Vision For Australia Research Articles

Shining a light on disparities to access. Specialist teachers’ perceptions on the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions on learning for students with blindness and low vision in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific

ABSTRACT COVID-19 restrictions have had significant impacts on teaching and learning globally. A growing body of literature has been published on the experiences of students and teachers as they negotiated school closures and social restrictions. Much less has been published about the experiences of students with disability, and very little about students with blindness and low vision (BLV). The impact of BLV on learning is significant due to the visual nature of the curriculum. To address the dearth of research on how COVID-19 restrictions impacted educational access and participation for students with BLV, the authors, supported by a research grant through the South Pacific Educators of Vision Impairment (SPEVI), surveyed and interviewed Specialist Teachers of students with BLV in Australia, New Zealand, and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific region, that is, the region that encompasses SPEVI’s work. The results bring teachers’ voices into the collation of strategies to inform future educational responses. These are presented as a series of six key catalysts or drivers for change over four stages of action; moving through times of crisis that necessitate remote teaching and learning or other fundamental shifts in practice due to crisis-driven changes.

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

The Synergy between John Dewey’s Educational Democracy and Educational Reforms in New South Wales, Australia

“Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. John DeweyThe current study examines the impact of John Dewey’s democratic educational principles on the recent educational reforms in New South Wales, Australia, using data collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews, with open-ended questions, as part of case studies designed for this purpose. The participants in this study are all Australian educators (n=60), undertaking full-time and part-time academic posts, involving learning and teaching activities at universities and other higher educational institutions/providers in Sydney, Australia. As part of the case studies, the individual, personal, and professional teaching and learning journeys of the educators are sketched in details in relation to John Dewey’s four (4) key democratic educational reformative principles. Finally, this research study concludes by providing a realistic response to the following question: Given the current liberal and relatively democratic educational system in New South Wales, are the Australian educators truly given the opportunity to create a positive and constructive future vision for Australia, in general, and the Australian graduates, in particular. The current study further provides a realistic and clear-cut description of the hurdles facing the current educational system in New South Wales, Australia.

Paranoia and the Far Right in 1970s Rural New South Wales

ABSTRACT When Gough Whitlam’s Labor government won re-election in 1974, Nora Opferkuch, a Coonabarabran farmer, wrote to the Attorney-General Lionel Murphy. After congratulating him on the party’s success, she warned him of the parlous state of political life in the Central New South Wales town. “No one dares speak Politics in Coonabarabran now,” she wrote. The town was in the grip of a fascist conspiracy that had resulted in a terrible crime. Opferkuch’s letter opens up an under-examined area of Australian political culture—the activities of the far right. Using interviews and newspaper reports, as well as Opferkuch’s letter, this article explores the veracity of her allegations. It reveals the impact on a rural town of social change led by a resurgent political party with a vision for Australia at odds with that of the ruling elite. It also extends understandings of Australian political culture, including the role of politics in the everyday life of a rural town, and explores the impact of the political past on contemporary events.

Creating a new frontier in detection and data integration for exploration through cover

A new wave of technologies and data products are needed to address the decline in greenfields exploration activity and discovery success in Australia. Australia is an old continent with much of its remaining mineral endowment obscured by a thick cover of weathered rock, sediment and soil materials. This presents a critical challenge for mineral exploration now and into the future, as the industry currently lacks the fundamental data, scientific knowledge and technological tools needed to discover new, world-class ore deposits buried beneath this cover. UNCOVER, is a national vision in Australia for the future for mineral exploration geoscience research to tackle the geological barriers to more tier 1 discoveries. Harnessing capabilities, a well-defined focus and virtuous collaboration on the task of developing this new technology coupled with strong industry engagement can address this challenge.

An update on the characteristics of patients attending the Kooyong Low Vision Clinic

