Community Debate Research Articles

Linguistic Acceptability in Hong Kong English

This paper reports the findings of a study of 28 debatable English usages — items whose acceptability is the subject of community debate — which figure prominently in usage guides in Hong Kong. Data were collected from Hong Kong informants via several elicitation methods: a judgment test, a slot-filling test and a proofreading test. Respondents’ acceptability judgments were noted to be sensitive to a number of sociolinguistic variables. Informants who were older (in this case, members of the English teaching profession) were more tolerant of traditional debatable usages than younger informants (students), as were students with higher levels of English proficiencncy (as indicated by students’ results in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination) compared to those with lower levels. Finally, prescribed debatable usages were found to be more readily embraced in formal than informal styles.

Surface Tension: Boundary Negotiations around Self, Society, and Nature in a Community Debate over Wildlife

This study draws on extensions of a Meadian framework to explore the possibility of nature as a “generalized other” that is experienced through a dialogical eco‐self. The author revisits Mead's work, tracing an emerging literature on the eco‐self, and investigates constructions of human–nature boundaries using interviews from a community reacting to the human destruction of a cattle egret nesting colony. She introduces the concept of “surface tension” to capture the fluid, negotiated, and often contradictory quality of narratives about nature and the self. The findings highlight the eco‐self as an emergent and ongoing accomplishment that is not reducible to any one formulation.

Reconstructing the Internet: How Social Justice Activists Contest Technical Design in Cyberspace

Reconstructing the Internet: How Social Justice Activists Contest Technical Design in Cyberspace

THE COMMUNITIES WE ARE REGAINING BUT NEED TO LOSE

Michael Young and Gerard Lemos’ (1997) text The communities we have lost and can regain has had a substantial influence on New Labour's communitarian thinking. This paper critically examines a specific aspect of New Labour's communitarian agenda, namely, its use of public housing policy to rebuild communities in order to combat social exclusion on so-called ‘sink estates’. The paper is presented in four main parts. The first part of the paper discusses how, why and to what extent ‘community’ has been lost, with particular reference to public housing estates. The second part examines why community rebuilding is now seen as the solution to the problems caused by the loss of community on public housing estates and, to this end, pays particular attention to the communitarian values that underpin New Labour's third way. The third part of the paper examines some empirical studies of community in order to highlight the key characteristics of ‘community’ and thereby develop a critical understanding of what New Labour are currently seeking to achieve. The fourth part of the paper juxtaposes this discussion of ‘community’ with a discussion of emerging socio-economic trends that have been identified in the literature on late modernity and globalization. By highlighting emerging socio-economic trends such as residential mobility into the community debate, the paper concludes by criticizing the policy of community building as ‘good for you’. Our key point is that community building restricts the residential mobility of poorer households and exacerbates (rather than combats) their social exclusion because a key indicator of social inclusion is their ability to take advantage of the social, cultural and economic opportunities that so often exist ‘elsewhere’.

Confidential health care for adolescents: reconciling clinical evidence with family values

Community debate about confidential health care for adolescents was triggered recently by the federal government's proposal to allow parents of teenagers aged 16 years and under access to their children's Health Insurance Commission data without their consent. Extensive research evidence highlights the importance of confidentiality in promoting young people's access to health care, particularly for sensitive issues such as mental and sexual health, and substance use. Involving parents is important, but evidence for any benefit from mandatory parental involvement is lacking. The law recognises the rights of mature minors to make decisions about their medical treatment and to receive confidential health care; however, the doctor must weigh up certain factors to assess maturity and ensure that confidentiality around such treatment will be in the young person's best interests. Evaluation of maturity must take into account characteristics of the young person, gravity of the proposed treatment, family factors, and statutory restrictions.

Nonresidential Parents: Nonresidential Mothers, Schools, and the Reform Process

The Australian Commonwealth Government is about to initiate widespread changes to family law. Central to the reform proposals is the introduction of Family Relationship Centres (FRCs), as alternatives to current adversarial approaches to settling family separation. This discussion paper raises two issues in relation to the forthcoming reforms. Firstly, within community debates, nonresidential (noncustodial) mothers are typically subsumed under nonresidential (noncustodial) parents, often without recognition of their particular needs, as nonresidential mothers.1 The article draws attention to the social stigma nonresidential mothers suffer and its implications for the reform process. Secondly, we include both nonresidential mothers and nonresidential fathers in a critique of the lack of educational initiatives by educational research and schools to involve nonresidential parents in their children’s schooling. We believe that in the spirit of the forthcoming reforms, schools need to reach out to all parents. This means that school personnel (school psychologists, social workers) need to be available to families and consultants during negotiations within the proposed FRCs, to assist both nonresidential mothers and fathers in securing school involvement.

