华信惠悦成功变身

日前，华信惠悦(Watson Wyatt Worldwide)在嘉里中心召开记者招待会，其亚太区董事李秋里博士宣布，大中华区在各地的分公司的营运合而为一，其香港、北京、上海及深圳的分公司将在全新的统一组织内运作。     

The Effect of Inference Training on Skilled and Less Skilled Comprehenders

This paper assess the impact of introducing inference training to skilled and less skilled comprehenders. Children aged between 6 years 6 months and 9 years 11 months, classified as skilled or less skilled comprehenders, were instructed on how to make inferences from and generate questions about a text over a period of six sessions. Comparison groups of skilled and less skilled comprehenders were trained in standard comprehension strategies. The less skilled group showed a significantly greater improvement than the skilled group, regardless of the training given, but inference training was significantly more effective than standard comprehension strategies in the less skilled group. Seven out of ten less skilled readers who were inference trained increased their performance sufficiently to become classified as skilled comprehenders, whilst four out of ten less skilled comprehenders taught standard comprehension strategies improved to the same level. It is concluded that the value of explicitly teaching children inferential skills is that the enjoyment of the task of reading is enhanced and is therefore more likely to be undertaken readily, even by pupils who may have initially found reading difficult.     

Creative Thinking in the Early Years of Education

This paper proposes a framework for exploring creative thinking in the early years of school. It explores creative thinking as characterised in two significant curriculum landmarks applicable to young children: Plowden from the 1960s and the Early Learning Goals from 2000. It proposes 'little c creativity' as a way of conceptu alising creativity, arguing that it represents the start of a 'third wave' of understanding the meaning and potential of creativity in the early years of education. Drawing on empirical observations from a number of nursery and early years classrooms in England, it raises some pedagogical and systemic issues around fostering 'little c creativity' in the early years of education.     

Political Education in/as the Practice of Freedom: A Paradoxical Defence from the Perspective of Michael Oakeshott

Creating education systems that promote democratic sustainability has been the concern of political thinkers as diverse as J. S. Mill, Dewey, Benjamin Barber and Derek Bok. The classic dichotomisation of democratic theory between deliberative democrats and Schumpeterian democrats suggests that education in the service of democracy can be constructive—that is, provide a student with the skills necessary to elect her leaders without changing her nature—or reconstructive—that is, fundamentally and radically reshape the student to produce a citizen whose goals are transformed to be congruent with society. Michael Oakeshott, who has written extensively both on political regimes and on the purpose of liberal education, offers a third way to assess the connection between government and education. Despite his own dismissal of civic or political education as fundamentally vocational and thus beyond the boundaries of the liberal arts, this paper provides a potentially surprising Oakeshottian defence of political education within the liberal arts with reference to the importance he places on experience as a pedagogic tool. Thus, Oakeshott's educational philosophy has a certain resonance with the recent calls to locate the relevance of liberal arts within the burgeoning development of experiential civic engagement programmes in American universities.     

The Lisbon Strategy Challenges to the Czech Republic Human Resources

When achieving long‐term sustainable growth, the key role is assigned to ­knowledge‐based competitiveness. The new EU Member States therefore face a double challenge on the Lisbon road. On the one hand, higher expenditure is required to improve the quality of research and education input and infrastructure, and on the other, innovation system changes are necessary to increase the efficiency of expended resources. At the same time, both supply and demand sides must be adequately balanced in policy supporting knowledge‐based competitiveness. On the supply side, the position of the new Member States in EU‐25 has been defined in the competitiveness matrix; on the demand side, specific attention is given to the quality of human resources as a prerequisite of competitiveness in the EU as assessed by Czech companies. Finally, recommendations are formulated for the competitiveness support both in the form of a comprehensive innovation policy and a more specific support to human resource supply for innovation.