BackgroundSince 1972, the Australian College of Optometry has worked in partnership with Vision Australia to provide multidisciplinary low‐vision care at the Kooyong Low Vision Clinic. In 1999, Wolffsohn and Cochrane reported on the demographic characteristics of patients attending Kooyong. Sixteen years on, the aim of this study is to review the demographics of the Kooyong patient cohort and prescribing patterns.MethodsRecords of all new patients (n = 155) attending the Kooyong Low Vision Clinic for optometry services between April and September 2012 were retrospectively reviewed.ResultsMedian age was 84.3 years (range 7.7 to 98.1 years) with 59 per cent female. The majority of patients presented with late‐onset degenerative pathology, 49 per cent with a primary diagnosis of age‐related macular degeneration. Many (47.1 per cent) lived with their families. Mean distance visual acuity was 0.57 ± 0.47 logMAR or approximately 6/24. The median spectacle‐corrected near visual acuity was N8 (range N3 to worse than N80). Fifty patients (32.3 per cent) were prescribed new spectacles, 51 (32.9 per cent) low vision aids and five (8.3 per cent) were prescribed electronic magnification devices. Almost two‐thirds (63.9 per cent) were referred for occupational therapy management and 12.3 per cent for orientation and mobility services.ConclusionsThe profile of patients presenting for low‐vision services at Kooyong is broadly similar to that identified in 1999. Outcomes appear to be similar, aside from an expected increase in electronic devices and technological solutions; however, the nature of services is changing, as treatments for ocular diseases advance and assistive technology develops and becomes more accessible. Alongside the aging population and age‐related ocular disease being the predominant cause of low vision in Australia, the health‐funding landscape is becoming more restrictive. The challenge for the future will be to provide timely, high‐quality care in an economically efficient model.

Narratives of Childhood in Regional Western Australian Towns: A Trajectory of Hope and Collective Wisdom for Landmark Reforms

THE EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION and care reforms in Australia have been heralded as a cause for celebration, greatly anticipated by a sector that has lamented its invisibility. Drawing on qualitative data from a study of three towns in the south-west of Western Australia, this article aims to provoke reflection on where we stand with the celebrated aim of putting young children at the centre of the vision for Australia. The South-West Early Childhood Project investigated how childhood is constructed and how communities welcome families and young children. The study identified several themes: narratives of invisibility/visibility; narratives of sitting still/being active; and narratives of conformity/diversity. The article foregrounds the acclaimed experience of the city of Reggio Emilia (Italy) and extends an invitation to communities in Australia to position themselves on a trajectory of hope by harnessing collective wisdom in support of landmark early childhood reforms.

Curating a Nation’s Past: The Role of the Public Intellectual in Australia’s History Wars

Curating a Nation’s Past: The Role of the Public Intellectual in Australia’s History Wars

Equity in vision in Australia is in sight.

Equity in vision in Australia is in sight.

Engaging History and Negotiating National Identity with Miki's Concerto Requiem (1981) at the 18th Biennial Festival of Arts in Adelaide, South Australia

Minoru Miki's Concerto Requiem, performed in the Festival in Adelaide in 1994, was part of the Artistic Director's new vision for Australia to ‘meld East and West in a new Australian-ness’. It also coincided with fiftieth-anniversary events to mark the end of the Pacific War. Miki, who was composer-in-residence at the Festival, was acutely aware of public perceptions of the Japanese as bitter enemies. He specifically requested that Concerto Requiem be performed in remembrance of all Australians and Japanese who had died in the war, but it is only the analysis presented here that has revealed the depth and subtlety of Miki's compositional strategy to convey musically his message for coexistence. This study explores the way Concerto Requiem demonstrated Hunt's broad vision and was a tool for reconciliation between Australia and Japan. It argues that the performance was an episode in the story of cultural relations between Australia and Japan that reveals the way music and music-making occur in the nexus between geopolitical imperatives and historical resonances that continue to have an impact on the negotiation of identity at transcultural festivals in Australia today.

Australian television, popular memory and suburbia

Different archives of television material construct different versions of Australian national identity. There exists a Pro-Am archive of Australian television history materials consisting of many individual collections. This archive is not centrally located nor clearly bounded. The collections are not all linked to each other, nor are they aware of each other, and they do not claim to have a single common project. Pro-Am collections tend not to address Australian television as a whole, rather addressing particular genres, programs or production companies. Their vision of Australia is ‘ordinary’ and everyday. The boundaries of ‘Australia’ in the Pro-Am archive are porous, allowing non-Australians to contribute material, and also including non-Australian material and this causes little sense of anxiety.

