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Schools are often the first point of contact for young refugees resettling in Australia and play a significant role in establishing meaningful connections to Australian society and a sense of belonging in Australia (Olliff in Settling in: How do refugee young people fair within Australia's settlement system? Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, Melbourne. http//:. Accessed 21 June 2010, ; Gifford et al. in: Good Starts for recently arrived youth with refugee backgrounds: Promoting wellbeing in the first three years of settlement in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne: La Trobe Refugee Research Centre. . Accessed 4 June 2011, ; Sidhu and Taylor in: Educational provision for refugee youth in Australia: Left to chance? Journal of Sociology, 43(3), 283-300, ). However, too little is known of how refugee youth encounter school in their new country. This article draws upon individual narratives of young former refugee's experiences of high schools. It explores the stories told by the young people of being identified as different and of negotiating ways of belonging in schools both academically and socially. It argues that it is how the school positions the newly arrived refugee students within mainstream school culture that opens up or restricts opportunities for inclusion in all aspects of school (in culture and pedagogy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Victoria, Australia, senior secondary mathematics students are expected to use technology and thus need to make decisions about using pen-and-paper (P&P) or technology when solving mathematics problems. The predominant technology is a Computer Algebra System (CAS). This study investigated the beliefs about CAS held by twelve Year 11 students as they learnt to use CAS and whether these beliefs were stable over time. These students held a range of beliefs related to the usefulness of CAS, speed of CAS compared to P&P, whether CAS is proper mathematics, choice of CAS or P&P, ease of use, the correctness of answers and solving problems in Mathematical Methods (i.e. the mathematics subject studied). Beliefs are often described as being stable (e.g. McLeod, 1992), but some researchers stress stability needs to be determined empirically rather than being seen as a characteristic of beliefs (e.g. Liljedahl et al., 2012). For this sample of students, stability (rather than instability) is a feature of students' beliefs about CAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Disaster Management (DM), reusing knowledge of best practices from past experiences is envisaged as the best approach for dealing with future disasters. But analysing and modelling processes involved in those experiences is a well-known challenge. But the efficient storage of those processes to allow reuse by others in future DM endeavours is even more challenging and less discussed. Without an efficient process in place, DM knowledge reuse becomes even more remote as the effort incurred gets construed as a hindrance to more pressing activities during the execution of disaster activities. Efficiency has to also be pursued without compromising the effectiveness of the knowledge analysis and reuse. It is important to ensure that knowledge remains meaningful and relevant after it is transformed. This paper presents and validates a DM knowledge analysis framework (DMKAF 2.0) that caters for efficient transformation of DM knowledge intended for reuse. The paper demonstrates that undertaking knowledge transformation and storage in the context of its use is crucial in DM for both, effectiveness and efficiency of the transformation process. Design Science Research methodology guides the research undertaken, by informing enhancements and how the framework is evaluated. A real case study of flood DM from the State Emergency Service of Victoria State Australia is successfully used to validate these enhancements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role and significance of schooling in maintaining and renewing social disadvantage is particularly evident in upper secondary education, and especially so in the high-stakes final examination at the end of Year 12. This paper focusses on Senior English in this context, with specific regard to the Australian state of New South Wales. Building on a recent study of the outcomes of the Higher School Certificate (HSC) in 2017, it analyses what the data reveal about the relationship between Senior English and social inequality in this instance. It does so with reference to a brief account of the history of English teaching and senior secondary curriculum policy in New South Wales and also, comparatively, a now well-established comprehensive study of senior secondary schooling in Victoria. It concludes with some implications of this account for further investigations of Senior English and subject English more generally, as well as of the social meaning of senior secondary education in Australia, in particular with regard to the nexus between curriculum and assessment, knowledge, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strict lockdowns have been employed by many of the world's nations as a public health response to COVID-19. However, concerns have been expressed as to how such public health responses disturb the human ecosystem. In this paper, we report on findings from a longitudinal study of Australian parents in which we investigated how state differences in government-mandated lockdowns affect the relationship well-being (i.e., relationship satisfaction and loneliness) of parents. We situated the study of the relational effects of strict lockdowns within the Vulnerability Stress Adaptation Model (VSAM, Karney & Bradbury, 1995) that considers the role of parents' pre-existing vulnerabilities (i.e., psychological distress and attachment insecurity), life stressors (pre-pandemic and COVID-19 stressors), and adaptive relationship processes (constructive communication and perceived partner support). A total of 1942 parents completed 14 waves of assessments of relationship satisfaction and loneliness over a 13.5-month period as well as baseline assessments of personal vulnerabilities, life stressors, and adaptive relationship processes. Parents with high relationship adaptations and low vulnerabilities evidenced the highest relationship well-being (i.e., high satisfaction and low loneliness) during changes in lockdown restrictions, while parents with moderate relationship adaptations and vulnerabilities experienced the poorest well-being. Differences in state lockdown restrictions (i.e., Victoria [long and strict lockdown policy] vs all other states) were associated with differences in relationship well-being for parents with high relationship adaptations. Specifically, Victorian parents experienced significant declines in relationship well-being compared to non-Victorian parents. Our findings provide novel insights into how government-mandated social restrictions can disrupt the relational ecology of parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 forced the digitalisation of teaching and learning in a response often described as emergency remote teaching (ERT). This rapid response changed the social, spatial, and temporal arrangements of higher education and required important adaptations from educators and students alike. However, while the literature has examined the constraints students faced (e.g. availability of the internet) and the consequences of the pandemic (e.g. student mental health), students' active management of these constraints for learning remains underexplored. This paper aims to "think with" COVID-19 to explore student agency in home learning under constrained circumstances. