The role and professional identity of a Language and Learning Adviser (LLA) areoften misunderstoo... more The role and professional identity of a Language and Learning Adviser (LLA) areoften misunderstood within the university, especially within faculties, by academics and management. This paper reports on a multimodal project which sought to provide an avenue for expression of LLAs’ frustration with this lack of recognition using art practice-led research (PLR)methodology. Although the LLA experience has been examined by the profession from numerous po-sitions, there has not been a study using PLR methods that captures the sub-jective experience of LLAs’work experience and their perceptions of the stu-dent and LLA encounter. By employing PLR in a workplace where partici-pants had not been trained as artists, unique visual and textual insights about individual LLAs’ perceptions of these encounters were generated. Artworks were created which are material evidence, or mediating objects that represent new understandings, augment new ways to be visible and, through participant discussion and analysis, provide new opportunities to voice professional quan-daries, values and possibilities. The aim was to make visible the constraints and possibilities under which LLAs work, so those outside the profession might come to a deeper understanding of the LLA role, including how LLAs can collaborate with academics to develop academic skills within curriculum design. This paper and visual artefact is a record and expression of the ways LLAs face the issue of invisibility in their practice and how an art project brought the group together in meaningful and affirming ways.
As in the neighbouring colony of Victoria, homeopathy in colonial New South Wales attracted the s... more As in the neighbouring colony of Victoria, homeopathy in colonial New South Wales attracted the support and attention of a wide cross section of society. In this thesis I concentrate on the varying ways in which homeopathy made its presence felt within New South Wales - with particular focus on the period 1840-1880. Linking itself with colonial ideals of progressive social reform, homeopathy in New South Wales, much like its counterpart in the United States, managed to establish itself in opposition to the `conservative' element within nineteenth century society. In a colony which has been described as `excessive' in its preoccupation with liberalism, the New System of homeopathy in New South Wales fitted neatly with both the anti-orthodox sentiment prevalent within New South Wales society, as well as the vision of a better, more egalitarian world which many colonists brought with them to the new country. During the 1850s the homeopaths and their supporters concentrated their efforts on the Sydney Homeopathic Dispensary both as a symbol of progress of the New System within the colony and as a means by which to extend the social benefits of this cheaper, milder and (for many) more effective medicine to the broader community. During the 1860s, with the Dispensary struggling to remain viable, the homeopaths attempted to secure legal support for the New System, petitioning the government to provide homeopathic treatments in government funded hospitals. During the 1870s, the homeopaths made their presence felt primarily through their role in blocking the repeated attempts of the regular medical profession to secure regulatory (restrictive) medical legislation within the colony. Focussing in particular on the public and political debates surrounding Sir Alfred Stephen's 1875 Medical Bill, I focus in the last section of my thesis on the nature of the opposition to restrictive legislation in the colony. I argue that this opposition needs to be understood not only in terms of the lack of unity within the regular medical profession itself, as has often been emphasised, but on the existence of a coherent and self-conscious defence of medical pluralism within the colony - a campaign within which the homeopathic movement in New South Wales played a central role. Working primarily outside of the bounds of the symbolic markers of professionalism (institutions, journals, societies,) often associated with a mature and influential medical tradition, homeopathy in New South Wales was less visible than in many comparable places during the nineteenth century, but no less influential
Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notabl... more Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notable for its emphasis on private practice, its lag in the nineteenth-century race for medicine to professionalise, and its generous spread of irregular modalities. This paper examines the contribution of homeopathy, the most influential of the irregular modalities, to shaping the medical landscape in the colony. Examination of the prominent debates regarding regulatory medical legislation reveal the extent to which the homeopaths, amongst others, successfully aligned themselves with liberal sensibilities in the colony to engage in an effective and sustained defence of medical pluralism, at a time when what constituted scientific medicine was itself undergoing significant transformation and renegotiation.
The educational needs and circumstances of refugee background students is a conversation topic th... more The educational needs and circumstances of refugee background students is a conversation topic that the literature would indicate waxes and wanes. It is a conversation that is picked up in this article in response to a fear that it is in danger of being subsumed by the 'one-size fits all' approach of the dominant neoliberal discourse that has had such a powerful hold on education in the last few decades.
The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary st... more The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary study in Australia. For example, up to one third of students at some institutions are international students. At the same time, alternative entry options and pathways linking Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and Higher Education (HE) courses have been increasingly utilised by students from a variety of backgrounds. Language and learning support is crucial for many of these students to enable them to achieve successful outcomes in their studies. This paper outlines the reconceptualisation of a collaborative approach between language and learning practitioners and law staff at Victoria University (VU) to develop and model appropriate teaching and learning pedagogies to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse cohort of students.
