Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Queensland'

Within Australia and in Europe. there is evidence of growth in the incidence of non¬standard forms of employment such as part-time and casual work. Part of this growth can be attributed to changes in the structure of the economy and the increasing importance of service industries where non-standard forms of employment proliferate. There is also evidence, however, that employers at the firm level are progressively expanding their use of non-standard employment and reducing their reliance on full-time labour. One explanation for this organisational-level phenomena has been suggested by Atkinson (1987) in his account of the ‘flexible firm’. Atkinson claims that employers are increasingly attempting to divide the workforce into two major segments: a skilled, full-time core labour force and an unskilled, non-standard segment. This thesis examines Atkinson’s ‘flexible firm’ model through a study of labour-use practices of three acute hospitals in Queensland. A main finding of this thesis is the generalised and substantial growth of non-standard employment in all types of Queensland hospitals. The growth of non-standard hospital labour is not as, Atkinson would suggest, largely the result of demand-side strategies of employers but is also conditioned by supply-side factors. Gender, rather than skill, is found to be an important determinant of the proliferation of non-standard employment. Non-standard employment is not the major labour adjustment mechanism in all sectors of the hospital industry. Labour intensification is a critical and overlooked form of labour adjustment in the public sector. Overall, this thesis concludes that employers’ labour-use practices need to be conceptualised within the context of the opportunities and constraints imposed by the interaction of demand and supply-side factors.

Within Australia and in Europe. there is evidence of growth in the incidence of non¬standard forms of employment such as part-time and casual work. Part of this growth can be attributed to changes in the structure of the economy and the increasing importance of service industries where non-standard forms of employment proliferate. There is also evidence, however, that employers at the firm level are progressively expanding their use of non-standard employment and reducing their reliance on full-time labour. One explanation for this organisational-level phenomena has been suggested by Atkinson (1987) in his account of the ‘flexible firm’. Atkinson claims that employers are increasingly attempting to divide the workforce into two major segments: a skilled, full-time core labour force and an unskilled, non-standard segment. This thesis examines Atkinson’s ‘flexible firm’ model through a study of labour-use practices of three acute hospitals in Queensland. A main finding of this thesis is the generalised and substantial growth of non-standard employment in all types of Queensland hospitals. The growth of non-standard hospital labour is not as, Atkinson would suggest, largely the result of demand-side strategies of employers but is also conditioned by supply-side factors. Gender, rather than skill, is found to be an important determinant of the proliferation of non-standard employment. Non-standard employment is not the major labour adjustment mechanism in all sectors of the hospital industry. Labour intensification is a critical and overlooked form of labour adjustment in the public sector. Overall, this thesis concludes that employers’ labour-use practices need to be conceptualised within the context of the opportunities and constraints imposed by the interaction of demand and supply-side factors.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Griffith Business School
Griffith Business School
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Creative industries have significance in considerations of regional development because of their potential for both social-cultural and political-economic benefit. This is especially the case in Indigenous communities, given the potential of traditional and contemporary cultural expression for industry development and employment. This research set out to explore and evaluate an action research approach to creative industries development in regional contexts, stimulated by a research initiative of　Queensland's Department of State Development in cooperation with Queensland University of Technology's Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre. It is based on an analysis of seven pilot projects undertaken between 2002 and 2004, most of which involved Indigenous　participation and which gave rise to consideration of the additional value of Indigenist research perspectives. The research found that an action research methodology, informed by Indigenist research values, can assist creative enterprise development in a regional context through the development of new businesses or by value-adding to existing businesses, and the consequent generation and exploitation of new intellectual property. In this process, it found that there is an emerging role for the creative entrepreneur, such a role arising from the practices of community cultural development and social-cultural animation.

Creative industries have significance in considerations of regional development because of their potential for both social-cultural and political-economic benefit. This is especially the case in Indigenous communities, given the potential of traditional and contemporary cultural expression for industry development and employment. This research set out to explore and evaluate an action research approach to creative industries development in regional contexts, stimulated by a research initiative of　Queensland's Department of State Development in cooperation with Queensland University of Technology's Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre. It is based on an analysis of seven pilot projects undertaken between 2002 and 2004, most of which involved Indigenous　participation and which gave rise to consideration of the additional value of Indigenist research perspectives. The research found that an action research methodology, informed by Indigenist research values, can assist creative enterprise development in a regional context through the development of new businesses or by value-adding to existing businesses, and the consequent generation and exploitation of new intellectual property. In this process, it found that there is an emerging role for the creative entrepreneur, such a role arising from the practices of community cultural development and social-cultural animation.

The notion of Queensland as a ‘Smart State’ is the Queensland Beattie Government’s response to global conditions that require a new type of worker and citizen for a new knowledge economy. The role of education in the success of the ‘Smart State’ is clearly outlined in the Queensland Government’s vision statements and policies, identifying teachers as a key factor in the production of this new type of worker and citizen. In this study I explore the relationship between Queensland’s Smart State policy and the daily practices of teachers as they are implicated in the building of a ‘Smart State’. The study takes place during what is unquestionably the largest and most comprehensive reform effort to be imposed on Queensland schools and teachers, under the auspices of a ‘Smart State’. The research includes policy analysis of two key Smart State documents, and fieldwork involving semi-structured interviews, observations and artefact collection of the work of two primary school teachers. Using Fairclough’s theories regarding the relationship between discourse and social change, it is possible to show how changes occurring in contemporary organisations are related to changes in discourse, in particular, those surrounding the discourses of a ‘knowledge economy’ or ‘globalisation’. The ‘Smart State’ is conceptualised in this study as regimes of discourses that may produce new practices and new ways of acting and being (Fairclough, 2001a). The interdiscursive, linguistic and semiotic strategies used in Smart State policy are analysed to show how this discourse is emerging into a hegemonic position, while identifying the dominant discourses reiterated in the policy as necessary skills for a new type of worker. These discourses are mapped onto those identified through the fieldwork of teachers’ daily work practices to determine if Smart State discourses are becoming apparent in teachers’ work. This study is significant because it makes visible the current relationship between the discourses of the ‘Smart State’ and teachers’ daily work. In this current climate of rapid change and economic survival it is important that the operationalization of a ‘Smart State’ can be attributed to teachers’ work as new ways of acting and interacting become a part of their daily practices.

This thesis examines the spiritual formation of Queensland Baptists ministers. It explores their current practice and seeks to systematise it into a framework. By elucidating a paradigm it is anticipated there will be two positive benefits. First, ministers will be able to be more intentional regarding their own formation and then second, they will be better equipped to assist their parishioners in their formation. Foundational to the thesis is that it is not sufficient to merely know about God in an academic manner but one ought to actually know God in an intimate and experiential way.