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to understand the day-to-day actions of nineteen undergraduate students managing their learning during the COVID-19 lockdowns in Victoria, Australia. Emirbayer and Mische's multiple dimensions of agency — iterative, projective, and practical-evaluative — are used to explore student experience. The findings illustrate students' adaptability and agency in navigating life-integrated learning, with most of their actions oriented to their present circumstances. This practical evaluative form of agency was expressed through (1) organising self, space, time, and relationships; (2) self-care; and (3) seeking help. Although this study took place in the context of ERT, it has implications beyond the pandemic because higher education always operates under constraints, and in other circumstances, many students still experience emotionally and materially difficult times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of the role of students' interpretation and creation of multiple forms of representation in science learning has long been established and advocated, but there is a paucity of research into the extent to which this emphasis in science education is reflected in high stakes final year high school science examinations. This study investigated the inclusion of visualizations in the questions within such examinations that require students to construct a response, and also the extent to which such questions required students to create or modify diagrams or graphs within their responses. Examinations in physics, biology and chemistry from the Cambridge International Examination, New Zealand, Singapore and the States of New South Wales and Victoria in Australia over a six-year period (2014-2019) were analysed. The results indicate that less than one third of constructed response item (CRI) questions include visualisations, with most occurring in physics, then biology and then chemistry. An infinitesimally small percentage of questions across all subjects and in all but one of the jurisdictions required the creation or augmentation of visualisations. The misalignment between the integral role of visualizations in science pedagogy and the paucity of visualizations in CRIs in final year high school examinations as well as implications for examination re-design and associated further research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impact of removing the level crossing, which constitutes traffic hazard to the society, on house prices by conducting a quasi-natural experiment using the Level Crossing Removal Project (LXRP) implemented by the Victoria state government in Australia since 2015. Using a difference-in-differences method, we analyzed the changes in housing prices due to the improvement of transportation infrastructure, gauging the LXRP's impact on house and unit submarkets separately. We found that the prices for house and unit markets increased significantly after the removal of level crossings, with the value uplift decreasing with distance from the removal site. This paper contributes to the existing literature by adding an empirical study related to the enhancement of infrastructure aiming to improve the traffic safety in the urban context. Unlike previous studies, this study examines the effect of improvement projects for existing infrastructure and provides relevant implications to improve the efficiency of investing public resources in infrastructure improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the policies of school autonomy in Australian public education from the Karmel report in 1973 to the present day. The key focus is on the social justice implications of this reform. It tracks the tensions between policy moves to both grant schools greater autonomy and rein in this autonomy with the increasing instatement of external forms of regulation. Utilising Nancy Fraser's concepts of dis-embedding and re-embedding markets, we track key policy moments in three Australian states (Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales) along with federal interventions. We draw attention to the redistributive and representative justice implications arising from these policy moments as occurring within a consistent trajectory towards a market agenda and argue that future policy needs to consider the effect of past policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision making in a rapidly changing context, such as the development and progression of a pandemic, requires a dynamic assessment of multiple variable and competing factors. Seemingly beneficial courses of action can rapidly fail to deliver a positive outcome as the context changes. In this paper, we present a flexible data-driven agent-based simulation framework that considers multiple outcome criteria to increase opportunities for safe mobility and economic interactions on urban transit networks while reducing the potential for Covid-19 contagion in a dynamic setting. Using a case study of the Victoria line on the London Underground, we model a number of operational interventions with varied demand levels and social distancing constraints including: alterations to train headways, dwell times, signalling schemes, and train paths. Our model demonstrates that substantial performance gains ranging from 12.3–195.7% can be achieved in metro service provision when comparing the best performing operational scheme and headway with those realised on the Victoria line during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, deep learning (DL) approaches have been proven effective in addressing high nonlinear relationships within complex systems. Although various scientific studies have primarily focused on optimizing model architecture and enhancing its computational efficiency through hybridization, they have neglected the crucial aspect of selecting appropriate predictor variables (PV) and their influence on the model's predictions. In this paper, a new multi-phase stochastic DL model is designed with a feature selection framework for monthly streamflow prediction. The multi-phase hybrid MCMC–BC–BiLSTM–BiGRU model is based on bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) and bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU) integrated with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) based bivariate copulas (BC). First, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm was employed for screening optimal PV, and then significant antecedent streamflow was coupled with it to generate optimized input combinations. In addition, 25 different MCMC–BC models were adopted for each input combination to determine the dependency of previous month's streamflow on current and future streamflow. Finally, best-fitted MCMC–BC model was integrated with hybrid BILSTM–BiGRU model to predict streamflow at nine different catchments in the Victoria region of the Upper Murray Basin (UMB), Australia. The experimental results show that the multi-phase hybrid MCMC–BC–BiLSTM–BiGRU model showed remarkable performance in comparison to its benchmark counterparts with respect to different robust statistical error metrics. Therefore, this study demonstrates that stochastic DL techniques can be effectively employed as a promising alternative predictive tool for upstream discharge predictions with high consistency and accuracy, specifically when a statistically significant relationship with the antecedent streamflow exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International literature suggests that many young people transitioning from government care become parents before age 21, characteristically termed 'early parenting', at least in the English-speaking world. Yet there is only limited knowledge of the factors that lead to this challenging responsibility. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of service providers' experiences working with young people transitioning from care who had become parents, in the state of Victoria, Australia. Victorian service providers recommended ways that current out-of-home care, transition from care and parenting services could be improved to reduce feelings of loss, including new service approaches that prioritise relationship-based practice, holistic support and practical assistance from a trusted person or service. Preventing feelings of loss and isolation and increasing supportive relationships in care and throughout transitions from care may help to prevent early pregnancy and parenting amongst care leavers who otherwise lack resources for parenting independently. Providing parenting support which addresses feelings of loss and social isolation may reduce the increasing numbers of children being placed in care, and associated ongoing cycles of child protection involvement with disadvantaged families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020 when schooling was abruptly reconfigured by the pandemic, young people were required to demonstrate new capabilities to manage their learning and their wellbeing. This paper reports on the feelings, thoughts and experiences of eight Year 9 and 10 students in NSW and Victoria about the initial period of online learning in Australian schools that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic. Beyond dominant narratives of vulnerability and losses in learning, our participants offered counternarratives that stressed their capacities to rise and meet the times. We trace three central themes on how they: found moments of agency that increased their confidence, reconfigured resilience as a socially responsible set of practices, deployed sociality as a resource for the benefit of themselves and others. The pandemic opened up conversations with young people about