Showing papers by "Australian Catholic University published in 1998"

Introducing the Variable through Pattern Exploration

Abstract: Understanding the concept of variable is fundamental to success with algebra Introducing the Variable through Pattern Exploration Variables are the basic tool for expressing gen eralizations. An understanding of the concept of variable is fundamental to our students' success with algebra. Yet this concept is more sophisticated than we realize and is often the stum bling block in our students' algebraic development (Leitzel 1989; NCTM 1989). Traditionally, a students' first encounter with a variable has been in an equation, where it repre sents an unknown number. Textbooks that follow

A model of professional nurse caring: nursing students’ experience

Abstract: Research into caring from the perspective of nursing students is poorly documented. This paper presents a study which described the construct of caring as experienced by students in pre-registration programmes at two universities in New South Wales, Australia. Qualitative data were collected using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. From the analysis of the data a model of professional nurse caring from the student's perspective was created. In this model, compassion, as the core of caring is actualized in the students' nursing of patients by communicating, providing comfort, being competent, being committed, having conscience, being confident and being courageous. Communication is not only an actualization of this caring but constitutes an important medium for the expression of caring actions.

Water quality in rural Australia

Abstract: Grab samples of drinking water collected from reservoirs and from creeks flowing over pristine land, farmland or land having mixed use were analysed for their physicochemical and microbiological characteristics. A significant difference between sites for conductivity and sites for pH was noted using a two-way ANOVA. No significant interactions were detected between any of the other parameters: Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Escherichia coli, coliforms, plate count, turbidity or rainfall.

Effect of Catholic School Culture on Students’ Achievement in the Higher School Certificate Examination: a multilevel path analysis

Abstract: This study examines the effect of Catholic school culture on academic achievement in the Higher School Certificate Examination. A model expressing interrelationships among home background, student characteristics, academic motivation, expectation, school culture perceived by students and academic achievement was developed and tested utilising multilevel path analysis. Data comprised questionnaire responses and examination results from 4949 Year 12 students in New South Wales, Australia, from 44 Catholic schools. The study identified both direct and indirect influences of aspects of school culture on academic achievement, after controlling for student, home and school characteristics.

Development of angle concepts: A framework for research

Abstract: 36 Grade 4 children were interviewed to find how they interpreted the angles implicit in six realistic models. Angle recognition varied considerably across the six situations, as did children’s tendency to recognise angular similarities between them. Based on these and other results, a framework for further research on the development of children’s angle concepts is proposed. It is suggested that children first classify their everyday angle experiences intophysical angle situations; they then group situations to formphysical angle contexts; and then they gradually group contexts intoabstract angle domains. Each classification step leads to the formation of a corresponding angle concept.

Feed-Forward Artificial Neural Network Model For Forecasting Rainfall Run-Off

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a blind test of the ability of a feed-forward artificial neural network to provide out-of-sample forecasting of rainfall run-off using real data. The results obtained are comparable with the results obtained using best methods currently available. The focus of the paper has been an easily repeatable experiment applied to rainfall and run-off data for a catchment area; which particular catchment was not revealed to the experimenters, i.e. a blind experiment. To this end, a simple model has been specified, and the architecture of the neural network and the data preparation procedures adopted are discussed in detail. The results are presented and discussed in detail and the extent to which the system was found to be non-linear is quantified. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Domains of distress: the experience of breast cancer in Australia.

