1 / DONGDONG LIN

This study is an investigation into the science literacy of college genetics students who were given a modified curriculum to address specific teaching and learning problems from a previous class. This study arose out of an interest by the professor and researcher to determine how well students in the class Human Genetics in the 21st Century responded to a reorganized curriculum to address misconceptions that were prevalent after direct instruction in the previous year's class. One of the components to the revised curriculum was the addition of a multimodal representation requirement as part of their normal writing assignments. How well students performed in these writing assignments and the relationship they had to student learning the rest of the class formed the principle research interest of this study. Improving science literacy has been a consistent goal of science educators and policy makers for over 50 years (DeBoer, 2000). This study uses the conceptualization of Norris and Phillips (2003) in which science literacy can be organized into both the fundamental sense (reading and writing) and the derived sense (experience and knowledge) of science literacy. The fundamental sense of science literacy was investigated in the students' ability to understand and use multimodal representations as part of their homework writing assignments. The derived sense of science literacy was investigated in how well students were able to apply their previous learning to class assessments found in quizzes and exams. This study uses a mixed-methods correlational design to investigate the relationship that existed between students' writing assignment experiences connected to multimodal representations and their academic performance in classroom assessments. Multimodal representations are pervasive in science literature and communication. These are the figures, diagrams, tables, pictures, mathematical equations, and any other form of content in which scientists and science educators are communicating ideas and concepts to their audience with more than simple text. A focused holistic rubric was designed in this study to score how well students in this class were able to incorporate aspects of multimodality into their writing assignments. Using these scores and factors within the rubric (ex. Number of original modes created) they were correlated with classroom performance scores to determine the strength and direction of the relationship. Classroom observations of lectures and discussion sections along with personal interviews with students and teaching assistants aided the interpretation of the results. The results from the study were surprisingly complex to interpret given the background of literature which suggested a strong relationship between multimodal representations and science learning (Lemke, 2000). There were significant positive correlations between student multimodal representations and quiz scores but not exam scores. This study was also confounded by significant differences between sections at the beginning of the study which may have led to learning effects later. The dissimilarity between the tasks of writing during their homework and working on exams may be the reason for no significant correlations with exams. The power to interpret these results was limited by the number of the participants, the number of modal experiences by the students, and the operationalization of multimodal knowledge through the holistic rubric. These results do show that a relationship does exist between the similar tasks within science writing and quizzes. Students may also gain derived science literacy benefits from modal experiences on distal tasks in exams as well. This study shows that there is still much more research to be known about the interconnectedness of multimodal representational knowledge and use to the development of science literacy.

This dissertation demonstrates that the presence of the initiative process alters voting behavior in the selection of candidates. By allowing constituents to bypass their elected officials to directly select policy, the availability of the initiative leads to substitution between voters' concern over substantive versus symbolic representation. In states with heavy use of the initiative, votes for candidates depend less on the policy positions of the candidates but more on personal characteristics like integrity, attractiveness and descriptive representation. Predictions are derived from a formalization of the theory and are empirically tested using diverse types of data. I demonstrate diminished concern over policy positions through survey data. As use of the initiative increases, a multi-level model demonstrates that votes in that state are less dependent upon the similarity between respondent and candidate policy positions. Increased concern over the integrity of candidates demonstrated through decreased conviction rates for political corruption by the Department of Justice, and increased concern for descriptive representation is demonstrated by a greater balance in the gender of legislators in initiative states. Finally, I find that the personal attractiveness of legislators has a greater effect on votes in initiative states. This theory of substitution depends upon direct democracy leading to more representative policy which is a highly contested claim. This dissertation supports the substitution claim by demonstrating that the initiative does improve representation. I demonstrate how representation should be measured conceptually and statistically, replicate previous models, and then test the theory on an extensive new dataset.