where and how learning takes place and how schools might adapt and respond to young people's growing sense of urgency about the future of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Research shows criminal code laws negatively affect the health and safety of sex workers and hinders their ability to access protective and other services. Less is known about sex workers' views on how to improve their occupational and broader social rights. This paper aims to help fill in this knowledge gap. Methods: In 2017, a cross-section of active sex workers (N = 60) from Victoria, Canada, were interviewed about their personal and work lives under Canada's 2014 criminal code law, Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA). Thematic analysis was carried out using the participants' (n = 57) who answered these two open-ended questions: What changes are needed to improve health, safety and rights for sex workers? What would be your dream list of services sex workers need right now? Results: Participants recommended elimination of Canada's criminal code law governing consensual sex work, and policy change in two main areas: (1) occupational health and safety and (2) access to non-judgmental protective, health, and other community services. Conclusion: Sex workers are an important source of insight regarding the unintended consequences of the PCEPA and its stated commitment to improve their safety and ensure the protection of their occupational and social rights. Policy Implications: Consensual adult sexual commerce should be decriminalized and governed by health and social welfare policies, just as other service jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing mature-age access to education and training in a way that is responsive to changing labour market needs is a key policy challenge. In this paper we examine the impacts of a unique reform in the Australian state of Victoria that aimed to meet this challenge by introducing a broad-based voucher for those 25 and older. In effect, the reform uncapped public course-level funding and linked it to individual student choice instead of centralised funding allocations. Using national administrative enrolment data and difference-in-differences estimation, exploiting the continuation of existing centralised funding models in other states, we find that the voucher increased mature-age vocational education and training participation and improved the alignment of course enrolments with measures of prevailing skill needs, including enrolments of disadvantaged groups. Our study provides first evidence on the use of broad-based vouchers in vocational education and training to expand access to mature-age learning in a demand-responsive way. These results provide support for policies that put student choice at the centre of efforts to lift mature-age access to training, which is especially important for countries, such as the United States, that have traditionally funded vocational education and training through centralised allocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warnings issued by meteorological or oceanographic agencies are a common means of allowing people to prepare for likely impactful events. Quantifying the relationships between ocean conditions and coastal impacts, such as shoreline change or flooding of coastal assets (e.g. flooded access points, overtopping of sea walls) is crucial for developing operational coastal hazard warnings. Existing studies have largely omitted empirical data, relying on modelling to estimate total water levels and impact potentials. It is well documented that site-specific conditions influence local morphodynamics and as such, detailed data related to the physical environment is a necessary component of these existing approaches. The capacity to collect these data is not always available, however, and so an alternative approach that does no rely on detailed modelling may be necessary in some instances to identify the conditions that lead to coastal impacts. We propose an alternative empirically based approach for isolating oceanic conditions that are conducive to impact along open coasts, using two case studies from Victoria, southeast Australia: Port Fairy and Inverloch. Oceanic conditions were defined using data obtained from a WAVEWATCH III (WW3) model hindcast, assessed against newly installed wave buoys, which evidenced variation in mean conditions between the two sites. We coupled impact-based data derived from citizen-science and social media to modelled and observational data, to identify the oceanic conditions that led to impacts. We found heterogeneity in the response of the case study locations to deviations from the local mean wave characteristics and still water levels. This paper demonstrates an approach through which impact-based thresholds for erosion could be developed for management applications and early warning systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, sandy soils are known to be the only type of soils susceptible to liquefaction. However, liquefaction has also been observed in silty and clayey soils. As one of the most problematic soft soils in the state of Victoria, Australia, Coode Island Silt (CIS) extends from the northern shoreline of Port Phillip Bay to the south and west of Melbourne central business district and contains a considerable and variable amount of sand. Although this material covers an area of more than 20 km2 at a depth varying from ground level to 30 m below the ground level in the metropolitan region of Melbourne, the effect of sand content on the liquefaction potential and post-earthquake behaviour of CIS has never been studied properly. Through an extensive set of monotonic, cyclic and post-cyclic triaxial tests, this paper explores the earthquake and post-earthquake response of CIS containing variable sand content. Based on the test results, it is found that the sand content up to 60% does not affect the liquefaction potential of CIS under the tested cyclic stress ratio. Also, it is found that although the applied cyclic loading does not considerably alter the internal friction of CIS-sand mixtures, the post-cyclic secant stiffness increases dramatically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of competition on hospital quality using hospital administration data from the State of Victoria, Australia. Hospital quality is measured by 30-day mortality rates and 30-day unplanned readmission rates. Competition is measured by Herfindahl-Hirschman index and the numbers of competing public and private hospitals. The paper finds that hospitals facing higher competition have lower unplanned admission rates. However, competition is related negatively to hospital quality when measured by mortality, albeit the effects are weak and barely statistically significant. The paper also finds that the positive effect of competition on quality as measured by unplanned readmission differs greatly depending on whether the hospital is publicly or privately owned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new group Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making (MCDM) method is introduced by combining two 'Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE)' and 'Multi-attribute decision making with dominance in the criteria' methods. PROMETHEE family of outranking methods is among the recently developed MCDM methods which have received lots of attention in the recent years because of its capacity in ranking finite set of alternative actions based on conflicting criteria. The second method helps the decision makers to consider ambiguity and imprecision of relative importance of each objective (criterion) without allocating importance weights to them. The proposed method of PROMETHEE with Precedence Order in the Criteria (PPOC) not only can address capabilities of PROMETHEE method just with determination of precedence order of criteria, but also can make it possible to have a group decision making environment with conflicting objectives. Operational management of an urban water supply system is a good example of a set of decision making problems with several objectives and Decision Makers (DMs). In this paper, PPOC method has been applied to the case study of Melbourne water supply system, previously analyzed in the literature, to assess a number of operation rules with respect to eight criteria evaluated under single or group decision-making situations. The satisfaction degree of each DM and the overall group ranking results have also been provided in the paper. The proposed method is applicable for different decision making problems in urban water supply management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bushfires of 7th February 2009 in and around