The World Health Organization (2020a) labels childhood obesity as ‘one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st Century’ (para. 1). Schools are avenues for obesity intervention through food literacy education, the delivery of which occurs in Health and Physical Education and in Design and Technologies (Home Economics) in the Australian Curriculum (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2017; Ronto et al., 2017a). In this study, home economics as the subject for the delivery for food literacy education is the focus. An exploratory mixed methods case study was engaged using an online survey instrument for data collection during February-March 2021. The research questions explored Australian curriculum and school-based influences and constraints on years 7-10 Queensland secondary school food literacy programs, how Home Economics teachers, who are members of the Home Economics Institute of Australia (Queensland), currently deliver food literacy through the Australian Curriculum, and the changes in the Australian Curriculum, and school-based support, they require to deliver effective holistic food literacy programs. SPSS and Leximancer were used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data respectively, followed by data convergence to address the research questions. Key findings reveal that 80% of respondents agreed that the current Design and Technologies curriculum needs to be changed, furthermore 61% agreed that school-based change was required to support effective, holistic food literacy education. Curriculum mandated practical food education and transition of nutrition into home economics subjects were core themes in the responses. This study contributes to the growing body of research signifying the value of home economics to deliver school-based food literacy education. It contributes to this evidence base by exploring in depth the influences and constraints experienced by home economics teachers to undertake this work. Given the role of home economics educators as key to addressing the childhood obesity crisis, this study reveals the challenges that serve as impediments to this crucial work.
Thesis (Masters)
Master of Education and Professional Studies Research (MEdProfStRes)
School Educ & Professional St
Arts, Education and Law
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Histories of public health in colonial and immediately post colonial Queensland do not, in general, mention any role for the police. Equally, histories of the Queensland police are as reticent on the subject as their medical colleagues. Annual Reports from Commissioners of Police and Commissioners of Public Health to the Parliament are also silent on the subject. Yet it is evident that, especially in the nineteenth century, the police played an important role in the management of some diseases, both acute and chronic. In this thesis, I investigate the public health role of the Queensland police: starting with the New South Wales Towns Police Act of 1838, which empowered the police of proclaimed towns to order the removal of obstructions and nuisances, the police then moved into more 'medical‘ areas. As an important part of their function, the discipline and control of the populace in public places, they became involved in the early management of persons suspected of being of unsound mind. Later, with the Contagious Diseases Act of 1868, the police became involved in the complicated nexus between prostitution and venereal diseases, a nexus that would lead directly to the Fitzgerald Inquiry of 1989. Aborigines were also widely perceived to be affected by venereal diseases; since they did not in general live in towns proclaimed under the Contagious Diseases legislation, they were ignored by the primary health advisory body, the Central Board of Health. The police, trying to establish better relations with the Indigenous population after the carnage of the Frontier Wars, attempted to help out those who seemed to be suffering the most. The discovery of gold had profound demographic effects, including the 'invasion‘ of the gold fields by a large number of Chinese labourers, people who soon came to be labeled as the importers of the dread disease of leprosy. The police were instructed in 1892 to arrest suspected ‗lepers‘, and were expected to look after them during the long periods that often occurred between arrest and confirmation of diagnosis, at which point they would escort the unfortunate patient to a lazarette. In addition, they performed important social roles, dealing with matters of compensation for goods destroyed (from fear of contagion), to investigating the social conditions of families left without bread winners, and other activities.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Humanities
Arts, Education and Law
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Anthony Downs public choice theory proposes that every rational person would try to meet their own desires in preference to those of others, and that such rational persons would attempt to obtain these desires in the most efficient manner possible. This thesis submits that the application of this theory would mean that public servants and politicians would perform acts of corruption and maladministration in order to efficiently meet their desires. As such action is unavoidable, political parties must appear to meet the public demand for accountability systems, but must not make these systems viable lest they expose the corruption and maladministration that would threaten the government’s chance or re-election. The thesis demonstrates this hypothesis through a study of the history of the public sector in Queensland. It shows that all governments have displayed a commitment for accountability whilst simultaneously ensuring the systems would not be able to interfere with government control or expose its flaws.

Anthony Downs public choice theory proposes that every rational person would try to meet their own desires in preference to those of others, and that such rational persons would attempt to obtain these desires in the most efficient manner possible. This thesis submits that the application of this theory would mean that public servants and politicians would perform acts of corruption and maladministration in order to efficiently meet their desires. As such action is unavoidable, political parties must appear to meet the public demand for accountability systems, but must not make these systems viable lest they expose the corruption and maladministration that would threaten the government’s chance or re-election. The thesis demonstrates this hypothesis through a study of the history of the public sector in Queensland. It shows that all governments have displayed a commitment for accountability whilst simultaneously ensuring the systems would not be able to interfere with government control or expose its flaws.

Writing Women into the Law in Queensland consists, as well as an exegesis, of profiles of seven significant women in the law in Queensland which have been published in A Woman's Place: 100 years of women lawyers edited by Susan Purdon and Aladin Rahemtula and published by the Supreme Court of Queensland Library in November 2005. Those women are Leneen Forde, Chancellor of Griffith University and former Governor of Queensland; Kate Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Court and now of the Court of Appeal; Leanne Clare, the first female Director of Public Prosecutions; Barbara Newton, the first female Public Defender; Carmel MacDonald, President of the Aboriginal Land Tribunals and the first female law lecturer in Queensland; Fleur Kingham, formerly Deputy President of the land and Resources Tribunal and now Judge of the District Court and Catherine Pirie, the first Magistrate of Torres Strait descent. The accompanying exegesis investigates the development of the creative work out of the tensions between the aims of the work, its political context, the multiple positions of the biographer, and the collaborative and collective nature of the enterprise.

Writing Women into the Law in Queensland consists, as well as an exegesis, of profiles of seven significant women in the law in Queensland which have been published in A Woman's Place: 100 years of women lawyers edited by Susan Purdon and Aladin Rahemtula and published by the Supreme Court of Queensland Library in November 2005. Those women are Leneen Forde, Chancellor of Griffith University and former Governor of Queensland; Kate Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Court and now of the Court of Appeal; Leanne Clare, the first female Director of Public Prosecutions; Barbara Newton, the first female Public Defender; Carmel MacDonald, President of the Aboriginal Land Tribunals and the first female law lecturer in Queensland; Fleur Kingham, formerly Deputy President of the land and Resources Tribunal and now Judge of the District Court and Catherine Pirie, the first Magistrate of Torres Strait descent. The accompanying exegesis investigates the development of the creative work out of the tensions between the aims of the work, its political context, the multiple positions of the biographer, and the collaborative and collective nature of the enterprise.

This research was stimulated by the knowledge that dental services to rural and remote consumers in Australia are unpredictable and will remain so into the future. Rural and remote consumers are disadvantaged in their access to dental services due to distance, scarcity of dentists, lack of choice· and variable quality of treatment and facilities. Nonetheless, it is clear that some rural and remote consumers are able to achieve sound oral health. This study examined these dental consumers in order to identify characteristics which may contribute to their success. Providing appropriate and adequate dental services to rural and remote towns is predicted to become more difficult and require greater travel due to both a reduction in the number of dentists and a smaller population base. Encouraging rural residents to become more effective as dental consumers may result in improved preventive practices, more positive attitudes to oral health and better dental status. Dental effectiveness is improved when the dentist-patient relationship is sound and when there is a source of routine and continuing dental care, features which should form part of public health policies and training of rural dentists.

This Research Project examines methodology used by the Mapping and Surveying Industry, Industry Advisory Council to respond to change occurring within Queensland's Geographic Information "Industry". The word industry is written in "parenthesis" because it yet has to be proven that a definable Queensland Geographic Information Industry exists. This project also examines that question as a side issue. The perception that change is occurring is evident in the Industry Strategic Plan, formulated in 1986, and in public statements by prominent members of the industry. The Industry Advisory Council convened three search conferences during 1989, and this study of action learning is based on participant observation at those conferences with comparison drawn through individual interviews with "industry" members. The questions addressed are: 1.Is the search conference action learning construct appropriate to achieve the kind a change and management of change sought by the "industry" leaders? 2. Did negotiated learning take place at the actions search conferences? 3.Are the base assumptions revealed at the search conferences reflected in the wider "industry?"; and 4. Did the search conferences achieve change? Revans (1982) defines action learning as "Learningby- Doing", or in more detail: "Action learning is a means of development, intellectual, emotional or physical, that requires its subject, through responsible involvement in some real, complex and stressful problem, to achieve intended change sufficient to improve his observable behaviour henceforth in the problem field" (Revans 1982, p.626). Ethnographic methodology is used to study the three search conferences as a participative observer. Verification or refutation of opinions stated and conclusions drawn from this observation is sought through direct interviews conducted with 18 "industry" members. Examination of available literature leads to the conclusion that the answer to the first question addressed is yes. However, the other three questions were answered in the negative. Observation of activity at the search conferences did not indicate that action learning was taking place, or that opinions expressed were reflected in the wider "industry". The research carried out for this project did not find evidence to suggest that the search conferences promoted change. Two suggestions are given for possible future action by the Industry Advisory Council and the "industry".

