Transnational public sector knowledge networks: Knowledge and information sharing in a multi-dimensional context

Sharing of knowledge, information, and practices across cultural and national boundaries has become a means to address critical global problems. As government agencies increasingly collaborate with international counterparts on these issues, transnational knowledge and information sharing networks grow in importance as mechanisms for collaboration. This paper explores the nature of transnational public sector knowledge networks (TPSKNs) and identifies critical contextual factors that shape their performance. In these networks, each participating organization operates within complex national, organizational, and information contexts. The contextual differences between participants produce distances in culture, politics, intentions, organizational factors, relationships, knowledge, resources, geography, and technology. These distances influence their ability to engage in the processes and interactions that are essential to network performance. The paper concludes with a conceptual dynamic model that accounts for the relationships among these factors that can guide further research in understanding knowledge and information sharing across national and cultural boundaries.     

“Fleeting pockets of anarchy”: Streetwork. The exploding school

Colin Ward (1924–2010) was an anarchist and educator who, together with Anthony Fyson, was employed as education officer for the Town and Country Planning Association in the UK during the 1970s. He is best known for his two books about childhood, The Child in the City (1978) and The Child in the Country (1988). The book he co-authored with Fyson, Streetwork. The Exploding School (1973), is discussed in this article as illustrating in practical and theoretical terms Ward’s appreciation of the school as a potential site for extraordinary radical change in relations between pupils and teachers and schools and their localities. The article explores the book alongside the Bulletin of Environmental Education, which Ward edited throughout the 1970s. It argues that the literary and visual images employed in the book and the bulletins contributed to the powerful positive representation of the school as a site of potential radical social change. Finally, it suggests that “fleeting pockets of anarchy” continue to exist in the lives of children through social networking and virtual environments that continue to offer pedagogical possibilities for the imaginative pedagogue.     

The submergence and re-emergence of gender in undergraduate accounts of university experience

Gender distinction has been shown to characterise both undergraduate experiences and outcomes. Yet research recounted in this article supports work that shows that young people are often unaware of such trends, subscribing instead to individualist perspectives that foreground equality of opportunity and agency. This article examines the gender continuities and divergences in 64 undergraduate students' accounts of their experiences, and constructions of peers and lecturers, in higher education. Concepts of heteroglossia and monoglossia are applied to gender to explain how students submerged ‘structure’ and inequality in their accounts, but how discourses that presented the genders as distinct (and in which the masculine is elevated over the feminine) nevertheless ‘bubbled up’ in their articulations. The students tended to reject the notion that gender and other structural differences impact their experiences and outcomes; yet their broader discussions frequently reflected (often stereotypical) monoglossic constructions of gender difference. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the sociology of education and for higher-education pedagogy.     

An analysis of the effectiveness of feedback to students on assessed work

This paper presents the views of students, from a range of schools and disciplines, on the effectiveness of current assessment feedback practices at Flinders University. We also report on a workshop on feedback with teachers. Overall, individual written comments were found to be the most useful form of feedback. However, there was significant variation with the level of satisfaction with feedback and the relative usefulness of different forms of feedback across the different schools and disciplines. This research suggests both the need to improve the effectiveness of such feedback and to tailor the forms of feedback offered to students according to the distinctive teaching and learning environments in different schools and disciplines. To that end, innovation and further research on feedback are justified, and some suggestions are offered.     

General Mass Communications

Harold A. Innis' Empire and Communications (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972---$12.50/2.75)

The Bias of Communication (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964---$8.50/3.50)

John Gordon Burke (ed.) Print, Image and Sound: Essays on Media (Chicago: American Library Association, 1972---$6.95)

Mark Slade, Language of Change: Moving Triages of Man (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart & Winston of Canada Ltd, 1970 (available in this country.from Winston Press, 25 Groveland Terrace, Minneapolis 55403)---price not known, paper)     

General Communications

MASSCOM: MODULES IN MASS COMMUNICATION, (Chicago: Science Research Associates, 1984—series of seven booklets, price not given, paper)

COMPARATIVE BROADCASTING SYSTEMS, by Richard C. Burke (43 pp.)

MASS MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE, by Kathleen J. Turner (38 pp.)

MASS MEDIA HISTORY, by Don Pember (57 pp.)

MASS MEDIA AND FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES, by Loy Singleton (43 pp.)

MASS MEDIA LAW, by William L. Rivers (43 pp.)

MASS MEDIA CAREERS, by Joseph Turow (60 pp.)

WRITING TELEVISION CRITICISM, by Bruce E. Gronbeck (44 pp.)

FUNDAMENTALS OF COPY AND LAYOUT, by Albert C. Book and C. Dennis Schick (Chicago: Crain Books, 1984—$14.95)

THE BENEVOLENT DICTATORS: INTERVIEWS WITH ADVERTISING GREATS, by Bart Cummings (Chicago: Crain Books, 1984—$24.95)     

Removal of Gay‐Themed Materials from Public Libraries: Public Opinion Trends, 1973–2006

Gay images have slowly become integrated into mainstream cultural venues over the last forty years, including publishing. Studies show that gay‐themed materials in libraries are targets of censorship attempts. Are these attempts reflections of the opinions of the majority of the population or of a vocal minority? The information in this study contributes over thirty years of trend data on the general public's views of the censorship of gay‐themed materials in libraries. This information can be useful to library policy makers and those faced with materials challenges.     

Understanding Differences in Academic Effectiveness: Practitioners’ Views∗

As part of a large‐scale study of the ability of 94 secondary schools to promote academic achievement, case studies of six outlier schools were conducted and headteachers (principals) and their deputies were questioned about the processes of effectiveness. The analysis of their responses ‐ grouped by the performance of their school (measured by value added analyses of three years of public examination results) as effective, ineffective or mixed ‐ reveals considerable support for previously cited characteristics of effective schooling. Despite the limitations imposed by a reliance on the use of retrospective accounts, the study takes forward the field of school effectiveness in its search for generalisable findings and coherent theory.

     

Implicit Association Tests of Attitudes Toward Persons With Disabilities

The authors assessed 3 of the currently available implicit association tests designed to measure attitudes toward persons with disabilities. The Revised Multiple Disability Implicit Association Test, the Implicit Association Test for Attitudes Toward Athletes With Disabilities, and the Disability Attitude Implicit Association Test were related to each other, demonstrating some consistency in measurement. They were mostly unrelated, however, to more traditional, explicit measures of attitudes toward persons with disabilities. In addition, although the implicit association tests were not related to socially desirable responding, the most psychometrically sound explicit measure (The Interaction With Disabled Persons Scale) was related to socially desirable responding.