Melbourne, Victoria, Australia resulted in loss of 173 lives, more than 2000 houses and other property, and many other assets. The questions and issues that quickly emerged will be the subject of debate, in Australia and internationally, for years to come. Importantly the fires of February the 7th were not one single fire, but many unconnected fires which occurred on an unprecedented day of extreme fire danger following prolonged drought. The fires affected communities which were solely in rural areas, in inter-mix areas, in rural-urban interface areas and in wholly suburban situations. This paper gives an overview of the extensive data collection exercise undertaken over a 3-month period by a team of researchers, fire investigators and agency personnel to attempt to learn the lessons of these fires. The paper briefly outlines some of the high level findings from near 2000 staff days of field work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting international patterns, Aboriginal people in Victoria are more likely to gamble and to experience gambling harm than non-Indigenous Victorians. This paper describes experiences of gambling reported by 50 Aboriginal people interviewed in regional Victoria in 2016 and 2017 as part of studies initiated by two Aboriginal community-controlled organisations. Data were analysed using social practice theory (SPT) and coded to the elements of 'meaning', 'material', 'competence', and 'temporality'. Across each element we identified highly contradictory experiences. Gambling held meaning as an opportunity for community gatherings but was also regarded as a cause of domestic violence, conflict, isolation and shame. Materially, the venues that offered gambling were experienced by many Aboriginal people as safe and welcoming, but at the same time gambling produced a damaging affective sense of addiction for some. Gambling was a competency that some people valued and taught to children, but it was also seen as undermining cultural practices. While Aboriginal people were historically denied access to licensed venues offering commercial gambling, many participants now found opportunities to gamble inescapable. The intermingling of benefits and harms described above supports the need for a multi-faceted response to gambling in Aboriginal communities, which includes harm reduction as well as supply restriction and treatment. Some experiences of gambling related by our participants reflected those reported also by non-Indigenous Australians, while others were differently nuanced. Because SPT is used to understand collectively-shared practices, it facilitates the identification of gambling interventions at the level of the community, as recommended by our research participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This two-part paper considers the complementarity between adaptation and mitigation in managing the risks associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect. Part one reviews the application of risk management methods to climate change assessments. Formal investigations of the enhanced greenhouse effect have produced three generations of risk assessment. The first led to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), First Assessment Report and subsequent drafting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The second investigated the impacts of unmitigated climate change in the Second and Third IPCC Assessment Reports. The third generation, currently underway, is investigating how risk management options can be prioritised and implemented. Mitigation and adaptation have two main areas of complementarity. Firstly, they each manage different components of future climate-related risk. Mitigation reduces the number and magnitude of potential climate hazards, reducing the most severe changes first. Adaptation increases the ability to cope with climate hazards by reducing system sensitivity or by reducing the consequent level of harm. Secondly, they manage risks at different extremes of the potential range of future climate change. Adaptation works best with changes of lesser magnitude at the lower end of the potential range. Where there is sufficient adaptive capacity, adaptation improves the ability of a system to cope with increasingly larger changes over time. By moving from uncontrolled emissions towards stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mitigation limits the upper part of the range. Different activities have various blends of adaptive and mitigative capacity. In some cases, high sensitivity and low adaptive capacity may lead to large residual climate risks; in other cases, a large adaptive capacity may mean that residual risks are small or non-existent. Mitigative and adaptive capacity do not share the same scale: adaptive capacity is expressed locally, whereas mitigative capacity is different for each activity and location but needs to be aggregated at the global scale to properly assess its potential benefits in reducing climate hazards. This can be seen as a demand for mitigation, which can be exercised at the local scale through exercising mitigative capacity. Part two of the paper deals with the situation where regional bodies aim to maximise the benefits of managing climate risks by integrating adaptation and mitigation measures at their various scales of operation. In north central Victoria, Australia, adaptation and mitigation are being jointly managed by a greenhouse consortium and a catchment management authority. Several related studies investigating large-scale revegetation are used to show how climate change impacts and sequestration measures affect soil, salt and carbon fluxes in the landscape. These studies show that trade-offs between these interactions will have to be carefully managed to maximise their relative benefits. The paper concludes that when managing climate change risks, there are many instances where adaptation and mitigation can be integrated at the operational level. However, significant gaps between our understanding of the benefits of adaptation and mitigation between local and global scales remain. Some of these may be addressed by matching demands for mitigation (for activities and locations where adaptive capacity will be exceeded) with the ability to supply that demand through localised mitigative capacity by means of globally integrated mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on several conferences including International Society of Business, Economics, and Ethics (ISBEE) World Congress to be held at the University of Melbourne in Victoria in July 2004, a conference titled "Ethics All the Way Through" to be held in Chicago, Illinois on October 21-23, 2004, and the First Annual Meta-ethics Workshop to be held in Madison, Wisconsin on October 16-17, 2004.

The Australian Government's efforts to increase the proportion of Australians with university-level qualifications has placed educational aspirations at the forefront of education policy. Despite increasing numbers of young Australians enrolling in higher education, regional and rural students continue to be underrepresented in university populations. Previous research shows that levels of social capital are positively associated with educational aspirations; therefore, in this paper, we examine the associations between access to various forms of social capital and aspirations for post-school study and employment. We conduct analysis of data collected from 460 students attending government secondary schools located in and around Shepparton in regional Victoria. Of the various measures of social capital, we focus on parent-derived social capital, discussions with parents; student-derived social capital, participation in extracurricular activities and peer-derived social capital, aspirations of their friends. We explore how measures of social capital can be used to critically make sense and engage with the post-school aspirations of young people in the increasingly precarious landscape of youth employment in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Dual substance dependence and psychiatric and psychological morbidities are overrepresented in prison populations and associated with reoffending. In the context of an increasing prison population in Australia, investigating the needs of vulnerable people in prison with a dual diagnosis can help inform in-prison screening and treatment and improve prison and community service integration and continuation of care. In this study we quantified psychiatric well-being in a sample of people in prison with a history of injecting drug use in Victoria, Australia, and identified factors associated with this outcome. Methods and Results: Data for this paper come from baseline interviews undertaken in the