Search results

Global focus on reforming teachers has resulted in the inclusion of multiple survey questions about teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies. A cross-national analysis of these survey data will likely enhance our understanding and inform the future direction regarding teacher professional development policy and practice. Yet we do not know whether these surveys measure the key features and their contextual factors of teachers’ professional learning activities to allow a systematic cross-national analysis. Based on international and U.S. literature, I develop a conceptual model of teachers’ professional learning activities in global context and analyze relevant survey items used in three major international studies – TIMSS, PIRLS, and TALIS. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the coverage of these survey items and a direction for improving data collections of teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies.

This paper aims to investigate the practices of a well-established professional development committee (PDC) at an academic library to reveal the development of effective professional development programs with various themes and the diversified delivering formats and the assessment of library employees’ training needs and the effectiveness of professional development programs with Needs Assessment Surveys and Program Follow-up Employee Opinion Surveys. Professional development programs are widely adopted in academic libraries to support the professional growth of library employees and improve the quality of library services. Developing, promoting and administering professional development programs are main responsibilities of the PDC.

The study is based upon the PDC’s recent practices since 2011. The Needs Assessment Surveys (in 2012 and 2013) are conducted electronically, so are the Opinion Surveys since 2013 which are formerly conducted in paper.

The well-planned professional development program themes with special designed delivery formats have demonstrated their effectiveness through high attendance of each professional development event. The positive results and high compliments from both Need Assessment Surveys and Opinion Surveys also endorse their values to employee’s professional growth.

This paper classifies various professional development program ideas into six program themes and three special delivery formats, and each is presented with intention, planning and organization. This paper also provides details of using different Need Assessment Surveys and Opinion Surveys for evaluation, which is also lacked in published literature.

This paper seeks to examine the dissemination of high‐involvement innovation practices at Finnish workplaces and to consider how their adoption can be promoted by means of a publicly‐funded R&D programme.

The empirical material is based on a survey by the Finnish Workplace Development Programme TYKES. (TYKES is a governmental R&D programme for promoting simultaneous improvements in productivity and the quality of working life by granting funding to development projects at Finnish workplaces.)

The interim results of the survey provide a strong evidence‐based argument in favour of the supportive role of the programme.

The paper suggests areas where governments might introduce support programmes to foster the spread of innovative activity.

The paper provides insights into support policy issues in Finland and will be of interest to those involved in that field.

Media coverage of police activities is substantial and makes for “eye‐catching” headlines. Most people in the UK will remember the riots of 1981 and how policemen battled against overwhelming odds. Equally, the story of the young, brave policeman who attempts, and is injured in the process, to arrest treacherous villains, induces waves of sympathy from a probably, very middle‐class public. Best of all, are the stories of corrupted policemen who, detected and apprehended, generate in us all that slight feeling of insecurity which makes for excellent gossip.

A growing number of African countries are starting to produce science, technology and innovation (STI) indicators. The purpose of this paper is to provide some lessons learnt in the production and use of STI indicators in Malawi and South Africa. It is compares the two countries’ efforts to conduct Research and Development (R&D) surveys and examines whether and how STI indicators are used in policymaking processes.

The study approach is qualitative. The research methodology encompasses a thorough review of both policy and academic literature as well as some interviews.

The study demonstrates that South Africa has a relatively developed institutional arrangement for undertaking R&D and innovation surveys and developing related STI indicators. There is evidence that efforts are being made to use STI indicators to inform policymaking in the country. On the other hand, Malawi conducted its first R&D survey under the African Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators Initiative (ASTII) and has not established an institutional mechanism dedicated to producing STI indicators. There is no evidence that indicators are used in, or to inform, policymaking in the country.

Because of significant differences in STI policymaking histories, capacities and cultures of the two countries, it is not really useful to compare the STI production and use. Rather it is important to draw lessons from the efforts of the two countries.

The results suggest that the production of STI indicators should be embedded in policy processes. To be useful and effective, STI indicators production needs to be explicitly linked to policy formulation, evaluation and monitoring activities without necessarily undermining the independence of producing STI indicators.

Creating stand-alone programmes or agencies for R&D and innovation surveys without clear articulation with policymaking needs erodes opportunities of having evidence-based STI policy regimes.

Although in 2005 only South Africa and Tunisia had national programmes dedicated to the generation of R&D statistics, by the end of 2010 at least 19 African countries had experimented with conducting R&D surveys under the auspices of the ASTII of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. These countries accumulated different experiences and consequently build different kinds of institutional capacities. Through the Malawi and South Africa case studies, some important lessons for STI indicators production and use and STI policymaking can be drawn for developing countries in general and African countries in particular.

This article describes the development processes, sampling and analysis practices and the assessment of reliability and validity of a new 0survey that sought to evaluate undergraduate students' perceptions and expectations related to privacy and library participation in learning analytics studies. This article provides other researchers with information required to independently evaluate the survey's efficacy, as well as guidance for designing other surveys.

Following question development, pre-survey validity assessments were made using subject matter expert panel review and cognitive interviews. Post-hoc analysis of survey construct reliability was evaluated using the Omega coefficient, while exploratory factor analysis was utilized to assess construct validity. Survey design limitations and potential bias effects are also examined.

The survey exhibited a high level of reliability among research constructs, while the exploratory factor analysis results suggested that survey constructs contained multiple conceptual elements that should be measured separately for more nuanced analysis.

