From dot points to disciplinarity: the theory and practice of disciplinary literacies in secondary schooling

This thesis explores the disciplinary literacies of Business Studies and Music, with a focus on the written component of the HSC examination in the final year of schooling in New South Wales. The syllabus contains dot points of topics to be covered in the course but these offer little guidance for teachers or students in how to compose an answer to an HSC examination question and they obscure relations between different aspects of disciplinary knowledge. To help teachers move beyond syllabus dot points, this thesis aims to illuminate the distinctive literacy demands of Business Studies and Music. This is achieved by using analytical frameworks from Systemic Functional Linguistics and Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis to explore the features of successful HSC writing in these two subjects. Analysis reveals that successful writing in Business Studies explains patterns of cause and effect with profit as the main motive. In contrast, successful HSC writing in Music describes musical events in terms of concepts of music and principles of musical composition. In the analysis, concepts of music are systematised as networks and taxonomies to reveal the relations within and between concepts. The analysis also includes a typology of images (graphic notation and non-traditional notation) used to represent music to enable an investigation of how image and written text are interrelated in successful HSC responses

Connections : safe spaces for women and youth in Latin America and The Caribbean

RESUMEN: Este libro se puede leer en muchos niveles. Uno de ellos puede no ser muy obvio para aquellos que están acostumbrados a leer sobre violencia e inseguridad en América Latina. Es el nivel que le da a este libro un estatus de originalidad y una contribución que va más allá de la región: el ser una forma de conocimiento destinada no solo a interpretar el mundo, sino a cambiarlo […], visibiliza la importancia de un proceso de investigación ajustado al tipo de conocimiento que produce. Aquí se conectan el proceso y el resultado, lo que debería propiciar un debate más amplio con respecto a cómo y qué sabemos de la naturaleza de la violencia y la agencia social para reducirla […]. Esta visión es particularmente relevante en contextos donde el Estado reproduce la violencia, con terribles impactos, en especial en periferias excluidas. […] El proceso de investigación abordado en este libro transgredió muchas fronteras. Hubo fronteras entre países, barreras lingüísticas, fronteras en torno a la educación, el conocimiento y la experiencia, y entre etnias, géneros y generaciones. […] este proceso reunió a académicos, activistas y líderes comunitarios de cinco países de América Latina y uno del Caribe, incluyendo comunidades indígenas en México y Guatemala […]. La violencia está en el tiempo y en el espacio y se reproduce entre las generaciones en diversos espacios de socialización. Este proceso de investigación que trasciende las fronteras, plantea una discusión que atraviesa los diferentes casos sobre cómo los déficits y las desigualdades materiales, las violencias estatales en nombre de la ‘seguridad’, las especificidades culturales, de género y generacionales de la experiencia y la comprensión de la violencia, así como las diversas formas de criminalidad, se cruzan y se reproducen a través del tiempo y el espacio. Jenny Pearce, investigadora y profesora en el Latin American and Caribbean Centre (LACC) de la London School of Economics and Political ScienceABSTRACT: This book can be read on many levels. One level may not be so obvious to those who are used to reading about violence and insecurity in Latin America. It is the level which gives this book a claim to true originality and a contribution beyond the region. This contribution is to form of scholarship aimed not only to interpret the world but to change it […], this text visibilizes the significance of the research process to the kind of knowledge that is produced. It connects process and outcome, and this should start a wider debate about how as well as what we know about the nature of violence and the social agency to reduce it […]. This is particularly relevant in contexts where the State reproduces violence, with terrible impacts on the margins. The research process discussed in this book transgressed many boundaries. There were intercountry borders, linguistic barriers, boundaries around education, knowledge and experience and between ethnicities, genders and generations. […] the research process brought together scholars and community activists and actors from five Latin American and one Caribbean country. And within Latin America there were indigenous communities in Mexico and Guatemala who participated […]. Violence is located in time and space. It is reproduced inter-generationally through varied socialisation spaces. The boundary crossing research process, raises cross case discussion about how material deficits and inequalities, state violences in the name of ‘security’, cultural, gender and generational specificities of experience and understanding of violence, and varied forms of criminality, intersect and reproduce through time and space. Professor Jenny Pearce. Latin American and Caribbean Centre (LACC), London School of Economics and Political Scienc

Giving birth to and parenting children with developmental disabilities: an application of persoanl construct psychology