‘Millscapes’ is a heritage story that examines what heritage does. It sits within the field of critical heritage studies, drawing on the framework of New Materialism to explore how place and its inhabitants are entangled, materially, culturally and historically, within the Queensland wool textile industry. Its focus is the Queensland Woollen Manufacturing Company (QWMC), a state heritage-listed site situated in Ipswich, a satellite city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Little has been written about the woollen mills apart from newspaper accounts, meaning that the significance of the woollen textile industry for Ipswich and Queensland is little known and understood. The study is timely for the QWMC site as it was purchased in 2015 by Ipswich City Council and is undergoing conservation works. The future use of the site is yet to be determined. The questions of what this heritage does are examined through exploring the mill site’s territorialities and flows of affect, and the intra-actions between machines, operators, mill management structures and entanglements with families and communities. Findings also emerge on the ways in which New Materialism brings understandings of the becoming of this heritage, and cultivates new heritage research methods. By focusing on the last decades of QWMC (1947–1971), the research revisits times of extraordinary social change for the predominantly female workforce, in parallel with the global forces acting on the textile industry. The ‘Millscapes’ research can be regarded as a ‘re-turn’. It is not just revisiting the past but turning it over, revitalising understandings of woollen textile manufacturing in Queensland. New Materialism emphasises the material elements of the social (Fox & Alldred 2018b) and in doing so provides game-breaking insights to the field of heritage studies. The ‘New’ in New Materialism refers to a newness in thinking, deliberately setting aside hierarchical and a priori logic to rethink relationships and ontologies (St Pierre, Jackson & Mazzei 2016, p. 100). In this way, New Materialism breaks down binaries, decentring the human. Agency becomes performative and not necessarily human (Barad 2007). The non-linearity of causation is created by flows of affect (DeLanda 2015, p. 17), also reflected in the intra-actions between material and living entities (Barad 2007). Over a decade ago, Coole and Frost (2010) noted New Materialism’s newness, as indicated by a lack of agreed labelling. Since then, a proliferation of terms used within the New Materialism framework underline what Kuhn (1970) would identify as a revolutionary state of this school of thought. Through the conceptual and theoretical resources of New Materialism, ‘Millscapes’ demonstrates what heritage can do with a site in its raw state: it is not about adaptive re-use or creating a museum. Rather, it reflects the entanglement of place, space, bodies, presences, absences, atmospheres and memories held within the space – particles in suspension that move, collide, bond and come apart. Components intra-act, affect, change. The research events disrupt the past; memories leap across time to the present becoming enfolded with other matter through the plurality of site histories, ethnographies, walkthroughs, archival documents and photographs. The knowledge gained through my own learning about wool and fibre arts brought insights into the manufacturing processes. Field trips contextualised the mill with other remaining mill structures, the Queensland sheep industry and new start-up mills. Concepts, methodologies and findings merged. Data created interpretation, which created data. Heritage became iterative acts, bringing the past to the present and drawing in future potentialities, significantly shifting perspectives and boundaries. The performativity of heritage emerged through different materialities as I walked the mill site, studying the photographs and prompting workers’ rememberings. Memories pushed through, energised by their affective intensities. Stories voiced by former workers intermingled with observations of the heritage site and remnant matter. Spatial memories were drawn to life and the site’s possibilities imagined. The New Materialism framework generated rich, but often overwhelming, historical and experiential data offering a kaleidoscope of views. Each ‘twist’ could bring a movement of time, a movement through space as bodies emerged and receded within the scope yet remained enfolded within a larger account. As I struggled to analyse the data without disturbing its inherent entangledness, I was pushed to develop visualisation tools to examine intra-actions, the power dynamics through re/deterritorialisation and the interplay of materiality and expression. These tools are embedded with the findings of bringing a New Materialism perspective to this heritage. A key outcome of the research has been to understand the mill heritage as a process of intra-action: ongoing transformation through relationships. The research found stories of working conditions and the roles of women and girls at the mill entangled with social expectations around work, marriage and pay inequalities. These factors were further enmeshed with industrial manufacturing processes and practices – and, of course, the materiality of wool, always entangled, tough yet fragile. Unknown elements of the mill surfaced, through the intermingling of participants’ drawings, interior photographs and mill spaces, locating machinery in the empty spaces and clarifying the mill processes. Bringing agency to the non-human shifted knowing. As discussed in this thesis, operating a machine becomes contingent upon intra-actions between operators’ skills, behaviours, memories, machine capabilities, wool behaviours and the mill environment. Intra-action gives rise to considering what is shared and how components change through relationship. Power emerged as a back and forth of territorialisations, as millworkers found ways to get through the day. Gendered roles, although entrenched within social and organisational structures, could nevertheless change, both slowly and suddenly. What does heritage do? It remakes our understanding of our place in the world. A heritage policy framework can narrow the view of heritage around sites, building fabric and aesthetic, leaving behind important matter that resides mostly in memories. ‘Millscapes’ troubles the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) (Smith 2006) as well as decentring the human in productive ways. Cultural heritage simply becomes heritage, as the lines between nature and culture blur, the global becomes enfolded in the local, and the industrial re-blends into the city’s commercial centre – once distant, now engulfed. In this account, humans are no longer assumed to be the centre of the story – they are not the only actants with agency. The myriad human and non-human components of the mill assemblage change at different speeds and intensities. Importantly, this work has potential for informing strategies for heritage management and processes to determine heritage significance – moving beyond a values-based approach. The statement of significance in the state heritage register is wanting in terms of social and industrial significance. Understanding what heritage does and what this site does provides a refreshing view. New Materialism calls attention to the generative nature of the heritage and an understanding of the whole assemblage. The mill assemblage is dynamic, not static – not something that is or was, but a place constantly being remade (even if imperceptibly). The process of research with in-situ activities opened the doors of the mill to the communities connected with it. This reach into community can be extended further.These connections enrich what the heritage does, our understandings of it; they recognise the shared responsibilities and the place’s ongoing becoming. This research attends to the multi-scalar dimensions of change across time, space, and matter: different times, different places, different people. Giovannelli’s cantata, quoted below, weaves the threads of three generations of women entangling handcrafting, manufacturing, and writing. This dissertation attempts a similar movement. The challenge of this work has been more than the writing of a doctoral thesis. Its findings are not only academic; they are also material, personal, creative. Through this work, we can show how the constant churn of matter brings a renewed ethics that highlights coexistence, our shared responsibility for our heritage and what it helps us to make out of the past and for the future. Heritage thus becomes a ‘making with’, a continual intra-action, a making and remaking of our world. The act of turning over and rearranging the folds of matter, space and time allows the becoming of something new. I, lost in a reverie on the shore / of an age old sea / holding a pen / but sharing the looms same lot / of interwoven strands and lives / a thread running through a century / of knots and invisible mends / the always threatening scissors / in your sewing basket, with its apotropaic stones/ and a piece of work in progress. My first time visiting the mill site was a Saturday afternoon, quiet, steamy, the mauve of a young jacaranda nicely lending its hues to frame my photograph. Peering through the chain wire fence didn’t give me any sense of what lay inside – just an old factory becoming derelict. The buildings, a forlorn presence on the street, were nothing grand, no indication of what it had been – just insignia on the gates QWM: Queensland Woollen Manufacturing – but you would need to know that. In a different space-time, a weekday in the 1960s, the milieu of the working mill, the loud rhythmic sound of shuttles flying across rooms paused each day with the ‘knock-off’ siren. A local had told me about afternoons back then, out on the verandah across the road, listening for that siren, the street filling with bicycles, and buses and young women pouring out of the mill. Another spacetime leap to wintery Saturdays, The Terrace vibrating with the surge of footy crowds, their team loyalties worn on scarves and beanies, made from real wool.The quietness today made me conscious of the whir of my snapping camera, even my presence in the street interrupted the residential ambience. This old mill was a building becoming heritage ...
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Hum, Lang & Soc Sc
Arts, Education and Law
Full Text

