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Stories and literature play an important and necessary role in understanding the past and in creating the future. Yet, in colonised countries such as Australia, the status of contemporary national texts, particularly those reflecting the diverse voices of Indigenous writers, women, and other marginalised groups, continue to be underrepresented in schools. In this article, we explore the reasons why Australian texts continue to be marginalised in education, when there is a clear desire for diverse Australian voices amongst the reading public. We also consider the kinds of national identities that current text selection and teaching policies are creating and maintaining in schools. In order to develop these ideas, we draw on data collected via a survey of secondary English teachers for a pilot research project called "Teaching Australia." In this project, we explored the Australian texts being selected and championed by teachers in secondary schools, the perceptions of nation and national identity these convey, and teachers' approaches to including diverse Australian texts in their classrooms. In the final section of the paper, we consider some future opportunities for engagement with diverse Australian literature for teachers and students of English.

While "born digital" artefacts such as video games and e-books have been part of secondary school English in Anglophone countries for over two decades, databases of mass-digitised (hence "re-mediated") literary texts are yet to have a significant presence in, or influence on, literary work in subject English. The authors contend that engagement with these digitised texts requires a postdigital "literary literacy". They explore how "distant reading" -- applying digital tools to large-scale data to identify patterns beyond the scale of human perception -- offers a form of postdigital literary literacy that can be enacted alongside others, including productive reading and code switching. Using the example of the To be continued… database of fiction originally published in 19th and 20th century Australian newspapers, the article argues that postdigital literary objects offer new literary knowledge and new ways of thinking about literary study and teacher expertise in English in the 21st century.

This paper examines the role of literature in the English classroom in Australia and its part in shaping national identity. We contend that it is important to consider the possible roles of national literatures in contemporary school contexts, where students are becoming local and global citizens and argue that reading Australian literature as a part of the field of "world literature" can support a pedagogical approach which enables dynamic reading practices. Drawing on a 2016 research project titled Teaching Australia, which sought to explore English teachers' engagement with Australian texts, this paper examines current and future uses of Australian literature in both the globalised world and in the Australian secondary English classroom.

A first person narrative is presented which explores the author's experince of a trip to Australian wildlife sanctuary.

The article reports on the use of the diary form in Joseph Furphy's novel, "Such Is Life." The novel is about life in rural Australia. The demanding nature of the novel attracted a few dedicated followers, who memorialized Furphy and his contribution to Australian literary culture. Narrator Tom Collins took extracts from his diary and presented them to the reader as unvarnished truth.

The article focuses on Ethel Turner's classic novel "Seven Little Australians." The novel was published in 1894 in Britain, came with a new illustrated Ward Lock edition in 1912 and was adopted into a film that was released in Australia in 1939. Turner depicted a big family that is financially constrained and like the novel "The Man Who Loved Children," it revolves around an adolescent girl and her relationship with her father. The author says that the two aforementioned novels offer an escape from reality and from the patriarchal society.

The article reports on the garden cemetery in Australia. The cemetery in Kew, Victoria, to which this comment refers, is the Boroondara General Cemetery, claimed to be the first garden cemetery established in Australia, in 1859. The garden cemetery, in Australia as in Britain, unites the Victorian cult of the dead with the Victorian cult of the garden. More important is the distinction between public and private space in the Australian garden cemetery as compared to the British. British garden cemeteries commenced as private commercial ventures. Australian garden cemeteries were publicly funded amenities. Different Antipodean colonial understandings of civic spaces could make radically different the experience of quite similar physical spaces to those found in England.

In the romantic stereotypes of the 'Bush Myth', Australian national identity is formed through the confrontation between the bushman and the natural environment, particularly as depicted in 'realist' literature. This myth has been displaced from its centrality in numerous ways. Less attention has been paid to the many other competing literary figurings of national identity at the turn of the nineteenth century, and in the early twentieth century. One of these tropes, often used by women writers, looked at the national space not as a hostile and alien environment but as a garden. By contrast, iconic fictions such as Lawson's 'Water them Geraniums' show gardening as a feminine pursuit antithetical to (masculine) Australian life. Australia as garden produced a different set of possibilities for the settler colonial plot. Instead of beleaguered fighters against an unyielding wilderness, fictions figuring the nation as a garden produced a potentially more fruitful and less doomed role for the protagonist, particularly the female protagonist. This plot also allowed some casting of urban space, particularly suburban space, as authentic Australian space, rather than second-hand European waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the historic gardens in Australia. Description on the Currie garden; Importance of the garden in the identity of the Curries; Types of garden plants.

