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Until the middle of the 20th Century, all the governments of the various regions in Nigeria did was to give grants‐in‐aid to the voluntary agencies that operated approved schools while a few “government schools” were established in a few strategic towns. After the Nigeria‐Biafra civil war in 1970, some State governments took over the complete ownership and control of all educational institutions in their areas of jurisdiction. The educational policies and practices of the voluntary agencies were condemned as being foreign‐oriented, irrelevant to Nigeria's needs, and divisive in the sense that denominational schools encouraged religious and tribal bigotry and unhealthy rivalry among the citizens. It was also argued that state take‐over of all schools would enable the government to plan the education system as part of the national integrated plan for social and economic development. The author supports greater control of the education system by the government and indeed a state take‐over of voluntary schools based on mutual agreement. However, voluntary agencies and private individuals should be allowed to own and run their own schools completely at their own expense within the broad framework of government regulations. However, many Nigerians objected to the unilateral seizure and control of church and private schools by the government. People argued that it was illegal to dispossess the voluntary agencies of schools they built mostly with their own resources without first of all working out an agreement with them which should include adequate compensation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a group of International Baccalaureate (IB) Physics teachers exercise collective agency by initiating and facilitating their own collaboration using online tools across time zones and school contexts. The paper seeks to inform teacher communities, school leaders, policy and the growing body of literature about teacher agency.

This paper uses qualitative case study approach. Data were gathered from individual interviews, classroom observations and the group’s meeting agendas, notes and reflections.

Central to the group’s work is a norm of teaching “lock-step,” meaning they teach approximately the same lesson at approximately the same time. The norm enabled them to exercise collective agency over the curriculum and professional learning by establishing conditions for sharing knowledge and experiences and fostering accountability while still allowing for some individual adaptation.

An implication for teacher communities is that the norm of lock-step may be of benefit for improving curriculum (or other educational reforms) when the intention of the norm is to advance the collective (vs marching at the same pace). The study underscores the value of school leaders providing opportunities for teacher choice and voice in the design and facilitation of their learning communities.

The case of the IB Physics group contrasts decades of research showing that teachers cling to their autonomy. Group members were willing to give up a good deal of their individual autonomy for the benefits they derived from their collaboration.

An attempt is made to examine and assess the extent to which general politics influence decisions on major educational issues in a country, comparatively small, whose total population is 2.8 million. Education is centrally financed although locally administered, and professional supervision is largely the responsibility of a central agency. Educational decisions of any importance are made centrally yet the intrusion of party politics into the governance of education is seen to be minimal. A further conclusion is that the various groups involved in public education have through consultation and negotiation achieved a workable balance of power. The “politics of education” in New Zealand is to he found in the relationships of these groups and the pressures they are able to exert. This is an area that offers considerable opportunity for research.

In recent years, there has been considerable interest within education policy in collaborative professional enquiry/inquiry methodologies, both as an alternative to top-down implementation of change and for the purpose of fostering educational improvement. However, researchers have been critical of this approach, pointing to various concerns: these include the risk of reducing a developmental methodology to an instrumental means for delivering policy, as well as issues around sustainability of practices. The purpose of this paper is to describe a Scottish university/local authority partnership, which developed an approach entitled Critical Collaborative Professional Enquiry, designed to address some of these concerns. The paper also reports on empirical outcomes related to the partnership project.

This interpretivist study generated qualitative data from multiple sources, utilising a range of methods including semi-structured interviews with teachers and school leaders, evaluation surveys and analysis of artefacts developed during the inquiry phases of the project.

This programme exerted a powerful effect on the teachers who participated. The research suggests that teachers developed better understandings of the curriculum, and of curriculum development processes. There is evidence of innovation in pedagogy, some sustained and radical in nature, and further evidence of changes to the cultures of the participating schools, for example, a shift towards more democratic ways of working.

This paper reports upon an original approach to curriculum development, with considerable potential to transform the ways in which schools approach innovation.

Considers the role of the career counsellor in the light of increasing employee expectations and job mobility. Examines career counselling and employee appraisal, techniques of career counselling, good practice guidelines, referral, and relevant agencies. Asserts that career counselling can help employees to develop their potential, and also benefit the company by reducing absenteeism, tension at work and low productivity.

In progressive universities the next 25 years will see graduate qualities, massification, technology, flexible delivery and new disciplines drive pedagogical change. The lecture and online transmission of rapidly outdated content will continue to give way to a focus on the qualities required by students for employability and lifelong learning. Heavier and more diverse workloads on university teachers will encourage the disaggregation of their teaching. This will provide a window of opportunity for academic librarians to demonstrate their educational partnership role. They should contribute proactively to that disaggregation and, as a key accountability, to the development of information literate students. A version of this paper was presented to the 24th annual conference of the International Association of Technological University Libraries (IATUL) Ankara, Turkey, 2‐5 June 2003 as “Changing the paradigm: libraries, education and networking”.

Information professionals are increasing called upon to provide access and services for information that, by its nature, must be restricted to certain uses or classes of individuals. This paper aims to explore the six major compliance regulations in the USA that information professionals should have a basic understanding of to manage a restricted information environment effectively.

This paper is a general review of laws and requirements in the USA related to information security that may affect information professionals in their work.

The world of information security is complex and there are multiple laws, guidelines and standards that apply. For information professionals managing or deploying digital repositories or information archives, all of these need to be considered because plans and systems are being developed. Information professionals will increasingly be called upon to lend their expertise to emerging preservation problems related to restricted data, so understanding the basics of information security law is a requirement to successful information practice.

This is the first general overview of this area of information practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in factors influencing use of entrepreneurial assistance programs by male and female entrepreneurs.

Data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics I are used to determine drivers of assistance program use by men and women using logistic regression. These drivers include size and composition of the start-up team and personal network, experiences of the entrepreneur, team and network; support provided by the team and network, and other factors.

In total, 31 percent of female entrepreneurs and 24 percent of male entrepreneurs in the sample used entrepreneurial assistance programs. Results show that drivers of assistance use do vary by gender. Education, business/entrepreneurial knowledge and involvement in a technology-based start-up are drivers of program use by women. Personal network size, entrepreneurial experience of start-up team, and having worked for parents’ business are drivers of program use by men.

This study inform policy and support practices about use of assistance programs and suggests that the support drivers of women are different, justifying continued need for targeted assistance programs such as those specifically for women starting technology-based ventures.

This research addresses gender differences in use of assistance programs. Results provide support that a “one-size-fits all” support may not be useful, and that there may be need for targeted assistance programs.

OUR appearance in mid‐month may rob our New Year greetings to our readers of first bloom, but they are nevertheless hearty for their prosperity during 1922. We believe the year will be a good one in spite of the immediate fog that covers public finance and trade. The country is undoubtedly on the way to recovery, and libraries will share in the advance. At first there will be the proverbially British assaults on the things of the mind, but the future is with the library movement. It has more friends now than at any time in the past generation, and our circulations, registration and attendances are greater than ever before. A vast public lies behind public libraries. It is true that it is unorganized and inarticulate, but it exists, and perhaps librarians may be able to do something to organize it.

Discusses current issues in intellectual property, including the interpretation of legal and professional guidelines, and suggests that, in this fast‐moving and internationally‐aware field, professional information staff appear to have to balance increasing pressures to obey and impose the law or the licence, on the one hand, with a post‐modern customer ethic, on the other. Implications for teaching information law and ethics are explored.