This research explored the responses of people to giving birth to and parenting children with developmental disabilities. Two issues in particular were investigated: the construct pole preferences of parents and their emotional states. The content of the most influential self-referring constructs was obtained, along with the content of the structural triggers of the emotional states. Based on a literature review from various theoretical frameworks, along with personal construct psychology, I developed a preliminary personal construct model of the adaptation process to giving birth to and parenting children with developmental disabilities. This model was tested and elaborated from qualitative and quantitative analysis of interview data collected from 81 participants. It was a longitudinal study with the first data collection being within 6 to 24 months of the diagnosis and the second data collection being 18 months later. A matched control group of 81 parents of children without disabilities was interviewed on both occasions. The results indicated that parents of children with developmental disabilities did experience significantly higher levels of cognitive anxiety, death, mutilation, separation, guilt, and shame when compared with parents of children without developmental disabilities. The participants who could incorporate the event into their preferred way of viewing life, experienced less anxiety compared with parents who perceived themselves as being on their non-prefened construct poles. The adaptive process was most effective when parents experienced themselves as having been de-railed by the events from their preferred construct pole and reconstrued life. In so doing they moved again to their preferred construct pole. This group of parents indicated no significant difference in the levels of their negative emotions compared to parents who gave birth to children without developmental disabilities

Exploring the use of images to construct musical meaning about concepts of music

In high stakes testing in the final year of secondary schooling in New South Wales, music students from diverse backgrounds create examination answers using language and image to represent meaning about the concepts of music. This paper focuses on the ways in which musical meaning is created through images, including pitch contours, rhythm notation, texture scores, tables and graphs. This article argues that images are highly efficient and effective exam techniques for committing sophisticated and detailed meaning about concepts of music. Also, images help create a ‘meta’ perspective on the music as a whole, as well as enabling perception of tiny moments, or the flow of unfolding music. Consequently, general musical meaning about principles of composition like unity and contrast can be construed along with more particular meanings related to musical events. Analysis of these affordances shows the value of images in aural examinations and as meaning-making resources in music education

A Phase Ib Study to Evaluate the MEK Inhibitor Cobimetinib in Combination with the ERK1/2 Inhibitor GDC‐0994 in Patients with Advanced Solid Tumors

Lessons Learned Despite strong preclinical rationale, combined cobimetinib‐mediated MEK inhibition and GDC‐0994‐mediated ERK inhibition was not tolerable on two 28‐day dosing schedules in which GDC‐0994 was given for 21 days continuously and cobimetinib administered over 21 days either continuously or intermittently. Adverse events were as expected for mitogen‐activated protein kinase pathway inhibition, but overlapping and cumulative toxicities could not be managed on either dosing schedule. Pharmacokinetic parameters of cobimetinib and GDC‐0994 given in combination were similar to those previously observed in monotherapy studies, so that there was no evidence of drug–drug interaction. Cycle 1 metabolic responses were observed by 18F‐fluorodeoxyglucose‐positron emission tomography but were not predictive of outcome measured by RECIST 1.1. Background Simultaneous targeting of multiple nodes in the mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway offers the prospect of enhanced activity in RAS‐RAF‐mutant tumors. This phase Ib trial evaluated the combination of cobimetinib (MEK inhibitor) and GDC‐0994 (ERK inhibitor) in patients with locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors. Methods Cobimetinib and GDC‐0994 were administered orally on two separate dosing schedules. Arm A consisted of concurrent cobimetinib and GDC‐0994 once daily for 21 days of a 28‐day cycle; Arm B consisted of intermittent dosing of cobimetinib on a 28‐day cycle concurrent with GDC‐0994 daily for 21 days of a 28‐day cycle. Results In total, 24 patients were enrolled. For Arm A, owing to cumulative grade 1–2 toxicity, the dose of cobimetinib was decreased. For Arm B, dose increases of GDC‐0994 and cobimetinib were intolerable with grade 3 dose‐limiting toxicities of myocardial infarction and rash. Pharmacokinetic data did not show evidence of a drug–drug interaction. Overall, seven patients had a best overall response of stable disease (SD) and one patient with pancreatic adenocarcinoma had an unconfirmed partial response. Conclusion The safety profile of MEK and ERK inhibition demonstrated classic MAPK inhibitor–related adverse events (AEs). However, overlapping AEs and cumulative toxicity could not be adequately managed on either dosing schedule, restricting the ability to further develop this combination