundance of a majority of nontarget birds and a quarter of nontarget butterflies increased with Natura 2000 coverage. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reservedpeerReviewe

Contrasting population trends of Common Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) across Europe

The greatest loss of biodiversity in the EU has occurred on agricultural land. The Common Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) is one of the many numerous and widespread European farmland breeding bird species showing major population declines linked to European agricultural intensification. Here we present results based on monitoring data collected since 1975 in 24 countries to examine the influence of changing extent of grassland and cattle abundance (based on results of earlier studies showing the importance of lowland cattle grazed grassland for the species), wintering provenance and temperature on national breeding population trends of Starlings across Europe. Positive Starling population trends in Central-East Europe contrast with negative trends in North and West Europe. Based on this indicative approach, we found some support for the importance of cattle stock and no support for grassland, temperature or wintering provenance to explain Starling population trends in Europe. However, we acknowledge such a European-wide analysis may conceal regional differences in responses and suggest that currently accessible national land use datamight be insufficient to describe the detailed current changes in animal husbandry and grassland management that may be responsible for changes in food availability and hence breeding Starling abundance and their differences across Europe. Reviewing results from local studies relating Starling population trends to local agricultural change offer contradictory results, suggesting complex interacting processes at work. We recommend combining national datasets on demography, land-use/agricultural practices and from autecological research to better explain the reasons for contrasting Starling trends across Europe, to enable us to predict how changing agriculture will affect Starlings and potentially suggest mitigation measures to restore local populations where possible.Peer reviewe