weeks prior to release as part of a prospective cohort study of incarcerated men who reported regular injecting drug use prior to their current sentence. Eligible participants completed a researcher-administered structured questionnaire that canvassed a range of issues. Psychiatric well-being was assessed using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) and potential correlates were included based on a review of the literature. Of the 317 men included for analyses, 139 were classified as experiencing current poor psychiatric well-being. In the multivariate model using modified logistic regression, history of suicide attempt (aOR = 1.36, 95%CI 1.03-1.78), two or more medical conditions (aOR = 1.87, 95%CI 1.30-2.67) and use of crystal methamphetamine in the week prior to their current sentence (aOR = 1.52, 95%CI 1.05-2.22) were statistically significantly associated with current poor psychiatric well-being. Conclusions: Comprehensively addressing the health-related needs for this vulnerable population will require a multidisciplinary approach and enhancing opportunities to screen and triage people in prison for mental health and other potential co-occurring health issues will provide opportunities to better address individual health needs and reoffending risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of joint probability distributions of rainfall characteristics such as severity and duration is important in water resources management. Deriving their distributions using standard statistical techniques are often problematical due to its complexity. Standard methods usually assume that the rainfall characteristics are independent or that their marginal distributions belong to the same family of distributions. The use of copulas based methodologies can circumvent these restrictions and are therefore increasingly popular. However, the copulas and marginal distributions that are commonly used belong to specific parametric families and their adoption could lead to spurious inferences if the underlying assumptions are violated. For this reason, we recommend a nonparametric or semiparametric approach to estimate the joint distribution of rainfall characteristics. In this paper, we introduce and compare several copula-based approaches, each involving a combination of parametric or nonparametric marginal distributions conjoined by a parametric or nonparametric copula. An empirical illustration of the different approaches using rainfall data collected from six stations in the state of Victoria, Australia, demonstrated that a nonparametric approach can often give better results than a purely parametric approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to perform fire frequency analysis to obtain fire frequency curves (FFC) based on fire intensity at different parts of Victoria. In this paper fire frequency curves (FFCs) were derived based on forest fire danger index (FFDI). FFDI is a measure related to fire initiation, spreading speed and containment difficulty. The mean temperature (T), relative humidity (RH) and areal extent of open water (LC2) during summer months (Dec-Feb) were identified as the most important parameters for assessing the risk of occurrence of bushfire. Based on these parameters, Andrews’ curve equation was applied to 40 selected meteorological stations to identify homogenous stations to form unique clusters. A methodology using peak FFDI from cluster averaged FFDIs was developed by applying Log Pearson Type III (LPIII) distribution to generate FFCs. A total of nine homogeneous clusters across Victoria were identified, and subsequently their FFC’s were developed in order to estimate the regionalised fire occurrence characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexuality is an important priority for people following spinal cord damage (SCD), due to the impact on sensory and motor function, including paralysis and associated mobility restrictions. Men living with SCD report difficulty in achieving and maintaining erection, impaired capacity for orgasm (with or without ejaculation), and increased likelihood of retrograde ejaculation as significant challenges for sexuality. The implications of these issues for men following non-traumatic SCD (spinal cord dysfunction or SCDys) has not been examined. Drawing on interviews with eight heterosexual men following SCDys, this paper seeks to examine the factors that impact sexual satisfaction. Due to a focus on coitus and the significance of erectile function in this, most participants reported dissatisfaction with their sexuality post-SCD. However, this could be overcome through expanding their sexual repertoires. Through providing information and education about non-coitus focused expressions of sexuality, there is scope for sexual rehabilitation services to significantly increase the quality of life of men after SCDys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the hopes that Somalis who came to Melbourne as refugees have for their children's education. It analyses their perceptions of the Somali and Australian education systems and the implications of these for their family's ability to adapt and cope with Australian life. In doing so, it also shows how they use education to reconstruct their world as part of resettlement in Australia. This paper argues that specific programmes and activities that bring parents and teachers together around their child's education can build bridging social capital, contributes to optimism about the future and sets the stage for positive agency at a time when Somali families are coping with trauma, loss and disconnection in an unfamiliar society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade growth in spatial information use for disaster management has been considerable. Maps and spatial data are now recognized as critical elements in each of the four phases of disaster management: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The use of spatial information to support the phases of mitigation, preparedness and response to bushfires is widely understood. Less attention, however, has been given to the role of spatial information in the recovery. Moreover, the application of the spatially enabled society concept to bushfire recovery has not been explored. This paper explores the role that spatial information plays and could play in the recovery phase of a bushfire disaster. The bushfires in Victoria, Australia that took place during February 2009 are used as the primary case study. It is found that: Spatial information for recovery requires a pre-existing infrastructure; Spatial capacity must be developed across agencies dealing with recovery; Spatially enabled address and parcel information are the key dataset required to support all recovery tasks; Spatial integration of bushfire datasets (spread and intensity) require linking with planning regimes, and Spatial information that is volunteered could be incorporated into recovery activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy of 'leave early or stay and defend', often shortened to the 'stay or go' policy, has been the subject of critical review in the Royal Commission that followed the recent disastrous bushfires in Victoria, Australia. The need for people to evacuate or stay and defend their property and protect themselves is a critical life safety decision for many people on days of high bushfire activity. Some limited research has been undertaken into this individual decision making in bushfires. Other fields of emergency management also require people to make similar decisions as to whether to evacuate or stay in a 'defend in place' situation. This paper examines research into 'stay or go' strategies and decision making performance for high rise buildings, looking for common factors that may inform the bushfire situation and potential reforms for policy. Similarly, research into Hurricane Katrina and the failures to evacuate when mandated provide further insight into factors which can affect or postpone decision making. A number of common improvements related to emergency preparedness, situation awareness and trusted communication systems emerge in all these fields. However, this paper also suggests that this decision making in bushfires is more complex that just two simple options of 'stay or go'. A greater understanding of group behavior and socio-cultural factors and their impact on personal decision making is required if more effective emergency management is to occur in the bushfire domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

