This ethnographic study was undertaken in order to examine the problem of many of our E.S.L. students' slowed academic progress in high school. The study found culture shock and culture conflict, low self-esteem and poor motivation, established learning styles and unsuitable teaching techniques, personal and societal identity confusion to be factors preventing such students from achieving their full potential.

The key purposes of this study were to determine the extent that people purport to utilise critical thinking in educational and organisational settings; second, to examine the forces that encouraged and discouraged critical thinking and third, to identify strategies and environments that encourage and foster critical thinking. The literature examined shows that the use and teaching of critical thinking has been well represented in educational settings. However, upon an initial review of literature within organisations it appeared that the term critical thinking was not commonly used. While critical thinking occurred within organisations it tended to be defined as problem solving and decision making approaches. The model of critical thinking which underpinned this research was that of Stephen Brookfield (1987). Brookfield's model was tested through the design of the methodology. A total of ninety three surveys were completed by students at the University of Canberra from the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Management. Thirteen individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a selection of these students. The data suggested that critical thinking occurred both within educational and organisational environments. One of the main impediments to the use of critical thinking was the availability of ample time and the respondents claimed that they had more time to apply critical thinking during their studies rather than at work. The respondents identified strategies such as brainstorming, role playing and modelling behaviour as some of the approaches that would increase the likelihood of the use of critical thinking at work and study. An unanticipated finding was that individuals applied a different interpretation in the application of critical thinking within organisations compared to educational settings.

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This study is primarily concerned with organisational communication in a large Canberra Licensed Club. Through a case study approach, it explores how effectively the Canberra Southern Cross Club communicates with its staff and its membership within the framework of its own unique culture. At the same time the Club is exposed to social, economic and technological changes which all have an impact on the Club's culture. Using historical research and interview and survey data, the author shows how the Club's unique sense of place and definition has set it apart from other Licensed Clubs in the significant emphasis it places on community assistance and involvement, and the strong commitment to female and family membership. The nature of the organisational culture is such that the staff have responded to the needs of the Club culture in attaining high performance standards. The membership is the highest of any Licensed Club in Canberra. Members interviewed in the study expressed a sense of belonging to the Southern Cross Club, so important in an environment where there is evidence of break down of social cohesiveness at the local community level. This is due to the social interaction of the Club's social and sports groups which act as informal communications networks for the Club members. The Club has also developed the characteristic of remaining close to the members in learning what they want and of catering to them with the result that it has enjoyed productivity, profitability and stability over a long period of time. The culture of the Club has been influenced by various changes, particularly since the late 1970s. Flow-on benefits have occurred for members in the way the Club has managed these changes which has resulted in the adoption of a more commercial and innovative approach. This has enabled the Southern Cross Club to keep pace with other large Licensed Clubs in the industry. However, it has not compromised the Club's attitude towards the family and the dignity of the individual. Its strong commitment to providing opportunities for social interaction is a facet of club life not always appreciated by the wider community.

The study is concerned with the process of socialisation of teachers in the teaching profession. Drawing on socialisation theory the study sees the process of secondary socialisation in teacher preparation as building skills and enabling personal development. It was predicted that in the transition from the training institution to the first years of teaching, the degree of job satisfaction and commitment to teaching would be related to the degree of conflict experienced and that job satisfaction and commitment would be less for beginning teachers compared with that anticipated by trainees. Conflict was seen as appropriately measured by the difference between personal professional attitudes and occupational values one the one hand and the professional attitudes and occupational values perceived to be held by senior teachers on the other. Seventy-three final year trainee teachers at the Canberra College of Advanced Education and 47 beginning teachers in their first two years of teaching in Canberra primary and secondary schools, were selected as the sample. Previously validated instruments were used in a questionnaire. The findings clearly showed the existence of conflict between personal professional attitudes and occupational values and the perceived professional attitudes and occupational values of senior teachers. The difference in conflict between trainees and beginning teachers was small and tended to decrease. However, there was a marked increase in variance of conflict scores for women conpared to men. For women also, conflict was highly related to job satisfaction. Thc findings suggested that men tend to be more homogeneous in their adaptation to teaching and are more inclined to be satisfied and committed despite holding professional attitudes and occupational values which conflict with those of senior teachers. The study discusses some of the imlications of the findings for the training institution and the importance, particularly for women teachers, of coping with conflict in the teaching situation.

