"What is going on here?" Challenges experienced by white teachers in a government school in a remote Aboriginal community

As practitioners at the coalface, teacher voices are critical in conversations about how to improve persistent abysmal education outcomes for remote Aboriginal students. Yet, despite significant interest and research conducted by educators, academics, government and influential others, teacher voices are resoundingly silent. Foregrounding non- Indigenous teachers in situ, this critical ethnographic study sought to identify challenges experienced by primary teachers in a remote Aboriginal community school and ascertain why challenges to teacher practice endure. The site of this study was a government school in a very remote Aboriginal community, where the teachers, including the researcher/practitioner, were white. Eighteen teachers including the researcher, from a possible 19, participated in the two and a half year study. Six preservice teachers, with support from their families, constituted the advisory group concerning Aboriginal practices in the community. Teacher practice is critical to student academic achievement (Hattie, 2009). Yet, despite an abundance of funding, research and public critique of Indigenous education, teacher practice fails to deliver the desired student academic outcomes (ACARA, 2016f). This study is premised on a belief there is more going on at the borderline between the institution of education and the Aboriginal community than inadequate teacher practice. This study foregrounds non-Indigenous teacher voice as one voice that is critical to finding out what is going on in this remote Aboriginal community school. This critical ethnographic study utilised the theoretical lens of Third Space (Bhabha, 1994) to identify the school as an "in-between" Space in which educators from the dominating institution of education and Aboriginal clans from the local community meet at the borderline of each other's culture. Third Space theory conceives of two different cultural groups, such as non-Aboriginal teachers and the Aboriginal community, as being from two different Spaces. From the teachers' perspective, the First Space is the institution of education and the Second Space is the remote Aboriginal community comprising Aboriginal clans. The First Space is most familiar to the teacher while the Second Space is, for most teachers, foreign. Bhabha (1994) recognises the borderline as an enunciative Space in which talk happens between people including "discussion, dispute, concession, apology and negotiation" (Bhabha, 1994, p. x). A Third Space is a hybrid Space of both First Space and Second Space that is unrecognisable as belonging to either one or the other. Rather, the Third Space is a coconstructed composition of both. In the construction of the Third Space, members from both groups actively destabilise "the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representations" (Bhabha, 1994, p. 245). The shape of contemporary Aboriginal education requires consideration of the historical coloniser/colonised relationship that continues to influence government and Aboriginal clan relationships (Nakata, 2007). In its current form, the school is unable to address challenges experienced by teachers because the government continues to dominate the social arrangements within the school. Obligated to practice according to institutional demands, teachers find themselves in "borderline engagements of cultural difference" (1994, p. 3) caught between institutional demands and practices and those of Aboriginal students, local employees and families that originate in clan social orders and arrangements. Third Space theory complements critical ethnography because they both contest existing norms and "move from 'what is' to 'what could be'" (Madison, 2012, p. 5). Data were collected from researcher observations, conversations with teachers during day-to-day teacher practice and a semi-structured group interview involving all participants. Teachers' accounts of contradiction, confusion and conflict provided insight into the conditions contributing to the challenges affecting their practice. Kemmis, McTaggart and Nixon's "Practice Architectures" framework (2014, p. 81) was utilised to delve deeply into teacher sayings, doings and relatings to identify the cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that shape and are shaped by teacher practice. With a 'sense of what could be', this study identified the conditions currently holding teacher practice in place, practice resulting in student academic failure. The research found adverse home conditions preclude teacher effectiveness and the institution's regulation of schools and teachers undermines teacher effectiveness at the borderline. Further, the institution's interpretation of 'schooling' locates teachers in the middle of a tug-of-war of legitimacy between the institution and local clans. In its current form, education in this remote Aboriginal community is untenable for both the community and the teachers. Many challenges reported by teachers have been repeatedly highlighted in the literature in academic research, government reports and documents produced by Indigenous leaders; however, the emphasis is mostly placed on Indigenous people. Challenges experienced by Indigenous people in remote communities are presented as detrimental to Indigenous people with little consideration to the service providers, including teachers, whose practice is also affected by the same challenges. This study shows that the current shape of schooling in this remote Aboriginal community is problematic for students AND teachers rather than the current intimation of being problematic BECAUSE OF teachers. Teachers are unable to perform their duties to teacher and institution satisfaction because the institution's insistence of dominance has led to the school being a battleground between two different cultures. In the middle of the battleground, teachers are accused of being the main perpetrator of poor education for Aboriginal students. As a matter of urgency, this study highlights the need for the school to become a Third Space, a "Space of intervention in the here and now" (Bhabha, 1994, p. 10). 'What is' cannot continue because it is failing both teachers and students and their respective first Spaces, the institution of education and the local Aboriginal community. The school needs to be reconstructed by institution and community leaders as a Third Space to tackle the entrenched challenges reported by teachers. Challenges described by teachers in this study need to be heard in discussions that create new arrangements