This research study explores the issue of teacher leadership in South-East Queensland Anglican schools. An initial exploration of the context of Anglican education in South-East Queensland confirmed that both nationally and within the Anglican system, hierarchical understandings of school leadership were being challenged amidst a growing expectation of teacher leadership. However, despite this expectation of teacher leadership, there was little in respect to formal policy and resource support for teacher leadership within South-East Queensland Anglican schools. This research study seeks to gain a more informed and sophisticated understanding of teacher leadership, with particular focus on the perspective of classroom teachers. A comprehensive analysis of key literature in educational change, professionalism in education and educational leadership, revealed a number of key insights that informed this study. Significant socio-economic change in recent decades has brought about corresponding educational change. This has resulted in a call for greater professionalism in education and a new paradigm of educational leadership. Within this context, there is new interest in distributing leadership beyond the formal role of the principal and into the hands of teacher leaders. However, a further review of the literature highlighted the lack of a clear conceptualisation of teacher leadership. While teacher leadership is predominantly considered in the literature as the domain of those in formal, positional roles, less is known about informal, in-class teacher leadership. Based on these insights, the researcher identified one major research question: How do teachers, who are recognised as teacher leaders in South-East Queensland Anglican schools, conceptualise teacher leadership? To answer this research question, four research sub-questions were posed: Behaviour of teacher leaders - What do they do? Purpose of teacher leadership - Why do teachers strive for this? Feelings of teacher leaders - How do they feel about what they do? Support for teacher leaders - What do they need? This research study is situated within the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism. As both a perspective and a method, symbolic interactionism is situated within a pragmatic constructivist research paradigm. This research study explored a restricted group of 16 teachers within three South-East Queensland Anglican schools, and employed qualitative research methods including Experience Sampling Method and focus group interviews. The findings of this research study suggest that teacher leaders in South-East Queensland Anglican schools have a confused conceptualisation of teacher leadership, with little common symbolic language to delineate the phenomenon. This study made the following conclusions in relation to teacher leadership in South-East Queensland Anglican schools: The broad understanding of teacher leadership is unrecognised in the field of education. Teacher leadership is a complex phenomenon. Teacher leadership is principled action in support of learning. There is untapped potential for teacher leaders to act as change agents in school revitalisation. Collegial relationships, the provision of time, relevant professional development and administrative support enable teacher leadership There is a need for a role-making policy to support teacher leadership. The development of teacher leadership in South-East Queensland Anglican schools requires support from the Anglican Schools Commission, school principals and the teachers themselves, through deliberate action in developing appropriate policy and practice.

Queensland and much of eastern Australia have had significant rainfall declines since ~1951, causing economic hardship on rural and urban communities. However, no significant attempt has been made to identify and understand the physical causes of the rainfall declines over southeast Queensland (SE QLD) and whether they are likely to continue into the 21st century under higher levels of global warming.In this research, climate observations, models and global climate data as well as palaeoclimate information are used to investigate past, present and future rainfall trends in SE QLD. Five global climate models (GCMs) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC–AR4) show a significant decrease in rainfall will occur over the SE QLD region during the 21st century. Observations since ~1951 show the mean sea level pressure (MSLP) has been increasing over much of Queensland, indicating the subtropical ridge has been expanding. This study attributes the increase in the MSLP and some of the rainfall decline to changes in the subtropical ridge and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM). Projections show increases in the MSLP over the region are likely to continue during the 21st century associated with the positive polarity of SAM. Land cover changes over SE QLD were investigated using a regional climate model and show rainfall decreases with higher surface albedo values. Finally, a palaeoenvironmental record developed using lake sediments from Lake Broadwater in SE QLD, indicates a gradual rainfall decline has occurred during the last ~3.2 kyr B.P. Hence SE QLD has undergone a slow rainfall decline since the late Holocene and also since ~1951, with these conditions likely to continue and intensify during the 21st century.

This research study explores the issue of teacher leadership in South-East Queensland Anglican schools. An initial exploration of the context of Anglican education in South-East Queensland confirmed that both nationally and within the Anglican system, hierarchical understandings of school leadership were being challenged amidst a growing expectation of teacher leadership. However, despite this expectation of teacher leadership, there was little in respect to formal policy and resource support for teacher leadership within South-East Queensland Anglican schools. This research study seeks to gain a more informed and sophisticated understanding of teacher leadership, with particular focus on the perspective of classroom teachers. A comprehensive analysis of key literature in educational change, professionalism in education and educational leadership, revealed a number of key insights that informed this study. Significant socio-economic change in recent decades has brought about corresponding educational change. This has resulted in a call for greater professionalism in education and a new paradigm of educational leadership. Within this context, there is new interest in distributing leadership beyond the formal role of the principal and into the hands of teacher leaders. However, a further review of the literature highlighted the lack of a clear conceptualisation of teacher leadership. While teacher leadership is predominantly considered in the literature as the domain of those in formal, positional roles, less is known about informal, in-class teacher leadership.;Based on these insights, the researcher identified one major research question: How do teachers, who are recognised as teacher leaders in South-East Queensland Anglican schools, conceptualise teacher leadership? To answer this research question, four research sub-questions were posed: Behaviour of teacher leaders - What do they do? Purpose of teacher leadership - Why do teachers strive for this? Feelings of teacher leaders - How do they feel about what they do? Support for teacher leaders - What do they need? This research study is situated within the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism. As both a perspective and a method, symbolic interactionism is situated within a pragmatic constructivist research paradigm. This research study explored a restricted group of 16 teachers within three South-East Queensland Anglican schools, and employed qualitative research methods including Experience Sampling Method and focus group interviews. The findings of this research study suggest that teacher leaders in South-East Queensland Anglican schools have a confused conceptualisation of teacher leadership, with little common symbolic language to delineate the phenomenon. This study made the following conclusions in relation to teacher leadership in South-East Queensland Anglican schools: The broad understanding of teacher leadership is unrecognised in the field of education. Teacher leadership is a complex phenomenon. Teacher leadership is principled action in support of learning. There is untapped potential for teacher leaders to act as change agents in school revitalisation. Collegial relationships, the provision of time, relevant professional development and administrative support enable teacher leadership There is a need for a role-making policy to support teacher leadership.;The development of teacher leadership in South-East Queensland Anglican schools requires support from the Anglican Schools Commission, school principals and the teachers themselves, through deliberate action in developing appropriate policy and practice.

Monoclonal employed antibodies against to investigate the various myosins have been employed to investigate the muscle fibre types in limb and tongue muscles of the Queensland cane toad Bufomarinus. The results of experiments using immunocytochemical techniques suggest that these antibodies can detect twitch fibres of types 1 - 3 as well as slow-graded fibres of type 4. 5 as established by Smith and' Ovalle (1973) in the limb muscles of Xenopus laevis. Evidence is presented to suggest that twitch fibres may contain more than one type of myosin in a single fibre. In addition, limb muscles showed seasonal variation in immunocytochemical staining patterns which could be explained by synthesis of type 2 myosin in type 1 fibres. In young toads, a difference in immunocytochemical reactivity of fibres compared with mature toads was found, suggesting the possible existence of foetal myosin in type 1 fibres in these animals. In addition to this, there is a progressive increase of type 2 myosin synthesises in type 1 fibres as the young toads mature to adulthood. Immunocytochemical data also suggest that tongue muscle fibres can be classified into types 1-3 as in twitch limb muscles. In the hyoglossus muscle, a population of fibres displays a staining pattern not found in the limb muscles, suggesting the existence of a unique type of myosin in these fibres.

