Aboriginal students and the Western Australian literacy and numeracy assessment

Since the introduction of standardised testing in Western Australia with the Western Australian Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (WALNA) it has become quite evident that Indigenous students\u27 performance is well below that of non-Indigenous students. As WALNA is now very much a part of the pedagogical landscape steps must be taken to ensure that those students who are not reaching the benchmark scores or the MSE requirements do progress..

Sporting Chance: Indigenous Participation in Australian Sport History

For many non-Indigenous Australians the only time they have any engagement with Indigenous peoples, history or issues is through watching sport on television or being at a football match at ground like the MCG. This general myopia and indifference by settler Australians with Indigenous Australians manifests itself in many ways, but perhaps most obscenely in the simple fact that Indigenous Australians die nearly 20 years younger than the rest of Australia’s citizens. Many non-Indigenous Australians do not know this. Sport in many ways has offered Indigenous Australians a platform from which to begin the slow, hard process for social justice and equity to be actualised. This paper will discuss the participation of Indigenous Australians in sport and show how it has enabled Indigenous Australians to create a space so that they can speak out against the injustices they have experienced and to improve race relations going into the future. The central contention is that through sport all Australians can begin a process of engaging with Indigenous history as a means to improve race relations between the two groups

The role of physical education and sport in education (SPINED) : extending at risk students\u27 participation in school life: a case study of progress within a specialist sports school

This case study focused on developments at Clontarf Aboriginal College and Football Academy, a Specialist Sports School in the Perth metropolitan area. The study specifically explored: • the ways in which the development of an Australian Rules Football academy at the school have enhanced opportunities for Aboriginal students, many of whom may be deemed in educational terms \u27at risk\u27, to engage in school life; • the organisational I institutional, social, cultural and economic factors (i) enabling and (ii) inhibiting enhancement of educational and sporting opportunities and take-up of these opportunities by the Aboriginal students; • the extent to which progress achieved within the school context can be mirrored beyond the school, in terms of the lives and lifestyles of the students concerned. The case study highlights the complex dynamics between social, cultural, economic and institutional issues in educational developments that seek to engage students in learning, in school life, in future careers, and in community life, via a central focus on sport. Data collected via institutional records, a questionnaire survey of academy staff, in-depth interviews with staff, and a questionnaire survey of students enrolled at the academy, is reported. The data provides important insights into the challenges and potential of sport-focused initiatives that are directed towards social and educational agendas, and specifically, the life experiences and \u27life chances\u27 of young people who are deemed to be \u27at risk\u27. Developments are described that are fundamentally concerned to both extend and shape the life choices that students make on and beyond the sports field, school grounds and their school years. Data from staff and students points to the football program at Clontarf having a significant impact upon the social and physical development of students, and their current and prospective future lifestyles. Although focusing on a Specialist Sports School, the case study raises many issues relevant to non-specialist schools. The data presented supports the case for investment in clearly focused physical education and school sport programs, and accompanying longitudinal research capable of tracking addressing the long term impact of participation in initiatives such as the football program at Clontarf

A New Method for Assessing the Resiliency of Large, Complex Networks

Designing resilient and reliable networks is a principle concern of planners and private firms. Traffic congestion whether recurring or as the result of some aperiodic event is extremely costly. This paper describes an alternative process and a model for analyzing the resiliency of networks that address some of the shortcomings of more traditional approaches – e.g., the four-step modeling process used in transportation planning. It should be noted that the authors do not view this as a replacement to current approaches but rather as a complementary tool designed to augment analysis capabilities. The process that is described in this paper for analyzing the resiliency of a network involves at least three steps: 1. assessment or identification of important nodes and links according to different criteria 2. verification of critical nodes and links based on failure simulations and 3. consequence. Raster analysis, graph-theory principles and GIS are used to develop a model for carrying out each of these steps. The methods are demonstrated using two, large interdependent networks for a metropolitan area in the United States.