Creating an Environment That Fosters Feedback Among Nurses

The goal of the project is to provide a voice for the nursing staff by adding their input on potential changes to the unit and to ultimately build stronger relationships among nurses. Involving staff from the beginning, this project started with a communication needs assessment completed in one unit at a small rural hospital in the Midwest. This included session meetings and a ballot survey. A project was designed to strengthen feedback among nurses on the unit, addressing horizontal violence in the workplace, and relating to Watson\u27s nursing care theory. The project\u27s goal is to create an environment that fosters feedback among nurses by designing an educational intervention. The outcome of the project should benefit relationships among the nurses as a result of improving communication that emphasizes proper use of feedback to create a respectful caring environment

Working paper 17: Bat habitat and forest restoration treatments

Northern Arizona is home to at least 20 species of bats or two-thirds of the bat species found in the state (Cockburn 1960, Hinman and Snow 2003). Only a couple of these species live exclusively in ponderosa pine forests while the rest inhabit a variety of ecosystem types from desert scrub to pinyon-juniper to ponderosa pine-Gambel oak and mixed conifer (Arizona Game and Fish Department 1996, Hinman and Snow 2003). Bats are an important part of the forest ecology of northern Arizona because they prey on insects such as midges, moths, beetles, flies, mosquitoes, termites, and ants. They typically roost in the cavities of live trees and snags, under loose tree bark, in tree stumps and logs, in rock crevices, or in caves. As the new era of ecologically restoring forest ecosystems in the Southwest moves from experiments to full implementation, the question arises:What effects will restoration treatments have on forest wildlife, including often forgotten or poorly understood animal groups, such as bats? Thinning, for instance, might remove snags where bats roost, and burning could inadvertently destroy or alter such roosting sites.While its true that fire will create new snags, given the present forest conditions, they will be younger, smaller-diameter snags that are more susceptible to fire, and not the 27-inch-plus-diameter snags bats most often use. In this working paper, we look at research and studies that provide some recommendations about ways to maintain bat habitat while restoring forest tree health and vitality

Motion into and out of in English, French and Norwegian.

This is an article posted in the open Access journal Nordic Journal of English Studies (NJES) . The original article can be found here: http://ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/view/3087This paper presents a contrastive study of Norwegian predications of motion events with the compound prepositions ut av (‘out of’) and inn i (‘into’) and their translations into English and French. The motivation for choosing these two types of predication is that French, unlike English, is said to avoid the use of manner verbs with boundary-crossing events. The paper examines all occurrences in the Oslo Multilingual Corpus (OMC) of self-motion predications containing the two Norwegian prepositions, in all of which path is coded in the prepositional phrase. The verb may also code path, it may code manner, or it may be a neutral verb of movement. We first analyse the Norwegian originals with respect to their coding of path and manner and then turn to the two sets of translations and investigate the extent to which they retain the manner/path coding choices of the source predications and, if not, what sort of alterations they make. If the contention that French avoids manner verbs with boundary-crossing actions is correct, the French translations should exhibit a much greater degree of path or neutral motion coding in the verb than either the Norwegian originals or the English translations. The data show that this is indeed the case. There are also, however, more occurrences of manner verbs in French with boundary-crossing actions than one would expect given the language’s reputation in the literature for avoiding this construction