Abstract: Purpose/objectives To describe difficulties experienced by women after treatment for primary breast cancer. Design Descriptive and exploratory. Setting Queensland, Australia. Sample 245 women (70% response rate) less than 16 weeks postsurgery for breast cancer completed a survey. The mean age for this sample was 55 years; 71% had undergone mastectomy, and 29% had undergone conservative breast surgery. Methods Focus groups were used to generate items for the survey, "Experience of Breast Cancer Questionnaire" (EBCQ). The EBCQ and the psychological subscale of the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RSCL) were administered by mail to the sample. Main research variables Psychological distress, fear of recurrence, decisional uncertainty, informational support, self-image and social relationships, sexual morbidity, and physical effects of treatments. Findings Factor analysis of the EBCQ identified five factors, accounting for 60% of the variance. These included psychological effects, treatment concerns, physical effects, self-image, and chemotherapy effects. Four of the five subscales had reliability coefficients of greater than 0.80. Psychological effects included cognitive and emotional effects. Treatment concerns included decisional uncertainty and poorly perceived informational support. Physical effects reflected the symptom pattern of axillary dissection. Self-image included breast loss and social isolation. Conclusions Nurses who assist women in adjusting to breast cancer should consider the effect of fear of recurrence and perceptions of body image on the recovery process. Because participation in treatment decisions may increase the demands on women at diagnosis, informational support appropriate to each woman's needs is essential. How self-esteem can affect self-image and social relationships after breast cancer requires further investigation. Implications for nursing practice Understanding the experience of illness from the perspective of the patient assists nurses in validating their nursing practice and provides clinically relevant information to guide intervention. In particular, supportive psychological care should target both emotional and cognitive responses to breast cancer. Informational support is integral to a patient's satisfaction with treatment decisions and is likely to predict adjustment. When assisting women to adjust to self-image changes, nurses may need to target women's perceptions about their body image.

Idealised versus tainted femininity: discourses of the menstrual experience in Australian magazines that target young women

Abstract: Information and messages concerning health-related issues are not confined to material provided by official figures or sources. Much information exists in the community and comes from a variety of sources. One such source is the media. This paper reports the findings of a study conducted over a 12-month period of advertisements for menstrual products in a selection of four monthly Australian magazines (n = 48) directed towards young women. The study examined the way in which menstruation and the menstrual experience were depicted in terms of page space, textual content and visual images. Findings revealed that advertisements for menstrual products provided confusing, conflicting and paradoxical messages. These included stressing the normality of menstruation while also emphasising the importance of keeping it hidden and secret. Menstruation was depicted as being a state of tainted (idealised) femininity because of the potential for the menstrual silence to be shattered by people finding out. Protection failure was depicted as being the ultimate in tainted femininity and a result of a woman's incorrect choice of product. Choosing menstrual-care products was depicted as simple but, paradoxically, complex and confusing. Women were depicted as liberated and sophisticated but images and language related to infancy were used. Freedom and liberation were conferred by the use of the advertised product. Overall, in common with previous studies, menstruation was depicted as a crisis of hygiene that is a risk to femininity. Advertisements for pantyliners suggest that femininity itself poses a threat to (idealised) femininity. This study demonstrates the crucial role of the media as a source of health information for young women.

Adult development and transformative learning

Abstract: This article analyses the intellectual discourses of adult development and adult learning. It argues that through a process of transformative adult learning individuals can experience the disintegration and reintegration of past and present human growth. The development of adults is considered not in terms of discrete theories but as a collage of theories. The writers analyse and interpret the literature that attempts to study the interaction of individuals in the total context of the inner and outer forces that impinge on their life. We conclude from a study of the literature that adult development, from a transformative perspective, is more than adjustment to a particular society; it is a qualitative change in how one views the world; it involves tension and struggle that are productive of a new consciousness. This change occurs through a dialectical process that calls for movement through the old style of meaning‐making to a reconstruction of meaning that is a synthesis of the old and the new. It is al...

An ethic of the fitting: a conceptual framework for nursing practice.

Abstract: Nurses are expected to act within an ethos of care cognisant of duty, the right, and the good. Concepts of virtue theory, utilitarianism and deontology are used to outline a conceptual ethical framework for nurses in practice. This 'Moebius' framework aims to locate the virtues in a symbiotic relationship with the principles of utilitarianism and deontology. Under this framework, fitting ethical responses are sought. Within an ethic of the fitting, rules and principles do not guarantee the most ethically justifiable outcomes. Within the Moebius approach, the nurse ought to respond with a sense of compassion that befits the moment rather than adhere to a rule at all costs.

Clinical teaching models: a review of the role of preceptor in the undergraduate nursing program.

Abstract: The relatively recent transition of nursing education in Australia from a hospital-based apprenticeship, into the higher education sector has been marked by an acknowledgement that the clinical knowledge of undergraduate student nurses is at risk of becoming separated from their theoretical knowledge. The length of time which student nurses spend on clinical placements experiencing the complexities of the clinical world is diminishing, partly in response to economic constraints on universities and health care agencies. This contrasts with an expectation that students will be safe and competent practitioners immediately on graduation. The preceptor model is being increasingly used in the final semester of the undergraduate-nursing course to facilitate the development of critically thinking, reflective practitioners. This paper examines some of the assumptions that have been made about preceptorship in its adoption into the Australian nursing education context. It is concluded that further research into the experiences of registered nurses in the preceptor role may increase our understanding of the potential of preceptorship as a clinical teaching model which can meet the future needs of both nursing education and nursing service.

The Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Institutional-Level Environment in Universities

Abstract: This study reports the development and validation of an instrument to assess institutional or university-level environment in universities. Using a sample of 489 academics from 52 departments in 28 Australian universities, an instrument called the University-Level Environment Questionnaire (ULEQ) was field-tested and validated. The final form of the ULEQ consists of 42 items assigned to seven scales: Academic Freedom, Concern for Undergraduate Learning, Concern for Research and Scholarship, Empowerment, Affiliation, Mission Consensus, and Work Pressure. Validation data showed that the ULEQ has sound structural characteristics, thus suggesting that it should prove to be an important research tool for individual academics, departments, and universities interested in improving their learning environments.

Learning with technology: use of case-based physical and computer simulations in professional education.

Abstract: This presentation will clarify contemporary ideas on the role of technology in education and how it can be employed to improve student learning experiences and outcomes. The paper will emphasise RMIT's role in providing quality education that is relevant to today's world and professional practice. It will examine a specific collaborative (RMIT & ACU), interdisciplinary project ’Pregnancy Simulator: Developing and Enhancing Student Learning of Assessment Skills’. This project consist of a physical pregnancy model connected to a multi-media computer-assisted learning package for the purpose of enhancing student learning of abdominal assessment skills.Our paper outlines an innovative technology-based teaching project and includes current educational issues or problems encountered in professional education, steps already taken to address these difficulties and how this project intends to facilitate learning. It identifies expected learning outcomes for midwives, nurses and medical students, and examin...

Social and economic infuences -ie influences- on graduation rates from higher education in Australia

Abstract: This paper presents an examination of national survey data on the graduation rates of young people who enter higher education in Australia. Two cohorts of young people were surveyed – those born in 1961 and those born in 1965. Of interest is the influence of gender and of selected social and economic background characteristics on graduation rates. The results for both cohorts provide further evidence of the gains made by young females during the 1980s in terms of educational participation and attainment. The results for the first cohort show also there were some signs of lower graduation rates being associated with socioeconomic disadvantage, at least as indicated by parent'`s occupational status and family wealth. For the second cohort, however, there was little evidence of any effect in the same direction. This suggests that attempts to deal with equity which have focussed on performance within higher education have either been quite effective or might be better directed towards the selection processes which lead to higher education.

Relationships between height and girth of mangroves and soil‐water conditions in the Mary and Hawkesbury River estuaries, eastern Australia

Abstract: The height and diameter at breast height (DBH) of mangroves on the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales and the Mary River, Queensland were related to soil-water salinity, soil-water content and distance from the mouth of the estuary. On the Hawkesbury River, both Avicennia marina and Aegiceras corniculatum declined in height and DBH with increasing soil-water salinity and soil-water content, and increased in height with distance from the mouth of the estuary. Both species showed an extensive range of all variables. On the Mary River, where species diversity was higher, no relationship was found between the height and DBH of A. marina and A. corniculatum and soil-water salinity and soil-water content. Both species increased in height with increasing distance from the mouth of the estuary, a characteristic shared with all other species studied (Excoecaria agallocha, Ceriops tagal var. australis, Rhizophora stylosa). The results suggest that growth characteristics of mangroves are not a simple response to salinity gradients in diverse systems and that other variables such as nutrient availability may be important controls on mangrove growth.

Tertullian and Rebekah: a Re-Reading of an "Anti-Jewish" Argument in Early Christian Literature

Abstract: Rebecca, la femme d'Isaac et la mere d'Esau et de Jacob, est mentionnee a neuf reprises dans les ouvrages de Tertullien. A partir d'une analyse attentive des arguments de Tertullien, l'A. demontre qu'au sujet de l'antijudaisme, la litterature chretienne ancienne n'est pas aussi repetitive qu'on a pu le penser. La prophetie de Rebecca a continue a representer pour les ecrivains chretiens posterieurs a Tertullien un argument de premier ordre contre les Juifs. Chez Tertullien, la prophetie est au coeur meme de son argumentation. C'est le signe de la volonte de Dieu de remplacer les Juifs par les chretiens comme peuple elu

The Primacy of the “Shoulds”: Where Is the Evidence?

