Arts Design & Architecture

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 359
  • (2021) Senior, Caitlin
    Thesis
    Australia and Canada are similar countries regarding their history, economy, culture, and many social values. Their education systems, however, perform differently in international comparisons. In this study I compare educational equity in South Australia and Alberta during the first two decades of this century. This research uses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with ten key high-level education system leaders and experts in South Australia and Alberta to explore how policies and reforms have addressed educational equity in these jurisdictions from 2000-2018. Three main findings of this study are: education policies and strategies in Alberta have facilitated equity more directly as part of educational improvement than in South Australia; collaborative professionalism has been a key driver of policy implementation in Alberta whereas South Australian policy implementation has relied more on compliance and competition between schools; and Albertan and South Australian policymakers have understood equity in education differently, especially how equity and excellence relate to one another.

  • (2021) Zipparo, Julian
    Thesis
    This research critically analyses institutional diversity through the research positioning of Australian universities. In so doing, it makes a contemporaneous contribution to the question of how diverse the institutions within the sector are, and in particular, how we can better understand the determinants or factors that help explain it. Understanding institutional diversity and its determinants is essential, given the concept serves as a bipartisan and enduring principle which underpins Australian higher education policy. Successive governments have sought to configure and resource the university sector in ways which meet varied needs and fit within resource constraints. Their approach to optimizing efficacy and efficiency has been through sector level settings designed to encourage institutions with a diverse range of missions. Exploring these questions through multiple methods and a theoretical framework that contributes to balancing historically polarised approaches, this research concludes that Australian university research positioning, while expressed in terms of uniqueness and difference, converges upon common aims and approaches and demonstrates a clear lack of diversity. The apparent homogeneity of research positioning across the sector is explained in part through the shortcomings and inherent contradictions within the mission-based compact program's design and implementation, and is also a product of the interaction between the sector funding model and isomorphism in institutional approaches to competitive resource seeking. However, and importantly, the observed homogeneity is also explained by selective narrative construction by universities, which serve various purposes and act to obscure intra-institutional complexity and what is argued to be significant internal diversity. This internal diversity has considerable implications for seeking diversity at the level of institutions through policy or programs, and indeed for observing for it in research.

  • (2020) Moncrieff, Abigail
    Thesis
    In a rich and growing field of writing around socially engaged curatorial projects, the role and impact of these projects in rural and regional Australian communities remains under-examined. Australian research on creative activity in general has been characterised as susceptible to an “urban bias”, in which scholarship is dominated by a focus on work taking place in metropolitan contexts. This reflects the international discourse on socially engaged practice since the 1990s, which has highlighted its relationship to new genre public art and its ability to engage with urgent social issues or conditions, with attention primarily paid to urban contexts and communities. Curating socially engaged projects in regional or rural Australia necessitates a different kind of engagement, which offers rich possibilities for curatorial research. In this project, I have applied a model of ‘conversational curating’ to the decisions and processes of curatorial practice-based research in a regional Australian context. Conversational curating characterises the engagement between artist and curator, along with a spectrum of potential relationships, that include a network of locally embedded creative agents, which is crucial to curating in regional locations. My case study of Cementa 17 has helped illuminate the conditions for curating in rural and regional Australian contexts and inform key understandings brought into the practice component of my research. The practice component of my research consisted of a residency and exhibition, titled Sentient, at Murray Art Museum Albury; this project was realised with the Sydney- based artist James Nguyen and local communities living along the Murray River in the twin border cities of Albury- Wodonga. This project concerned people’s personal accounts of origins and migration, intertwined with the environmental and social complexities of the Murray River’s usage over time. Research in the process of curating Sentient has explored duration as a key part of the conditions of making; this allows for a cumulative and dynamic engagement with place and communities—a specific requirement of rural and regional curating. My research uncovers some of the specific challenges and opportunities of working in rural and regional settings and demonstrates an effective curatorial approach that prioritises collaboration and relationship building through dialogue.