media space provides the communications channels to support the interactions between people at different locations using video and audio links and shared access to data. This paper looks at a telehealth implementation of outpatient consultations for tertiary-level paediatric surgical patients, consultations which exercise a high degree of interpersonal and data-sharing communication between the participants. Framing the telehealth situation as a media space invites the designer of the telehealth system to access a large body of prior work which identifies and discusses many of the issues that will arise in this complex multi-participant telehealth context. This paper presents, as a case study, a two-year project that developed and deployed a whole-of-room telehealth system in partnership with surgeons from The Royal Children's Hospital (RCH), Melbourne, Australia. Based on observations at the hospital and discussions with the surgeons, a descriptive model of the proposed telehealth consultation (and of its deployment in a clinical trial) was developed. This descriptive model became the vehicle for gathering requirements and for design and evaluation of the telehealth system. The evaluation contained four major components: two human factors studies, an observational study of training and process change for the clinicians and a clinical trial of the resulting system. The case study demonstrates the flow of design decisions from concept to deployment. It highlights the gaps that appeared in the descriptive model when the transition was made from the laboratory to deployment in the hospital. The conclusion is that, at this relatively unexplored level of telehealth, there are likely to be gaps in such a descriptive model that are not uncovered by laboratory experiments or by analytic evaluation but emerge only during a clinical trial with actual patients, clinicians and patient data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about access to sexual health information amongst young people with refugee backgrounds living in countries of resettlement. This paper reports on a study of sexual health amongst recently arrived young people from refugee backgrounds in Melbourne, Australia. The study employed qualitative research methods to explore and describe how resettled youth access, interpret and implement sexual health information. Between August and December 2007, data was collected through 23 focus group discussions and 14 in-depth interviews involving 142 young people with refugee backgrounds. Participants were purposively selected to reflect the ethnic composition of humanitarian entrants to Australia over the past 3 years. Their countries of origin included Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Sudan, Liberia, and Horn of Africa countries. The findings highlight how young people with refugee backgrounds are disadvantaged in relation to access to sexual health information. Young people had little knowledge of sexual health or STIs apart from HIV/AIDS. While they are aware of potential sources of sexual health information, few of these sources are utilized. Specific barriers to learning about sexual health include concerns about confidentiality, shame and embarrassment when discussing sexual health, and the competing demands of resettlement. The paper argues for sexual health promotion to be an explicit part of early resettlement services for refugee youth, and the implications for the development of appropriate sexual health education programs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mineral-potential mapping is the process of combining a set of input maps, each representing a distinct geo-scientific variable, to produce a single map which ranks areas according to their potential to host mineral deposits of a particular type. The maps are combined using a mapping function that must be either provided by an expert (knowledge-driven approach), or induced from sample data (data-driven approach). Current data-driven approaches using multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) to represent the mapping function have several inherent problems: they are highly sensitive to the selection of training data; they do not utilize the contextual information provided by nondeposit data; and there is no objective interpretation of the values output by the MLR This paper presents a new approach by which MLPs can be trained to output values that can be interpreted strictly as representing posterior probabilities. Other advantages of the approach are that it utilizes all data in the construction of the model, and thus eliminates any dependence on a particular selection of training data. The technique is applied to mapping gold mineralization potential in the Castlemaine region of Victoria, Australia, and results are compared with a method based on estimating probability density functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian education policies increasingly value equity and diversity, but these policies are not necessarily implicitly supported through curriculum. This study explores the hidden curriculum in senior school Drama and Theatre Studies in the state of Victoria, through an equity audit of texts prescribed through each subject's playlists, solos, and monologues between 2001/2002 and 2019. Data were collected and analysed on the ethnicities and genders of playwrights and creators, as well as the playlists' theatre companies and theatres. The findings show that both Drama and Theatre Studies, but particularly Theatre Studies, significantly underrepresent women and culturally diverse playwrights and creators. Opportunities for change can be seen in the Drama playlists, which have achieved gender equity and are approaching equitable cultural diversity. I discuss these findings against four points of choice wherein key stakeholders might critically engage with issues of ethnicity and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury (TSCI) is relatively uncommon, yet a devastating and costly condition. Despite the human and social impacts, studies describing patients with potential TSCI in the pre-hospital setting are scarce. This paper aims to describe the epidemiology of patients potentially at risk of or suspected to have a TSCI by paramedics, with a view to providing a better understanding of factors associated with potential TSCI. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study of all adult patients managed and transported by Ambulance Victoria (AV) between 01 January 2007 and 31 December 2012 who, based on meeting pre-hospital triage protocols and criteria for spinal clearance, paramedic suspicion or spinal immobilisation, were classified to be at risk of or suspected to have a TSCI. Data was extracted from the AV data warehouse, including demographic details, trauma aetiology, paramedic assessment, management and other event characteristics. Results: A total of 106,059cases were included in the study, representing 2.3 % of all emergency transports by AV. Subjects had a median age of 51 years (interquartile range; 29-78) and 52.4 % were males (95 % CI 52-52.7). Males were significantly younger than females (M: 43 years [26-65] vs. F: 64 years [36-84], p =0.001). Falls and traffic accidents were the leading causes of injuries, comprising 46.9 and 39.4 % of cases, respectively. Other causes included accidents due to sport, animals, industrial work and diving, as well as violence and hanging. 29.9 % of patients were transported to a Major Trauma Service (MTS). A proportion of 48.8 % of the study population met the Pre-hospital Major Trauma criteria. Conclusion: This is the first study to describe the epidemiology of potential TSCI in Australia and is based on a large, state-wide sample. It provides background knowledge and a baseline for future research, as well as a reference point for future in policy. Falling and traffic related injuries were the leading causes of potential SCI. Future research is required to identify the proportion of confirmed TSCI among the potentials and factors associated with TSCI in prehospital settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tendon pathology and tendinopathy have been reported in children and adolescents; however, the age at onset and prevalence of the conditions have not been examined systematically. Objective: To examine the prevalence of lower limb tendon pathology and tendinopathy in children and adolescents, and the factors associated with these conditions in this population. Methods: Six databases were searched (MEDLINE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, Scopus, the Web of Science and the Allied and Complementary Medicine Database). Studies were included if the prevalence of lower limb tendon pathology and/or tendinopathy were reported in humans under the age of 18 years. Studies were divided according to the method of diagnosis (physical examination, ultrasound or a questionnaire) and further