Surveying the landscape five years on : An examination of how teachers, and the teaching of Australia's shared-history, is constructed within Australian academic literature

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review of academic debates relating to the Australian Curriculum: History (ACH), in particular subjective constructions of teachers, and the teaching of Australian History and Aboriginal peoples' and Torres Strait Islanders’ histories. The literature reviewed from a socio-political lens, examines functions of power/knowledge operating in discourses of education to illuminate how teachers, Aboriginal peoples, and Torres Strait Islanders, take up and/or resist subjectivities constructing them. Drawing from the toolbox of post-structuralism, this literature review troubles the notion of the non-Indigenous perspective as dominant, and the teacher as an active, non-critical participant in the process

Summary of the International Workshop National Laws and Guidelines for Control of Infections

By way of introduction, Dr. Nyström described the hospital system in Sweden which is organized in a pyramidal fashion within each county. The largest hospital in each county contains a Department of Clinical Microbiology and the organization of hospital infection control activities follows this county structure. An infection control unit is located within the clinical microbiology laboratory of the major county hospital. The head of the unit, the hospital epidemiologist, is usually a specialist in clinical microbiology with medical training. The epidemiologist has an infection control committee consisting of clinicians of various specialties, especially surgeons. There are usually two infection control nurses per county (now approximately 1 nurse/3000 beds with an eventual goal of 1 nurse/1000 to 1500 beds). The nurses advise the ward staff in all the county hospitals. There are only some 50 infection control nurses in Sweden; financial restrictions curtail the development of infection control activitie

Your stories, my stories, our stories : Power/knowledge relations and Koorie perspectives in discourses of Australian History Education

Over the past decade, popularised notions and approaches to the teaching and learning of Australia’s history have been overwhelmingly researched and written by non-Indigenous academics. This research challenges dominant non-Indigenous curriculum and research agendas by exploring how, why, and to what degree Koorie, and by extension Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, are taken up for the development and implementation of school-based curriculum aligned to the Year Nine Australian Curriculum: History. The research is guided by Michel Foucault’s poststructural theory to examine a range of discourses identified by year nine history teachers and three Koorie Elders in Ballarat and Greater Shepparton. It is supplemented through Martin Nakata’s ground breaking work on Indigenous Standpoint Theory to acknowledge and highlight the cross-cultural/racial power/knowledge relations of peoples who are involved in the research. It is a timely response to the 2013 mandatory implementation of the Australian Curriculum: History in Victorian state schools. The research builds upon academic research (see Clark, 2006; Harrison & Greenfield, 2011; Mackinlay & Barney, 2011; 2014b) about how teachers may engage critically with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific content. It contributes significantly to a field of research that has not received much attention over the past eleven years. The research is a striking contribution to understandings of Australian cross-cultural/racial research and education practices. It argues that teachers are not necessarily insensitive to cross-cultural/racial relations operating in Australia; rather, that more rigorous and comprehensive teacher education programs are required for the integration of Koorie perspectives on Australian history. The research clearly demonstrates that stories from local Koorie communities offers up a wealth of knowledge that may be drawn upon to reform curriculum agendas towards shared-history understandings of Australia’s history. Ultimately, it advocates for a more nuanced and mature conversation about contemporary cross-cultural/racial education practices in Australia.Doctor of Philosoph

Lessons to learn, discourses to change, relationships to build : how decolonising race theory can articulate the interface between school leadership and Aboriginal students’ schooling experiences

When conversations about Aboriginal student educational success emerge, they are usually focussed on the high levels of underachievement and disengagement. School leadership is seen as critical to contributing to student outcomes. For Aboriginal students, creating inclusive learning environments that support culture and identity, and building trusting relationships with families and community members are also critical goals. As part of the Aboriginal Voices project, this paper uses Decolonising Race Theory (Moodie, 2018) to analyse interviews with four Principals in urban, regional, and rural locations to understand their perceptions and experiences of leading Aboriginal education in schools. From the interviews, three key themes emerged: leading culture, identity and school–community relationships, leading curriculum, pedagogy and teacher development, and leading student participation and achievement. Decolonising Race Theory (Moodie, 2018) is applied as an analytical tool to view these themes through a critical Indigenous lens to understand the Principals’ discourses around Aboriginal student experiences at school and their role in improving outcomes. This revealed contradictory positionings within and between Principal comments, from blaming students and their families for their underachievement, to implementing cultural programmes to build confidence to become self-determining adults. This data provides new ways of thinking through discourses about Aboriginal students and their families, communities, schools, teachers and Principals, and challenges some of the ‘regimes of truth’ that position these groups in particular ways. © 2022, The Author(s)

What's in a name?: Exploring the implications of eurocentric (re)naming practices of aboriginal and torres strait islander nomenclature in australian education practices

The aim of this article is to provide teachers with knowledge of ways in which Eurocentric (re)naming practices inform contemporary pedagogical approaches, while providing understandings pertinent to the mandatory inclusion of the cross-curriculum priority area: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2015). While we have focused on Eurocentric naming practices, we have also been conscious of names used by Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to name themselves and others and as non-Indigenous Australians we acknowledge that it is not our place to explore these in detail, or offer alternatives. In this article, we have explored the history of nomenclature as it relates to original inhabitants, the connotations of contemporary (re)naming practices in Australian education and discussed the importance of drawing on cultural protocols and engaging local communities for teaching and learning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It is anticipated that discussions arising from this article may open up spaces where teachers may think about ways in which they approach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

What's in a name?: Exploring the implications of eurocentric (re)naming practices of aboriginal and torres strait islander nomenclature in australian education practices

The aim of this article is to provide teachers with knowledge of ways in which Eurocentric (re)naming practices inform contemporary pedagogical approaches, while providing understandings pertinent to the mandatory inclusion of the cross-curriculum priority area: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2015). While we have focused on Eurocentric naming practices, we have also been conscious of names used by Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to name themselves and others and as non-Indigenous Australians we acknowledge that it is not our place to explore these in detail, or offer alternatives. In this article, we have explored the history of nomenclature as it relates to original inhabitants, the connotations of contemporary (re)naming practices in Australian education and discussed the importance of drawing on cultural protocols and engaging local communities for teaching and learning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It is anticipated that discussions arising from this article may open up spaces where teachers may think about ways in which they approach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures

Preconditioning of Improved and ``Perfect'' Fermion Actions

We construct a locally-lexicographic SSOR preconditioner to accelerate the parallel iterative solution of linear systems of equations for two improved discretizations of lattice fermions: the Sheikholeslami-Wohlert scheme where a non-constant block-diagonal term is added to the Wilson fermion matrix and renormalization group improved actions which incorporate couplings beyond nearest neighbors of the lattice fermion fields. In case (i) we find the block llssor-scheme to be more effective by a factor about 2 than odd-even preconditioned solvers in terms of convergence rates, at beta=6.0. For type (ii) actions, we show that our preconditioner accelerates the iterative solution of a linear system of hypercube fermions by a factor of 3 to 4.Comment: 27 pages, Latex, 17 Figures include