Eleni Petraki
University of Canberra, Arts and Design, Faculty Member
This article investigates the practical accomplishment of support in midwife-led antenatal interactions. Drawing on 16 transcribed antenatal consultations from Australia, and utilizing principles of conversation analysis, we investigate a... more
This article investigates the practical accomplishment of support in midwife-led antenatal interactions. Drawing on 16 transcribed antenatal consultations from Australia, and utilizing principles of conversation analysis, we investigate a range of interactional practices that midwives use to support expectant mothers and create a positive interactional environment during the consultations. The interactional practices examined include positive assessments, compliments, enhanced agreements, extended back-channels, good wishing, humor and joking, and brightside formulations. Through these turns, the midwife works to create with the woman a shared positive stance towards the upcoming birth by encouraging her, endorsing her decisions, treating the woman’s progression through pregnancy as an achievement, and selectively focusing on the positive side of situations. As such, the research contributes to understanding the practical management of support, a concept which underpins many health and care professions.
Research Interests:
The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to investigate how Indonesian undergraduate students perceive their teachers’ and their responsibilities in English language learning; (2) to investigate how the students perceive their... more
The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to investigate how Indonesian undergraduate students perceive their teachers’ and their responsibilities in English language learning; (2) to investigate how the students perceive their abilities related to autonomous English language learning; (3) to examine if there are differences in the students’ perceptions of their responsibilities and abilities concerning gender and majors of study. The study employed a mixed-methods research approach with a sequential explanatory design and recruited 402 participants in the quantitative phase and 30 participants in the qualitative phase. The data were collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The findings showed that the majority of students deemed the teacher to be the one in charge of their learning despite their positive perceptions of their abilities. No significant difference was found between males and females in their perceptions of responsibilities and abilities. Reg...
Research Interests:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are having a great impact on all aspects of society. However, due to the technical competencies and mathematical understanding required for implementing solutions leveraging these... more
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are having a great impact on all aspects of society. However, due to the technical competencies and mathematical understanding required for implementing solutions leveraging these technologies, access to the communities working on these technologies is limited to those having these skills. This limits the ability of domain experts to directly transfer their knowledge and contribute to the development of AI and ML systems. To address this problem, we propose the Human Education AI Teaming (HEAT) framework, in which we draw on human education to design an innovative education system to enable collaboration between humans and AI cognitive agents. The main aim of HEAT is to promote the social integration of AI by allowing domain experts to focus more on communicating a body of knowledge to the machine, and less on the computational, data, and engineering concepts associated with how the machine learns. We follow an educational theory-driven approach to derive the content knowledge and competencies required by each agent. We conclude the paper with a demonstration case study explaining how the complex autonomous guidance of a flock of sheep could leverage HEAT to make the technology accessible by empowering non-AI specialists, livestock farmers in our example.
Research Interests:
Symbiosis is a physiological phenomenon where organisms of different species develop social interdependencies through partnerships. Artificial agents need mechanisms to build their capacity to develop symbiotic relationships. In this... more
Symbiosis is a physiological phenomenon where organisms of different species develop social interdependencies through partnerships. Artificial agents need mechanisms to build their capacity to develop symbiotic relationships. In this paper, we discuss two pillars for these mechanisms: machine education (ME) and bi-directional communication. ME is a new revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) which aims at structuring the learning journey of AI-enabled autonomous systems. In addition to the design of a systematic curriculum, ME embeds the body of knowledge necessary for the social integration of AI, such as ethics, moral values and trust, into the evolutionary design and learning of the AI. ME promises to equip AI with skills to be ready to develop logic-based symbiosis with humans and in a manner that leads to a trustworthy and effective steady-state through the mental interaction between humans and autonomy; a state we name symbiomemesis to differentiate it from ecological symbi...