  • (2020) De Oliveira Yonamine, Mariana
    Thesis
    When faced with culturally anchored terms, subtitlers can render the translation closer to the foreign language and culture, adopting a strategy of foreignization, or closer to the domestic audience, thus adhering to a strategy of domestication (Venuti, 1995). This dissertation examined how strategies of translation used to render idioms (Gottlieb, 1997) in interlingual subtitles affect viewer’s processing (Ghia, 2012; Perego, 2010; Kruger & Doherty, 2016), focusing on the effects of domestication and foreignization on translation form recognition (Bisson, 2013; Perego et al., 2010), and also exploring translation meaning recognition, audiovisual content processing, and viewer’s self-reported viewing experience. The investigation method was an online survey, answered by 79 native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese based in Australia. During the 25-minute experiment, participants watched an 11-minute movie-clip with scenes extracted from the Australian movie The Dish, with subtitles embedded including idioms translated using domesticated and foreignized strategies. Domestication resulted in statistically significantly higher translation form recognition. No significant difference in translation meaning recognition was verified between both translation conditions. Participants stated usage of audiovisual content for language learning showed significant interaction with translation form and meaning recognition. Participants processed effectively the experiment’s audiovisual content, dense in idioms, scoring high in general comprehension, face–name association, scene recognition, subtitle recognition. The self-reported cognitive and evaluative response of participants signalled satisfaction with subtitles and low difficulty and effort to follow them. The findings expand the evidence-based knowledge in the audiovisual translation field on subtitle processing and the effects of translation strategies on the subtitles as a product. Based upon these findings, it is argued that the domestication of idioms could be used to promote targeted use of translation strategies to accelerate learning using subtitles (Pavesi & Perego, 2008; Ghia, 2012; Ragni, 2018), for purposes that could benefit from higher translation recognition, as language learning, didactic videos or informative material, as public health or community service campaigns. For other uses in which conveying meaning is deemed sufficient, as entertainment, the findings suggest that domestication or foreignization yield similar meaning recognition. The dissertation concludes by presenting the limitations of the experiment and avenues for future research.

  • (2020) Nikolova, Mariya
    Thesis
    I examine whether and how avant-garde tropes promote the potential of permanent renewal as white America’s (re)birth and transformation. Renewal, in its broadest sense, ties to the capacities to create, progress, transcend, and simply be. From Black critique we know that, within dominant discourse, all these capacities have been stifled and denied to Black bodies ever since colonization. On the one hand, Black creative work and origin/ality have been fetishized, appropriated, stolen, and dismissed in and by dominant culture. On the other hand, Black being has been construed as negativity and barred on the level of ontology (Fanon, Wilderson, Warren). It follows then that racialization operates on multiple levels in the conceptual frame of renewal. I study this conceptualization in the works of and literary criticism on Kathy Acker, Don DeLillo, and Marilynne Robinson. More specifically, I investigate how images of renewal enable the claim on futurity, transformative potential, and movement forward as exclusively white properties. Constructed through oppositions between white subjectivity and Black incapacitation, these images often ‘bury’ the latter by highlighting the former. With this project, I show that, deriving from white ideology, such representations are symbiotic and simultaneous. The “good” story of white renewal is inextricably linked to narrative transgressions towards Black being. I study these transgressions and the ways white literature alibies them out, and instead pushes forward an image of white morality and heroism. In this regard, my project focuses not only on racist production as illustrated by the texts in question but also on the ways whiteness regulates writing and reading practices. I consider how tenets of whiteness – like the programmatic quest towards renewal – function on narrative and discursive level. For instance, I show that an avantgardism embedded in whiteness positions white texts as ground-breaking and transformative despite a lack of formal or conceptual innovation. Similarly, techniques such as textual deferral, omissions, and incorporation bar or defuse the critique which exposes the racist premises and anti-Black workings of white fiction. The project thus examines what kind of images/imagination this literature has promoted with the effect of strengthening the racialized division of American culture.