Huntington disease (HD) is a degenerative neurological disease that typically onsets in midlife. It leads to progressively severe impairment in cognitive, behavioral, and motor function and premature death. Persons who test positive for the HD gene expansion know they will develop the disease. Research indicates changes are detectable several years before onset. Thus, HD has a long prodromal period (prHD). While researchers are aware of changes, little is known whether persons with prHD or their companions notice changes, or how they make sense of and cope with them. Leventhal and colleagues developed the Common Sense Model of Illness Representation (CSM) to describe how people make sense of illness. According to the CSM, people notice somatic changes, form illness representations, select coping procedures and evaluate them, and reappraise illness representations in an iterative process. The CSM has been used to explore illness representations in a variety of illnesses, including diagnosed HD. The authors of the model state it is also applicable in anticipated illness but this assertion has not been adequately tested. The purpose of this thesis was to use the CSM to explore and describe illness representations in persons with prHD and their companions. The results of this exploration are presented in three papers. The first paper, presented in Chapter 2, was a preliminary study based on interview data from 8 persons and 7 companions. Results of this analysis indicated persons with prHD and companions noticed and made attributions for changes, suggesting they formed illness representations. However, they were unsure whether some changes were related to HD. Results were considered preliminary because participants were not directly asked to make attributions. Data were also limited to changes in work function and the sample size was small. In the next two papers, 23 couples were interviewed. The purpose of the second paper, presented in Chapter 3, was to explore illness representations in persons with prHD and their companions and evaluate the usefulness of the CSM in anticipated illness using prHD as a model. Results supported preliminary findings: Participants noticed changes, made attributions, used coping strategies and evaluated them. Again, they unsure whether some changes were related to HD. Other elements of the CSM were partially supported by the data. The third paper, presented in Chapter 4, used quantitative and qualitative methods to explore coping in persons with prHD and companions. Participants were asked open-ended questions about how they coped with changes and were also verbally administered the Brief COPE scale. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed participants used active coping, acceptance, planning, and social support. Participants rarely used denial or substance abuse. Persons with prHD used more coping strategies than companions. Three major themes from the qualitative interview were identified: trying to fix it, can't fix it, and not broken yet. Qualitative interviews revealed some coping strategies that the Brief COPE did not measure. Findings from these papers may inform interventions to help people with prHD and companions cope with changes. Persons with prHD and companions might benefit from knowing what changes might be related to HD in order to cope more effectively.

Australia has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world. Epidemiological data indicate that young men (15-25 years of age) make up one of the most vulnerable groups. The print media regularly portray men in this age group as aggressive and violent in various ways (on the sporting field, at war, in their cups, in contests and in leisure, all of which which take on many different forms). This dissertation presents a collection of such images gleaned over a number of years, the purpose of which is to evoke Durkheim's notion of suicidogenic currents that flow through the ??collective consciousness??, finding, according to Durkheim, their clearest expression in suicide rates. Using the notion of ??suicidogenic current?? as a sensitizing concept, this thesis traces the way in which violence weaves its way through social life and influences social relations that may be conducive to suicide. It will be argued that the images presented ?? arranged, for effect, as photomontages ?? express the celebration of violence as a powerful social trend which runs not only through social activity, but also through hearts and minds of contemporary persons; as such, it constitutes one of the suicide-inducing conditions in contemporary society.