Research Interests:
Social dilemmas force individuals to choose between their own self-interests or group interests. Individuals can decide to cooperate for the benefit of the group or defect to put their personal interests first. The Public Goods Games... more
Social dilemmas force individuals to choose between their own self-interests or group interests. Individuals can decide to cooperate for the benefit of the group or defect to put their personal interests first. The Public Goods Games (PGG) is a well-studied economic game that can provide insight into human behavior in social dilemmas. In particular, the question of interest is why do non-kin cooperate in these social dilemmas? Studies have shown that cooperation levels in a population increase if cooperators can punish (e.g., impose a fixed penalty) on free riding defectors to reduce their payoff during a PGG. This punishment is costly because these cooperators must pay a small fee to impose this punishment. Even a minority of cooperators can be successful in punishing so long as cooperators who punish are trustworthy---i.e., the agree to punish and actually do punish---and the punishment levels are high enough. But cooperators may become untrustworthy by refusing to punish to avoid paying the small fee. This second type of free riding can undermine the punishment applied to defectors, allowing them ultimately to prevail in the entire population. Everyone loses in that case. This situation can be avoided by also punishing untrustworthy cooperators. In this paper, replicator equations predict how different strategies evolve in a population of PGG players. We use a 1st-order fuzzy logic system to determine punishment levels applied to untrustworthy cooperators. Our results show a fuzzy logic based decision system can effectively improve cooperation levels in the population.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper originates in a study that examined students’ views about their favourite grammar lessons in the Sri Lankan secondary ESL classrooms. The data collection involved semi-structured interviews with thirty students about their... more
This paper originates in a study that examined students’ views about their favourite grammar lessons in the Sri Lankan secondary ESL classrooms. The data collection involved semi-structured interviews with thirty students about their attitudes to grammar teaching methods. The students were required to narrate their experiences of their most favourite and memorable grammar lessons. The data were analysed qualitatively employing the grounded theory. The results show that the effective grammar lessons include three main characteristics: comprehensible input, useful content and clear explanations/interesting delivery techniques. The findings suggest that lessons are judged not only in terms of the activities or techniques employed but also in terms of the usefulness of the grammar item presented. The findings have implications for language pedagogy and language teacher education in general. First, teachers need to be knowledgeable in grammar and be able to draw on various explanations t...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article investigates the practical accomplishment of support in midwife-led antenatal interactions. Drawing on 16 transcribed antenatal consultations from Australia, and utilizing principles of conversation analysis, we investigate a... more
This article investigates the practical accomplishment of support in midwife-led antenatal interactions. Drawing on 16 transcribed antenatal consultations from Australia, and utilizing principles of conversation analysis, we investigate a range of interactional practices that midwives use to support expectant mothers and create a positive interactional environment during the consultations. The interactional practices examined include positive assessments, compliments, enhanced agreements, extended back-channels, good wishing, humor and joking, and brightside formulations. Through these turns, the midwife works to create with the woman a shared positive stance towards the upcoming birth by encouraging her, endorsing her decisions, treating the woman’s progression through pregnancy as an achievement, and selectively focusing on the positive side of situations. As such, the research contributes to understanding the practical management of support, a concept which underpins many health ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this article, we present a new type of classification problem, which we call Comparative Classification Problem (CCP), where we use the term data record to refer to a block of instances. Given a single data record with n instances for... more
In this article, we present a new type of classification problem, which we call Comparative Classification Problem (CCP), where we use the term data record to refer to a block of instances. Given a single data record with n instances for n classes, the CCP problem is to map each instance to a unique class. This problem occurs in a wide range of applications where the independent and identically distributed assumption is broken down. The primary difference between CCP and classical classification is that in the latter, the assignment of a translator to one record is independent of the assignment of a translator to a different record. In CCP, however, the assignment of a translator to one record within a block excludes this translator from further assignments to any other record in that block. The interdependency in the data poses challenges for techniques relying on the independent and identically distributed (iid) assumption. In the Pairwise CCP (PWCCP), a pair of records is grouped...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The popularity of social networking sites in the Arab world has resulted in a new writing code, Arabizi, which combines Roman letters and numbers to represent the Arabic language. This new code received vehement criticism from Arabic... more
The popularity of social networking sites in the Arab world has resulted in a new writing code, Arabizi, which combines Roman letters and numbers to represent the Arabic language. This new code received vehement criticism from Arabic linguists who argued that Arabizi is detrimental to the Arabic language and Arab identity. Arabizi use, however, has been increasing, especially in Saudi Arabia, a highly conservative and religious society. To address this apparent contradiction, this study investigated the reasons why young Saudi Arabians use Arabizi online and their attitudes towards its use. The research was based on 131 questionnaires distributed on social networking sites, and 20 interviews conducted with Saudi users of Arabizi. The findings suggest participants use Arabizi because (1), it is the language of their peers, (2) it is cool and stylish, (3) they have difficulties with the Arabic language, and (4) Arabizi constitutes a secret code, allowing escape from judgements of the ...
Research Interests:
... of face embodies deeply held, although subtle feelings of honor, respect, esteem and the self in public and private ... Ethnic Chinese students' Communication with cultural others in a NewZealand University. ... Intercultural... more
... of face embodies deeply held, although subtle feelings of honor, respect, esteem and the self in public and private ... Ethnic Chinese students' Communication with cultural others in a NewZealand University. ... Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal communication Across Cultures ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
" Moral versions" of motherhood and daughterhood in Greek-Australian family narratives Eleni Petraki, Carolyn Baker* and Michael Emmison This chapter takes a situated, microanalytic approach to the analysis of narrative and... more
" Moral versions" of motherhood and daughterhood in Greek-Australian family narratives Eleni Petraki, Carolyn Baker* and Michael Emmison This chapter takes a situated, microanalytic approach to the analysis of narrative and identity as observed in interviews with daughters and ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Page 1. Disagreement and opposition in multigenerational interviews with Greek-Australian mothers and daughters* ELENI PETRAKI Abstract Previous research on oppositional discourse has pointed out the need in the turn-by-turn analysis of... more
Page 1. Disagreement and opposition in multigenerational interviews with Greek-Australian mothers and daughters* ELENI PETRAKI Abstract Previous research on oppositional discourse has pointed out the need in the turn-by-turn analysis of conflict and disagreements. ...