The death of a child spectator at the implosion of the Royal Canberra Hospital on 13 July 1997 was an accident that had a profound impact on the local community, prompting a significant cursive response. Promoted as a public spectacle, the implosion was planned as an orchestrated collision between past and future that would enable an instantaneous obliteration of past in order to create a site of future opportunities. When it resulted instead in a failed demolition and the death of a child, the reversal of popular expectation precipitated not only shock, grief and guilt, but also a widespread state of ontological instability. If a certain fascination with death and disaster had contributed to the event’s popular appeal before the implosion, it was compounded by feelings of guilt and shame in the event’s tragic aftermath. Those feelings, shared by public and journalists alike, were given expression in the mediated discursive space of the Canberra Times and other media outlets, resulting in an extensive rhetorical performance of witness, therapy and argument. In this thesis, I use the diversity of voices that are held together in the discursive web that forms the textual fabric of this study’s empirical data, not to create a historical, single perspective narrative, but to go some way in re-creating the event, and the immediate response to it, by allowing that discourse to be re-voiced. As the product of extensive cultural labour on the parts of those who produced it, the implosion discourse, of which this thesis is now a part, stands as a significant corpus of commemorative work. This discourse is evidence of an engaged polity – one that transcended the passive role prescribed for it of an audience as consumers of entertainment to become, through its own labour, agents, creators and performers of meaning. My central thesis is that it is in this cultural performance that the true practice of ‘community’ can be discerned. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis represents the first effort to catalogue extant timber slab houses of 19th century Canberra and its outlying regions. From an archaeological viewpoint, it looks at slab houses as above-ground artefacts that possess ingrained information about the culture that built them and analyses them as material culture through an investigation of their: history, material, construction, function and design. It is inspired by the work of folk historian, Henry Glassie, and focuses on form and pattern, through a comparison of floor plans, in order to understand the needs, minds and behaviours of early Canberrans. The thesis also draws on the historic documentary record of a similar local group of houses, those resumed by the Commonwealth in 1912-13.

The tourism industry is vulnerable to crises and disasters and increasingly government and industry stakeholders are turning their attention to how to prevent, manage and recover from shock events. In the last decade there has been increasing interest in tourism research on crises and disasters, prompted in part by recognition of the tourism industry's vulnerabilities and what appear to be more frequent shock events. The beginning of this century has been marked by a series of crises and disasters including the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the United Kingdom, the 2001 terrorist hijackings in the USA, the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings, the 2003 SARS epidemic in southeast Asia and Canada, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in the southern USA in 2005 (Henderson, 2007). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007a) has also predicted that the extreme weather events associated with climate change will lead to more natural disasters. Crises and disaster have local, regional and global repercussions on the tourism industry at business/corporate, industry and destination levels and the need for more attention to preparation, response and recovery is acknowledged. Much of the initial tourism research in this field focused on descriptions of crises and disasters and their impacts on tourism with some reflection on their management. This foundation and the comprehensive crisis and disaster literature from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, economics, geography and environmental science led to development of crisis and disaster management frameworks specifically designed for the tourism industry. These frameworks have achieved varying degrees of acceptance amongst tourism researchers with Faulkner and Vikulov's (2001) Tourism Disaster Management Framework (TDMF) being the most well known and often cited. The more recent Crisis and Disaster Management Framework (CDMF) developed by Ritchie (2004) is a useful destination-level framework based on a strategic management approach. Despite the development of these frameworks, relatively little tourism research effort has focused on destination recovery and very little on medium and long term recovery. In addition, there is little research on wildfires as a type of natural disaster. The extensive bushfires in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in 2003 (often referred to as the Canberra fires) provided an opportunity to investigate in a longitudinal study the short, medium and long term actions undertaken by the government and tourism industry to assist destination recovery and then compare them with Ritchie's prescriptive CDMF. Being longer term research this study is able to consider almost the entire recovery stage whereas other research has focused on short or medium term recovery (for example Faulkner & Vikulov, 2001). This research centred on a case study which is defined by Yin (1989 quoted in Wimmer & Dominick, 1997, p. 102) as an 'empirical inquiry that uses multiple sources of evidence to investigate a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context'. This case study used interviewing, the documentary method and participant observation as the key methods. Representatives of government and the tourism industry were interviewed in-depth about the actions taken by their organisations or businesses. The interviews were semi-structured with mostly open-ended questions and some participants undertook multiple interviews over a three year period. Extensive secondary data and documentation about the bushfire and subsequent response and recovery was generated by the ACT government, industry and community and publicly available sources included reports and reviews, media releases, newspaper articles, newsletters, brochures, websites and legal and coronial enquiries. These were critical for gaining a comprehensive understanding of recovery. Participant observation was also important and, as a resident of the ACT, the author participated in relevant events and observed the public face of community recovery. The three methods resulted in a large data set that was distilled into a 'response and recovery story' structured according to Ritchie's CDMF. Upon comparing the findings with the framework, it was found that many elements were evident in the 'real life' case study including crisis communication, resource management, stakeholder communication, destination restoration and disasters as agents for change. There were also new findings that could be integrated into a redeveloped framework including the establishment of a recovery team, training for crisis and disaster management, tourist/visitor management, recovery planning, human resource management issues, business recovery tools, partnerships and memorialisation and commemoration. The resulting Tourism Industry Crisis and Disaster Management Framework (TICDMF) is a practical and comprehensive tool for Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) that both describes what occurred in a real life case study but also prescribes recommended management actions. In addition to specific recommendations for the ACT tourism industry, this research also resulted in general recommendations to the tourism industry, government and educators. These focused on (i) the importance of crisis and disaster management planning, (ii) the need to evaluate and document response and recovery and devote adequate resources to organisational learning, (iii) potential use of tools like the TICDMF and the plethora of resources to manage crises and disasters, (iv) educating staff, academics and tertiary tourism and hospitality students about crisis and disaster management and (v) accepting the chaos of recovery and devoting adequate resources to address the resulting complexity. The tourism industry is vulnerable to external shocks whether they be local crises or national disasters. The preparedness of the industry and its ability to effectively respond and recover is of critical importance for destinations and the community in which they function. Case studies of crises and disaster and development of a body of theoretical and practical knowledge will ensure that government and industry continue to play an important role in caring for the safety and security of tourists while maintaining a viable and sustainable industry for all stakeholders.