This article provides a model for other researchers wishing to re-use the survey described or develop similar surveys.

As learning analytics interest continues to expand, engaging with the subjects, in this case students, of analysis is critical. Researchers need to ensure that captured measurements are appropriately valid in order to accurately represent the findings.

This survey is one of very few addressing library learning analytics that has undergone extensive validity analysis of the conceptual constructs.

In this paper, we outline the rationale for developing the Survey of the Status of Social Studies (S4). The instrument contains items for analyzing the organizational structure, instructional decision-making, professional attitudes, and demographics of social studies teachers. Nationally-inclusive data generated from this survey analysis were used to examine the technical and theoretical validity of the instrument. Incorporating factor analysis, findings suggest constructs embedded within S4 related to social studies pedagogy, content emphases, and technology-use that reflect extant theory. As such, the S4 and accompanying nationwide data set offer social educators a valuable resource for fostering professional development and policy.

Community impacts resulting from corporate facility new development, expansion, renovation, merger, consolidation, closure and disposition activities are under greater scrutiny by public officials, citizen, and special interest groups. The paper reports public sector views on municipal structure, most desired industries, community advantages, use of cost benefit studies and the methods used to evaluate development impacts.

The research presented is based on a national survey of US economic development officials and their methods for measuring project impacts and determining public costs and benefits associated with economic development projects.

The research found that the public sector emphasized community advantages that were abstract and hard to measure in response to the corporate need for hard data on facility and development costs. About 30 percent of the public administrators surveyed never or rarely used any measures to determine community impacts associated with facility development. The most common impact measures used were individual experience, public meetings, tax impacts, amount of private investment, and local planning goals. Infrastructure costs, environmental quality issues, traffic and public services were the most important cost areas.

Every corporate real estate project has unique characteristics and accordingly, community impacts vary. This research presents an overview of the analysis methods used or not used by public development officials. The corporate decision maker must learn to recognize needs and opportunities for additional data collection that will make a case for facility project support.

Understanding the public sector impact analysis perspective is important because it enables corporate real estate decision makers to understand key issues, frame and present projects to citizens, identify research gaps and negotiate greater subsidies, and fair terms in development and performance agreements.

Surprisingly, very little research exists in this area. The survey data indicate limited use of impact measures and methods. Future research into this area should investigate why impact analysis measures are not extensively used and how standard measures could be used to evaluate social, environmental and economic impacts.

The purpose of this research is to obtain an updated assessment of the use of standard methods in IS development practice in New Zealand, and to compare these practices to those reported elsewhere.

A web‐based survey of IS development practices in New Zealand organisations with 200 or more full‐time employees was conducted. The results of the survey were compared to prior studies from other national contexts.

The results suggest that levels of standard method use continue to be high in New Zealand organisations, although methods are often used in a pragmatic or ad hoc way. Further, the type of method used maps to a shift from bespoke development to system acquisition or outsourcing. Organisations that reported using standard methods perceived them to be beneficial to IS development in their recent IS projects, and generally disagreed with most of the published limitations of standard methods.

As the intent was to consider only New Zealand organisations, the results of the survey cannot be generalised further afield. More comparative research is needed to establish whether the trends identified here occur at a wider regional or international level.

A significant proportion of organisations anticipated extending their use of standard methods. Growth in packaged software acquisition and outsourced development suggests an increasing need for deployment management as well as development management, possibly reflecting the increased visibility of standard project management methods.

The relevance of traditional standard methods of IS development has been questioned in a changing and more dynamic IS development environment. This study provides an updated assessment of standard method use in New Zealand organisations that will be of interest to researchers and practitioners monitoring IS development and acquisition elsewhere.

This paper aims to report on how an Administrative Division at a research‐intensive Australian university utilised feedback data from the Learning and Growth Survey, to initiate changes.

This paper refers to the actions taken by the Administrative Division to the results obtained from the Learning and Growth Survey. The questionnaire items are based on the “Balanced Scorecard” system outlined by Kaplan and Norton in 1996. It consists of a number of items identified as integral to effective growth and learning strategies for staff‐development. The questionnaire seeks staff perceptions of the individual items and how their needs are met in the current University management practices.

The results of this survey indicate that employees were willing to provide practical feedback on a range of dimensions, which they felt would assist improvement of their development and growth opportunities. Further, this paper demonstrates that in any exercise which involves collecting information on staff perceptions, staff not only expect that the data would be utilized constructively, but also that the institution would also make practical changes based on their feedback and that they would be informed about these changes.

This survey revealed that some of the feedback obtained from participants had limitations as to what actions could be taken within the Administrative Division because of the ramifications for institutional budgets. However, issues related to improvement of the learning and growth environment were possible to address through practical changes within the bounds of the Division's budget. Further, when conducting similar surveys among university staff, it is essential that anonymity of the participants is ensured. It is also vital that the purposes, outcomes, proposed actions and progress in implementation of these actions are well communicated to all the staff.

A growing number of tertiary institutions have recently started conducting surveys among their staff concerning the staff satisfaction with their work in the organisation(s). Despite this growing number of employee surveys, there is a lack of academic literature available describing how such surveys are conducted and the issues that institutions face when designing, implementing and evaluating these surveys. From the available information, it was also unclear what aspects of employee experience these surveys cover and whether they focus on staff learning and development. Therefore, this paper attempts to make a step in that direction by describing an employee survey regularly conducted among staff within administrative units at a large Australian University.