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It is some years since I submitted a thesis on The Financial Effects of Labour Turnover, which was subsequently published in abbreviated form. I am obliged to M E Orton, therefore, whose writing in the Summer Journal encourages me to return to this old stamping ground and to clear up a long‐standing confusion — especially as his article in this Review so usefully reviews concepts and does not rehash old figures.

The purpose of this paper is to engage with the theme of activation policies and organisational innovation in the capability perspective, from the viewpoint of active labour market policies in the UK.

The focus of the article is the City Strategy initiative in Great Britain, which encourages institutions to work together to develop solutions to concentrations of worklessness. The article presents findings from a case study of the introduction of the City Strategy in one English sub‐region: Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country. The empirical investigation is based on analysis of documentary evidence including strategy papers and “grey literature” such as minutes of meetings and internal briefings. In addition, the case study draws on in‐depth qualitative interviews conducted with 18 local actors involved in the City Strategy.

The empirical investigation provides selected evidence of successful public action undertaken through the City Strategy. It discusses issues concerning the benefits of partnership working and inter‐agency cooperation, but also limits that are reached.

The paper identifies elements of the capabilities approach – the idea of situated public action, the importance of local actors, and key concepts of empowerment and voice – as providing a helpful framework for analysis. While the City Strategy represents an interesting example of situated public action to tackle worklessness, it can be argued that what is missing in this instance is what the capabilities approach identifies as key elements of empowerment and voice for local actors.

Much has been written about the causes and measurement of labour turnover, but less has been written about the costs involved. It is generally assumed that high rates of labour turnover will have harmful financial effects, without any serious attempt being made to quantify these effects. Sometimes it is considered that the costs involved in quantifying the costs will not justify the knowledge gained. Over the years, however, various methods for costing labour turnover have been suggested and used in specific examples. This article summarises the main methods suggested, and attempts to draw some conclusions as to their adequacy. No method yet devised has presented management with a simple but effective guide to labour turnover costs which can be applied in most situations.

This paper aims to offer an analysis of the conflicting values behind Norway's much celebrated inclusive working life (IWL) programme, which aims to reduce sickness absenteeism, to increase the average age of retirement, and to hire functionally challenged persons. This article, moreover, presents sorely needed qualitative data from a preliminary study on IWL that shows how state‐owned enterprises have struggled to cope with the conflicting goals.

This is a qualitative study based on interviews with regional managers and representatives of the unions who had to adapt to IWL, and the results suggest possible explanations behind the disappointing numbers found by other quantitative studies on IWL.

Because of the decision to implement IWL, regional managers are caught in the middle of two different ideologies, namely, neo‐liberalism or new public management (NPM) and the welfare‐state ideology, and they find themselves making choices according to the former. This study on state enterprises at the local level has found that managers and union representatives appeared to support the intentions behind the programme, but they clearly prioritized productivity and efficiency over inclusiveness.

As the results are from a preliminary qualitative study of IWL that only included state enterprises, there is a need for further research that also includes the private enterprises.

This study finds that IWL is ineffective because it cannot harmonize the NPM and the welfare‐state ideologies.

This article helps to remedy the lack of qualitative documentation on the progress of IWL. These results also question the prevailing optimism over the potential of IWL by pointing to the ideological tensions between welfare and efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a middle school science teacher, new to programming, supports students in learning to debug physical computing systems consisting of programmable sensors and data displays.

This case study draws on data collected during an inquiry-oriented instructional unit in which students learn to collect, display and interpret data from their surrounding environment by wiring and programming a physical computing system. Using interaction analysis, the authors analyzed video recordings of one teacher’s (Gabrielle) pedagogical moves as she supported students in debugging their systems as they drew upon a variety of embodied, material and social resources.

This study presents Gabrielle’s debugging interactional grammar, highlighting the pedagogical possibilities for supporting students in systematic ways, providing affective support (e.g. showing them care and encouragement) and positioning herself as a learner with the students. Gabrielle’s practice, and therefore her pedagogy, has the potential to support students in becoming better debuggers on their own in the future.

While much of the prior work on learning to debug focuses on learner actions and possible errors, this case focuses on an educator’s debugging pedagogy centered on the educator debugging with the learners. This case study illustrates the need for educators to exhibit deft facilitation, vulnerability and orchestration skills to support student development of their own process for and agency in debugging.

To help workers make the right decision, over the years, technological solutions and workplace learning analytics systems have been designed to aid this process (Ruiz-Calleja et al., 2019). Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to further revolutionise the integration of human and artificial learning and will impact human and machine collaboration during team work (Seeber et al., 2020).

Complex problem-solving has been identified as one of the key skills for the future workforce (Hager and Beckett, 2019). Problems faced by today's workforce emerge in situ and everyday workplace learning is seen as an effective way to develop the skills and experience workers need to embrace these problems (Campbell, 2005; Jonassen et al., 2006).

