Regional and national interest in reforming teaching in Indonesia has seen governments, NGOs and education specialists combine to drive pedagogical changes among school teachers there. Results of these programs have been indifferent at best. This paper reports on teacher reform programs in Provinsi Papua, one of the most marginal societies in Indonesia. The Papuan Provincial Government, AusAID and an Australian University focused on bringing cohorts of secondary teachers and Principals for professional development to Australia. An evaluative, survey inquiry was conducted into the effectiveness of a series of AusAID (now DFAT Australian Aid) Scholarship programs on changing capacities and approaches of teachers and Principals at least eighteen months after their offshore experience. Findings revealed significant changes in teaching practices, improved quality of teacher-student relationships and improved interactions with colleagues. We argue that our findings demonstrate an appetite for student-centred approaches to teaching and that offshore programs may have important outcomes that larger scale, in-country programs fail to realise. This has implications for DFAT Australian Aid-funded and similar Scholarship programs.

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The main object of the work reported here was to find a rational design method for granule-fed single-screw extruders used for plastics processing. The first half of the paper contains a brief review of the literature on extrusion theory. Also the existing theory of Newtonian melt flow is extended to the granule-fed extruder and predictions of the behaviour of granule-fed machines are made. In addition the extruder flow equation for non-Newtonian ‘power law’ fluids is solved. In the second part of the paper are described experiments on polythene extrusion which demonstrate that qualitatively this non-Newtonian polymer behaves as predicted in the first part. An adequate correlation of flow results for the melt zones of the screws used is obtained, using an ‘apparent’ viscosity with a shear rate correction to allow for non-Newtonian behaviour. Outputs can be predicted within about 25 per cent using the design method recommended as a result of the work, but power consumption predictions tend to be low, and further attention must be given to that aspect.

The time-dependent deformation of an NHL 3.5 natural hydraulic lime mortar, a 1 : 6 Portland cement mortar, two Portland cement/CL90 hybrid mortars and a CL90 lime paste, through creep and drying shrinkage under load, has been investigated. An apparatus was constructed to measure the dimensional changes of eight individual samples simultaneously. A reversible relationship between changes in specimen dimension and relative humidity has been established. The influence of load on deformation rate was found to be most significant during the first two weeks of monitoring with little effect thereafter. The rate of deformation during the first 2 weeks of sample monitoring was greatest for mortars containing a high proportion of calcium hydroxide. A linear relationship was found between strain rate and calcium hydroxide content.