Experiences in the early years of life are increasingly recognised as significant predictors of long-term cognitive and psychosocial behaviour. This thesis focuses on one aspect of early development: the cultural identity of the young child and investigates the influence of continuity of practice between home and the child care centre in this development. The use of child care services for very young children has increased dramatically in the past two decades. For the first time in history there may be more babies aged 0-3 years in care situations than babies who are cared for at home - this impacts upon the child’s micro-culture (individual, unconscious practices guided by beliefs, norms and values) and macro-culture (ritualistic, symbolic behaviour, often conscious which is tied to belonging to an ethnic group). This study investigates the way in which child care centres contribute to the development of micro and macro-cultural identity in very young children. This study was originally designed to increase the knowledge base about the ways in which interactions with children (particularly in relation to sleep and feeding micro-cultural practices) differ between home and child care service and the implications of these differing practices. As the study progressed a new focus was developed and evolved into an analysis of communication processes between parents and staff and the effects of those communication processes. Qualitative methods on non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and semi-structured questionnaires were used to address the research questions. Recommendations from the study focus on setting level and policy issues. The early childhood sector is called on to redress notions around communication and partnership building with parents / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis weaves together disparate sources of theoretical knowledge with the lived experience of 11 women to illuminate the mysterious world of pre-natal relating - the foundation for postnatal life and the beginnings of the capacity to love. Love and supportive relationships can ameliorate stress and trauma post-birth, but do they operate prenatally, and if so how? This research clearly shows that mothers relate to their preborns and from the rich detail of their stories, the author proposes a schema that captures the complexity and changing nature of prenatal relating. The basic physiological and neurological structures are formed from conception, making the preborn vulnerable to the effects of direct and maternal experience. Preborns have extensive capacities that include the potential for interaction. These capacities and experiences affect infant development post birth. This evidence supports the author's initial hypothesis that prenatal stress is a significant factor in the attentional and behavioural problems of childhood, and challenges purely genetic explanations. 'Normal' life events have greater potency during pregnancy, making the transition to parenthood stressful even for many women in low risk situations. Feeling supported is essential for the health and well-being of the mother and preborn. This thesis reports a phenomenological and prospective study of 11 pregnant women as they lived the prenatal journey. From the interviews, it describes the development of the prenatal relationship and the range of stressful and supportive factors that should be considered in the creation of child and family friendly communities. / Master of Science (Hons)

The adoption of health behaviours is essential if coronary heart disease patients are to optimise their chance of survival and reduce the likelihood of recurrent coronary events. However, this behavioural change may not ensue following an acute myocardial infarction(AMI). This study on first AMI subjects sought firstly to examine the psychometric properties of five scaled instruments used for assessing health behaviours. Secondly, the study assessed the prevalence of health-enhancing behaviours at the time of the first AMI and 6 months after this event.Thirdly, the magnitude of health behavioural change was then examined. Fourthly, sociodemographic, clinical and psychosocial predictors of health-enhancing behaviours were explored.These health-enhancing behaviours included non-smoking behaviours, normal body mass index (BMI), adequate physical activity, medication adherence and low dietary fat intake. Finally, the study examined relationships between sociodemographic , psychosocial and modifiable lifestyle factors, based on Antonovsky's hypothesis on sense of coherence(SOC), stress and adaptive coping. The study highlights that some modifiable risk factors, for example, being overweight or obese and physical inactivity were more resistant to change following an AMI.This finding, and the relationship between stress and increased dietary fat suggest a need for individualised programs to support the specific needs of AMI patients to change their modifiable cardiac risk factors. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)(Health)

The purpose of this research is to investigate the significance of a Tiwi community's history in order to better understand the work of Aboriginal Community Police Officers (ACPO).The situation under study is a workplace on Bathurst Island in the Northern Territory. The literature on workplace education offers the proposition that an understanding of the socio-cultural and historical context of workplaces is fundamental to thinking about workplace education.It is hypothesised that ACPOs have a dual consciousness of their profession and their workplace, and this consciousness has been informed and shaped by their common history.It is argued that this history is characterised by syncretism. The process of acculturation is researched, where police officers draw on experiences with, and knowledge of, both Tiwi and murrintawi societies.An historical account of the Tiwi society is given.A literary device of vignettes is used, followed by a descriptive-analytical interpretation in which historical events and various social-cultural aspects are described, analysed and interpreted / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis engages with the feminist argument that women need to create a culture of the female and rediscover female genealogy. The misogynistic, theological and philosophical narratives on Woman are deconstructed. Using the metaphor of divining as a tool for searching for a source the author seeks to discover the source of Woman, one not bound by male definition and control. In removing the stigma of Woman as 'misbegotten male' and cause of 'original sin' Woman's sexuality and spirituality are recognised. Female sex is acknowledged and the difference reframed so that male sex no longer holds the dominant position. Woman becomes Divine, and it is a divinity that signifies her earthly interactions in her spiritual, social and personal life. After the divining a female genealogy is created and the divine is drawn out in woman. The writing and analyses of Virginia Woolf and Luce Irigaray are drawn on to establish the basis of the research methodology. Creativity, myths, story, poetry, fiction and feminist analysis are used to find the woman hidden in traditional patriarchal rendering of history. This thesis is both a historical and autobiographical research taken within the context of the author's cultural influences. It is a transdisciplinary research within a set framework, concentrating on women's sexual and spiritual specificity. Greek and Celtic history, Wicca, Christianity and Buddhism are included, with an inclusive but not in-depth analysis of these traditions. The underlying theme of this thesis is women's disconnection from each other. In the author's personal story it concerns her mother, sister and herself. In the collective story it is about women's loss of their female genealogy and connection to their women's history. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study focused on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of suicidal behaviour of 90 people who had come to the attention of the Accident and Emergency Department of Westmead Hospital, Sydney, N.S.W., after an attempt to harm themselves. The risk factors identified in the study were combined with the circumstances and motive of attempt. Participants were regrouped according to whether the problems the respondent described were chronic (longstanding) or acute (pivotal). The participants were further classified according to the persistence of thoughts of self-harm ( impulsive or non-impulsive/deliberate) and the presence or absence of these feelings at the time of the interview (the resolution of the attempt) and the types of problems/situations and triggering events the person described as wanting to escape. By developing strategies and treatments for the problems as they were identified in this study and by raising the awareness that there is help available for these different issues, we may be able to reduce the pain which results in an attempt to self harm. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Ninety six women, average age 47, who had a hysterectomy between October 1997 and June 1999 were initially interviewed in hospital and followed up for four months after discharge. The findings of the study indicate that adequate support was needed in early recovery period and discharge programs should take into consideration the needs of women with small children and those who have no onsite home support. Strategies used by the women to assist convalescence included support from family and friends but little in the way of health professional or community support. The majority of women returned to normal activities by four months. Communication between women and health professionals was also considered by the women to be important following discharge, especially in terms of information and reassurance about their progress during recovery. / Master of Science (Hons) (Health)