Bush fires...two words which conjure up images of destruction and despair. Constituting one of the most destructive forces of nature, their impact has been felt worldwide, extending beyond the damage caused to the physical environment, to include disruption and hardship to communities – impacts which have unfortunately been seen recently in Victoria, where over 200 lives were lost and more than 2000 homes were destroyed by bushfires in February 2009. The level of risk to communities from bush fires has been observed to be steadily increasing in urban-rural interface areas internationally. Concerns have been raised in the observation that populations are essentially being placed in harm’s way by the growing popularity of rural-style developments and eco-living trends. Understandably, significant research has been dedicated to the study of bush fires, improving our understanding of fire behaviour and progressing technical development, more recently also expanding to address the social and town planning considerations of bushfire risk management. However, relatively little research has been conducted specifically targeting bushfire risk management characteristics and requirements in Queensland. Those investigations that have been undertaken have been limited in scope, essentially being administrative in nature. Therefore, what are essentially generic research principles are being applied as the basis for bushfire risk management strategies in Queensland. The concern with this is that although bushfires will behave in a certain way in given environments, “risk” is a dynamic concept, and the implications of bushfire risk management will vary significantly with the social and organisational environment in which it occurs. Although contemporary bushfire risk management in Queensland is indeed based on established theory, in the absence of a detailed investigation into the social, organisational and physical characteristics specific to Queensland, the principles of bushfire risk management are essentially being applied in the form of a generic template, rather than the being objectively “managed”.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Griffith School of Environment
Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology
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Measurement and prediction of sediment transport rates are important for rivers in Queensland, particularly in connection to sediment delivery to near shore lagoons in the Great Barrier Reef. Planning and managing for sustainable sand and gravel extraction also requires accurate and reliable calculation of bed material load in river systems. Using sediment transport formulas can overcome the difficulties and reduce the costs associated with collecting field data. Sediment transport formulas were developed from theories that relate sediment transport to hydraulic and sediment variables, and were calibrated mostly with laboratory experiments. Previous evaluations of these formulas, mostly under the US and European conditions, showed that the suitability of these formulas could vary greatly according to the flow conditions under which they were applied. Evaluating the formulas in Australia is virtuallly nonexistent. In this study, sediment transport formulas are evaluated for Queensland rivers, where a wide range of climatic, hydrological and sediment conditions exist.
Thesis (Masters)
Master of Philosophy (MPhil)
Griffith School of Engineering
Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology
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Suicide has drawn much attention from both the scientific community and the public. Examining the impact of socio-environmental factors on suicide is essential in developing suicide prevention strategies and interventions, because it will provide health authorities with important information for their decision-making. However, previous studies did not examine the impact of socio-environmental factors on suicide using a spatial analysis approach. The purpose of this study was to identify the patterns of suicide and to examine how socio-environmental factors impact on suicide over time and space at the Local Governmental Area (LGA) level in Queensland. The suicide data between 1999 and 2003 were collected from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Socio-environmental variables at the LGA level included climate (rainfall, maximum and minimum temperature), Socioeconomic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) and demographic variables (proportion of Indigenous population, unemployment rate, proportion of population with low income and low education level). Climate data were obtained from Australian Bureau of Meteorology. SEIFA and demographic variables were acquired from ABS. A series of statistical and geographical information system (GIS) approaches were applied in the analysis. This study included two stages. The first stage used average annual data to view the spatial pattern of suicide and to examine the association between socio-environmental factors and suicide over space. The second stage examined the spatiotemporal pattern of suicide and assessed the socio-environmental determinants of suicide, using more detailed seasonal data. In this research, 2,445 suicide cases were included, with 1,957 males (80.0%) and 488 females (20.0%). In the first stage, we examined the spatial pattern and the determinants of suicide using 5-year aggregated data. Spearman correlations were used to assess associations between variables. Then a Poisson regression model was applied in the multivariable analysis, as the occurrence of suicide is a small probability event and this model fitted the data quite well. Suicide mortality varied across LGAs and was associated with a range of socio-environmental factors. The multivariable analysis showed that maximum temperature was significantly and positively associated with male suicide (relative risk [RR] = 1.03, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.07). Higher proportion of Indigenous population was accompanied with more suicide in male population (male: RR = 1.02, 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.03). There was a positive association between unemployment rate and suicide in both genders (male: RR = 1.04, 95% CI: 1.02 to 1.06; female: RR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.16). No significant association was observed for rainfall, minimum temperature, SEIFA, proportion of population with low individual income and low educational attainment. In the second stage of this study, we undertook a preliminary spatiotemporal analysis of suicide using seasonal data. Firstly, we assessed the interrelations between variables. Secondly, a generalised estimating equations (GEE) model was used to examine the socio-environmental impact on suicide over time and space, as this model is well suited to analyze repeated longitudinal data (e.g., seasonal suicide mortality in a certain LGA) and it fitted the data better than other models (e.g., Poisson model). The suicide pattern varied with season and LGA. The north of Queensland had the highest suicide mortality rate in all the seasons, while there was no suicide case occurred in the southwest. Northwest had consistently higher suicide mortality in spring, autumn and winter. In other areas, suicide mortality varied between seasons. This analysis showed that maximum temperature was positively associated with suicide among male population (RR = 1.24, 95% CI: 1.04 to 1.47) and total population (RR = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.32). Higher proportion of Indigenous population was accompanied with more suicide among total population (RR = 1.16, 95% CI: 1.13 to 1.19) and by gender (male: RR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.13; female: RR = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.03 to 1.48). Unemployment rate was positively associated with total (RR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.24 to 1.59) and female (RR=1.09, 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.18) suicide. There was also a positive association between proportion of population with low individual income and suicide in total (RR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.10 to 1.48) and male (RR = 1.45, 95% CI: 1.23 to 1.72) population. Rainfall was only positively associated with suicide in total population (RR = 1.11, 95% CI: 1.04 to 1.19). There was no significant association for rainfall, minimum temperature, SEIFA, proportion of population with low educational attainment. The second stage is the extension of the first stage. Different spatial scales of dataset were used between the two stages (i.e., mean yearly data in the first stage, and seasonal data in the second stage), but the results are generally consistent with each other. Compared with other studies, this research explored the variety of the impact of a wide range of socio-environmental factors on suicide in different geographical units. Maximum temperature, proportion of Indigenous population, unemployment rate and proportion of population with low individual income were among the major determinants of suicide in Queensland. However, the influence from other factors (e.g. socio-culture background, alcohol and drug use) influencing suicide cannot be ignored. An in-depth understanding of these factors is vital in planning and implementing suicide prevention strategies. Five recommendations for future research are derived from this study: (1) It is vital to acquire detailed personal information on each suicide case and relevant information among the population in assessing the key socio-environmental determinants of suicide; (2) Bayesian model could be applied to compare mortality rates and their socio-environmental determinants across LGAs in future research; (3) In the LGAs with warm weather, high proportion of Indigenous population and/or unemployment rate, concerted efforts need to be made to control and prevent suicide and other mental health problems; (4) The current surveillance, forecasting and early warning system needs to be strengthened, to trace the climate and socioeconomic change over time and space and its impact on population health; (5) It is necessary to evaluate and improve the facilities of mental health care, psychological consultation, suicide prevention and control programs; especially in the areas with low socio-economic status, high unemployment rate, extreme weather events and natural disasters.

Suicide has drawn much attention from both the scientific community and the public. Examining the impact of socio-environmental factors on suicide is essential in developing suicide prevention strategies and interventions, because it will provide health authorities with important information for their decision-making. However, previous studies did not examine the impact of socio-environmental factors on suicide using a spatial analysis approach. The purpose of this study was to identify the patterns of suicide and to examine how socio-environmental factors impact on suicide over time and space at the Local Governmental Area (LGA) level in Queensland. The suicide data between 1999 and 2003 were collected from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Socio-environmental variables at the LGA level included climate (rainfall, maximum and minimum temperature), Socioeconomic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) and demographic variables (proportion of Indigenous population, unemployment rate, proportion of population with low income and low education level). Climate data were obtained from Australian Bureau of Meteorology. SEIFA and demographic variables were acquired from ABS. A series of statistical and geographical information system (GIS) approaches were applied in the analysis. This study included two stages. The first stage used average annual data to view the spatial pattern of suicide and to examine the association between socio-environmental factors and suicide over space. The second stage examined the spatiotemporal pattern of suicide and assessed the socio-environmental determinants of suicide, using more detailed seasonal data. In this research, 2,445 suicide cases were included, with 1,957 males (80.0%) and 488 females (20.0%). In the first stage, we examined the spatial pattern and the determinants of suicide using 5-year aggregated data. Spearman correlations were used to assess associations between variables. Then a Poisson regression model was applied in the multivariable analysis, as the occurrence of suicide is a small probability event and this model fitted the data quite well. Suicide mortality varied across LGAs and was associated with a range of socio-environmental factors. The multivariable analysis showed that maximum temperature was significantly and positively associated with male suicide (relative risk [RR] = 1.03, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.07). Higher proportion of Indigenous population was accompanied with more suicide in male population (male: RR = 1.02, 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.03). There was a positive association between unemployment rate and suicide in both genders (male: RR = 1.04, 95% CI: 1.02 to 1.06; female: RR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.16). No significant association was observed for rainfall, minimum temperature, SEIFA, proportion of population with low individual income and low educational attainment. In the second stage of this study, we undertook a preliminary spatiotemporal analysis of suicide using seasonal data. Firstly, we assessed the interrelations between variables. Secondly, a generalised estimating equations (GEE) model was used to examine the socio-environmental impact on suicide over time and space, as this model is well suited to analyze repeated longitudinal data (e.g., seasonal suicide mortality in a certain LGA) and it fitted the data better than other models (e.g., Poisson model). The suicide pattern varied with season and LGA. The north of Queensland had the highest suicide mortality rate in all the seasons, while there was no suicide case occurred in the southwest. Northwest had consistently higher suicide mortality in spring, autumn and winter. In other areas, suicide mortality varied between seasons. This analysis showed that maximum temperature was positively associated with suicide among male population (RR = 1.24, 95% CI: 1.04 to 1.47) and total population (RR = 1.15, 95% CI: 1.00 to 1.32). Higher proportion of Indigenous population was accompanied with more suicide among total population (RR = 1.16, 95% CI: 1.13 to 1.19) and by gender (male: RR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.13; female: RR = 1.23, 95% CI: 1.03 to 1.48). Unemployment rate was positively associated with total (RR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.24 to 1.59) and female (RR=1.09, 95% CI: 1.01 to 1.18) suicide. There was also a positive association between proportion of population with low individual income and suicide in total (RR = 1.28, 95% CI: 1.10 to 1.48) and male (RR = 1.45, 95% CI: 1.23 to 1.72) population. Rainfall was only positively associated with suicide in total population (RR = 1.11, 95% CI: 1.04 to 1.19). There was no significant association for rainfall, minimum temperature, SEIFA, proportion of population with low educational attainment. The second stage is the extension of the first stage. Different spatial scales of dataset were used between the two stages (i.e., mean yearly data in the first stage, and seasonal data in the second stage), but the results are generally consistent with each other. Compared with other studies, this research explored the variety of the impact of a wide range of socio-environmental factors on suicide in different geographical units. Maximum temperature, proportion of Indigenous population, unemployment rate and proportion of population with low individual income were among the major determinants of suicide in Queensland. However, the influence from other factors (e.g. socio-culture background, alcohol and drug use) influencing suicide cannot be ignored. An in-depth understanding of these factors is vital in planning and implementing suicide prevention strategies. Five recommendations for future research are derived from this study: (1) It is vital to acquire detailed personal information on each suicide case and relevant information among the population in assessing the key socio-environmental determinants of suicide; (2) Bayesian model could be applied to compare mortality rates and their socio-environmental determinants across LGAs in future research; (3) In the LGAs with warm weather, high proportion of Indigenous population and/or unemployment rate, concerted efforts need to be made to control and prevent suicide and other mental health problems; (4) The current surveillance, forecasting and early warning system needs to be strengthened, to trace the climate and socioeconomic change over time and space and its impact on population health; (5) It is necessary to evaluate and improve the facilities of mental health care, psychological consultation, suicide prevention and control programs; especially in the areas with low socio-economic status, high unemployment rate, extreme weather events and natural disasters.