This paper traces the introduction of Steiner programmes in publicly funded school settings in Vi... more This paper traces the introduction of Steiner programmes in publicly funded school settings in Victoria, Australia, through a recent history covering approximately 1990–2011. Three programmes are examined through interviews with Steiner educators focusing on some of the challenges of working with these alternative educational ideas in these settings. While the first two of these programmes proved successful, the third was discontinued amid some controversy in 2011. The educational change these programmes presented is framed in terms of their contribution to epistemological diversity within the public-education domain in Australia, as reflected in the educational values associated with these programmes, and the educational sensibilities through which these were mediated in terms of the Steiner educators interviewed. Biographical Sociology is drawn on to foreground the felt experience of the Steiner educators involved, and to highlight some of the ideological and philosophical tensions that were at play, and how they were managed. These tensions, it is argued, were at times exacerbated through the co-location of these programmes within existing mainstream schools in Australia, in contrast to the more common stand-alone, publicly funded Steiner schools established internationally. In exploring the spilling over of these tensions into polemical public debate in relation to the third programme, the move of Steiner education into publicly funded school settings internationally is taken into account, and questions of the successful mitigation of these tensions more generally examined, placing these local experiences into a wider context.
Education in Victoria, Australia not only underwent significant
change in the 1970s, but was witn... more Education in Victoria, Australia not only underwent significant change in the 1970s, but was witness to a widespread educational reform project. Whilst exploration of the more widespread alternatives has been of some interest, the smaller progressive traditions that emerged in some ways ‘alongside’ the broader reforms have rarely been examined in any detail. This article explores the founding of the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School (MRSS) in the 1970s, the first of its kind in Victoria, and the third such school nationally. Analysis is based primarily on interviews with educators directly involved. L.A. Reid’s notion of education as an ‘aesthetic’ object is drawn on to examine the collective experiences of the founders of the MRSS, and the particular expression they gave to Steiner’s educational ideas.
Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notabl... more Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notable for its emphasis on private practice, its lag in the nineteenth-century race for medicine to professionalise, and its generous spread of irregular modalities. This paper examines the contribution of homeopathy, the most influential of the irregular modalities, to shaping the medical landscape in the colony. Examination of the prominent debates regarding regulatory medical legislation reveal the extent to which the homeopaths, amongst others, successfully aligned themselves with liberal sensibilities in the colony to engage in an effective and sustained defence of medical pluralism, at a time when what constituted scientific medicine was itself undergoing significant transformation and renegotiation.
Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association, 2008
The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary st... more The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary study in Australia. For example, up to one third of students at some institutions are international students. At the same time, alternative entry options and pathways linking Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and Higher Education (HE) courses have been increasingly utilised by students from a variety of backgrounds. Language and learning support is crucial for many of these students to enable them to achieve successful outcomes in their studies. This paper outlines the reconceptualisation of a collaborative approach between language and learning practitioners and law staff at Victoria University (VU) to develop and model appropriate teaching and learning pedagogies to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse cohort of students.
Patterned on Jan van Eyck’s famous Ghent polyptych, our representation places higher education at... more Patterned on Jan van Eyck’s famous Ghent polyptych, our representation places higher education at the centre top to signal higher education’s promise and commanding position in the symbolic sphere. Upper panels identify key cultural, ideological and institutional influences that still shape higher education. Lower panels name the resultant human types associated with these historical processes. Although the illusion of symmetry between past and future is maintained, the face of higher education keeps changing with increased acceleration. The moral divide in van Eyck’s work is replaced by a temporal axis in which previous conceptions and associated human types simply become passé, and morally irrelevant.
The role and professional identity of a Language and Learning Adviser (LLA) areoften misunderstoo... more The role and professional identity of a Language and Learning Adviser (LLA) areoften misunderstood within the university, especially within faculties, by academics and management. This paper reports on a multimodal project which sought to provide an avenue for expression of LLAs’ frustration with this lack of recognition using art practice-led research (PLR)methodology. Although the LLA experience has been examined by the profession from numerous po-sitions, there has not been a study using PLR methods that captures the sub-jective experience of LLAs’work experience and their perceptions of the stu-dent and LLA encounter. By employing PLR in a workplace where partici-pants had not been trained as artists, unique visual and textual insights about individual LLAs’ perceptions of these encounters were generated. Artworks were created which are material evidence, or mediating objects that represent new understandings, augment new ways to be visible and, through participant discussion and analysis, provide new opportunities to voice professional quan-daries, values and possibilities. The aim was to make visible the constraints and possibilities under which LLAs work, so those outside the profession might come to a deeper understanding of the LLA role, including how LLAs can collaborate with academics to develop academic skills within curriculum design. This paper and visual artefact is a record and expression of the ways LLAs face the issue of invisibility in their practice and how an art project brought the group together in meaningful and affirming ways.