The Gift of Ben Boisot: A Parent Perspective

This essay was written in response to McTernan and Ward (2005), who are, respectively, president and immediate past president of the Voice of the Retarded (VOR). As parents of adults with severe developmental disabilities, their advocacy is to maintain a place in society for large institutions for people with severe or profound mental retardation. Because VOR purports to be an advocate for people with disabilities, such as my son, I have followed their advocacy over the years. Their perspective has not matured with time, rather, it has become overburdened with references to research, state audits, media, and peer-reviewed studies. They are more concerned with what politicians and governmental agencies are doing relative to supporting or tearing down their cause than being honest with themselves. McTernan and Ward’s (2005) use of stiff and technical words, such as empirical indicators, measures, quality, and tenured, are veils that cover a desperate fear, a fear that could be eliminated if they choose to do so. The VOR lobbies and intimately follows the movement and decisions of every government-directed agency, policymaker, statistician, academic, media outlet, vocal parent, or organization (statewide and nationally) that has anything to say or do on the subject of institutions and people with developmental disabilities. I have known ‘‘fear’’ intimately, and it is ever present in the work and words of VOR.

Bataille's Contestation

The aim of this essay is to clarify one of the central themes in Georges Bataille's post-war writings, namely sovereignty. At the same time, it attempts to bring to light the intellectual tradition from which Bataille's thinking arises and to which it contributes. Three specific themes are addressed: the so-called community debate (Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot), Bataille's Hegelian influences (especially Alexandre Kojeve's reading of Hegel's phenomenology), and the possible affinities between Bataille's understanding of sovereign enjoyment and Lacan's “other” jouissance. Through these admittedly brief and suggestive investigations, the essay can hopefully elucidate what Bataille understood as “contestation,” a rather specific form of critical thought and a confrontation with the Western traditions of knowledge and, further, examine the limitations and differences of this contestation in relation to what one could call “social criticism.”

Antidepressants and Suicide

At the outset let me declare that in my 35 years of psychiatric practice I have accepted pharmaceutical company hospitality and also support for various research projects, and I have written not only on the use of antidepressants, but also on nonpharmacological methods in the treatment of depression. I believe that I do not have an ideological bias for or against one form of treatment or another, or indeed their combinations; rather, the bottom line is whether or not a person afflicted with depression improves and recovers. Since the introduction of the newer antidepressants in the late 1980s there have been sporadic reports of suicidal ideation and behavior in those who have been placed on Serotonin Specific Re-uptake Inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants (Teicher et al., 1990; Healy & Whitaker, 2003), which has led to questioning their use. On the other hand, large population studies such as those undertaken by Isacsson (2002) in Sweden, Olfson et al. (2003) in the United States, and Hall et al. (2003) in Australia have been reassuring in noting an association between increased prescribing of antidepressants and a reduction of suicide rates. Nevertheless, there has still been a body of opinion expressing reservations about the use of such antidepressants (Healy & Whitaker, 2003), and, not unexpectedly, there has been ongoing community and professional debate about this important public health issue. In 2004 a remarkable study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Jick et al. This study is important because it addresses a number of concerns that have been raised. Jick et al. had access to the United Kingdom General Practice Research Database, which has enrolled more than three million people since its inception in 1987, and which contains over 35 million patient-years of data available for research. This enabled them to examine the frequency of emergent suicidal behavior following the use of two distinct pharmacological classes of antidepressants, the older tricyclic antidepressants and the newer SSRIs, in large numbers of patients. In fact, the numbers were such that one could never anticipate enlisting so many participants in a formal research project. They identified 159,810 persons aged between 10 and 69 years who had had at least one prescription of amitriptyline, dothiepin (tricyclic antidepressants), fluoxetine, or paroxetine (SSRIs) in the period 1993 to 1999. Subjects were excluded if they had had a recorded prescription for another antidepressant, or if they had diagnoses other than depression, in order to produce a more homogeneous study population. There were 36,165 who had taken amitriptyline, 46,587 who had taken dothiepin, 49,671 who had taken fluoxetine, and 35,465 who had taken paroxetine. The mean number of study antidepressantprescriptions for these persons were similar for each drug. Jick et al. analyzed the data for both nonfatal suicidal behavior as well as suicide. Nonfatal suicidal behavior was a first time record of either suicidal ideation or attempted suicide. Up to four control subjects without suicidal behavior were identified, and matched by age, sex, and duration of contact in the register, for each suicidal subject. For the suicide analysis similar selection criteria were utilized, and up to 10 controls were selected for each suicide. Jick et al. found that there were 555 persons with a first time episode of nonfatal suicidal behavior, including suicidal ideation, and there were 2062 control subjects. There was no difference between the four study drugs in terms of the emergence of suicidal ideation or behavior, and there was no evidence of any effect modification by age or sex. Compared with those who started taking an antidepressant more than 90 days before their first suicidal behavior, those who started taking their antidepressant within 1 to 9 days before developing suicidal behav-

Teaching the ‘nature of science’: modest adaptations or radical reconceptions?

