The action workflow approach to workflow management technology

Abstract

This paper describes the ActionWorkflow? approach to workflow management technology: a design methodology and associated computer software for the support of work in organizations. The approach is based on theories of communicative activity as language/action, developed in a series of systems for coordination among users of networked computers. This article describes the approach, gives an example of its application, and shows the architecture of a workflow management system based on it.     

Spanish savings banks: a view on intangibles

We study Spanish savings banks from the point of view of their efficiency, transparency in the disclosure of financial information through the net, and the provision of electronic banking services. Performance indicators are developed using data envelopment analysis and the tools of multivariate statistical analysis. The choice of indicators is framed within the theory of intangible assets. An attempt is made rank savings banks according to their level of achievement in each indicator. Savings banks are shown to be classified into four groups according to the level of achievement in the indicators of transparency and e-service. The relationship between efficiency and profitability is also discussed.     

Ten Years of Peer‐Reviewed Articles in Counselor Education: Where,What, Who?

Although counselor educators may be called on to justify publication venues, authorship order, and types of articles for purposes of promotion and tenure, there are few sources of data regarding norms for publication in counselor education. The current study examined peer‐reviewed publication venues, article types, and authorship order of 317 faculty members who were employed by 49 doctoral programs in counselor education accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. The study reviewed 1,547 articles published between January 1997 and December 2006. Results are presented, and implications for counselor education are discussed.     

School experiences of Children in Need: Learning and support

Children in Need (CIN) have received little attention in education circles. These are children who are usually living at home but where there are concerns over their health or development due to abuse or neglect, or they are disabled. Like Children in Care (CIC, who mostly live away), educational attainments for CIN are lower than for the general pupil population, with higher levels of special educational needs. This article draws on additional analysis from a recently completed, mixed methods study into this educational attainment gap for CIN and CIC. The overall research involved quantitative analysis from official statistics of a whole-birth cohort of children (n = 471,688) born in 2000/2001 and tracked through to their General Certificate of Secondary Education exams in 2017. This was complemented by semi-structured interviews with 18 CIN and 23 CIC, parents and associated professionals. This article focuses on interviews with CIN, their parents and professionals. Two main themes emerged from this further analysis of the qualitative data. One concerned children’s problems with learning. Children said that they often struggled with their schoolwork and received insufficient classroom support to help. The second theme was that pupils and parents reported more positive experiences of learning and support in Pupil Referral Units compared with secondary schools. The overall conclusion is that attention should rightly address the social, emotional and mental health difficulties of CIN, but this should be coupled with adequate support for classroom learning.     

Science and Literature: Towards a Conceptual Framework

Teachers of science and the history of science may wish to enliven and contextualise their subject matter by citing literary references to scientific ideas; similarly, teachers of literature may wish to examine the impact of science on their own field. Both groups of scholars may wish to examine how science and literature inform each other in their common social and cultural context. The question that arises is whether or not the relationship between science and literature has stable features that can give structure to such studies? There are various possibilities: the study of ‘science and literature’ could chart the impact of science on literature, or the impact of literature on science, or both; or look at how both science and literature have historically responded in similar or different ways to a common historical context. Amid this melee of options, the primary purpose of this paper is to sketch a conceptual framework to assist the science educator to explore the literary response to scientific ideas. For the sake of brevity, science will be taken to include the natural sciences (including the pseudo sciences of alchemy and astrology since they were once regarded as authentic) but not technology or medicine. Literature will be taken to mean fictive writing – poems, plays, novels – but will not include here science fiction. These exclusions are partly for reasons of space, but also because science fiction has its own literature of critical analysis within literary scholarship.     

Perspectives on human and social capital theories and the role of education: An approach from Mediterranean thought

Current discussions about education suggest that a transformative pedagogy that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills is needed. However, there is no agreement as to the inputs needed for a correct development of the educational model. In this sense, we can identify the presence of two different approaches to human and social capital which embody distinct educational worldviews. On the one hand, the ‘Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Personal Culture’ approach, and on the other hand, the ‘Non-Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Civic Culture’ approach. The first, which is linked to mainstream economic theory, sees education as any stock of knowledge that contributes to an improvement in the productivity of the worker and individual well-being. The second, which is rooted in the Mediterranean tradition of political thought, highlights the role of civic virtues, reciprocity, and public action within the educational process and its influence on public happiness. In this article, we analyse these connections in order to introduce the eighteenth-century Mediterranean tradition of economic thought into discussions about human and social capital theories and the role of education in them. Focusing on education through these prisms, national and international agendas must be reoriented towards the integral development of people to include broader global debates.     

Data Science Support at the Academic Library

Data science is a rapidly growing field with applications across all scientific domains. The demand for support in data science literacy is outpacing available resources at college campuses. The academic library is uniquely positioned to provide training and guidance in a number of areas relevant to data science. The University of Arizona Libraries has built a successful data science support program, focusing on computational literacy, geographic information systems, and reproducible science. Success of the program has largely been due to the strength of library personnel and strategic partnerships with units outside of the library. Academic libraries can support campus data science needs through professional development of current staff and recruitment of new personnel with expertise in data-intensive domains.     

Elementary School Children’s Explanations of Day and Night

Science & Education - Most students have interacted with scientific representations that are used as teaching resources in schools. Often these external representations present challenges for...     

Representations over the Earth’s shape and the process of day and night from Nahua indigenous schoolchildren / Representaciones sobre la forma de la Tierra y del proceso día y noche en niños de escuelas indígenas Nahuas

This research presents the way in which children from a Nahua indigenous community build representations of the Earth’s shape, as well as the process that causes day and night. Concepts from school and local culture were studied. For the first case, a questionnaire was applied to 331 children, out of which 38 children were then interviewed on the topics from the questionnaire. For the cultural ideas, three teachers from the region and 30 children from the sample were interviewed. The results show that the representations depend on the form of questioning and the existence of three models: a flat structure with a celestial dome and mechanisms that hide or remove the Sun or the Moon in order to create day and night; a spherical structure with a surrounding sky, where the Sun and Moon rise and set; and a transitional model with a hollow sphere, flat surface and celestial dome. Cultural ideas do not appear to have any influence over these models, probably due to a loss of the community’s cosmogonic knowledge and the age of the children.