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Universities are encouraged to embed key skills in their undergraduate curricula, yet there is often little support on how to identify skills development and progression. This paper describes a tool that facilitates colleagues in auditing key skills and career/employability skills within individual modules and mapping these skills across degree pathways. The instrument presented supports a systematic approach to collect information on skills development. It enables tutors to highlight those skills students have the opportunity to develop or practise within a module, and to record for each skill whether explicit learner support is provided, whether the skill is assessed, and the desired standard of proficiency. The latter is identified from descriptors defined for three standards. Data collected for all modules within a degree pathway may subsequently be summarised (mapped). The tool provides valuable summary data for institutional quality assurance purposes and facilitates reflection on how to enhance students' learning experiences.

Data literacy – the ability to read, analyze, interpret, evaluate and argue with data and data visualizations – is an essential competency in social studies. This study aims to examine the degree to which US state standards require teachers to teach data literacy in social studies, addressing the questions: to what extent are US social studies teachers required to teach data literacy? If they are required to teach it, are they provided with guidance about competencies to address at each school or grade level and with respect to particular content?

The study used content analysis, using a variety of priori and emergent codes, to review social studies standards documents from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Findings indicate that although state standards suggest that data visualizations should play a role in social studies instruction, they provide poor guidance for a coherent, progressive and critical approach across grade levels.

Researchers currently know little about if and how teachers address data literacy in social studies education. This study provides a snapshot of guidance teachers across states are given for teaching data literacy, and by extension, the quality of data literacy instruction recommended for students across the USA.

Positively engaging parents who have concerns about their children's schooling is a key part of effective educational leadership. The purpose of this paper is to use empirical research on complaint interactions and interpersonal effectiveness to develop and trial an assessment of principals' interpersonal effectiveness in challenging conversations with parents. The paper presents descriptive data about principals' level of skill in one such type of conversation.

A complaint scenario was written and an actor trained to play the role of the parent during a videotaped conversation with each of 30 newly appointed principals. The tapes were transcribed and assessed on six dimensions of interpersonal effectiveness. A code book was written which included definitions of each dimension, a five‐step progression on each dimension, coding rules and examples. The actor also provided ratings of the effectiveness of each principal.

The findings indicated that the principals were, on average, more skilled in advocating their own position than in deeply inquiring into and checking their understanding of the views of the parent. Many had difficulty respectfully challenging the parent's assumptions about the situation and reaching a shared understanding of what to do next.

The paper provides rarely obtained behavioural data about the interpersonal skills of school leaders and provides a strongly grounded theoretical framework for analysing these skills. Detailed suggestions are made about how further research can contribute to both the evaluation and development of the interpersonal skills required to achieve positive outcomes from challenging conversations.

A key finding in the extant literature on adopting information systems has been the importance of management support and a champion. Further research has indicated that business managers need to have appropriate IT knowledge and skills to lead adoption adequately. In the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), this role is usually assumed by the owner/manager. This research aims to synthesise these two tenets by identifying and understanding the type of business intelligence and analytics (BI&A) leadership skills that owners/managers need to develop during the adoption of BI&A.

Five BI&A knowledge areas are identified and connected to different types of BI&A leadership skills through qualitative in-depth case studies of fourteen Australian SMEs.

The case studies reveal that several BI&A leadership skills need to be developed to bring SMEs to higher stages of BI&A adoption.

This study proposes a BI&A leadership skills development framework that allows practitioners to develop progressive BI&A skills concerning managing data, analytical skills, business processes, social and cultural change, and investment decisions to achieve sustainable operational, management and strategic goals.

The paper takes a unique approach that links five knowledge areas to BI&A leadership skills that owners/managers need to ensure for effective adoption and orchestration of BI&A in their organisations. The BI&A leadership framework includes a developmental approach that relates to the iterative and complex nature of BI&A adoption.