In moving beyond the dichotomy between representative and participatory models of democracy, contemporary democratic theory has drawn out the crucial role of deliberation in the effective operation of democratic institutions. However, while various theorists show that deliberation is applied to democratic effect in an assortment of arrangements (such as interpersonal relationships, new social movements and international negotiations), there appears to be a hesitation in theorising the means to improve the deliberative functioning of currently existing representative institutions. This thesis argues that despite the many limitations of representative democracy, and of the mass media which act as its key deliberative forum, currently existing models of representative democracy still offer formal and practical opportunities for collective deliberation in rhetorical exchanges among citizens, particularly, but by no means exclusively, in the course of the election campaign. Consideration of recent democratic theory suggests that the quantity and quality of democratic deliberation in a range of particular situations may be assessed against a set of criteria: access, transparency, feedback and coordination. For citizens to make use of the deliberative opportunities raised by the election campaign requires, it is argued, the creation of a contemporary rhetoric. This thesis addresses that process by reviewing the roots of rhetorical practice and theory in tribal and bardic methods used to produce social cohesion, in the activities of the Sophists in Greek, and particularly Athenian, direct democracy and in the practical reason of Aristotle's seminal text. This thesis then proceeds to consider the rhetorical techniques, employed in two recent election campaigns, which overcame the preconceptions of academic and media commentators to produce "upset" results by successfully engaging, it is argued, the citizen-audience in a meta-narrative of rhetorical exchange. From consideration of these three case studies, an account of a rhetoric emerges as a technical and instrumental discipline. While a contemporary version of political rhetoric may be derived from campaign practices in the electoral context, that rhetoric is also capable of utilising the mass media for much broader deliberative purposes and the potential for marginal and critical political forces to apply these activities more widely is explored. Central to the development of new, deliberative accounts of rhetoric is a return to Aristotle to appreciate the ethical import of rhetoric. A contemporary approach to rhetoric, arising from an emerging account of citizenship as participatory, deliberative, global and "media-active" is considered.

One method chosen to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in the health and education sectors is a decentralized voluntary board system. In Canada, boards are delegated specific administrative responsibilities but much of the power for funding and policy development is still held centrally by the provincial governments. Depending on the specifics of the debate, this structure creates either a dependent of an interdependent relationship between the boards and the provincial government that created them. What the relationship should be is unclear because the responsibilities associated with governance are not well defined in the literature. Given this reality, board members continue to accept the responsibility to account to the provincial governments and represent many stakeholders.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building. / Documentation within architecture refers to working drawings that are produced to envisage an imagined building. These drawings are a tangible representation of an object that has no tangible existence. Conventional documentation regards the act of drawing as that process upon which the object is wholly dependent for its coming into existence: they assist in ‘getting to’ the building. However, the definition of the word ‘document’ refers to a record of events, that is, post factum evidence. Within architecture, drawing as a record is not the dominant practice. Instead, representation that is a visualisation of the non-existent dominates. Hence, the realm of post factum documentation is under-examined. Due to the predominance of drawing within architecture, models are seen as an adjunct to drawings and so their role and potential has been examined in far less depth than that of architectural drawings. This thesis explores the notion of the model as three-dimensional post factum documentation of architecture. Through the theory of drawing, case studies of models of various scales are examined. These case studies are the Panorama model of New York City, the reconstruction of Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion, and the exhibition of architecture as post factum model, in particular the work of Peter Eisenman, Herzog and de Meuron, El Lissitzky, Allan Wexler and Diller and Scofidio. This examination repositions models within an expanded notion of the design process, which displaces the built object as the endpoint of this process, and investigates the critical facility of models.

This thesis considers women’s representation in television commercials in Australia and Bangladesh. It is an empirical study. A total of 780 advertisements were recorded from various television channels of Australia and Bangladesh. Among them 280 and 500 advertisements were taken from Bangladeshi and Australian television channels respectively. This thesis is about women’s representation in television commercials in Australia and Bangladesh. Bringing an interdisciplinary but empirical approach to a broad range of recently screened advertisements, the thesis examines how femininities are stereotypically represented in these two countries’ television commercials. The study suggests that women are produced and reproduced as sexual objects and/or objects to be looked at, and that representations of women’s bodies circulate around the binary of purity and pollution in heavily gendered and racialised ways. The interesting finding of this study is the extension of the ‘male-gaze’ concept where women come under the gaze from (hetero) sexual perspectives. The study suggests that images of femininity and racialisation are produced and reproduced. This constructs women’s secondary position and creates racial instability in societies.

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