This thesis critiques the nature/nurture debate in sociology and applies current thinking to sociological work on child abuse. By examining the literature available within sociology, biology and ecology, the nature/nurture debate is shown to be a defining epistemological construct within sociology. In deconstructing the debate, this thesis shows that addressing biology within sociology does not require an acceptance of determinism and that a plurality of possibilities still exists. It also reveals that human corporeality is viscerally susceptible to the environment and that separating human social life from its corporeality merely reiterates the Judeo-Christian theology that human life is divinely separate from its environment. In applying contemporay and classical sociology to the issue of child abuse, this thesis destabilises contemporary notions of the plasticity of the body and the irrelevance of the biological sciences to human social life. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Sociology)

Modernising discourses of intellectual disability have brought innovative social technologies that promote participation and freedom for people so labelled. This thesis argues there is a key experiential contradiction between these discourses as operationalised in neo-liberalism and the ways that people with intellectual disability embrace self-advocacy and become political actors in their own right. Through its inherently moral claims, self-advocacy supports the experiential voice of the 'other' and reveals itself as a sustaining and enduring pillar in the struggle against human injustice and inequity. These other discourses, in contrast, intensify individualisation, ignore power relations and depoliticise self-advocacy as a politics of resistance. The first part of the thesis critically examines the emergence of intellectual disability as a dimension of human difference and examines how forms of knowledge shape social and policy responses to such people. The second part presents a collaborative action research methodology and a reflective study which challenges the bio-medical, positivist and psycho-reductionist styles of research that have objectified people with intellectual disability. Using this methodology, the voices and experiences of two groups of self-advocates, one in England and the other in Australia are interpreted. Contemporary professional and other governmental interventions demand individual competencies in the pursuit of self-determination. These discourses of empowerment and citizenship are in constant tension with historically conditioned structures which shape the material and social lives of people with intellectual disability. The thesis finds similarities in the ways that self-advocates and their allies interpret these political realities and work within, across and beyond their contradictory trajectories of constraint and freedom. The study suggests that self-advocacy is a complex and sophisticated practice aimed at recognition of the unique lived experience of intellectual disability and the legitimacy of claims to self-representation. It also operates at a deeper level as an emotional process of transformation. Its powerful recuperative character sustains liberated identities for people with intellectual disability, many of whom have experienced lives of abuse, neglect and mis-recognition. Such practices have the potential to contribute to transforming both the centres of policy-making and power and subaltern selves.

What ways of being and knowing constitute the experience of healthy relational life? Ontologically, what takes place in the experience of meeting a loved one, face to face? What is ???good communication??? in an intimate relationship? What does commitment enable in relational life, and what constitutes healthy dedication in marriages? This thesis addresses the above questions through a conceptual analysis of the dual nature of social life: identity-based, self-reifying, object-focused, atomised and oppositional, and dialogical, relational and present. It does so with the help of qualitatively analysed interviews of respondents talking about their experiences of committed intimate relationships. The first part of this thesis discovers that current social theory links the increased fragility of intimate relationships to the individualisation of social experience, and the rise of discourses that encourage reflexivity and personal responsibility. I discuss specific funding strategies the Australian Federal Government employs in seeking to manage the risk of marriage breakdown in the community. I argue that while a complex mix of rational-instrumental reasoning, the neo-liberal ethos of self-enterprise and some Christian norms of family life underlie much policy, the actual practice of marriage education in Australia has a community basis, and has much potential for real relationships. I offer a critique of risk-preventative discourses in marriage pedagogy, and show that the key terms used by clinical researchers draw on the same methodological individualism as the economic model of relational life. I argue that often, social theorists also reduce relationships to dyads of competing individuals exchanging themselves as goods, or bargaining for the best deal while using their investments as threat points. I suggest that the identity struggles that ensue from such alienated relations in intimate lives can be understood through the Hegelian binary oppositional model, and also, through some psychoanalytical theory on differentiation. This thesis suggests that on examination of couples??? relationships, we find a different ontological structure in relationality. Relationships have the potential to transcend their total, additive, atomised form and be experienced as wholes. Couples teach us that love is not just self-directed action; that choice can burden, but responsibility to what is present can be freeing; and that relational ???success??? is more complex than simply staying together for life.