This article explores the nature of a continuing mismatch between curriculum reform rhetoric in science education and actual classroom practice. Lack of philosophical consensus about the nature of science (NOS); lack of appropriate curriculum guidance, classroom materials and pedagogical content knowledge for NOS teaching; teachers’ personal theories of learning; and the realities of classroom constraints are all implicated as interacting factors that contribute to the mismatch. Because curriculum policy is political, with pressure brought to bear by many interest groups, it is suggested that the science teaching community cannot adequately address the issues raised in the absence of wider community debate and support.

School based youth health nurses' role in assisting young people access health services in provincial, rural and remote areas of Queensland, Australia

People living in rural and remote areas have poorer health and more limited access to health services than those in urban areas. Adolescence, generally a period of optimum health, is fraught with risky health behaviours, increasing morbidity and mortality. Increasingly, mental health problems including depression, alcohol and drug use, suicide, self-harm, sexual health, inappropriate nutrition and physical activity are key areas of adolescent health concern in Queensland, Australia. To address the health and well being needs of young people the School Based Youth Health Nurse (SBYHN) Program was introduced into State high schools in Queensland in 1998. SBYHN responsibilities include individual consultations and health promotion within the high school environment. This study was undertaken to explore the referral role of SBYHN in provincial, rural and remote Queensland and to ascertain the availability of referral services. A self-report survey was posted to all SBYHN in Queensland. Forty-four (62%) nurses participated; 27 from provincial, 11 from rural and 6 from remote areas. SBYHN consult with young people in provincial, rural and remote State high schools in the areas of psychological concerns, drug and alcohol concerns and/or abuse, family conflict and/or abuse, sexual and reproductive health, social and isolation concerns and nutritional advice. However, the frequency with which SBYHN reported themselves as an appropriate source for young people to seek assistance from varied from over 90% for areas such as sexual and nutritional advice to approximately 30% for areas such as physical abuse and drug and alcohol abuse. When required by the SBYHN, referral services were locally accessible to young people less than 50% of the time. Access to some referral services was reduced because some young people do not want parental involvement in their health and the service requires parental consent. When referral services were unavailable SBYHN used phone counselling, available generalists, supported and monitored the young people until a service was available, or they accepted this as an aspect of residing outside the metropolitan areas and did the best they could. Sometimes, when a young person was reluctant to attend a recommended service or there was a long wait for an appointment, SBYHN provided ongoing support while endeavouring to persuade attendance at the recommended service. Situations like these, experienced by at least half those studied, place SBYHN in the precarious position of practicing beyond their scope of practice. Health problems during adolescence can be reduced by ensuring assistance and support are available for young people when and if they require it. Thorough confidential individual consultations are provided by SBYHN and young people are availing themselves of this service. SBYHN are practicing at an advanced level and need to be recognised as such. Additionally, the availability of services in rural and remote regions needs consideration. As rural youth are more vulnerable to a number of health concerns, it is imperative that services are available for them. The issue of parental consent remains a barrier to young people seeking health services and it may be timely for community debate on this issue.

The Gospel Community Debate: State of the Question

For the last few decades the growing assumption has been that a community exists behind each of the four canonical Gospels. Elaborate reconstructions and reading techniques have been employed to draw out the characteristics of these communities, with the assumption that if we can see ‘behind the text’, we could better interpret the text itself. Recently the scholarly reconstruction of the communities behind the Gospels has been challenged by The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, edited by Richard Bauckham. Since the publication of The Gospels for All Christians, several discussions have begun concerning the nature of the Gospel communities, as well as the overall methods for reading the Gospels. This article attempts to place the Gospel community debate in the current discussion and direct it toward future resolve.