divided into studies that reported prevalence data by tendon [reported two data points (right and left) for each participant] and those that reported prevalence data for each participant [reporting one data point (right or left) per participant]. Results: Seventeen studies met the inclusion criteria. Lower limb tendinopathy prevalence (presence of pain and dysfunction) ranged between 8.2 and 33.3 %, and increased in prevalence as age increased up to 18 years. The odds ratio for studies reporting tendinopathy by tendon was 0.37 (95 % confidence interval 0.20-0.69) in favour of boys presenting with tendinopathy. Study aims and reporting methods were heterogeneous. Conclusions: The age at onset of lower limb tendinopathy in children and adolescents has not been widely studied. This systematic review found that tendinopathy is present in children and adolescents, and increases in prevalence with age up to 18 years. Male sex is significantly associated with tendinopathy in studies that report tendinopathy by tendon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rates of gambling and gambling-related harm fluctuate over time, influenced by availability, adaptation and demographic change, among other things. Assessing change is compromised by methodological variation. The main aim of this paper is to assess change in gambling participation and problems in adult Victorians over a 5-year period. Data are from the Victorian Gambling Study (VGS) 2008-2012 (n = 15,000) and the 2003 Victorian Longitudinal Attitudes Survey (n = 8479). An additional aim was to determine the impact of methodological differences on prevalence estimates. Despite gambling availability increasing and more activities being included participation rates declined substantially. Decreases occurred across almost all demographic groups and gambling activities. When adjustments were made for methodological differences there were no significant changes in problem, moderate risk and low risk gambling. Males and people with lower education had higher rates in both surveys. In the latter survey, two groups that experienced large participation reductions, namely young adults and metropolitan residents, emerged as additional groups with higher rates of problem and moderate-risk gambling. Further research is required to discover why overall rates of harm may have plateaued when participation continues to fall and why some groups with reduced participation experience increased harm. The findings suggest that availability and total consumption models are over-simplistic. They further suggest that to be effective prevention programmes will need to extend beyond gambling availability to include interventions directed towards individuals at risk and wider environmental determinants of vulnerability and harm. Additionally this study found that restricting administration of the problem gambling measure to subsets of gamblers generate significantly lower prevalence estimates, implying that many previous surveys under-portray gambling-related harm and that without appropriate adjustment for methodological variation findings cannot be validly compared across studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the frequency, nature and proximity of service contacts among victims and perpetrators of intimate partner homicide in Victoria, Australia. A retrospective review was conducted of coroner's records of 120 intimate partner homicides for the period 2000-2008. In 91 (75.8 %) of the cases, one or both parties had contact with a service in the 12 months preceding the homicide. The justice system was the most frequent point of contact among both parties, and the healthcare system was often the first and preferred point of contact for victims and perpetrators when seeking assistance individually. Overall, perpetrators were more likely to have contact with a service than victims, and the majority of all service contacts occurred within 1 month of the homicide. This paper outlines the prevention opportunities that exist within the service system and highlights the importance of interventions and treatments directed at perpetrators of family violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of Australian early childhood teachers' pedagogical practices with young children experiencing parental separation and divorce. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews and a focus group were conducted to explore the actions of teachers to support young children experiencing parental separation and divorce. A grounded theory approach was used to analyse data. Teachers reported actions that were focussed on constructing emotional, behavioural, and academic support for young children, as well as forming partnerships with parents, school personnel, and community members to assist. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of men's experience of prison release is frequently reduced to singular narratives about reoffending risks or reintegration challenges. This paper seeks to enlarge this conventional view by highlighting the heterogeneous ways in which prison release may be experienced and understood. Analysis of men's experience of release from prison in Victoria, Australia, shows how the concept of assemblage and a phenomenographic methodology can work together to capture and convey this heterogeneity. By assembling the ways ex-prisoners understand and experience release together with the conceptions of post-release support workers this approach highlights conflict and convergence between different ways of experiencing the post-release terrain, specifically around conflicting notions of post-release 'success'. The innovative combination of assemblage and phenomenography thus contributes a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the challenges of release from prison and of supporting ex-prisoners' so-called 'reintegration'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deleterious impact of parental substance abuse on child development and family functioning is well established. However, evaluations of interventions designed to ameliorate such impacts are very limited. This paper presents the results of a service evaluation using a pre-post design of the Supporting Kids And Their Environment (SKATE) program; a child-focused group program run by Glastonbury Community Services from 2006 to 2010 in the Geelong region of Victoria, Australia. The intervention was an 8-week psycho-educative model that used family-based techniques. Outcomes are reported for child behavior problems, assessed on the Child Behavior Checklist, and family functioning, assessed on the Family Support Scale. A total of 89 children and families within 13 intervention groups were recruited via adult Drug and Alcohol Services (Mean age = 10.4 years; SD = 2.4). Results suggest reductions in emotional and behavioral problems in children as well as improving family functioning with small to moderate effect sizes after children's participation in the SKATE program compared to pre-test. These preliminary findings suggest that children whose parents are substance abusing are a high-risk group but they may benefit from targeted intervention programs that are well integrated with the adult drug treatment system. Such interventions warrant further development and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores contemporary challenges that community policing practices pose to unified understandings of sovereignty that traditionally underpin the delivery of state-centred policing in developed states. Fleming (Sage: 37-39, 2009) suggests that community policing is about partnerships, consultation and building trust in communities. Through a case study of the development of a local security network in an inner suburb of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia), I explore how state police work with other community agencies. Interviews with police and service providers identified past experience of policing in remote or international contexts, and an appreciation of community development principles, as factors that contribute to effective community policing. I discuss these claims, drawing on international policing literature that critically evaluates capacity building in a range of so-called fragile states, arguing that greater consideration of policing in differently organised states could reshape our understanding and expectations of community policing at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High quality gambling participation and prevalence studies are important to monitor and manage risks associated with an ever changing gambling environment. Such studies are expensive and choices must be made to balance precision and cost constraints. Common approaches include not screening