The heterogeneous skill-base of circular economy employment

This paper examines the opportunities and risks of employment, skills and education that are related to a circular economy (CE) in the United States. Combining occupational skills and education data with a newly introduced definition of CE employment, we compare circular- and non-circular-oriented occupations in terms of skills and abilities. Building on the seminal paper by Consoli et al. (2016) and looking at all occupations within a broad range of CE-related industries, we detect and address heterogeneity in job requirements within the CE. We distinguish core activities within CE employment – focusing on renewable energy, repair, re-use of materials and the sharing economy – from enabling activities, which are focused on management, design, and ICT-applicability of the CE. While core CE-activities generally require more manual and technological skills, enabling activities, in contrast, require more complex cognitive skills. Neither core nor enabling CE sectors, however, are entirely cohesive in terms of skill requirements. Part of the education and skills demand is identifiably driven by ‘circularity’, particularly with regard to technical skills for the core of the CE. This may require specific education and training programs for future development of the CE.     

The Discourse of the Literacy Hour

The introduction of a national 'literacy hour' as part of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) has been seen as a major reform to improve standards of literacy in primary schools in England. A major thrust of the reform has been the concept of 'interactive whole class teaching' which has come from the school improvement literature. However, critics argue that the concept of interactive whole class teaching is not well defined and that it mainly results in traditional whole class teaching. As a consequence of policy initiatives like the NLS, teachers are pressurised into using more directive forms of teaching with less emphasis on active learning. In order to investigate these arguments, the discourse styles of 10 teachers were intensively studied as they taught the literacy hour. The findings suggest that the endorsement of interactive whole class teaching appears to have had little effect in providing opportunities for pupils to question or explore ideas to help them regulate their own thinking. The implications of the findings for externally generated curriculum reforms like the NLS are considered together with the in-service needs of teachers who are charged with implementing such policy-led initiatives.     

The reliability and validity of the instructional climate inventory‐student form

The increased focus on school climate as a causative factor in dropping out of school has led to the development of a number of instruments intended to measure perceived school climate. This study examined the reliability and validity of the Instructional Climate Survey‐Form S (ICI‐S; Braskamp & Maehr, 1988), a 20‐item instrument that measures school climate as seen by students. The internal consistency and factor structure of the ICI‐S were examined, as well as the ability of the instrument to classify students from different educational settings. Three hundred and twenty‐eight students representing three programs rated programs they attended using the ICI‐S. Factor analysis indicated that ICI‐S was best explained by one factor. The reliability coefficients of the total score were within the acceptable range (above .80) for all three programs, and the total score correctly classified 57% of the students. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Differences in problem solving by nonscience majors in introductory chemistry on paired algorithmic-conceptual problems

The purpose of this investigation was to identify and describe the differences in the methods used by faculty teaching introductory chemistry and students enrolled in an introductory chemistry course at the university level to solve paired algorithmic and conceptual problems. Of the 180 students involved, the problem-solving schemas of 20 selected students and 2 professors were evaluated using a graphical method to dissect their think-aloud interviews into episodes indicative of solutions to paired problems on density, stoichiometry, bonding, and gas laws. The interviewed students were classified into four different problem-solving categories (i.e., high algorithmic/high conceptual, high algorithmic/low conceptual, low algorithmic/high conceptual, and low algorithmic/low conceptual), and composite graphs of their problem-solving schemas were compared to those representative of members of the faculty experts' category. Results of these comparisons indicated that as the students' ability to solve both algorithmic and conceptual problems improved, less time and fewer transitions between episodes of the problem-solving schemas were required to complete the problems. Regardless of the students' problem-solving ability, algorithmic-mode problems always required more time and a greater number of transitions for completion than did the paired conceptual-mode problems. However, regardless of topic, all students more frequently correctly solved the algorithmic-mode problems than the corresponding paired conceptual-mode problems. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 905–923, 1997.