As in the neighbouring colony of Victoria, homeopathy in colonial New South Wales attracted the s... more As in the neighbouring colony of Victoria, homeopathy in colonial New South Wales attracted the support and attention of a wide cross section of society. In this thesis I concentrate on the varying ways in which homeopathy made its presence felt within New South Wales - with particular focus on the period 1840-1880. Linking itself with colonial ideals of progressive social reform, homeopathy in New South Wales, much like its counterpart in the United States, managed to establish itself in opposition to the `conservative' element within nineteenth century society. In a colony which has been described as `excessive' in its preoccupation with liberalism, the New System of homeopathy in New South Wales fitted neatly with both the anti-orthodox sentiment prevalent within New South Wales society, as well as the vision of a better, more egalitarian world which many colonists brought with them to the new country. During the 1850s the homeopaths and their supporters concentrated their efforts on the Sydney Homeopathic Dispensary both as a symbol of progress of the New System within the colony and as a means by which to extend the social benefits of this cheaper, milder and (for many) more effective medicine to the broader community. During the 1860s, with the Dispensary struggling to remain viable, the homeopaths attempted to secure legal support for the New System, petitioning the government to provide homeopathic treatments in government funded hospitals. During the 1870s, the homeopaths made their presence felt primarily through their role in blocking the repeated attempts of the regular medical profession to secure regulatory (restrictive) medical legislation within the colony. Focussing in particular on the public and political debates surrounding Sir Alfred Stephen's 1875 Medical Bill, I focus in the last section of my thesis on the nature of the opposition to restrictive legislation in the colony. I argue that this opposition needs to be understood not only in terms of the lack of unity within the regular medical profession itself, as has often been emphasised, but on the existence of a coherent and self-conscious defence of medical pluralism within the colony - a campaign within which the homeopathic movement in New South Wales played a central role. Working primarily outside of the bounds of the symbolic markers of professionalism (institutions, journals, societies,) often associated with a mature and influential medical tradition, homeopathy in New South Wales was less visible than in many comparable places during the nineteenth century, but no less influential
Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notabl... more Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notable for its emphasis on private practice, its lag in the nineteenth-century race for medicine to professionalise, and its generous spread of irregular modalities. This paper examines the contribution of homeopathy, the most influential of the irregular modalities, to shaping the medical landscape in the colony. Examination of the prominent debates regarding regulatory medical legislation reveal the extent to which the homeopaths, amongst others, successfully aligned themselves with liberal sensibilities in the colony to engage in an effective and sustained defence of medical pluralism, at a time when what constituted scientific medicine was itself undergoing significant transformation and renegotiation.
The educational needs and circumstances of refugee background students is a conversation topic th... more The educational needs and circumstances of refugee background students is a conversation topic that the literature would indicate waxes and wanes. It is a conversation that is picked up in this article in response to a fear that it is in danger of being subsumed by the 'one-size fits all' approach of the dominant neoliberal discourse that has had such a powerful hold on education in the last few decades.
The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary st... more The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary study in Australia. For example, up to one third of students at some institutions are international students. At the same time, alternative entry options and pathways linking Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and Higher Education (HE) courses have been increasingly utilised by students from a variety of backgrounds. Language and learning support is crucial for many of these students to enable them to achieve successful outcomes in their studies. This paper outlines the reconceptualisation of a collaborative approach between language and learning practitioners and law staff at Victoria University (VU) to develop and model appropriate teaching and learning pedagogies to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse cohort of students.