Traditional models of public participation in planning have been criticized as 'top-down' segregating planners from ordinary citizens; thus, there has been a quest for greater public involvement in planning decisions and policy-making. The public demands a greater voice in planning and development affairs. To provide public input into the planning process, planning agencies often establish Citizen Advisory Committees (CAC) to involve the public in planning decisions. The increasing redevelopment pressure in inner city suburbs in most Australian cities has led to the creation of many advisory groups for advising planning agencies and Ministers for Planning on planning and development matters. These advisory committees usually consist of people of diverse backgrounds elected, selected and/or appointed by the planning agency to provide community input into planning policy making. However, little is known about the context and operational process in the consultation processes of advisory committees. Much of the existing literature on public participation lacks widely applicable evaluation approaches for determining whether the existing context and process is fair and effective in the participation process. As complex social phenomena, public participation processes are influenced by contextual factors. This thesis examines the Terms of Reference and the operational process of planning advisory committees, and evaluates them through two proposed meta-criteria: fairness and effectiveness. LAPACs in Canberra have been selected for the evaluation of the participation process, providing a basis to develop a conceptual model for its improvement. The analysis is based on a theoretical framework, which focuses on the criteria of fairness and effectiveness in the public participation process. This study uses a qualitative approach to data analysis using multi-method techniques such as focus interviews, document analysis and participant observation. The interviews were conducted with LAPAC members and other planning community who were directly or indirectly involved in the ACT's consultation process, and aware of its planning decisions. They are development proponents, the enthusiastic wider public, planning staff, the Minister for Planning, and planning spokespersons of political parties. The data provide insight into the details of the proposed criteria to evaluate the fairness and effectiveness of a participation process. The results suggest that improving the participation process in a planning advisory committee requires changes in committee protocols, operational processes and planner roles in conducting the participation processes. Specifically, there needs to be a move away from static processes toward more strategic, active and accountable processes. This thesis suggests some practical steps, in order to ensure greater fairness and effectiveness in the participation process of a planning advisory committee, and recommends the proposed evaluative criteria as a new framework for evaluating planning advisory committees.