Designing for Disability: Making Activities of Daily Living more Manageable through 3D Printing

Introduction: While there have been many innovations developed for those with physical disabilities in recent years, a multitude of unmet needs still remain. With the advent of new and affordable technologies such as 3D printing, it is now more possible than ever before to bring one’s ideas to life; from creating customized prosthetics to wheelchair attachments for water bottles and umbrellas, we are able to quickly realize potentials otherwise unlikely - and in turn, we have the capacity to make the activities of daily living more manageable for those with physical disabilities. Objectives: By personally hearing from individuals with physical disabilities about what challenges they face on a daily basis, it is possible to develop 3D printed items that can address their unmet needs. This work seeks to propose design(s) that can be conveniently created via an FDM 3D printer, in response to their expressed concerns. Methods: In accordance with the principles of appreciative inquiry, first-hand discussions with those having physical disabilities have allowed for some insight into a few of the current struggles they endure. Their stories have inspired the following proposed design(s) which can be 3D printed, with the hope that these developments can help them navigate the world we live in just a little bit easier. Results: Presented design(s) have been drafted in Autodesk Fusion 360 and initial prototypes are to be printed in ABS plastic with an Affinia FDM printer. Conclusions: 3D printing is an affordable, convenient, and promising means of developing items that can assist those with physical disabilities as they navigate our often inaccessible-world. While many changes require advocacy and intervention at the level of public policy, some impactful means of assistance can instead be constructed in this manner

The Barriers that Deter the Geriatric Population From Receiving Healthcare

In the United States, the geriatric population is considered to include individuals that are 65 years or older. In 2016, there was an estimated 49.2 million elderly Americans (Roberts, Ogunwole, Blakeslee, & Rabe 2018). Since the advances of modern medicine are prospering, this number is expected to increase drastically. Furthermore, the geriatric population is projected to double, from 2010 to 2030, to 20% or 72 million Americans (Horton and Johnson 2010). Looking further into the future, the American geriatric population is expected to be 83.7 million in 2050 (Ortman, Velkoff, & Hogan 2014). In a 2016 Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the American geriatric population self-reported the highest percentage of “fair” or “poor” overall health (Center for Disease Control and Prevention 2018b). In response, the United States Department of Health and Human Services set up additional programs and resources to improve this rating; however, with the many health complications that older Americans face, there has been a surprising inconsistent quality of care for this population. The disparity becomes significant since many geriatric patients deal with chronic health complications. Previous studies show that there are both tangible and intangible factors as to why the geriatric population face issues with access to healthcare or the quality of care. This retrospective analysis looked at the different types of barriers for the geriatric population in the United States. This study investigated the barriers in rural settings, urban settings, and more specifically Philadelphia, where the medical field is expanding to better care for this population. Physicians’ behavior and attitude towards patients, “difficulty in getting to the doctor, the absence of services, lack of career progression opportunities for physicians, and the increased financial burden” are the many barriers, which geriatric patients face when trying to access quality healthcare (Douthit, Dwolatzky, & Biswas 2015). One might think tangible barriers, such as the cost of medical care, would be the major barrier facing this population. However, studies concluded that the perceived behavior and attitude of the physician is the most significant barrier that deters the geriatric population from wanting to receive medical care. Possible solutions to this issue include reform of healthcare policy and focusing on patient-centered care

Backyard wildlife habitat and fire safety: A guide for residents of Flagstaff

This booklet describes how to design our backyards and larger properties to promote wildlife habitat, reduce water use, and minimize risk to property from unnatural wildfire. It also provides information about local and state resources that can be useful in such efforts