Suggests that attempts to promote more effective approaches to personal transferable skills development throughout the UK higher education sector have met with variable but generally limited success. Considers why this has been the case. Argues that the problem is not simply one of a lack of understanding of what constitutes good practice in this area of teaching and learning ‐ the difficulties inherent in operationalising established good practice models are equally if not more significant. Identifies and discusses some of the commonly experienced barriers to the effective management of change in this area and begins to outline an agenda for addressing them.

Skilled migrants' careers are heterogeneous, with existing theories capturing only some of their diversity and dynamic development over time and circumstance. This paper aims to draw out the multilevel (macro, meso and micro levels) influences impacting skilled migrants' careers by using the lens of the intelligent career framework. Furthermore, structuration theory captures the agency of skilled migrants facing different social structures at and across levels and explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers.

Following an abductive approach, this paper examines the career influences for a sample of 41 skilled migrants in three different host countries. Individual career stories were collected through qualitative interviews. Important career influences from these narratives are categorised across the intelligent career competencies (knowing why, how and whom) at the macro, meso and micro levels.

Findings illustrate the lived reality for skilled migrants of these interrelated multilevel career influences and go some way in elucidating the heterogeneity of skilled migrants' careers and outcomes. The interplay of individual agency in responding to both facilitating and challenging social structures across the multilevels further explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers and how/whether they achieve satisfying career outcomes. Some potential policy implications and options arising from these findings are suggested.

By considering multilevel themes that influence skilled migrants' career capital, the authors were able to better explain the complex, relational and idiosyncratic shaping of their individual careers. As such, the framework informs and guides individuals, practitioners and organisations seeking to facilitate skilled migrants' careers.

The purpose of this paper is to design an objective, valid and reliable “Checklist” tool that teachers could use to measure their students’ food skills acquisition.

The design of the Checklist was based on 18 procedural food skills identified by teachers and verified by analysis of skills in recipes that are typically used in food education programmes in secondary schools. The skills were divided into five skill-sets and a recipe covering the skills was selected to test the Checklist. For the test, three hypothetical situations of a person with low, some and expert skills making the recipe were demonstrated in separate videos. Teachers were invited to test the Checklist by viewing the videos, completing the Checklist for each of the three conditions and completing an evaluation.

In total, 40 home economics teachers tested the Checklist and reported that they could use the tool to measure the development and progress of their students’ procedural food skills. Analysis of variance analyses of the data and the non-parametric analyses suggest that the Checklist is a reliable and valid evaluation tool.

Teachers report using various tools to measure their students’ food skills acquisition but these have not been well-documented in the literature. These preliminary findings of an original and quantifiable tool showed that home economics teachers used the Checklist to measure their students’ procedural skills however, as the teachers’ comments suggest, further development and validation of the tool are required.

In a Dilbert cartoon the pointy haired boss introduces his son to Dilbert, explaining that the young man has been hired to manage the technology development group because he has gone to college. When Dilbert asks him what college he attended, the youth replies that he actually spent four years hiding in the attic. What does a college education accomplish? Will it get you the job of your dreams? What can a person really learn? How does higher education distinguish one from others in the workforce or next door for that matter?

The purpose of this paper is to assess the management of the public sector health workforce in Botswana. Using institutional frameworks it aims to document and analyse human resource management (HRM) practices, and make recommendations to improve employee and health system outcomes.

The paper draws from a large study that used a mixed methods approach to assess performance of Botswana’s Ministry of Health (MOH). It uses data collected through document analysis and in-depth interviews of 54 key informants comprising policy makers, senior staff of the MOH and its stakeholder organizations.

Public health sector HRM in Botswana has experienced inadequate planning, poor deployment and underutilization of staff. Lack of comprehensive retention strategies and poor working conditions contributed to the failure to attract and retain skilled personnel. Relationships with both formal and informal environments affected HRM performance.

While document review was a major source of data for this paper, the weaknesses in the human resource information system limited availability of data.

This paper presents an argument for the need for consideration of formal and informal environments in developing effective HRM strategies.

This research provides a rare system-wide approach to health HRM in a Sub-Saharan African country. It contributes to the literature and evidence needed to guide HRM policy decisions and practices