The roles of professional and trade associations

Under the former Communist regimes, trade associations were often effectively instruments of government. They now have to acquire a new role in the emergent democracies. But trade associations have few resources, are difficult to manage, and are subject to legal restraints. Yet these groups have an enormous job: to act on behalf of their members, to represent them to the government and other groups, and to achieve what they as an industry want and need. This requires that members reach a common position and provide support and assistance. It also requires that the association delegate some activities to commercial operators. A variety of book trade associations is described. Clive Bradley has been chief executive of the British Publishers Association since 1976 and director of the Confederation of Information Communication Industries since 1984. A barrister who studied law at Cambridge and Yale Universities, he has made special studies of the laws of copyright and industrial relations and of European law. This article was adapted from a presentation given at the seminar “East Meets West: Copyright and the Publisher in a Market Economy”, held in Hamburg in March 1991.     

Four spheres of knowledge required: an international study of the professional development of literacy/English teacher educators

This paper reports on a research study of 28 literacy teacher educators (LTE) in four countries: Canada, the USA, England and Australia. It identifies three main forms of professional development: informal, formal and communities of practice and four spheres of knowledge: research; pedagogy of higher education; literacy and literacy teaching; and current school district and government initiatives. The study reveals the sheer scale of knowledge required to be an effective LTE and demonstrates how participants used the three forms of professional development to enhance their knowledge in each sphere. It concludes that the professional development of teacher educators is not conducted systematically; rather, it is quite ad hoc with much of it occurring through learning while doing. All had to construct their own programmes for professional development, which added yet another layer to their responsibilities.     

Successful journal publishing on the Internet: hit or myth?

If publishers of learned journals are going to make a success of their web publishing, they should not forget all the skills they have developed in publishing in print. This paper reviews the application of familiar journal publishing skills in the context of electronic journals or electronic editions of printed journals, and pinpoints areas where these skills apply in web publishing and where new skills are necessary.     

A New Framework For Quality

Quality emerges as an important theme in the British Government White Paper,'Higher Education: A New Framework' published in May 1991. Quality in both research and teaching receive attention. This article looks particularly at the latter, the differing approaches on each side of the binary line, the likely remit of the emerging audit unit, the difficulties of quality assessment in a single higher education system and the criteria for determining how far degree awarding powers should be bestowed on smaller institutions.     

Teacher Professional Development in the Area of 'School-Reporting-to-Parents'

In recent years there has been increasing interest internationally in the monitoring and reporting of student achievements in school. Australia is no exception regarding this interest. Here some of the developments regarding reporting to parents have also raised a variety of questions for research. The following paper is one attempt to meet the challenge presented. It is concerned with developing an understanding of the impact of school reporting in one Australian state, Western Australia (WA), with the aim of developing a set of propositions for discussion in teacher professional development programmes. While cognisance was taken of the associated research literature in the development of these propositions, they emerged mainly from a project which used a case study approach to develop an understanding of the variety of perspectives which the various stakeholders in WA government schools have on school reports and school reporting--past, present and future.     

Scaffolding students: suggestions on how to equip students with the necessary study skills for studying in a blended learning environment

In this paper we consider the implications of moving from a paper‐based delivery of study support materials to electronic delivery. The paper is based on telephone interviews with 60 students who had received a range of study support materials from a series of ‘student toolkits’, which are printed resource booklets for students of the UK Open University. McLoughlin (2002) sees the integration of electronic delivery at the primary, secondary and tertiary education levels as requiring an extension to current concepts of scaffolding. The extension we propose in this paper is the need to establish study skills plus the ways and means to seek support in a resource‐based environment. However, there is a delicate balance between increased provision and overloaded provision in resource‐based learning.