‘It’s just semantics?’: investigating a school district’s decision to respect or value diversity

Value diversity and promote understanding—so read a heading in a school district’s strategic plan. The phrase was to initiate six months of controversial community debate that was eventually encapsulated into the single question: Should our schools respect or should they value diversity? This question polarized the community, ultimately shaping the final outcome of the debate. Such localized deliberations reflect and reconstruct societal discourses about diversity and democracy, ultimately influencing educational policy decisions and schooling practices. Understanding how participants navigate these discourses is crucial for formulating more inclusive educational policy and for transforming societal discourses about democracy and difference. In this essay, it is argued that two discursive practices limited the democratic potential of the Boulder, Colorado school district’s debate and undermined the transformation of dominant discourses about diversity. It is suggested that these two linguistic tools appear frequently in public deliberation and identify implications for developing educational policy around diversity and for retheorizing the relationship between difference and democracy.

Class, Hegemony and Localism: The Southern Mining Region of New South Wales, 1850-1900

Historians have always been aware of the importance of localism or local loyalties in political life. This paper discusses in detail a number of large and small gold and base metal mining communities in the southern mining region of New South Wales during the nineteenth century. Aspects considered include the role of institutions such as progress associations and other more ephemeral gatherings, the nature of community debate and conflict, and the physical and economic environment. In gold mining settlements there was a much greater role for the independently minded working miners, the majority of whom fell within an aspirant middling class. By contrast, the vast majority of base metal miners and workers were employees. Localism was sometimes shaped by the hegemony which elites were able to exercise. It is argued that the specific nature of a mining community has important implications for the expression of localism.

Validation Guidelines for IS Positivist Research

The issue of whether IS positivist researchers were validating their instruments sufficiently was initially raised fifteen years ago. Rigor in IS research is still one of the critical scientific issues facing the field. Without solid validation of the instruments that are used to gather data on which findings and interpretations are based, the very scientific basis of the profession is threatened. This study builds on four prior retrospectives of IS research that conclude that IS positivist researchers continue to face major barriers in instrument, statistical, and other forms of validation. It goes beyond these studies by offering analyses of the state-of-the-art of research validities and deriving specific heuristics for research practice in the validities. Some of these heuristics will, no doubt, be controversial. But we believe that it is time for the IS academic profession to bring such issues into the open for community debate. This article is a first step in that direction. Based on our interpretation of the importance of a long list of validities, this paper suggests heuristics for reinvigorating the quest for validation in IS research via content/construct validity, reliability, manipulation validity, and statistical conclusion validity. New guidelines for validation and new research directions are offered.

Preparing for the future: Queensland 2020

By applying a futures approach to ageing of the population, Queensland has the opportunity to plan for changing aspirations of all of society – working to achieve identified preferred outcomes for society, rather than planning for problems or just for a specific target group. Queensland 2020: A State for All Ages is a project that aims to encourage whole‐of‐government and community debate on the structural ageing of the population and the interconnected needs of all generations. It focuses on government planning frameworks and aims to generate a transformational shift in how government, business and community organisations view the ageing of the population. To focus community debate and inform government planning, the project identified four key areas and commissioned academic stimulus papers to address these issues from an intergenerational perspective. These four areas were a futures focus; an ageing perspective; a youth perspective; and a human service planning perspective.

Santos, Jardins da Orla - referência urbana para a comunidade

Este trabalho faz parte do Projeto Portocidade, da Universidade Santa Cecília, uma reflexão sobre a história do desenvolvimento de Santos e uma análise sobre suas perspectivas futuras. A área correspondente aos jardins da orla de Santos, um arco com cerca de 6 km de extensão e uma largura de algumas dezenas de metros, foi objeto de disputas entre os proprietários dos terrenos fronteiriços à praia e o poder público, durante as primeiras décadas do século 20, até que, a partir dos anos 30, teve início a construção de gramados sobre a areia. Na década de 50 a relação que se estabeleceu entre a praia e as edificações que surgiram ao longo da orla, e o aumento da ocupação dessa parte da cidade promoveram mudanças importantes, incorporando definitivamente o jardim à paisagem santista. A partir dos anos 60, a forma de ocupação do jardim e sua caracterização passaram a ser dominantes no debate da comunidade, transformando os jardins da orla na mais marcante referência urbana de Santos. A alteração dos programas de necessidades, das funções e da própria concepção de paisagem, associada a uma crescente importância dada ao transporte individual, geraram conflitos que vêm definindo a maneira como a comunidade vê esse equipamento.

Fundholding: learning from the past and looking to the future.