Background: Sleep is an important element of functioning and well-being. The Medical Outcomes Study Sleep Scale (MOS-Sleep) includes 12 items assessing sleep disturbance, sleep adequacy, somnolence, quantity of sleep, snoring, and awakening short of breath or with a headache. A sleep problems index, grouping items from each of the former domains, is also available. This study evaluates the psychometric properties of MOS-Sleep Scale in a painful diabetic peripheral neuropathic population based on a clinical trial conducted in six countries., Methods: Clinical data and health-related quality of life data were collected at baseline and after 12 weeks of follow-up. Overall, 396 patients were included in the analysis. Psychometric properties of the MOS-Sleep were assessed in the overall population and per country when the sample size was sufficient. Internal consistency reliability was assessed by Cronbach's alpha; the structure of the instrument was assessed by verifying item convergent and discriminant criteria; construct validity was evaluated by examining the relationships between MOS-Sleep scores and sleep interference and pain scores, and SF-36 scores; effect-sizes were used to assess the MOS-Sleep responsiveness. The study was conducted in compliance with United States Food and Drug Administration regulations for informed consent and protection of patient rights., Results: Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.71 to 0.81 for the multi-item dimensions and the sleep problems index. Item convergent and discriminant criteria were satisfied with item-scale correlations for hypothesized dimensions higher than 0.40 and tending to exceed the correlations of items with other dimensions, respectively. Taken individually, German, Polish and English language versions had good internal consistency reliability and dimension structure. Construct validity was supported with lower sleep adequacy score and greater sleep problems index scores associated with measures of sleep interference and pain scores. In addition, correlations between the SF-36 scores and the MOS-Sleep scores were low to moderate, ranging from -0.28 to -0.53. Responsiveness was supported by effect sizes > 0.80 for patients who improved according to the mean sleep interference and pain scores and clinician and patient global impression of change (p < 0.0001)., Conclusion: The MOS-Sleep had good psychometric properties in this painful diabetic peripheral neuropathic population., Trial Registration: As this study was conducted from 2000 to 2002 (i.e., before the filing requirement came out), no trial registration number is available.

Objective: To examine whether childhood brain tumors (CBTs) are associated with a family history of brain tumors or other cancers in an international case-control study., Methods: Cancers in children's first- and second-degree relatives were ascertained by interview with parents of 620 children with astroglial tumors, 255 with primitive neuroectodermal tumors, 324 with other CBTs, and 2,218 controls from Australia, Canada, France, Israel, Italy, Spain, and the US. These were used with histories of neurofibromatosis or tuberous sclerosis to exclude in subanalyses children with Li-Fraumeni or other hereditary syndromes predisposing to brain tumors., Results: A first- or second-degree relative of 4% of children with astroglial tumors, 6% with PNET, 5% with other CBTs, and 5% of controls had had a brain tumor. Any potential differences were statistically non-significant, including when focusing on relatives diagnosed in childhood. In the US, where anatomical sites of relatives' other cancers were known, CBT occurrence was not associated with any other specific site. Results were not markedly altered by exclusion of children with hereditary syndromes., Conclusion: Consistent with most prior studies using these methods, we observed no strong relationship between CBT occurrence and cancers in family members.

The majority of suspected occupational risk factors for adult brain tumours have yet to be confirmed as etiologically relevant. Within an international case-control study on brain tumours, lifelong occupational histories and information on exposures to specific substances were obtained by direct interviews to further investigate occupational risk factors for glioma. This is one of the largest studies of brain tumours in adults, including 1,178 cases and 1987 population controls from 8 collaborating study centres matched for age, gender and centre. All occupational information, was aggregated into 16 occupational categories. In a pooled analysis, odds ratios (OR), adjusted for education, were estimated separately for men and women and for high-grade glioma (HGG) and low-grade glioma (LGG), focusing especially on 6 categories defined a priori: agricultural, chemical, construction, metal, electrical/electronic and transport. For men, an elevated OR of glioma associated with the category "metal" (OR = 1.24, 95% CI 0.96-1.62) was seen, which appeared to be largely accounted for by LGG (OR = 1.59, 95% CI 1.00-2.52). For the other 5 occupational categories, no elevated risks for glioma were observed. For women the only noteworthy observation for the 6 a priori categories was an inverse association with the "agriculture" category (OR = 0.60, 95% CI 0.36-0.99). Apart from the 6 major categories, women working in food production or food processing (category "food") showed an increased OR of 1.95 (95% CI 1.04-3.68). None of the 20 substance groups was positively associated with glioma risk. Although some other point estimates were elevated, they lacked statistical significance. The results do not provide evidence of a strong association between occupational exposures and glioma development.