Abstract: A central tenet of rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) has always been that irrational beliefs which express demands through absolutistic “shoulds”, “musts” or “oughts” are the basic cause of emotional disturbance. This premise is characteristic of Ellis' theory but is not always supported by other REBT writers or other writers within the cognitive therapy field. This paper reviews a range of research findings which appear to call into question Ellis' tenet of the primacy of the shoulds and which, in turn, raise theoretical and methodological difficulties in the measurement of beliefs. This along with the current theoretical debate regarding irrational belief processes may preclude the possibility of testing the proposition that demandingness is the primary irrational or dysfunctional belief.

Code of ethics: assistance with a lie choice?

Abstract: Nurses are often confronted with clinical situations demanding a decision to respond either by telling the truth or by deceiving. Nurses are not unique in this regard. However, nurses are expected to act within an ethos of care cognisant of duty, the right and the good. In order to be guided through such a dilemma nurses may reasonably ask for some clear and helpful statements to assist with that practice. This paper examines the Code of Ethics for Nurses in Australia for some such statements. (author abstract)

A Vision of the Whole Child: The Significance of Religious Experiences in Early Childhood.

Abstract: Most literature on early childhood highlights the importance of the whole child and a holistic approach to the care and education of young children. However, little attention is usually devoted in ...

Satire, Fiction and Reference To Reality in Jerome's Epistuia 117

Abstract: Satire is essentially a non-fictional literary form. Its point of departure is a real setting, which is directly referred to. But the way satirists magnify certain aspects of the reality they refer to distorts their picture.' Satires therefore are not realistic in the sense of providing reliable eye witness accounts of given situations. But they usually keep to rules, which provide hermeneutical keys for interpreting them with regard to the reality behind their distortions. How concrete that reality is, whether it just reflects a general or stereotype picture of a society or culture in a given age or whether the satire is directed against concrete historical figures, has to be established individually. The text discussed in the following has to be treated with such questions in mind. It is extant as a letter, but its addressees are not named and it is doubted whether they were historical figures. At a closer look it turns out to be a satire, but it seems at first sight to lack the concrete context that would give meaning and purpose to a satire. However, if it is a satire, and we may assume it is, it must have that context and we may try to reconstruct it using material provided by this text as well as others in its historical and literary vicinity; and although we may not succeed in finding definite answers to all the questions raised by this text, we hope nevertheless to shed some new light on this gripping little piece of ancient Christian literature.

Case management in action: An examination of two cases in the area of alcohol related brain damage

Abstract: ‘Practice Forum’ provides a forum for social work practitioners to share their practice with others; to describe what they are doing and assess its effectiveness. The practice of case management is applied in a wide range of service delivery models to meet complex client needs. Unfortunately, cost containment and lack of clarity of the role of the case manager has blurred the definition and practice of case management for both the consumer and professional providers. This article examines two cases of a small non-government agency in Melbourne called Alcohol Related Brain Injury Assessment, Accommodation & Support Inc. (ARBIAS) where case management services are delivered to people with alcohol acquired brain damage. The analysis presented here supports the view that continuity of care and intensive relationship building with clients is vital for successful client outcomes and has application to a variety of programs which service chronically disabled clients.

Are the least included in the kingdom of heaven?: the meaning of Matthew 5: 19

Abstract: According to the normative interpretation of Matthew 5:19, this logion specifies that a stict hierarchy will exist in the consummated kingdom of God based upon observance of the Jewish law. The highest place in the kingdom is reserved for those Christians who uphold the law, while those who break or relax the law will find themselves at a lower level. Matthew 5:19 therefore makes the important point that even law-free or Pauline Chisians would not be rejected from the kingdom. This study challenges this interpretaion of Matthew 5:19 by arguing that it is appropiate neither for the Chistian Jews who created it nor for the evangelist. Both Matthew and his Chistian Jewish predecessors were highly citical cf Paul and his gospel, and they expected law-free Chisians to face eternal punishment. In the light of it is, Matthew 5:19 must be taken as a reference to the exclusion of these Chistians from the kingdom.