This paper traces the introduction of Steiner programmes in publicly funded school settings in Vi... more This paper traces the introduction of Steiner programmes in publicly funded school settings in Victoria, Australia, through a recent history covering approximately 1990–2011. Three programmes are examined through interviews with Steiner educators focusing on some of the challenges of working with these alternative educational ideas in these settings. While the first two of these programmes proved successful, the third was discontinued amid some controversy in 2011. The educational change these programmes presented is framed in terms of their contribution to epistemological diversity within the public-education domain in Australia, as reflected in the educational values associated with these programmes, and the educational sensibilities through which these were mediated in terms of the Steiner educators interviewed. Biographical Sociology is drawn on to foreground the felt experience of the Steiner educators involved, and to highlight some of the ideological and philosophical tensions that were at play, and how they were managed. These tensions, it is argued, were at times exacerbated through the co-location of these programmes within existing mainstream schools in Australia, in contrast to the more common stand-alone, publicly funded Steiner schools established internationally. In exploring the spilling over of these tensions into polemical public debate in relation to the third programme, the move of Steiner education into publicly funded school settings internationally is taken into account, and questions of the successful mitigation of these tensions more generally examined, placing these local experiences into a wider context.
Education in Victoria, Australia not only underwent significant
change in the 1970s, but was witn... more Education in Victoria, Australia not only underwent significant change in the 1970s, but was witness to a widespread educational reform project. Whilst exploration of the more widespread alternatives has been of some interest, the smaller progressive traditions that emerged in some ways ‘alongside’ the broader reforms have rarely been examined in any detail. This article explores the founding of the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School (MRSS) in the 1970s, the first of its kind in Victoria, and the third such school nationally. Analysis is based primarily on interviews with educators directly involved. L.A. Reid’s notion of education as an ‘aesthetic’ object is drawn on to examine the collective experiences of the founders of the MRSS, and the particular expression they gave to Steiner’s educational ideas.
Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notabl... more Examinations of medicine in nineteenth century New South Wales have predominantly found it notable for its emphasis on private practice, its lag in the nineteenth-century race for medicine to professionalise, and its generous spread of irregular modalities. This paper examines the contribution of homeopathy, the most influential of the irregular modalities, to shaping the medical landscape in the colony. Examination of the prominent debates regarding regulatory medical legislation reveal the extent to which the homeopaths, amongst others, successfully aligned themselves with liberal sensibilities in the colony to engage in an effective and sustained defence of medical pluralism, at a time when what constituted scientific medicine was itself undergoing significant transformation and renegotiation.
Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association, 2008
The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary st... more The past decade has seen a marked increase in the diversity of the student profile in tertiary study in Australia. For example, up to one third of students at some institutions are international students. At the same time, alternative entry options and pathways linking Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and Higher Education (HE) courses have been increasingly utilised by students from a variety of backgrounds. Language and learning support is crucial for many of these students to enable them to achieve successful outcomes in their studies. This paper outlines the reconceptualisation of a collaborative approach between language and learning practitioners and law staff at Victoria University (VU) to develop and model appropriate teaching and learning pedagogies to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse cohort of students.
Patterned on Jan van Eyck’s famous Ghent polyptych, our representation places higher education at... more Patterned on Jan van Eyck’s famous Ghent polyptych, our representation places higher education at the centre top to signal higher education’s promise and commanding position in the symbolic sphere. Upper panels identify key cultural, ideological and institutional influences that still shape higher education. Lower panels name the resultant human types associated with these historical processes. Although the illusion of symmetry between past and future is maintained, the face of higher education keeps changing with increased acceleration. The moral divide in van Eyck’s work is replaced by a temporal axis in which previous conceptions and associated human types simply become passé, and morally irrelevant.
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Papers by Tao Bak
change in the 1970s, but was witness to a widespread educational
reform project. Whilst exploration of the more widespread
alternatives has been of some interest, the smaller progressive
traditions that emerged in some ways ‘alongside’ the broader
reforms have rarely been examined in any detail. This article
explores the founding of the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School
(MRSS) in the 1970s, the first of its kind in Victoria, and the third
such school nationally. Analysis is based primarily on interviews
with educators directly involved. L.A. Reid’s notion of education
as an ‘aesthetic’ object is drawn on to examine the collective
experiences of the founders of the MRSS, and the particular
expression they gave to Steiner’s educational ideas.
change in the 1970s, but was witness to a widespread educational
reform project. Whilst exploration of the more widespread
alternatives has been of some interest, the smaller progressive
traditions that emerged in some ways ‘alongside’ the broader
reforms have rarely been examined in any detail. This article
explores the founding of the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School
(MRSS) in the 1970s, the first of its kind in Victoria, and the third
such school nationally. Analysis is based primarily on interviews
with educators directly involved. L.A. Reid’s notion of education
as an ‘aesthetic’ object is drawn on to examine the collective
experiences of the founders of the MRSS, and the particular
expression they gave to Steiner’s educational ideas.