Australian trials of healthcare initiatives that included fundholding models have not produced convincing quantitative evidence of health gains, but there is qualitative evidence of improved patient well-being and significant changes in service mix, which may produce longer-term health gains. Fundholding is most likely to improve patient outcomes when implemented within a broader healthcare initiative that has the potential to be more effective if financed outside existing funding structures. The most appropriate fundholder organisation depends on the nature of the initiative and the type of stakeholder engagement required, but technical and organisational skills will always be needed for balancing financial viability and additional patient services. Stakeholders' willingness to engage in fundholding depends on the anticipated budget impact, how they will use the savings generated, and whether workforce needs will be fulfilled. Before including fundholding in healthcare initiatives, there must be realistic prospective analyses and community debate. Monitoring and evaluation frameworks must also be in place to provide ongoing evidence of quality of care, health and well-being outcomes and financial implications for fund contributors.

Bed rationing and allocation in the intensive care unit.

That the resources available for intensive care cannot be infinite is self-evident. Parallel increases in medical capability, cost, and community expectations have forced intensivists to confront the reality of resource limitation. Traditional bioethical structures cope poorly with this focus beyond the traditional patient-doctor relationship. Allocation of funds for intensive care may be case-based, historically based, per diem, or capitation-based but is always heavily influenced by political and economic considerations. Attempts have been made to relate costs to severity or intervention scores, but all these techniques are limited by the high fixed costs of intensive care. Methods available to help the physician faced with patient-selection dilemmas include cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analysis. These techniques involve assessment of the quality of life with the help of several well-validated quantitative approaches. Choosing between competing patients for intensive care beds is often more a theoretical issue than a practical one, because alternative arrangements can almost always be made. Physicians have an ethical and social responsibility to further develop the tools to inform community debate on these issues.

Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: Putting Out the Fire

The National Reading Panel report reiterates what many teachers recognize: phonics instruction is one ingredient of a successful reading program. Why such a clear and obvious finding is so threatening to some people remains a puzzle to Ms. Ehri and Mr. Stahl. IN PROFESSIONAL sports, it is called trash talking. In community debates, it is called building a straw man. In politics, it is known as negative campaigning. Those who do it believe that victory comes from attacking the other side, from tearing down structures rather than making them sturdier. Faults are featured, and strengths are slighted or denied. In The Argument Culture, Deborah Tannen regards this trend as a big problem. She suggests that a culture of critique has replaced rational analysis. Critique has become synonymous with criticism, and it has become the dominant approach in responding to people or ideas. She writes: What I is the ubiquity, the knee-jerk nature, of approaching almost any issue, problem, or public person in an adversarial way. . . . What l is using opposition to accomplish every goal, even those that do not require fighting but might also (or better) be accomplished by other means, such as exploring, expanding, discussing, investigating, and the exchanging of ideas suggested by the word dialogue. l am questioning the assumption that everything is a matter of polarized opposites, the proverbial two sides to every question that we think embodies open-mindedness and expansive thinking.1 The article by Elaine Garan, Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors: A Critique of the National Reading Panel Report on Phonics, which appeared in the March 2001 Phi Delta Kappan, exemplifies this tactic. Garan seems to be motivated more by a need to denigrate than by a desire to contribute a rational analysis of the National Reading Panel (NRP) report on phonics instruction and its effectiveness in helping children learn to read. Our purpose here is to examine the merits of Elaine Garan's criticisms and the adversarial quality that pervades her article. As we will document, her criticisms are highly selected, ill-founded, and overgeneralized. Moreover, her article does not represent the findings of the full NRP report. Garan begins her review with a plea for fairness in looking at the NRP report. Yet she finds only problems. Even a stopped watch is correct twice a day! Her unrelenting negative view reflects an unfortunate bias, one that we believe threatens to undermine rather than contribute to progress in our field. The National Reading Panel Report In April 2000, the NRP released its report, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction. The NRP was convened by Congress for the purpose of examining what research says about the effectiveness of reading instruction. The resulting report was intended to move the nation forward in the process of helping teachers improve their reading instruction. The panel included distinguished literacy researchers from the U.S. and Canada. Not only phonics instruction but several other types of reading instruction were reviewed by the panel, including phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary learning, and comprehension strategy instruction. The report was distributed in print and electronic form. In preparing the review of phonics instruction, the NRP carefully and objectively analyzed the results of 38 independently conducted studies of phonics instruction that included more than 7,000 students. Multiple protections against bias and established meta-analytic procedures were employed. Attention was focused on controlled experiments, the strongest form of scientific evidence. The report found clear evidence indicating that phonics instruction should have a place in the reading curriculum in today's schools. * Systematic phonics instruction was found to be more effective than unsystematic phonics instruction or no phonics instruction in helping students learn to read. …