infrequent gamblers and/or gamblers with low gambling expenditure, on the assumption that these gamblers are unlikely to be problem gamblers. Some studies combine moderate risk and problem gamblers to obtain robust groups for analysis. The resultant methodological variations compromise comparability and interpretation of changes over time and across jurisdictions. The Victorian Gambling Study 2008-2012 (VGS) and the Swedish Longitudinal Gambling Study 2008-2014 (Swelogs) are large jurisdiction-wide surveys with sample sizes of 15,000 and 8,165 respectively. Both studies screened all past-year gamblers. This paper reports on the modelling of some common methodological variants. Understanding the impact of these different variations enables better design of future studies and facilitates comparisons between existing prevalence studies within and across jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This study evaluates the Occupational Rehabilitation (OR) initiatives regarding return to work (RTW) and sustaining at work following work-related injuries. This study also identifies the predictors and predicts the likelihoods of RTW and sustainability for OR users. Methods The study is conducted on the compensation claim data for people who are injured at work in the state of Victoria, Australia. The claims which commenced OR services between the first of July 2012 and the end of June 2015 are included. The claims which used original employer services (OES) have been separated from claims which used new employer services (NES). We investigated a range of predictors categorised into four groups as claimant, injury, and employment characteristics and claim management. The RTW and sustaining at work are outcomes of interest. To evaluate the predictors, we use Chi-squared test and logistic regression modelling. Also, we prioritized the predictors using Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) measure and Cross-validation error. Four predictive models are developed using significant predictors for OES and NES users to predict RTW and sustainability. We examined the multicollinearity of the developed models using Variance Inflation Factor (VIF). Results About 75% and 60% of OES users achieved RTW and have been sustained at work respectively, whilst just approximately 30% of NES users have been placed at a new employer and 25% of them have been sustained at work. The predictors which have the most association with OES and NES outcomes are the use of psychiatric services and age groups respectively. We found that having mental conditions is as an important indicator to allocate injured workers into OES or NES initiatives. Our study shows that injured workers with mental issues do not always have lower RTW rate. They just need special consideration. Conclusion Understanding the predictors of RTW and sustainability helps to develop interventions to ensure sustained RTW. This study will assist decision makers to improve design and implementation of OR services and tailor services according to clients' needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately monitoring Canopy Nitrogen Concentration (CNC) is a prerequisite for precision nitrogen (N) fertiliser management at the farm scale with carbon and N budgeting across the landscape and ecosystems. While many spectral indices have been proposed for CNC monitoring, their applicability and accuracy are often adversely affected by confounding factors such as aboveground biomass (AGB), crop type, growth stages, and environmental conditions, limiting their broader application and adoption; with AGB being one of the most dominant signals and confounding factors at canopy scale. The confounding effect can become more challenging as AGB is also physiologically linked with CNC across the growth stages. Additionally, the interplay between index form, selection of optimal wavebands and their bandwidths remains poorly understood for CNC index design. This study proposes robust and cost-effective 2- and 4-waveband multispectral (MS) CNC indices applicable across a wide range of crop conditions. We collected 449 canopy reflectance spectra (400–980 nm) together with corresponding CNC and AGB measurements across four growth stages of ryegrass (winter and summer), and five growth stages of barley (winter-spring) in Victoria, Australia, in 2018 and 2019. All possible waveband (400–980 nm) combinations revealed that the best combination varied between seasons and crop types. However, the visible spectrum, particularly the blue region, presented high and consistent performance. Bandwidths of 10–40 nm outperformed either very narrow (2 nm) or very broad bandwidths (80 nm). The newly developed 2-waveband index (416 and 442 nm with 10-nm bandwidth; R2 = 0.75 and NRMSE = 0.2) and 4-waveband index (512, 440, 414 and 588 nm with 40-nm bandwidth; R2 = 0.81 and NRMSE = 0.17) exhibited the best performance, while validation with an independent dataset (from a different growing period to those used in the model development) obtained NRMSE values of 0.25 and 0.24, respectively. The 4-waveband index provides enhanced performance and permits use of broader bandwidths than its 2-waveband counterpart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of Early Childhood Teacher (ECT) shortages, recruitment, and retention are of concern in many nations, with ECT attrition being a contributing factor. Simultaneously, scholars argue that neoliberal influences are restricting the agency of ECTs. This article explores the relationship between ECT attrition and agency by re-examining narratives shared by four individuals who chose to leave early childhood teaching in Victoria, Australia. Through an analytical framework grounded in ecological systems, I delve into how agency was experienced in relation to the incidents that led participants to leave the profession at the individual, micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and chrono-systems. The findings suggest that upon entering the profession, participants had anticipated and found the need to advocate for their professional aspirations. Notably, their relationships with colleagues, particularly management and leadership, either afforded or constrained their agency. Other system factors influencing their agency, and reasons for leaving the profession, include the everyday busyness of teaching, educator-child ratios, and working conditions as defined by their employment entitlements. I argue that early childhood managers and leaders act as agency gatekeepers and concur with scholars who suggest a need to reimagine early childhood education and care as a public good, and to reconsider current hierarchical structures. This article aims to initiate further research concerned with the agency of ECTs and how they are or can be supported to not only remain but thrive within in the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gambling activities and the revenues derived have been seen as a way to increase economic development in deprived areas. There are also, however, concerns about the effects of gambling in general and electronic gaming machines (EGMs) in particular, on the resources available to the localities in which they are situated. This paper focuses on the factors that determine the extent and spending of community benefit-related EGM-generated resources within Victoria, Australia, focusing in particular on the relationships between EGM activity and socio-economic and social capital indicators, and how this relates to the community benefit resources generated by gaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the recent introduction by the Australian government of standardised literacy testing, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the professional ethics of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing in Victoria and South Australia that focused on the changing nature of their work practices through the implementation of such tests. The paper traces the ways in which teachers' work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers struggle with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of responsibility towards their students. Through an analysis of research data collected in public schools, the paper challenges circumscribed understandings of ethical practice on the part of teachers as a matter of being publicly accountable through mechanisms like the publication of standardised test results. It invokes, instead, a situated notion of professional ethics as responsiveness to those around us. The paper argues the primacy of an ethic of care that cannot be measured, and which is enacted in resistance to the judgments made by standardised tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]