Using historical narrative and extensive archival research, this thesis portrays the story of the twentieth century Queensland Rural Schools. The initiative started at Nambour Primary School in 1917, and extended over the next four decades to encompass thirty primary schools that functioned as centralized institutions training children in agricultural science, domestic science, and manual trade training. The Rural Schools formed the foundation of a systemised approach to agricultural education intended to facilitate the State’s closer settlement ideology. The purpose of the Rural Schools was to mitigate urbanisation, circumvent foreign incursion and increase Queensland’s productivity by turning boys into farmers, or the tradesmen required to support them, and girls into the homemakers that these farmers needed as wives and mothers for the next generation. Effectively Queensland took rural boys and girls and created a new yeomanry to aid the State’s development.

This study investigated conceptions of creativity in a group of Queensland teachers. The analysis of interview data produced precise descriptions of seven categories of meanings of creativity, delimiting the range and variance of meanings expressed. The study provides evidence of two distinct ways of experiencing and defining creativity. As a result the researcher was able to propose further research directions to extend educational understanding of creativity and recommended using the present study findings to strengthen policy and training measures for the Australian Curriculum focus on building creative capital.

Most corruption research is into what causes corruption, rather than how it functions, on institutional causal factors rather than how it works. There are strong practical reasons for this, given the difficulty in gaining reliable data about actual corruption. The political economy model of corruption is the most influential, coherent and popular. It describes corruption in terms of “rent seeking" behaviour by “rational optimisers”, and has the advantage of access to political economy tools and concepts such as game theory and principal agent theory. This thesis contests the assumptions of the rational choice influences on the political economy approach, using evidence from an in—depth case study of corruption in the Queensland Police Force between 1960 and 1987. The results show that the corrupt network in the Queensland Police Force involved highly complex social behaviour that displayed many “non rational” characteristics. Far from being rational optimisers focused on material benefits, corrupt network members were found to be willing to accept small material or non material rewards, even though their behaviour involved significant personal risk. Corrupt network members were also found to highly value social interactions and belonging to the corrupt network as a group. This is not to say that individuals in the corrupt network did not seek corrupt payments, as a large amount of cash was actually involved. However, the evidence shows that a very small number of “inner sanctum” power holders received a hugely disproportionate amount of the money while bearing disproportionately less of the risk. Corruption has to be holistically understood as an outcome of continuously functioning networks rather than as an episode with a distinct beginning and end. Using the data from the Queensland Police Force corrupt network, this thesis examines the nature of interactions between all the corrupt network actors using some of the tools and methodology of social network analysis. The evidence suggests that corrupt police networks are self contained and highly adaptive to threatsand opportunities from their environment. The network has a shape and function that transcends individuals, even though in the case of the Queensland Police Force corrupt network certain individuals were clearly important to its successful operation. The network is highly flexible and resilient, able to maintain itself while reducing activity even during periods of sustained external threat, and also to efficiently increase activity and access to resources when the environment is more favourable. The corrupt network is able to achieve these outcomes, both through using directly corrupt interactions between actors in the corrupt network, and other interactions that bear little relation to traditional conceptions of corruption. In particular this thesis finds that considerable energy is expended by corrupt network members in conducting interactions that: protect the network from external attack using network resources; promote the network to grow in directions that give it greater control of relevant resources; are of a social nature; and, promote the development of influence relations, access to resources, the swapping of information and the trading of favours. In fact, referring to a corrupt network underestimates the complexity of its interaction with its environment. The corrupt network within the Queensland Police Force interacted with several self contained networks that had links with each other: the corrupt police network; the criminal milieu; and, the adjacent influence network. The inter—relationships between all three networks were crucial to the operation of the police corrupt network, which at its highest point was receiving over $56,000 a month in corrupt payments from criminals. The evidence shows that without links to the criminals the corrupt conduct could not occur, but that links to the adjacent influence network were also highly important to corrupt network operation. The adjacent influence network consisted of a socially connected group of actors from Queensland’s primary social institutions including: the political sphere (and in particular the ruling National Party); the judiciary; and, the media. Access to powerholders in these institutions allowed the corrupt network to receive information and resourCes, thus ensuring it could protect and sustain itself over a long period of time. Anti-corruption measures need to take into account these social and network characteristics of corruption to be successful.

In 1988, the author completed a special planning study as partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Graduate Diploma. in Urban and Regional Planning course. 'Ihe study examined. whether ministerial rezonings were a valid component of the Queensland planning system. Conclusions were drawn and recommendations made as to how it was considered the system could be improved. As part of the Master of Applied Science, City and Regional Planning Course, a requirement is that this study be upgraded to an acceptable standard. To achieve this, an examination will be made of changes which have occurred in the legislation, the attitude of the current Queensland Government to Ministerial intervention, both when in opposition and now as the government, and the practice of ministerial intervention. 'Ihe study will outline the recommnendations which were previously made and compare the extent to which they have or haven't been adopted. Should effective changes to the system not have been made, then this updated study will make further recommendations which are capable of being implemented. 'Ihe methodology section of this chapter will set out the order and method of this updated study.

This study investigates why some public sector entities enter the Queensland Public Sector Annual Report Awards (QARA), while others do not. Organisers of such awards aim to provide incentives for public sector entities to improve the quality of their reporting. It is assumed that entities which voluntarily enter the QARA must receive positive net benefits for the entity as a whole and/or personal benefits to the mangers (bureaucrats) responsible. Agency theory provides a theoretical basis for prior public sector research which has been largely US based. This study extends that research by applying it to a different institutional setting: the Queensland public sector. Agency relationships within the Queensland public sector are identified for: state government departments, statutory bodies, and government owned corporations; and local government councils. This allows an analysis of the incentives for monitoring and signalling within these agency relationships. Specifically, this study focuses on the use of quality annual reports to signal quality of management, and the concept that QARA entry highlights the quality of annual reports. Therefore it is possible to identify potential benefits of entering QARA and to predict which entities are more likely to enter the competition. The proposition that entities could obtain benefits from entering the QARA was initially confirmed by obtaining documentary evidence relating to entries since the award's inception in 1981, with more detailed evidence obtained for the year 1996. Supplementary evidence was obtained by interviewing representatives from each entity type. This enabled a richer understanding of the role of annual reports, and the benefits and costs of QARA entry for individual types of entities. This supplied confirmation of the agency theory developed for the Queensland public sector. It was found that there were three key agency relationships for departments; four key agency relationships for statutory bodies and government owned corporations; and five key agency relationships for councils. For most public sector entities, the annual report was primarily used as a signalling tool to actors within the public sector and to external creditors (where applicable). The study concludes that there are benefits to be obtained by entities which enter the QARA. These benefits relate to the concept that QARA entry highlights the quality of an annual report, and that quality reporting is a signal of quality of management. When this quality is recognised by others, the entity as a whole may be rewarded by increased access to resources, and the managers responsible may obtain personal benefits such as public recognition, and improved job prospects.

