Search results

Rural schools have typically been strong on community but weak on professional learning. Their small size and geographical isolation have meant that much of the recent reform movement focused on professional learning communities has passed them by. But there is no reason why rural educators cannot participate in professional learning networks (PLNs) and benefit from heightened levels of collegiality that can be experienced across schools. However, intentional design for deeper collaborative work and face-to-face connection is necessary for PLN members to reap the benefits from increased professional capital and teacher leadership opportunities. This chapter describes the work of the Northwest Rural Innovation and Student Engagement (NW RISE) network in the United States. NW RISE brings together rural educators in gatherings that take place every six months, helps them to form “job-alike” groups focused on academic subject matter or cross-contextual themes, and provides support for shared curriculum design. This chapter describes how rural educators have seized upon the resources in NW RISE to promote student engagement and to develop their professional capacity across the network’s schools.

This chapter draws on data from a qualitative study examining the extent to which children and young people age 7 to 17 are able to participate and influence matters affecting them in their home, school, and community. It was commissioned by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in Ireland to inform the National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-Making, 2015–2020. Utilising Lundy’s (2007) conceptualisation of Article 12 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and Leonard’s (2016) concept of generagency, this chapter will examine children and young people’s everyday lives and relationships within the home and family in the context of agency and structure.

In the study, home was experienced by children generally as the setting most facilitative of their voice and participation in their everyday lives reflecting research findings that children are more likely to have their initiative and ideas encouraged in the family than in school or their wider communities (Mayall, 1994). Key areas of decision-making included everyday consumption activities such as food, clothes, and pocket money as well as temporal activities including bed-time, leisure, and friends. This concurs with Bjerke (2011) that consumption of various forms is a major field of children’s participation. Positive experiences of participation reported by children and young people involved facilitation by adults whom they respected and with whom they had some rapport. This locates children as relational beings, embedded in multiple overlapping intergenerational processes and highlights the interdependency between children’s participation and their environment (Leonard, 2016; Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2010).

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new model for export market opportunity analysis by combining the marketing‐based overall market opportunity index (OMOI) with the economic‐based gravity model in order to more accurately assess export market potential, in total and for specific industries.

Variables from the gravity and OMOI models are used to analyze export market opportunities for specific industries. Findings – Market size, economic intensity, geographic and language distance, and regional trade agreements (RTAs) are found to be strong predictors of export market attractiveness from a US firm's perspective. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is found to act as both a substitute for and a complement to exports. Cultural distance, based on Hofstede, is not a significant predictor for exports.

The authors' hybrid model extends previous OMOI models and is applied to industry‐level analysis.

Executives who are engaged in strategic planning for higher education generally complain about the process and the lack of clear outcomes from the strategic plan. They generally argue that the process is complex and sometimes confusing and the end result does not justify the time spent in preparing the plan. The extant literature on strategic planning in higher educational institutions (HEIs) is replete with these types of complaints. The work undertaken in this paper provides a solution to this problem. This paper proposes a simplified and efficient strategic planning model which executives can use to facilitate strategic planning in HEIs. This model takes into consideration, all the elements of previous models and synthesize them into a manageable, simplified framework that can be adapted to meet the planning needs of senior executives in any HEI.

The paper uses the action research framework to ground the solution to the problem identified. The action research framework is a sound research method that assists in resolving some of the practical problems executives in HEIs encounter as they move towards strategic planning. The researcher and a client in the higher educational sector, the UWI, engaged in collaborative problem-solving to develop a strategic plan for the client. To derive the solution, the researcher drew on the experience of the strategic planning process at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and also a number of selected universities in North American, Europe, Asia and Africa. The researcher then synthesized the outcomes from the deliberations and consultations with the client, the UWI and drew on theoretical knowledge in strategic management to derive the simplified model for strategic planning in higher education.

The research presented in this paper found that the existing strategic planning models used in higher education are generally complex, mostly designed specifically for an individual institution and lacks clarity regarding the implementation process. To overcome these problems for strategic planners in higher education, this paper proposes a simplified model that can be adapted by any HEI to assist with their strategic planning process. The Brainstoming- Visioning Action Results (B-VAR), the solution to the problem, presents the various elements of the strategic planning process that will need to be in place in order to develop a workable strategic plan and one that is implementable and will deliver tangible results for the HEI.