  • (2021) Asih, Ria
    Thesis
    The influence of teacher professional development (PD) programs on teacher self-efficacy (TSE) beliefs remains a continuing concern due to a wide range of evidence that shows minimum impact on teacher practices. This concern is more evident in mandatory PD implemented in less privileged contexts, where teachers are not personally motivated, but are mandated to engage government-initiated PD programs. Negative associations between mandatory PD and TSE beliefs are documented, which implicit evidence suggest the lack of explicit incorporation of mediating factors. This study addresses theoretical and methodological issues through contextualising existing instruments and establishing the relationship between teacher perceptions of mandatory PD and TSE beliefs with the mediating effect of sources of efficacy information. The significant difference among those variables based on teacher demographics was also investigated. The survey incorporated three instruments administered to 356 teachers in Bima, Indonesia. Four quantitative analyses were used to study the adaptation of the instruments, association among teacher perception of mandatory PD, TSE beliefs, and sources of efficacy information, and significant differences based on teachers’ demography. Results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the globally-used instruments can be adapted to the context of a less privileged region. The scales exhibited measurement invariance, which the three instruments retained their original factors but with item deletions that did not load significantly to their corresponding factor. The structural equation modelling revealed that teacher perceptions of mandatory PD did not affect TSE beliefs. However, a positive indirect effect between teacher perception of mandatory PD and TSE beliefs was found with sources of efficacy information as a mediating variable. The t-test result showed that teacher perception of mandatory PD was different between genders. The ANOVA results showed that significant differences in TSE beliefs were only found among teachers of different ages, years of teaching experience, employment and certification status. Findings of this study provide significant evidence for the conceptualisation of teacher perception of mandatory PD, sources of efficacy information, and TSE beliefs in the context of a less privileged region. More importantly, it highlights the critical role of sources of efficacy information in the association between mandatory PD and TSE beliefs. These findings have significant implications for the application of mandatory PD in Indonesia that were considered ineffective.

  • (2021) Almalky, Abdullah
    Thesis
    Gifted and talented individuals play an important role in the development of their country and the world. The effect of educating high-ability individuals is observed not only in high levels of achievement and competition wins but also in the prosperity of the individual s country. This qualitative case study research aims to provide research based evidence for developing programs to prepare school principals to meet the needs of gifted students in schools. The research data were obtained from eight primary schools that run programs for gifted students in Saudi Arabia. The data were collected from diverse case studies (high-performing [HP] and low-performing [LP] schools) from rural and urban areas in Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained by conducting semi-structured interviews with eight school principals and eight gifted education (GE) teachers and coordinators, conducting focus groups with 51 gifted students, and analysing four policy documents. The findings of the study reveal a lack of essential knowledge and skills among principals related to GE. However, principals of HP cases were more aware of and more concerned with addressing the needs of gifted students compared with principals of LP cases. In addition, principals of HP schools were mostly instructional leaders, whereas LP schools were mostly led by building managers. Rural principals were socially oriented, whereas urban principals were policy and functionally driven. Based on these findings, the study proposes two training models: a principal preparation program (PPP)-fix model for LP schools, and a PPP-prevention model for other schools. The study recommends an urgent revision of GE policy in Saudi Arabia and a clear definition of principals responsibilities towards gifted students. In addition, the study urges ministries of education and universities to consider including GE in PPPs and teacher preparation programs to help meet the needs of gifted students in schools.

  • (2020) Bostwick, Keiko
    Thesis
    Previous educational research on students’ growth constructs and their academic outcomes has been largely focused on the separate examinations of antecedents and consequences of students’ growth mindset and growth goals. This approach has provided a detailed account of the individual functionality of these growth constructs and their predictive value in relation to a variety of academic outcomes. However, there is also a need to examine potential relationships among these growth constructs in order to better understand how they may work together to promote students’ outcomes. The aim of the current investigation, therefore, was to augment existing literature on the individual associations of three major growth constructs (growth mindset, self-based growth goals, and task-based growth goals) on academic outcomes by way of a potential underlying growth orientation. Across four studies conducted in 18 Australian secondary schools, the appropriateness of this proposed underlying growth orientation and its associations with mathematics outcomes (engagement and achievement) was examined. Study 1 (N = 4699 students) found that students’ growth mindset and growth goals were well represented by an underlying growth orientation and that students’ growth orientation was positively associated with their mathematics outcomes. Using a multilevel model (n = 1414 students from 91 classrooms with 91 teachers), Study 2 found that in addition to student-level associations, there were several notable associations at the classroom-level. With a two-wave longitudinal design, Study 3 (n = 2949 students) found that students’ underlying growth orientation was positively associated with gains in students’ mathematics outcomes across one year of school. Finally, using a longitudinal, multilevel model (n = 898 students from 86 classrooms with 86 teachers), Study 4 found that longitudinal associations at the classroom-level may also be salient. In sum, results from the investigation demonstrate that an underlying growth orientation is meaningfully associated with mathematics outcomes, suggesting there is merit in developing more parsimonious educational interventions that target growth more broadly. Thus, alongside work that continues to investigate distinct growth constructs, the present investigation demonstrates it is also important to better understand how such constructs are inter-related and how this shared variance among constructs may benefit students’ academic outcomes.