This thesis examines the patterns of parents and student interaction, and how the attitudes of parents affect the attitudes of their children towards computing in a Queensland Rural State Secondary School. Data for this illuminative case study was gathered using a number of structured questionnaires and a series of semi-structured audio-taped interviews between parents and their children. The report explores, in some depth, a range of issues and perceptions which recur in the theoretical and research literature about parents' and students' anxieties towards computing. Readers may therefore gain insight by comparing this case study with their own experiences with computers. To interpret the report, conclusions are drawn regarding the influences of the students' gender, and that of their individual parents and the results that the combined influences have in fostering children's attitudes towards computing.

When screenwriter and doctoral candidate, Anthony Mullins, first started studying Konstantin Stanislavsky’s ‘system’ of performance and script analysis, he hoped the well-known acting technique would be a useful tool for screenwriters. Mullins assumed that because Stanislavsky’s technique analysed all the characters of a story (not just the protagonist) it would naturally be a more detailed approach than conventional techniques like the ‘three-act structure’. It also appeared that Stanislavsky’s ‘system’ had the added advantage of being familiar to actors, the very people who would eventually bring the screenplay to life. However, as Mullins began adapting Stanislavsky’s techniques to his screenwriting process he found it was instead counter-productive, particularly in how it mirrored many of the prescriptive limitations of the ‘three-act structure’. Further research of Stanislavsky’s late-career techniques revealed his wariness of “over-analysis” and the embrace of more intuitive and little-known improvisational techniques, referred to by Stanislavsky as ‘active analysis’. The research centres on the creation of three original TV drama pilot scripts and the Stanislavsky-influenced techniques Mullins used to create the screenplays.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Queensland College of Art
Arts, Education and Law
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Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) are persistent organic pollutants of global concern as they are persistent, toxic and can biomagnify through the food chain. PCDD/Fs are generally regarded as trace contaminants in a number of chemical products and they are formed as by-products from various industrial, chemical and combustion processes. The pollution with PCDD/Fs occurs with the release of these chemicals into the environment, resulting in the contamination of various compartments including; air, soil, sediment and biota. Studies that have investigated the distribution of PCDD/Fs in the environment suggest that the highest concentrations of these pollutants are found in locations with a history of industrial or chemical PCDD/F sources. Queensland is the north-eastern state of Australia. Queensland has a low population density, few industrial activities and is considered predominantly rural. Therefore it was somewhat surprising that elevated concentrations of PCDD/Fs (in particular the higher chlorinated PCDDs) have been observed in soil and sediments samples collected from various locations along the Queensland coast. The concentrations of PCDDs in Queensland samples were comparable to or higher than concentrations in similar matrices from highly polluted regions elsewhere. To investigate the origin of PCDDs in Queensland, the geographical distribution of PCDD/Fs in topsoil was investigated in the coastal and inland environments to provide information on the potential sources and to estimate the extent of the PCDD contamination. Distinct east-west gradients were detected in topsoil collected from bushland areas across the state with elevated PCDD concentrations confined to the coastal region. Within the coastal region, the contamination could not be associated with specific land uses. In fact, the PCDD/F congener profile was similar in the majority of samples from the coastal region, with a dominance of the higher chlorinated PCDDs (in particular OCDD), whereas PCDFs were low or below the limit of detection. The similarity in the PCDD/F congener profiles in the soils along the coastal region indicated that a source of PCDDs of similar origin has resulted in the contamination of soil extending more than 3000 km and estimations suggest that more than 50 tonnes of OCDD is stored in the topsoil of Queensland.s coastal region. Investigation into the vertical distribution of PCDDs in Queensland coastal soils revealed elevated concentrations of PCDDs, (in particular OCDD) in soils to at least 3.5 m. These results indicated that the extent of the PCDD contamination is significantly greater than anticipated and it was estimated that there is in the order of 3 000 tonnes of OCDD stored in Queensland's coastal soils. The specific PCDD/F congener profile in Queensland coastal soils is unlike known PCDD/F source profiles which led to the suggestion that some yet unidentified formation mechanism may have resulted in the contamination. Potential natural sources of PCDD/Fs, including forest fires, geogenic and biogenic processes were assessed as possible origins for the PCDD contamination in Queensland. Elevated concentrations of PCDDs were detected in the atmosphere during a 'prescribed burn'. This study demonstrated that although forest fires influence atmospheric PCDD/F concentrations substantially, forest fires are not the source of PCDDs in Queensland; rather they are an important mechanism for the redistribution of PCDDs and may have attributed to the widespread PCDD contamination. In this study geological materials (oil shale and kaolin) were analysed as a proxy to assess a geogenic origin of PCDDs. Elevated concentrations of PCDDs were observed in the kaolin samples, however similar and higher concentrations were detected in surface and sub-surface soils, suggesting that specific geogenic formation processes investigated are not the source of PCDDs in Queensland. A preliminary indication for a biogenic origin of PCDDs was identified during the anaerobic incubation of sugarcane irrigation sediments. An increase in the concentration of OCDD in the anaerobic treatment, compared to the control was observed after incubation for 90 days. In these same experiments, a dechlorination of OCDD to lower chlorinated (1,4,6,9-substituted) PCDDs was also observed. Similar transformation processes were observed in other anaerobic environments in Queensland, which led to the suggestion that a biogenic formation of PCDDs (possibly from a precursor) may be responsible for the origin of PCDDs in Queensland.