This study is about the risk of youth unemployment in Canberra. It applies the perspective of Giddens and others on risk communication to how the hazards of self identity and self esteem, coping ability, the work ethic, family support and level of education, the ability to enjoy spare time, drugs and alcohol use, poverty and suicide affect young people's ability to cope. The study's communication perspective also integates political with organizational, interpersonal and network as well as mass media communication. The study also draws from scholars who write from a sociological and psychological viewpoint and are frequently cited in communication sources. The loss of traditional work opportunities in the Public Service in Canberra is a significant barrier to a young person's integration into the community. Other barriers are the reduced work opportunities for young unskilled workers in a fledgling private market, the lack of adequate social and transport facilities, and family breakdown that can leave young Canberrans abandoned. The added factor of a global decline in participation in work in the last two decades has resulted in the general collapse in the full time jobs market, a growth of part time and casual employment, multiple job holding, and non-standard hours of work. Using historical research, participant observation, interview data and newspaper content analysis the study shows that the risk of unemployment for young people remains high notwithstanding the reduction in the overall unemployment rate. The media has played a significant role in forming community attitudes since the 1974 recession to the new millennium - a time of increasing government hardline policies towards welfare reform. Such policies have resulted in semi-privatisation of the employment services and tightening of welfare eligibility. Poor communication of these policies and coordination of their service delivery has resulted in public confusion about accessing these services. This is exacerbated in varying ways at the individual level depending on the extent that young people are affected by the hazards of unemployment. The government's answer to the problem of youth unemployment seeks to force young people to return to school and the family home. The outcomes of other reforms, such as the mutual obligation component of work for the dole, are yet to be determined. Young people want to work. However, the consequences of the present government reforms for young people are that they are 'parked' in education, denied access to full time employment and the privileges of adult status. All of these issues are reflected in the findings of the five research questions posed in the study detailed as follows: Research Question 1: What role does interpersonal communication play in the construction of a positive sense of self-concept among young unemployed people? Findings: Young people are vulnerable to social change. At the individual level, the risk of unemployment and its associated hazards is heightened when an individual's sense of self and identity is not properly developed and they are unable to forge a sense of belonging with society. Reduced job opportunities, lack of trust despite the strong will do to the 'right thing' have prevailed amongst the young. For some access to choice is exciting. For others who are overwhelmed or have dropped out the world can be a bleak place. For an increasing number of young people the absence of family support and education impinges on their interpersonal communication skills in developing coping strategies in their day-to-day existence outside society's norms of acceptance. Research Question la: How important is a positive sense of self-concept for young unemployed people in communicating with community support organizations? Findings: A positive sense of self-concept is paramount for young people communicating with Centrelink and the Job Network organizations in an environment where they are required to contribute extra effort in finding work, reduce their use of social assistance, adopt compliant behaviours towards the government's welfare reforms and meet raised expectations in finding employment. Research Question 2: How do young unemployed people differently experience their primary and secondary social support networks? Findings: Family support as well as education increases the ability of young unemployed people to interact with their primary and secondary social support networks. Consequently, a poor experience of primary support leads to eventual confusion when dealing with organizations that deliver employment services. The replacement of family support by a friendship group can nevertheless be empowering in these circumstances. Research Question 2a: How does young people's ability to access secondary support networks affect their experience of unemployment? Findings: The lack of family support and education increases the chances of having low resilience, low trust in organizations and other people and an inability to cope. These are all significant barriers to communicating successfully with secondary support networks that provide assistance with employment opportunities. Staying in education is a safety net against youth unemployment. The feeling of connectedness with the community is difficult because of the loss of identity and the absence of identity recognition for young unemployed people through discrimination. The maintenance of the work ethic in the main stems from the desire to accrue material benefits. Research Question 3: What is the role of community and organizational support for young people experiencing the hazards of unemployment? Findings: The findings of the study highlight the vulnerability of young unemployed people accessing organizational support with the hazards stated in the study being the intervening variables. It was found that reforms linking markets and networks make increasing demands on the unemployed and their families. Poor communication within Centrelink, interorganizationally with the Job Network providers and in public communication informing about such reforms has resulted in confusion amongst young unemployed people. The new market driven environment has had detrimental effects on clients because of the lack of integrated programs and has generated a lack of trust in organizational providers. Research Question 4: What is the role of the media and public opinion polls informing community perceptions about youth unemployment? Findings: Media agenda setting provides the cues setting the standards by which the public evaluates government and attributes responsibility for societal problems. Public opinion is formed when media reports on public affairs. People talk to one another about the topic and consequently public opinion is formed. In the 1970s the media framed unemployed youth as 'dole bludgers' and the polls reflected public attitudes that unemployment was due to people not wanting to work. Media framing in the 1990s contrasted with the 1970s view. Such indications included that it now considered that young people were priced out of a job whilst showing cynicism of governments to improve the situation. It did not use the 'dole bludger' tag. Although the salience of youth unemployment in the opinion polls had diminished, it was still a dominant consideration. Sympathy for young unemployed people who are seen as victims of social change by the media has maintained into the new millennium with media criticism aimed at the government's punitive approach to youth unemployment. Research Question 5: How are policies about youth unemployment communicated to the community? Findings: Following Foucault the study found that government is a broader process involving more than the state. From depth interviews with organizational representatives it was found that formulation of policy for youth and unemployment should be bottom up - community, state, federal - before Cabinet consideration. Political and economic ideologies currently precede pragmatism and there is a diminished voice of those representing youth policy. These findings contribute to building on understandings of the phenomenon of youth unemployment at the community level in Australia and inform about the various individuals, groups, organizations including the media that contribute to shaping the discourse in and around youth and youth unemployment.