Besides adding to our knowledge in strategic management and specifically, strategic management in higher education, the greatest value from this paper is the solution it presents to solve the long-standing problem of having complex and ineffective planning models to lead strategic plan development in HEIs. The added value is that the model is integrative as it draws on elements of previous planning models but simplified them for their adaptation to any HEI.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process, analysis, results, and implications of a card sorting usability study conducted during the planning stages of a web site redesign project at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The methodology was based on recommendations from usability literature. An open card sort was conducted with 14 students and one faculty member using 93 cards labeled with content from the library's web site. The subjects were asked to “think aloud” and explain their rationale for sorting the cards. The researchers used statistical analysis software to run a factor analysis on the results.

The researchers extracted 11 categories of cards that loaded together and 27 cards that did not fit a category. The categories showed evidence of clustering by shared words, format, and process or task. Cards that did not load were standalone categories, or were redundant or meaningless to the subjects.

The open card sort methodology and large number of cards resulted in cumbersome data that required specialized analysis. The qualitative data were critical to the interpretation of the quantitative data.

Libraries can use the process and analysis as a model for their own card sort usability studies. Results can be used to inform the naming of content and the creation of library web site architecture.

This study is unique in its use of the open card sort technique and factor analysis of the results. The results illustrate users' perceptions of library terminology and web site structure.

The authors are developing a model for rural science teacher professional development, building teacher expertise and collaboration and creating high-quality science lessons: technology-mediated lesson study (TMLS).

TMLS provided the means for geographically distributed teachers to collaborate, develop, implement and improve lessons. TMLS uses technology to capture lesson implementation and collaborate on lesson iterations.

This paper describes the seven steps of the TMLS process with examples, showing how teachers develop their content and pedagogical knowledge while building relationships.

The TMLS approach provides an innovative option for teachers to collaborate across distances and form strong, lasting relationships with others.

This paper aims to reconceptualise entrenched supply chains associated with coffee production and consumption to digital supply chains for sustainable development.

A case study of seven small businesses involved with Philippine coffee is employed to examine how coffee value chains should be envisioned following COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic reveals truncated barriers concerned with the lack of infrastructure, poverty cycles, sporadic workforce development policies and financial pressures that need to be redefined for coffee production and consumption to be more sustainable in the future.

The study is restricted to a single country and a small pool of respondents that may not reflect similar practices in other regions or contexts.

This paper illuminates the plight of coffee farmers in an emerging production landscape of the Philippines, and develops new propositions to envision a digital value chain post-COVID-19.

Life studies are a rich source for further research on the role of the Afro‐American woman in society. They are especially useful to gain a better understanding of the Afro‐American experience and to show the joys, sorrows, needs, and ideals of the Afro‐American woman as she struggles from day to day.

To compare the profitability and technical efficiency of firms in a monopoly industry, airports, operating with different degrees of market power and under differing regulatory regimes, minimalist in New Zealand and interventionist in Australia.

Unlike previous privatisation studies, this study measures efficiency and profitability separately. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), the technical efficiency of privatised airports is assessed, and this independent measure is used in regression analyses to determine whether efficiency, regulation or privatisation is related to airport profitability.

For firms with monopolistic characteristics operating under minimalist regulation, profitability is related to market power, not efficiency improvements. For firms operating in a regulated environment, profitability is related to regulation, which constrains market power but does not impede efficiency.

This study is limited by its small sample size and its generalisability due to its single industry and regional focus. However, the findings support assertions that the impact of privatisation cannot be assessed independently of industry structure and regulation.

Policy makers considering SOE privatisation in non‐competitive markets should introduce either competition or regulation if firm efficiency is a desired outcome.

Academics and policy makers should be aware that privatisation and competition are not only complementary, as per the extant literature, but they are essential bedfellows. In the absence of competition, regulation is required to control for market power.