Research Interests:
... The data originate in a study that involves interviews with three generations of Greek-Australian and Cypriot-Australian women regarding ... In the conversation analytic literature, Mandelbaum has underlined the im-portance of such... more
... The data originate in a study that involves interviews with three generations of Greek-Australian and Cypriot-Australian women regarding ... In the conversation analytic literature, Mandelbaum has underlined the im-portance of such storytelling in identifying how communicators ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper considers two emerging interdisciplinary, but related topics that are likely to create tipping points in advancing the engineering and science areas. Trusted Autonomy (TA) is a field of research that focuses on understanding... more
This paper considers two emerging interdisciplinary, but related topics that are likely to create tipping points in advancing the engineering and science areas. Trusted Autonomy (TA) is a field of research that focuses on understanding and designing the interaction space between two entities each of which exhibits a level of autonomy. These entities can be humans, machines, or a mix of the two. Cognitive Cyber Symbiosis (CoCyS) is a cloud that uses humans and machines for decision-making. In CoCyS, human-machine teams are viewed as a network with each node comprising humans (as computational machines) or computers. CoCyS focuses on the architecture and interface of a Trusted Autonomous System. This paper examines these two concepts and seeks to remove ambiguity by introducing formal definitions for these concepts. It then discusses open challenges for TA and CoCyS, that is, whether a team made of humans and machines can work in fluid, seamless harmony.
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Causality is grounded in every scientific field. Computational modelling is no exception, except that it is our focus in this article. But what if we have made a mistake? Is causality a constraint on our understanding of complex... more
ABSTRACT Causality is grounded in every scientific field. Computational modelling is no exception, except that it is our focus in this article. But what if we have made a mistake? Is causality a constraint on our understanding of complex systems? Is it an obstacle in our ability to build theories to control change in complex systems? Or do we merely need to refine the concept as we evolve from one level of complexity to another? We start the journey of this article by glancing over a few key pieces of work from Philosophy and Metaphysics. We then centre the discussion on the pivotal element of this paper, causality of change in complex systems of systems and demonstrate that a counterfactual analysis of causality breaks down. We steer the discussion more towards "change" and the separation between physical and perceptual elements. Three applications are presented as examples of the type of complexity we face in computational modelling of complex systems of systems. These three applications --covering story generation in linguistics, network centric operations in defence and interdependency security problems --demonstrate how causal dependencies can be modelled, identified and extracted from a computational environment that mimics real-world complex systems of systems. We conclude the paper with a proposed model to control change in complex systems; a model we call the E4 model.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This study examined university teachers' perceptions of the role of humor in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching, teachers' practices of humor use, and teachers' preferences regarding humor types in the context of Vietnam. An... more
This study examined university teachers' perceptions of the role of humor in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching, teachers' practices of humor use, and teachers' preferences regarding humor types in the context of Vietnam. An ethnographic approach was employed in this study, combining observations, fieldnotes and interviews. The findings revealed that teachers acknowledged several beneficial functions of humor in EFL teaching. All teachers used humor in their teaching, or claimed that they did so. The three most preferred types of humor are humorous comments, jokes, and funny stories, employed to lighten the atmosphere and increase the teachers' immediacy. Teachers' perceptions about their practices and preferred types of humor provide insights into their readiness to adopt humor in the classroom. This research raises awareness of how humor can be integrated in language teaching and provides recommendations for effective classroom use.
Research Interests:
The history of grammar teaching is fraught with tensions especially in terms of the effectiveness of grammar teaching to students’ language development. Recently, there has been a growth in research on learner involvement in language... more
The history of grammar teaching is fraught with tensions especially in terms of the effectiveness of grammar teaching to students’ language development. Recently, there has
been a growth in research on learner involvement in language learning and learner beliefs. Within this paradigm, this research examined students’ beliefs about grammar instruction methods in the Sri Lankan secondary ESL classrooms. Questionnaires and semi-structured
interviews were conducted with students about their attitudes to grammar teaching methods
and their opinions about effective grammar lessons. The results showed students’ positiveattitude to explicit grammar teaching. The lessons were judged not only in terms of the engagement of activities employed, but also in terms of the teachers’ creative presentation and the usefulness of the grammar item in extending the students’ English language repertoire. The findings have implications for language pedagogy and language teacher education in general. The study supports the idea of integration of explicit instruction in grammar teaching with authentic real life examples to increase students’ awareness of the importance of grammar
been a growth in research on learner involvement in language learning and learner beliefs. Within this paradigm, this research examined students’ beliefs about grammar instruction methods in the Sri Lankan secondary ESL classrooms. Questionnaires and semi-structured
interviews were conducted with students about their attitudes to grammar teaching methods
and their opinions about effective grammar lessons. The results showed students’ positiveattitude to explicit grammar teaching. The lessons were judged not only in terms of the engagement of activities employed, but also in terms of the teachers’ creative presentation and the usefulness of the grammar item in extending the students’ English language repertoire. The findings have implications for language pedagogy and language teacher education in general. The study supports the idea of integration of explicit instruction in grammar teaching with authentic real life examples to increase students’ awareness of the importance of grammar