The thematic interpretation of plural nominalizations

Nominalizations, in German as well as in other languages, are systematically polysemous, a fact that has been widely discussed in the linguistic literature [...]. In this paper, I will discuss certain asymmetries concerning the interpretation of the postnominal genitive [...]

Learning to be a Woodturner

National and international Government policies and reports suggest that lifelong learning is a necessity to promote the cultural, social, educational and vocational dimensions of a person’s life. Many community based organisations play a significant role in providing learning opportunities for adults and thus promote a broad lifelong learning agenda. One such organisation is the Woodturners’ Society of Queensland (WSQ). The aim of the WSQ is the dissemination of information to its members (the majority of whom are over 50 years old) pertaining to the craft of woodturning in addition to providing workshops, seminars and training courses that help to develop and enhance their skills of woodturning. Via semi-structured interviews, the research reported in this paper explores the experiences of ten mature aged members of the WSQ with a view to examining not only their motivation to learn woodturning but also, and most importantly, the learning processes and activities they nominated as critical to their growth. Key factors that facilitated and inhibited the learning processes are identified and discussed. The paper concludes with implications that point to the need to support communities of practice

Learning New Practices in Small Business: Engagement and Localised Support

Discusses the findings of a study that investigated how the learning of innovative practices might best proceed in small businesses. The recent implementation of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) in Australia presented an opportunity for understanding how small business operatives learned to implement a new practice. The procedures comprised semi¬-structured interviews with 30 small businesses about how they had learned about and implemented the GST. A case study was written about each small business' experience that were verified for their accuracy by each small business. These case studies became the data source. It was found that the small business operatives that appeared to have learned most about the GST were those who were highly engaged in the task of learning about the GST - active learners and also accessed high levels of support from localised sources. A typology comprising dimensions of support needed and engagement by small business operatives was synthesised from the findings and is discussed

Completing an Educational Leadership Picture: Feminine Essentials from an Australian Perspective.

The position of women in Australian society, and other westernized countries has not improved greatly. Over the past two decades, a variety of feminist frameworks have been put forward to explain women's almost absence from formal leadership positions and highlight the various barriers that have contributed to this situation. In this book chapter we argue that the dominant culture of educational institutions is masculine. Thus valued practices are those which support competition, hierarchy and individualism (Blackmore 1997), while more feminine models of caring, concern and consensus are devalued or ignored. Because of this incomplete picture, our chapter outlines some important principles and relevant practices that create more feminine ways of leading organizations

Developing Senior Management Teams in Schools: Can Micropolitics Help?

While there is a vast body of literature that examines the role of the principal in schools, it has been only relatively recently that attention has focused on the working practices and relationships o f members in the Senior Management Team (SMT). This paper suggests that the study of micropolitics has potential for illuminating SMTs since it provides a lens to understand the dynamics of the team and the interactions and inter-relationships between and amongst their members. This micropolitical lens is concerned with how players use a variety of strategies such as power, coercion, cooperation, cooption and influence to obtain resources and achieve goals. This paper examines some of the recent research into SMTs and micropolitics and identifies five hey issues or pointers that may be linked to either facilitating or inhibiting the effective functioning of SMTs in schools. The set of issues provides a useful framework for members of SMTs to critically reflect upon as they seek to build shared purpose, cooperation and collaboration

Nominalizations and temporal prepositions

In this paper, we deal with the semantic interaction between ung-nominalizations of different event types and temporal prepositions like wiihrend 'during', vor 'before', nach 'after', bis 'until' and seit 'since'. According to the two-level-approach to selnantics (Bierwisch 1983, Bierwisch / Lang 1989), we will argue that the meaning of ten~poral prepositions is determined on the level of semantic form (SF). When combined with an event nominal, the period in time required by the preposition has to be inferred on the level of conceptual structure (CS). Very often, the exact nature of the period in time is determined by pragmatic factors. There are, however, some important restrictions to this inference procedure which rely on the event noun's Aktionsart. In Ehrich/Rapp (2000), it was claimed that eventive ungnominals inherit the Aktionsart of their base verb. This assumption receives strong support by the data presented in this paper

Learning From the Story of a Great Leader

This paper reports on research findings from a larger study which seeks to understand leadership from the experiences of well-known and well-recognised Australian leaders across a spectrum of endeavours such as the arts, business, science, the law and politics. To date there appears to be limited empirical research that has investigated the insights of Australian leaders regarding their leadership experiences, beliefs and practices. In this paper, the leadership story of a well-respected medical scientist is discussed revealing the contextual factors that influenced her thinking about leadership as well as the key values she embodies as a leader. The paper commences by briefly considering some of the salient leadership literature in the field. In particular, two prominent theoretical frameworks provided by Leavy (2003) and Kouzes and Posner (2002) are explored. While Leavy’s framework construes leadership as consisting of three “C’s‿ – context , conviction and credibility, Kouzes and Posner (2002) refer to five practices of exemplary leadership. The paper provides a snapshot of the life forces and context that played an important role in shaping the leader’s views and practices. An analytical discussion of these practices is considered in the light of the earlier frameworks identified. Some implications of the findings from this non-education context for those in schools are briefly noted

Heterogeneous Stochastic Interactions for Multiple Agents in a Multi-armed Bandit Problem

We define and analyze a multi-agent multi-armed bandit problem in which decision-making agents can observe the choices and rewards of their neighbors. Neighbors are defined by a network graph with heterogeneous and stochastic interconnections. These interactions are determined by the sociability of each agent, which corresponds to the probability that the agent observes its neighbors. We design an algorithm for each agent to maximize its own expected cumulative reward and prove performance bounds that depend on the sociability of the agents and the network structure. We use the bounds to predict the rank ordering of agents according to their performance and verify the accuracy analytically and computationally