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Historically, males from low socio-economic backgrounds have been a difficult demographic for educators to reach and engage. Despite efforts to widen participation in Australia, males who would be considered 'first-in-family', remain severely underrepresented in higher education. For those who do attend, they often encounter significant barriers and are at a higher risk of attrition. Experiences with employment can be a determiner of their success at university both in terms of informing or reaffirming their prospects for future employment. While recent policies in Australia have sought to integrate working-integrated learning (WIL) into university studies, these are not available to all students thus opportunities to develop skills and attributes through WIL remains a fragmented picture. As a result, we are witnessing many young people who are concerned about their future employability seeking out non-formal WIL opportunities to bolster their CVs. This paper explores the motivations of first-in-family males to pursue non-formal WIL opportunities and the effects these endeavours had upon their aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working at a satellite campus of an Australian regional university, where many students are the first in their family to attend university, fear of failure can present a strong disincentive to creative experimentation. Consequently, the authors have developed a number of tacit strategies with which to gently engender students with critical and creative skills at the expense of short-term vocational expectations. This de-emphasis of vocational specificity is particularly radical in a social context in which unemployment is high, cultural diversity is low (despite a higher than average Indigenous population) and education levels remain low. This paper seeks to explore the challenge of fostering a climate of critically engaged creative experimentation in a relatively conservative and socially disadvantaged regional context. The authors consider whether there is pedagogical value in facilitating the creation of liminal spaces between community and classroom in a social environment more attuned to vocational aspiration and economic sustenance than critical self -reflexive agency. The paper also addresses the role of student centred learning and the idea of the undergraduate student as researcher as critical to facilitating a holistic educational experience. This case study proposes a pedagogical climate that might performatively emphasise the importance of students re-imagining their own ethical, philosophical, spiritual and political futures. The authors find that the potential for failure is incontrovertibly linked to each of these aims. In a world in which previously unimagined contexts are routinely traversed the author's assert that the transformative potential of failure can unlock a transposable ability for students to critically navigate the complexity of contemporary cultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of what has been broadly labelled the knowledge economy has been such that, even in the absence of precise measurement, it is the undoubted dynamo of today's global market and an essential part of any global city. The socio-economic importance of knowledge production in a knowledge economy is clear, and it is an emerging social phenomenon and research agenda in geographical studies. Knowledge production, and where, how and by whom it is produced, is an urban phenomenon that is poorly understood in an era of strong urbanization. This paper focuses on knowledge community precincts as the catalytic magnet infrastructures impacting on knowledge production in cities. The paper discusses the increasing importance of knowledge-based urban development (KBUD) within the paradigm of the knowledge economy and the role of knowledge community precincts as instruments to seed the foundation of knowledge production in cities. This paper explores the KBUD, and particularly knowledge community precinct development, potentials of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and benchmarks this against that of Boston, MA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on neo-liberal and Deleuzian theory, this paper examines how new modes of governance are shaping Australian regions and what kind of resistance is emerging in response to them, in particular to government encouragement of business and commercial appropriation. The first part of the paper discusses recent literature on regional policy-making in the context of neo-liberalism. It is argued that Deleuzian metaphors such as 'reterritorialisation', 'deterritorialisation', 'machinic assemblages', 'folding' and 'lines of flight' provide a rich conceptual vocabulary that can be used to enhance an understanding of contemporary regional policy-making. To demonstrate the efficacy of this claim, the paper draws upon the example of policy-making in the Australian State of Tasmania and the conflicts these policies have generated. Amongst the paper's conclusions is that the competitive practices now being pursued within the auspices of regional policy-making generate a set of new interactions that have significance both across Australia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Port Adelaide waterfront is symbolic of a distinctive form of entrepreneurial urban governance that emphasises specific forms of capital accumulation. As in waterfront projects elsewhere in Australia and overseas, depicting Port Adelaide as an 'urban problem' has been critical in legitimating the public-private market-based approach to regenerating the waterfront site. This paper outlines how the ascendancy of urban governance in Australian political sensibility is coinciding with and facilitating a particular urban form in waterfront developments. This involves transforming the Port's disused industrial and maritime landscape from a site of production to one of consumption. This urban makeover signifies a radical reconstitution of place identity, economic function and social relations. This paper also investigates the impact on the pre-existing social structure, built form and economic activity base of the location and suggests that the potential for this significant waterfront project is not confined to the re-imagining of the discursive identity of the place but extends to meeting wider institutional metropolitan and regional planning objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low health status of indigenous communities in Australia, and other countries, has been a continuing societal problem. One way to improve health status involves the provision of health-related information. Computer-based systems offer new ways to provide such information: thus their application can be seen as process innovations. This paper describes the use of touch-screen technology to present health information in a culturally relevant fashion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Queensland, Australia. Touch-screen kiosks incorporate both computer hardware and software. The paper also outlines some of the key economic concepts relevant to an economic analysis of an information system employing touch-screen technology. It is shown that the economic analysis involves a two-stage process, and it is somewhat more complex than setting up an Internet website. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global oil prices have risen markedly over the past 18 months, generating considerable speculation regarding their economic and social impacts. Cities that are highly dependent on petroleum for urban transport are likely to be most adversely affected by rising oil prices. Yet there has been little recent scholarly engagement with the socioeconomic implications of increasing oil prices. This paper develops a basic framework and methodology for assessing the socioeconomic ‘oil vulnerability’ of Australian cities. The paper demonstrates that there is wide spatial variability in the vulnerability of Australia's urban populations to rising fuel costs which may compound existing socio-spatial divisions and speculates on some underlying causal factors. The paper calls for better data and new methods to understand the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first explore the trends in the maintenance of migrant community languages among the first generation migrants and then the socio-economic variation in the shift in use of community languages. Our analysis showed that language shift to English among first generation migrants has not been uniform, with some migrant groups adopting English as a home language at a much faster rate than others. Gender and duration of residence had strong association with language shift; languages of migrant groups of the pre-1980 period have not been maintained as well as that of later arrivals. Place of residence and the distribution of a linguistic community also provided opportunities for language maintenance as migrants residing in major capital cities in Australia tended to better maintain their community language. Finally, higher level of education was associated with lower likelihood of speaking a community language at home. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses some of the reasons why in the Northern Territory of Australia speakers of indigenous languages shift from using indigenous languages to using creoles and standard or non-standard English. Language attitudes of speakers are discussed in terms of what people say about languages, what public activities they engage in with respect to language maintenance, and how they talk in informal settings. The divergence between people's positive attitudes towards a language (as indicated by public language activities) and their everyday talk is discussed in the light of linguistic vitality indicators, including the socio-structural features of political, social, economic and cultural control, institutional control and status, and demographic factors as well as interactional possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Government's Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program aims to encourage greater participation of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in higher education. Historically, participation and retention rates of students from under-represented groups have been less than for the majority of school leavers. Universities are now intensifying their efforts to improve retention, and expect all parts of their institutions, including the university library, to contribute. Through a review of conceptual and empirical literature, this paper identifies five potential means by which a library may contribute to student retention and concludes by outlining one library's approach to investigating its contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporary migration has become a significant component of Australia's migration programme, most notably via the skilled temporary work visa (s457), student visas with work rights and Working Holiday Maker visas, but also the pilot of the Pacific Seasonal Workers’ Scheme. Temporary migration is an extremely diverse phenomenon and it clearly creates opportunities for individuals, households and states. However, it just as clearly creates additional vulnerabilities. It can be a way to get workers to do work where citizens are unwilling, and temporary migrants can be politically excluded both at home and abroad. The decoupling of citizenship and work, however, has uneven affects depending on the bargaining position of workers. This paper examines temporary migration in the Australian context, and the role of NGOs and unions engaged with these migrants. The argument made is that temporary migration transnationalises these organisations. It also shows, however, the uneasy tension between national and transnational politics and solidarities, with implications for temporary migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the results of research into the learning experiences of a group of adult learners in a university preparation programme in a college of Technical and Further Education in Sydney, NSW, Australia. The research was conducted over a three year period by the author as a teacher-researcher and is grounded in the phenomenological work of Schutz, and Berger and Luckmann. Students identified the diverse segments of their complex life-worlds and the salient situated interactions within these segments which support or distract them from learning. What emerges is a representation of the life-world of the adult learner which enables adult educators and students to better understand the complex world of learning in adulthood. An understanding of this world has become increasingly significant as recent economic and social changes have ensured that more adults return to formal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous Australians are significantly disadvantaged in comparison with non-Indigenous Australians on all socioeconomic indicators. Education and training are seen as a means of reducing inequality, and high levels of Indigenous participation in vocational education and training (VET) indicate that this sector has a central role in this process. This paper draws from an interview study undertaken to investigate the VET experiences of Indigenous adults in Victoria, Australia. Retrospective interviews were conducted with a sample of 128 current and former students, and teachers and other stakeholders in order to identify the factors that promote engagement in the system and improve qualifications and employment pathways. A major finding of the study was the vital role played by Indigenous Support Units in enabling Indigenous students to successfully negotiate their pathways through the VET system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional economic and social development is an important public issue in most countries, yet among the least successful. In Australia, some 40 years of trial and error regional strategy appear to have had limited success in securing long-range economic and social development leading to more diversified economies, population growth and converging regional wellbeing. The paper explores the nature of Australia's regional development problem and its causes as a prelude to summarising governments' changing capacity to influence and control events. Given this background, it sketches an emerging governance system, particularly in the State of New South Wales, designed to ameliorate regional adversity. Finally, it assesses the system's current and prospective functionality and impediments to system improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New national and international economic and social forces have reshaped national geographies in general and the characteristics of cities in particular, resulting in a range of diverse social and spatial outcomes. These outcomes, which include greater differentiation across, within and between cities has become a feature of the economic and social forces associated with post-Fordist social structures. Taking localities across Australia's metropolitan regions, this paper develops a typology of advantage and disadvantage using a model-based approach with clustering of data represented by a parameterised Gaussian mixture model and confidence intervals of the means providing a measure of differences between the clusters. The analysis finds seven clusters of localities that represent different aspects of the socio-spatial structure of the metropolitan regions studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The roles of universities have evolved over the last twenty years. Universities were once regarded as focusing on two key roles - teaching and research - which were exogenous to, and independent from, specific economic and social development imperatives. Today, it is increasingly recognised that universities perform important roles as enablers, even leaders, of regional economic and social development and in regional innovation systems; which has been captured in the notion of a third role for universities. This paper explores the nature of the third role of universities in the Australian setting as it applies to human capital formation. The roles of universities in this regard is categorised as being either generative or developmental in nature, based on the triple helix model of university, industry, government relations and the emerging literature on university engagement. This categorisation is explored using three case studies of non core-metropolitan universities. The study explores the nature of the roles performed by the universities in human capital formation and considers possible explanations of variation in the roles performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]