Before we begin again, I want to tell you why last year was horrendous [Blog post]

The education year is about to begin but I can’t let 2018 go. Not yet. I want to share with you how last year was for me, a Kamilaroi woman, a former schoolteacher and now a university lecturer and educational researcher. My urge to share is simply because I need to be persistent and I have to keep on trying to communicate how it is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, like me, in Australia today. I consistently investigate the biases and taken for granted assumptions upheld in our society in my work as a researcher and I want to tell you that last year was absolutely horrendous for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. And yet, it was also a significant year where we celebrated the strength and persistence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and we began discussions about truth telling and acknowledging the detrimental shared history of colonial Australia

Aerobic Fitness and Trainability in Healthy Youth: Gaps in Our Knowledge

Peak oxygen uptake (V̇O2) is widely recognized as the criterion measure of young people’s aerobic fitness. Peak V̇O2 in youth has been assessed and documented for over 75 years but the interpretation of peak V̇O2 and its trainability are still shrouded in controversy. Causal mechanisms and their modulation by chronological age, biological maturation and sex remain to be resolved. Furthermore, exercise of the intensity and duration required to determine peak V̇O2 is rarely experienced by most children and adolescents. In sport and in everyday life young people are characterized by intermittent bouts of exercise and rapid changes in exercise intensity. In this context it is the transient kinetics of pulmonary V̇O2 (pV̇O2), not peak V̇O2, which best describe aerobic fitness. There are few rigorously determined and appropriately analyzed data from young people’s pV̇O2 kinetics responses to step changes in exercise intensity. Understanding of the trainability of pV̇O2 kinetics is principally founded on comparative studies of trained and untrained youth and much remains to be elucidated. This paper reviews peak V̇O2, pV̇O2 kinetics, and their trainability in youth. It summarizes “what we know,” identifies significant gaps in our knowledge, raises relevant questions, and indicates avenues for future research

The influence of training and maturity status on girls’ responses to short-term, high-intensity upper- and lower-body exercise

A maturational threshold has been suggested to be present in young peoples’ responses to exercise, with significant influences of training status only evidenced above this threshold. The presence of such a threshold has not been investigated for short term, high intensity exercise. To address this, we investigated the relationship between swim-training status and maturity on the power output, pulmonary gas exchange and metabolic responses to upper (UP) and lower body (LO) Wingate Anaerobic Test (WAnT). Girls at three stages of maturity: pre-pubertal (Pre: 8 trained (T) 10 untrained (UT)); pubertal (Pub: 9 T, 15 UT); and post-pubertal (Post: 8 T, 10 UT) participated. At all maturity stages, T exhibited higher peak power (PP) and mean power (MP) during UP (PP: Pre, T, 163±20 vs. UT, 124±29; Pub, T, 230±42 vs. UT, 173±41; Post, T, 245±41 vs. UT, 190±40 W; MP: Pre, T, 130±23 vs. UT, 85±26; Pub, T, 184±37 vs. UT, 123±38; Post, T, 200±30 vs. UT, 150±15 W; all P<0.05) but not LO exercise, whilst the fatigue index was significantly lower in T for both exercise modalities. Irrespective of maturity, the oxidative contribution, calculated by the area under the O2 response profile, was not influenced by training status. No interaction was evident between training status and maturity, with similar magnitudes of difference between T and UT at all three maturity stages. These results suggest there is no maturational threshold which must be surpassed for significant influences of training status to be manifest in the ‘anaerobic’ exercise performance of young girls

Influence of training status and exercise modality on pulmonary O2 uptake kinetics in pubertal girls

The influence of training status on the oxygen uptake ( O2) response to heavy intensity exercise in pubertal girls has not previously been investigated. We hypothesised that whilst training status-related adaptations would be evident in the O2, heart rate (HR) and deoxyhemoglobin ([HHb]) kinetics of pubertal swimmers during both lower and upper body exercise, they would be more pronounced during upper body exercise. Eight swim-trained (T; 14.2±0.7 years) and eight untrained (UT; 14.5±1.3 years) girls completed a number of constant-work-rate transitions on cycle and upper body ergometers at 40% of the difference between the gas exchange threshold and peak O2. The phase II O2 time constant (τ) was significantly shorter in the trained girls during both cycle (T: 21 ± 6 vs. UT: 35 ± 11 s; P<0.01) and upper body exercise (T: 29 ± 8 vs. UT: 44 ± 8 s; P<0.01). The O2 slow component was not influenced by training status. The [HHb] τ was significantly shorter in the trained girls during both cycle (T: 12 ± 2 vs. UT: 20 ± 6 s; P<0.01) and upper body exercise (T: 13 ± 3 vs. UT: 21 ± 7 s; P<0.01), as was the HR τ (cycle, T: 36 ± 5 vs. UT: 53 ± 9 s; upper body, T: 32 ± 3 vs. UT: 43 ± 2; P<0.01). This study suggests that both central and peripheral factors contribute to the faster O2 kinetics in the trained girls and that differences are evident in both lower and upper body exercise

Talkin' bout a revolution: the call for transformation and reform in Indigenous education

The areas of concern (‘goals’, ‘domains’ and ‘priority areas’ - whatever policymakers wish to call them) relating to Indigenous education have not changed since the first National Indigenous education policy in 1989. Deficit discourses, discursive trickery and the inability to report progress continues to demoralise and ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students remain at the lower rungs of educational outcome indicators maintaining societal and institutional constructs. In this paper, I argue that there is a need to dramatically reform the approach to Indigenous education transforming the hegemonic positioning assumed by the coloniser. Essentially, this would take a revolution: a revolutionary transformation of institutional and societal constructs; a cognitive awareness of how language and discourses are used to maintain power; and, a need to privilege Indigenous voices and knowledges to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights in education are achieved

Die, brain demons die! The internal monologue of an Aboriginal researcher

The decision to undertake research as an Aboriginal researcher puts us in a precarious position. Opportunities have been afforded to us because of the struggles and challenges taken up by others in the struggle for self-determination and therefore, there is responsibility and accountability to continue in this struggle albeit my own expectations. Consider that it was not until the late 1960s that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were allowed to enter the Westernised classroom. Foregrounding all this is the fact that historically, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been the subject of numerous research projects making us the researched rather than the researcher