Health Systems Change in 2010

Whilst health science, epidemiology and public health developments have forged enormous progress in understanding, prevention and cure in the health care area we still appear to lack the motivation to tackle the fundamental antecedents of many of our emerging population-based community health problems; the prevention of chronic illness being a prime example. In spite of much progress in the area of health science, the social, economic and evolutionary forces that cast our physical being in the world still remain poorly understood or accepted in the health care arena. However, if our health care systems are to be manageable and sustainable in the future, these wider antecedents of our health status and wellbeing must be factored more fundamentally in to our management models with more effort being put into preventing lifestyle related chronic illnesses than is currently the case. As in the past where public health infrastructure innovations such as running water and efficient waste disposal systems served to add greatly to the wellbeing of individuals and communities, we now need to make similar efforts to control preventable illnesses such as metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and lifestyle related cardio-vascular disease at their source rather than waiting until the manifestation of these conditions require major medical and chemical intervention and management before we act. Our young people are at risk of early onset chronic conditions as a result of their emerging sedentary lifestyles, un-healthy dietary habits and health related behaviours, yet we continue to concentrate our health management effort on managing those with existing chronic conditions while leaving younger generations with lifestyle practices and behaviours that pre-dispose individuals to developing chronic illness earlier and earlier in their lives. It is time we took notice of these emerging trends and began expending more effort to prevent what are essentially lifestyle related illnesses that can be eliminated before they become endemic. By concentrating more upon the social and environmental factors affecting our illness profiles as well as upon dealing more effectively with those who are already suffering from chronic illness we will reduce the need for major end-stage interventions and alleviate the impact and cost of early onset chronic disease. To achieve this new population health vision in Australia at least, we will not only need to utilize the new government funding structures more effectively; those structures that support coordination and more effective management of care, but also take a much broader, environmental and social view of cause and effect in relation to the health of populations.

The Cost of Care for People With Impaired Vision in Australia

To prospectively collect data on the providers, types, and costs of care for people with impaired vision in Australia. Adults with impaired vision, visual acuity worse than 20/40, were recruited from clinics, vision rehabilitation agencies, and support groups. Participants completed daily diaries for 12 months, entering information on the amount of time they used caregivers and providers and types of care. Demographic information was obtained from questionnaires. The cost of care was calculated using mean hourly wage rates. The mean age of the 114 participants was 66.5 years (standard deviation [SD], 19.7) with 64% of participants female; 105 of 114 participants relied on a caregiver at least once during the 12 months. The mean amount of yearly caregiver time used was 152.2 hours (SD, 193; median, 81.3; range, 1-851 hours). The median time represents 4.6% of a working week. There were no significant associations of age, sex, type, or place of residence with the amount of care received (P > or = .1). As most of the caregivers were family members who assisted with transport, written communications, and personal affairs, the "opportunity costs" were calculated. The median annual opportunity cost was A$915 (US $710) (range, $A0-$9653 [US $0-$7491]). This study prospectively obtained data for the cost of caregivers for people with impaired vision. The degree of vision impairment was not associated with the amount of care used but showed a threshold effect: when vision is impaired to the extent that people cannot legally hold a driver's license, reliance on caregivers appears to be independent of the severity of loss of vision.

'Joy': Memorialisation and the Limits of Tolerance

While there are a growing number of ‘counter-hegemonic’ monuments in Australia, the numerous workers’ memorials commemorating heroic male figures ¬– coalminers, truck drivers, timber workers and wharf labourers – retain the exclusionary characteristic of traditional or ‘institutional’ memorialising. Many such memorials nourish a masculinist, albeit working class, vision of Australia’s nation building efforts, while commemoration of the lives of women – beyond ‘the exceptional’ – is rare in the public sphere. This article examines one such rarity: the statue of ‘Joy’ commemorating the lives of women who worked as prostitutes in the ‘red light’ district of East Sydney, an urban environment then in the later stages of gentrification. ‘Joy’ is a memorial resembling the more recent tradition of ‘new genre’ public art; art that ‘seeks to disrupt prevailing conceptions of the city’. When the larger-than-life cement, marble dust and steel statue took up her position on the street in East Sydney, New South Wales, it elicited widespread controversy. It is these different responses that are the subject of this article. They provide a snapshot of late-twentieth century Sydney views on prostitution and history.

Experience of Monocular Vision in Australia

In-depth interviews with 20 people with monocular vision identified a number of themes associated with the impairment, including psychological, psychosocial, physical, vocational, and daily living problems. They also revealed that in many cases, these problems had profound implications for people's adjustment to daily living. The implications of these findings for the delivery of rehabilitation services are discussed.

Primary eye care needs and services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations across Queensland: a ‘users' perspective

Background: Only a small percentage of people with low vision in Australia receive comprehensive low vision rehabilitation services. In an attempt to examine reasons for this under-utilisation of low vision services, the referral criteria used by Australian ophthalmologists and optometrists were investigated. This paper reports the results for optometric referrals; the results for the ophthalmological referrals have been reported elsewhere. Method: A survey was sent to a random sample of 800 optometrists in Australia. Information requested included the vision loss criteria used for referral of patients to services for visually impaired people, the frequency of prescription of low vision devices (LVDs), frequency of referrals and perceptions of the availability and quality of low vision services. Results: The response rate was 36 per cent. Optometrists reported that only 4.7 per cent of their patients have low vision. Optometrists frequently prescribe LVDs but the majority infrequently refer patients to low vision or rehabilitation services. The rate of referral is influenced by their referral criterion and the perceived availability and quality of low vision services. Conclusions: Optometrists do not manage many patients with low vision because the patients are usually referred to ophthalmologists for management of the underlying eye disease. However, many optometrists could adopt a lesser degree of vision loss as their referral criteria for low vision services and encourage ophthalmologists to do the same. With improved communication between the eye care practitioners and low vision services, patients will be referred to low vision services earlier, before vision loss severely affects their daily lives.