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) are persistent organic pollutants of global concern as they are persistent, toxic and can biomagnify through the food chain. PCDD/Fs are generally regarded as trace contaminants in a number of chemical products and they are formed as by-products from various industrial, chemical and combustion processes. The pollution with PCDD/Fs occurs with the release of these chemicals into the environment, resulting in the contamination of various compartments including; air, soil, sediment and biota. Studies that have investigated the distribution of PCDD/Fs in the environment suggest that the highest concentrations of these pollutants are found in locations with a history of industrial or chemical PCDD/F sources. Queensland is the north-eastern state of Australia. Queensland has a low population density, few industrial activities and is considered predominantly rural. Therefore it was somewhat surprising that elevated concentrations of PCDD/Fs (in particular the higher chlorinated PCDDs) have been observed in soil and sediments samples collected from various locations along the Queensland coast. The concentrations of PCDDs in Queensland samples were comparable to or higher than concentrations in similar matrices from highly polluted regions elsewhere. To investigate the origin of PCDDs in Queensland, the geographical distribution of PCDD/Fs in topsoil was investigated in the coastal and inland environments to provide information on the potential sources and to estimate the extent of the PCDD contamination. Distinct east-west gradients were detected in topsoil collected from bushland areas across the state with elevated PCDD concentrations confined to the coastal region. Within the coastal region, the contamination could not be associated with specific land uses. In fact, the PCDD/F congener profile was similar in the majority of samples from the coastal region, with a dominance of the higher chlorinated PCDDs (in particular OCDD), whereas PCDFs were low or below the limit of detection. The similarity in the PCDD/F congener profiles in the soils along the coastal region indicated that a source of PCDDs of similar origin has resulted in the contamination of soil extending more than 3000 km and estimations suggest that more than 50 tonnes of OCDD is stored in the topsoil of Queensland.s coastal region. Investigation into the vertical distribution of PCDDs in Queensland coastal soils revealed elevated concentrations of PCDDs, (in particular OCDD) in soils to at least 3.5 m. These results indicated that the extent of the PCDD contamination is significantly greater than anticipated and it was estimated that there is in the order of 3 000 tonnes of OCDD stored in Queensland.s coastal soils. The specific PCDD/F congener profile in Queensland coastal soils is unlike known PCDD/F source profiles which led to the suggestion that some yet unidentified formation mechanism may have resulted in the contamination. Potential natural sources of PCDD/Fs, including forest fires, geogenic and biogenic processes were assessed as possible origins for the PCDD contamination in Queensland. Elevated concentrations of PCDDs were detected in the atmosphere during a 'prescribed burn'. This study demonstrated that although forest fires influence atmospheric PCDD/F concentrations substantially, forest fires are not the source of PCDDs in Queensland; rather they are an important mechanism for the redistribution of PCDDs and may have attributed to the widespread PCDD contamination. In this study geological materials (oil shale and kaolin) were analysed as a proxy to assess a geogenic origin of PCDDs. Elevated concentrations of PCDDs were observed in the kaolin samples, however similar and higher concentrations were detected in surface and sub-surface soils, suggesting that specific geogenic formation processes investigated are not the source of PCDDs in Queensland. A preliminary indication for a biogenic origin of PCDDs was identified during the anaerobic incubation of sugarcane irrigation sediments. An increase in the concentration of OCDD in the anaerobic treatment, compared to the control was observed after incubation for 90 days. In these same experiments, a dechlorination of OCDD to lower chlorinated (1,4,6,9-substituted) PCDDs was also observed. Similar transformation processes were observed in other anaerobic environments in Queensland, which led to the suggestion that a biogenic formation of PCDDs (possibly from a precursor) may be responsible for the origin of PCDDs in Queensland.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Public Health
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This thesis examines the role of schooling in the implementation and achievement of the respective religious and secular policies of the London Missionary Society (L.M.S.) and the Queensland Government in the Reserve Islands of Torres Strait. It sets out to analyse the educational policies of mission and government, the practices and processes by which attempts were made to implement them in the schools, and the outcomes of schooling for the L.M.S., the Queensland government, and Torres Strait Islanders. Particular attention is paid to policies, styles of administration, the curriculum, roles of teachers, indigenous teacher training, and Islanders' responses to schooling. The various historical, socio-cultural, geographical, and community contexts in which schooling was set are woven into the analysis as important considerations. The thesis reviews arguments for considering the Reserve Islands as a colony of Queensland. Further, it attempts to go beyond conventional theorising on colonial education by using holistic, qualitative and interpretive approaches. These approaches allow for interactive analysis of an array of elements in the Reserve Islands which shaped the policies, practices, and outcomes of schooling. It provides for an eclectic historiography, which, it is argued, allows for Islander and European viewpoints to be considered, and relevant contextual features to be included.

This thesis makes a contribution to the growing body of literature examining the institutional dimension of human-environment interactions. It has been guided by an interest in the problem of loss of terrestrial biodiversity in the state of Queensland, Australia and its institutional determinants. The study explored two research questions: • How to conceptualise and evaluate the effectiveness of institutions contributing to the resolution of environmental problems? • How effective is the Queensland land use planning and development assessment system in achieving biodiversity protection outcomes? The first part of the study established a theoretical and analytical foundation for the effectiveness assessment of institutional environmental performance, by examining a wide range of theoretical, conceptual and analytical questions regarding the conceptualisation of institutions, their causal role and evaluation. The study was built on an understanding of institutions as systems of rules that structure social interactions, and it defined institutional ‘performance’ as an institutional influence on, or contribution to, the behavioural response of targeted actors. It argued that institutions play a significant role in social interactions, and are an important explanatory factor for many behavioural phenomena. Building on the literature review, the study established that biodiversity protection is a highly complex and multi-faceted problem. Institutional designs are required to address a range of problem attributes, such as the existing knowledge base, value and incentive systems, distribution of decision-making authorities, and coordination of interactions among a large number of actors. In this context, the study examined two analytical problems. The first was how to approach a large diversity of problem attributes that may contribute to the resolution or creation of complex environmental problems. The second was how to examine diverse and complex institutional designs.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Griffith School of Environment
Science, Environment, Engineering and Technology
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The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of single-sex and mixed-sex class groupings in Year 9 physical education on student attitudes and non-participation rates. The research design included both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Data collection included administration of a standardised attitude inventory to all students, collection of student nonparticipation rates from class teachers, and structured interviews with teachers and selected female students. Quantitative data was analysed to establish if there was a significant difference in attitudes and non-participation rates for students in mixedsex and single-sex physical education classes. Qualitative data directed attention to the attitudes of the female students to different class groupings; and teacher perceptions of class type effects. Results indicated that class type did not have a significant effect on student attitudes and participation rates and that schools should consider providing both mixed-sex and single-sex classes for physical education, in order to cater for the needs of the female students.

This study investigated how a group of teachers in Queensland, Australia made sense of the first government-developed preschool curriculum guidelines. The implementation of curriculum reforms in pre-compulsory settings has tended to be ignored by researchers. This study provided a unique opportunity to build insights into how preschool curriculum is constructed within contested and complex social and political contexts. An interpretive approach to research was adopted that was informed by hermeneutic traditions. Data were accumulated using two group conversations involving seven preschool teachers and three conversations with individual teachers. Transcripts gathered during the evaluation of the trial document were analysed as well as texts associated with the production of the guidelines. Aspects of critical and poststructuralist theory were combined to help construct critical understandings of teachers' experiences with the new guidelines. The investigation showed that preschool teachers made sense of the curriculum text in relation to their existing child-centred curriculum perspectives. The study highlighted how teachers' interpretations were shaped by competing agendas, ideologies and discourses operating within teachers' work contexts and the contexts that shaped the production of the text. The findings indicate that the introduction of the document reshaped teachers' views about curriculum, children and their roles as they renegotiated curriculum perspectives in relation to new official definitions of curriculum. Rather than evaluating the curriculum text, the study showed how teachers constructed multiple and contradictory interpretations of the text as they managed tensions within the texts and within complex work contexts. Teachers' perceived that the text provided government endorsement for their existing philosophies and practices and created new expectations for changes in practice. The document provided a resource that teachers could use strategically to justify their practice to parents and colleagues who did not always value child-centred practice. The text also operated to construct new positions and ways of understanding curriculum that competed with teachers' existing views. The study highlights that policy makers and teachers need to reflect critically on the multiple factors that shape the negotiation of curriculum meanings in diverse contexts. The study shows that preschool curriculum is negotiated within complex and unstable discourses and power relations. Recognition of this complexity can help curriculum developers to design materials that empower teachers as they manage competing interests and demands. Awareness of the multiple factors that shape curriculum and curriculum materials can help teachers to monitor reflexively the positive and negative outcomes of curriculum reform and make appropriate decisions about how to use reforms to meet children's needs. This can help teachers to maintain a sense of control within changing contexts and to ensure changes in practice can be ethically justified.

This study was concerned with examining the potential legal implications that an independent girls' school may be exposed to in relation to managing student peer-related aggression. There appeared to be two main aspects to managing this issue, which are, responding to incidents as they emerged, and secondly actively preventing their occurrence. It is demonstrated in the literature (Borg, 1998: 433) that there has been significant research conducted in regard to bullying, and as a result there is a growing awareness of the seriousness of the problem, particularly as a result of the consequences and frequency of student peer-related aggression in schools. However, it was evident that an area that had not been thoroughly researched was to do with the legal implications associated with this topic. This was despite the growing use of the law in education-related matters, and the growing emphasis being placed on risk management and the importance of schools' being hostile-free learning environments. This study adopted a multi-method exploratory case study approach utilising qualitative and quantitative paradigms, to examine how a school manages student peer-related aggression. This encompassed frequency of aggressive acts, bullying behaviours, responses of staff and students, whether the issue was perceived as a problem, promotion of school programs, and attempts to minimise and prevent student peer-related aggression. This was achieved by , surveying students and teaching staff of the school, interviewing the Deputy Principal, and examining school documents. The results were then analysed in regard to the effect of potential areas of law, that is, tort, contract, legislation, United Nations treaties and criminal law. While there were few problems in relation to potential legal implications for the case study school the study did find one area of concern, that is, the school appeared to respond on a needs basis to incidents of student peer-related aggression. Considering the reported seriousness of student peer-related aggression and the availability of prevention programs, it is suggested that a more appropriate approach to managing this issue would involve the incorporation of prevention strategies so as to minimise the potential legal consequences.