In this commentary the authors argue that the increased digitization of work and social interaction, combined with recent research on workplace learning analytics and AI opens up the possibility for designing automated real-time feedback systems capable of just-in-time, just-in-place support during complex problem-solving at work. As such, these systems can support augmented learning and professional development in situ.

The commentary reflects on the benefits of automated real-time feedback systems and argues for the need of shared research agenda to cohere research in the direction of AI-enabled workplace analytics and real-time feedback to support learning and development in the workplace.

This paper aims to identify computational thinking (CT) in 4th to 6th grade students in the context of project-based problem-solving while engaged in an after-school program.

This case study approach was selected due to its suitability for answering “how” or “why” questions about real-world phenomena within a set context (Creswell and Poth, 2018; Yin, 2018). This was an appropriate fit given the context of an after-school program and the research question asked how to identify learners’ demonstrated CT through project-based learning hands-on activities and problem-solving in a naturalistic environment.

Results show that heuristics, algorithms and conditional logic were observed more than other components of CT such as data collection, simulations and modeling. Descriptions of common activities in a naturalistic learning environment are presented to illustrate how the students practiced CT over time, which could help readers develop an understanding of CT in conjunction with hands-on problem-solving activities in elementary students. Identifying and classifying CT in this study focused on students’ learning process.

This study contributes to the challenging field of evaluating CT while focusing on observable behaviors and problem-solving activities with various degrees of teacher’s facilitation instead of final artifacts. Implications for researchers and educators interested in integrating CT in K-12 learning and its assessment are discussed.

This study is part of a participatory design research project and aims to develop and study pedagogical frameworks and tools for integrating computational thinking (CT) concepts and data science practices into elementary school classrooms.

This paper describes a pedagogical approach that uses a data science framework the research team developed to assist teachers in providing data science instruction to elementary-aged students. Using phenomenological case study methodology, the authors use classroom observations, student focus groups, video recordings and artifacts to detail ways learners engage in data science practices and understand how they perceive their engagement during activities and learning.

Findings suggest student engagement in data science is enhanced when data problems are contextualized and connected to students’ lived experiences; data analysis and data-based decision-making is practiced in multiple ways; and students are given choices to communicate patterns, interpret graphs and tell data stories. The authors note challenges students experienced with data practices including conflict between inconsistencies in data patterns and lived experiences and focusing on data visualization appearances versus relationships between variables.

Data science instruction in elementary schools is an understudied, emerging and important area of data science education. Most elementary schools offer limited data science instruction; few elementary schools offer data science curriculum with embedded CT practices integrated across disciplines. This research assists elementary educators in fostering children's data science engagement and agency while developing their ability to reason, visualize and make decisions with data.

The final report of the Butter Regulations Committee has now been published and it is earnestly to be hoped that Regulations based on the Committee's Recommendations will at once be framed and issued by the Board of Agriculture. It will be remembered that in an Interim Report the Committee recommended the adoption of a limit of 16 per cent. for the proportion of water in butter, and that, acting on this recommendation, the Board of Agriculture drew up and issued the “Sale of Butter Regulations, 1902,” under the powers conferred on the Board by Section 4 of the Food Act of 1899. In the present Report the Committee deal with the other matters referred to them, namely, as to what Regulations, if any, might with advantage be made for determining what deficiency in any of the normal constituents of butter, or what addition of extraneous matter other than water, should raise a presumption until the contrary is proved that the butter is not “genuine.” The Committee are to be congratulated on the result of their labours—labours which have obviously been both arduous and lengthy. The questions which have had to be dealt with are intricate and difficult, and they are, moreover, of a highly technical nature. The Committee have evidently worked with the earnest desire to arrive at conclusions which, when applied, would afford as great a measure of protection—as it is possible to give by means of legislative enactments—to the consumer and to the honest producer. The thorough investigation which has been made could result only in the conclusions at which the Committee have arrived, namely, that, in regard to the administration of the Food Acts, (1) an analytical limit should be imposed which limit should determine what degree of deficiency in those constituents which specially characterise butter should raise a presumption that the butter is not “genuine”; (2) that the use of 10 per cent. of a chemically‐recognisable oil in the manufacture of margarine be made compulsory; (3) that steps should be taken to obtain international co‐operation; and finally, that the System of Control, as explained by various witnesses, commends itself to the Committee.

The term “loose coupling” has been widely employed in higher education research. Building partly on the “garbage can model” of decision-making, it proposed an alternative to rational and linear views on organizing and governing, emphasizing instead ambiguity and complexity. The review of higher education research literature presented in this chapter demonstrates that the concept of loose coupling has frequently been used as a background concept, often taken for-granted either as a point of departure for studies of organizational processes in higher education or as a diagnosis of the complexity of higher education organization that inhibits implementation of reforms. This chapter provides systematization and critical examination of how the term “loose coupling”/“loosely coupled systems” has been employed in journal articles focusing on higher education in the last 40 years. It presents a broad mapping of 209 articles and a more detailed qualitative review of 22 articles, which employed loose coupling as more than a background concept.