A Networked Vision for Australia

A Networked Vision for Australia

Kakadu for Orchestra (1988)

The orchestral works of Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929) are in many respects related to the development of Australian orchestras since mid-century, including major orchestras in Sydney (where he lives), Melbourne, and elsewhere, and to the emergence of enthusiastic and ever-larger Australian audiences for new orchestral music. Sculthorpe's four Sun Music pieces from the 1960s are frequently cited as landmarks in the emergence of an internationally recognized, contemporary Australian style. He has continued to explore his vision of Australia in music that has extraordinary appeal and attractiveness to players and listeners. Sculthorpe's program notes, preconcert talks, public lectures, and interviews help make his work accessible to the widest possible audience. He explains many features of his music as reflective of Australian landscape, including the flatness of his melodic material, the music's repetitiveness, and its slow rate of change. Other features he explains are inspired by his affinity for the classical musics of Japan and Indonesia, Australia's Asian neighbors, such as his particular modalism, the gamelanlike accompanying figures and gongs, the non-developing sectional construction, and the long, gradual increase of tension building to dramatic climax. The title of the 1988 orchestral work Kakadu refers to Kakadu National Park in northern Australia, a vast area of rocky escarpments leading down through bushland and floodplain to the sea. Kakadu, the composer explains in his program note preceding the score, is concerned with his feelings about this place, its landscape, its change of seasons, its dry season and its wet, its cycle of life and death. The work is unusual among Sculthorpe's orchestral works in that it was commissioned by an American for an American occasion. An Aspen Music Festival trustee, Emanuel Papper, commissioned Kakadu as a birthday present for his wife, for performance at the festival in 1988. Australian music was featured at the festival that year - Sculthorpe was one of the festival's composers-in-residence - in recognition of Australia's national celebration of the bicentenary of European settlement. Jorge Mester conducted the Kakadu premiere in July; the first Australian performances, in Sydney and Melbourne, were in April of 1989, around the time of the composer's sixtieth birthday. The work has been programmed by a great number and variety of orchestras, including the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra in Miami (Dr. Papper's hometown) in 1992. A performance by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by the late Stuart Challender is available on the Australian label ABC Classics (426481). Sculthorpe chose the title Kakadu for several reasons. Like many Australians in 1988, he was uncomfortable with his country's celebrating white settlement that destroyed much of the continent's ancient, indigenous black culture. He surmised that Americans might be familiar with the Kakadu area if only as the location for much of the popular film Crocodile Dundee. In Kakadu, as elsewhere, Aboriginal culture had almost disappeared; sadly, today there are only a few remaining speakers of kakadu, or gagadju, the composer writes in his program note. Further, the Australian landscape, so essential to Sculthorpe's musical vision, is a major subject of Aboriginal music; the songlines or dreaming tracks describe every rock, tree, and water hole along the paths of the totemic ancestors. …

The importance and state of medical and public health research related to vision in Australia.

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A Vision for Australia: Indicators from Singapore

This article suggests that Australia could benefit from observing more closely Singapore's current development strategy. The production of labour intensive manufactures primarily by foreign firms and for export formed the core of Singapore's successful economic advance in the 1960s and 1970s. While a factor endowment strength—comparatively cheap labour—lay behind this achievement, the Singapore government actively supplemented this strength by creating a business environment highly favourable to the needs of foreign investors. With full employment and rising wage levels since then, Singapore lost its comparative advantage in the production of low wage manufactures to other East Asian countries. Recently, its development has been based more on created than inherited advantages. The Singapore government argues that the resources crucial to sustained per capita income advance in middle and higher income countries are not natural resources but rather information, technology, investible funds, research and development (R&D) spending and professional people. Singapore aims to develop its business environment to attract such resources to Singapore. The government's vision for Singapore is a nation where the share of professional and highly skilled manpower in the workforce rises over time. This employment goal informs the government's approach to all policy matters: infrastructure development, education, urban development, microeconomic reform, taxation, fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policy, support for manufacturing and service activities, and attitudes to foreign investors. By comparison with Australia, Singapore has a very level playing field. The government sees no conflict between intervening to attempt to create competitive advantage while vigorously pursuing microeconomic reforms to make the playing field in Singapore still more level.