  • (2020) Marzban, Samin
    Thesis
    Residential buildings with single-sided ventilated (SSV) facade require greater energy consumption of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to achieve a comfortable indoor environment and to maintain the health and productivity of the occupants. SSV facade has been reported to increase the likelihood of a poor indoor environment and high energy consumption. Hence, optimizing SSV facade design to create an energy-efficient and comfortable indoor environment is a challenging task. Existing studies have employed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to analyze natural ventilation of buildings with SSV facade or passive design strategies to reduce energy consumption. However, most existing studies have focused on addressing individual performance issues of SSV facade such as natural ventilation or energy consumption. There has been a lack of dealing with the integrated performance of SSV facade especially the integrated optimal performance across ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort. There has been also a lack of understanding which design variables and relationships may drive optimal performance of SSV facade design. This research aims to fill the research gap by developing an innovative self-adaptive evolutionary model to optimize SSV facade design, targeted at the integrated optimal performance across ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort. The model includes a self-adaptation and learning mechanism which integrates unsupervised machine learning with evolutionary algorithms. The self-adaptation and learning mechanism has the ability to discover emergent patterns named evolved genes which represent key design variables and relationships that lead to high-performance of ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort of SSV facade design. The discovered key design variables and relationships are then evolved from simple to complex in the self-adaptive evolutionary process until a set of optimal SSV facade design is obtained. The utility of the self-adaptive evolutionary model is demonstrated using multi-story residential buildings with SSV facade in Sydney. A set of optimal SSV facade design is obtained in the prototype implementation, which shows on average 20% improvement in ventilation efficiency, 40% energy saving on heating and cooling loads and improvement in daylight visual comfort compared to the baseline performance of a building with SSV facade v design. The evolved genes in different complexities are discovered and evolved over time, demonstrating the dynamic mapping between key SSV facade design variables and high-performance outcomes of ventilation efficiency, energy efficiency and visual comfort. The analysis results also prove the effectiveness of the self-adaptation and learning mechanism, which accelerates the process to enable high-performance of SSV facade design to be achieved at earlier generations and increases the integrated optimal performance of SSV facade design by 6 - 8% compared to a conventional evolutionary process. This research develops an innovative interdisciplinary approach which is built upon artificial intelligence, facade optimization and building sustainability to tackling the challenge faced in SSV facade design. Research outcomes will advance the interdisciplinary knowledge of utilizing artificial intelligence technologies to improve the indoor environment and reduce energy consumption of SSV facade design.

  • (2020) Harper, Mitchell
    Thesis
    This thesis investigates Deleuze’s genetic account of real experience in Difference and Repetition (hereafter DR) as a systematic form of metaphysics. While there is broad agreement on the aims of DR as a thesis in metaphysics, there is significant disparity in accounts of how this is accomplished. The overall goal of this thesis is to examine and clarify the processes involved in Deleuze’s metaphysical account of genesis in DR (the three syntheses of time and space, differentiation, individuation, differenciation, and dramatisation), how these processes involve a metaphysics of difference (intensive quantity), how they form a system (the relationship between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive), and how this has been understood in the secondary scholarship. Chapter 1 examines Deleuze’s reading of Kantian critique for two reasons. Firstly, it outlines Kant’s account of the conditioning of possible experience in order to provide a framework from which to understand how Deleuze radically transforms transcendental philosophy. Secondly, it critically examines Deleuze’s reading of Kant’s genetic account of real experience in order to outline its philosophical limitations. Chapter 2 explores Deleuze’s reconstructive reading of Nietzsche’s metaphysics of becoming as a rewrite of Kantian critique in order to show, on the one hand, that a metaphysical account of transcendental genesis necessitates a theory of time that attempts to grasp the perpetual emergence of the absolutely new, and on the other, that it provides a preliminary sketch of Deleuze’s own metaphysical system in DR. Chapter 3 aims to illuminate the three syntheses of time in Chapter 2 of DR by examining both how they form an interdependent unity and how they have been interpreted in the secondary scholarship. Chapter 4 analyses the secondary scholarship on DR and puts forward a novel interpretation of Deleuze’s metaphysics by arguing, on the one hand, that individuation signifies a process of intensive quantity split between differentiation (the virtual) and differenciation (the actual), such that, intensities comprise both the virtual and the actual, and on the other, that this entails a metaphysical (or panpsychist) conception of thought that involves a parallelism between Ideas and sensibility.