Dystopia on the Health Superhighway

The emerging Information Superhighway is starting to induce visions of dystopia within the medical profession. In several countries, doctors have opposed plans for the establishment of national health data networks. In the most recent example, the Council of the British Medical Association threatened to boycott the government's national data strategy. This action followed the lead of Australian doctors, many of whom have consistently opposed a national wide-area network for health data. In common is the fear that this data linkage will erode medical independence, increase the power of government health authorities, and eliminate the confidentiality of medical information. Doctors have a duty of care to patients to protect confidentiality, and they say the emerging national networks compromise this responsibility. Here, I argue that the emerging health superhighways should either conform to strict privacy standards or they should be demolished.     

Management education at a distance and its effects on career progression: The case of MBA in retailing and wholesaling students

Students who register for any MBA programme anticipate that their career opportunities will be improved. When they are also practising managers, evidence shows that career changes may occur at any time during the course of their programme. Using a survey on students studying the University of Stirling's MBA in Retailing and Wholesaling by distance learning this paper was able to support this evidence as well as investigating the type and frequency of career changes being experienced by managers.     

Policies on Inequality in the Third World: dependency or autonomy?

Analysis of the national planning documents of selected Third World countries reveals common key issues in policies on educational inequality. Expansion, national unity, decentralisation, positive discrimination and terminal education are highlighted as recurring themes. A further focus on the dimensions of aid, training, nationalism, regionalism and finance provides a framework which can be used both to assess the degree of dependency or autonomy exhibited in equity planning and to provide a critique of over‐simplified applications of dependency theory regarding educational policy.     

高等教育中的公立与私立问题--以英国为例的研究

从撒切尔夫人开始,英国就进行了广泛私有化改革,但英国的高等教育仍然由政府部门主导。最近的15年间,英国高等教育的财政制度和学校体制发生了巨大的变革,市场机制在英国高等教育中扮演了越来越重要的角色。在高等教育的结构方面,由过去主要以研究型大学为主,发展为多种类型大学并存。在政府对高等教育的管制方式方面,政府通过质量保证局与研究评估局,加强了对大学的绩效管理。在经费方面,一方面加强了绩效拨款,另一方面强调学生分担教育成本。在大学管理方面,在加强政府监督的同时,也进一步扩大了大学的自主权。这表明私营部门在英国高等教育变革中所扮演的角色越来越重要。     

Creativity as a twenty-first-century competence: an exploratory study of provision and reality

Recently, creativity has begun to be talked about as a twenty-first-century competency [UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation). 2006. The World Conference on Arts Education: Building Creative Capacities for the 21st Century: Working Document, Lisbon, Portugal, 6–9 March 2006. Lisbon: UNESCO]. Several government-endorsed publications have also stressed the importance of fostering creativity in the classroom [Robinson Report. (1999). Great Britain Department for Education and Employment. Department for Culture, Media and Sport. National Advisory Committee on Creativity and Cultural Education. All Our Futures: Creativity and Culture in Education. London: DfEE; DfES. (2004). Excellence and Enjoyment: A Strategy for Primary School. London: DfES; QCA. (2005). Find It! Promote It! London: QCA]. This study aims to explore opportunities to foster creativity following the new National Curriculum’s introduction (DfE (Department for Education). [2013a. National Curriculum for Art & Design. London: DfE; DfE. 2013b. National Curriculum for History. London: DfE; DfE. 2013c. National Curriculum for Science. London: DfE]). It explores provision and attempts to go beyond this into daily classroom practices by interviewing teachers. Analysis indicates a wide variation in terms of in-school provision. Certain schemes of work may be more successful at fostering creativity and that relying purely on the National Curriculum can hinder opportunities for creativity. Teacher responses indicate that they value creativity but find it hard to accurately describe incidents of creativity being fostered and teaching creatively is often confused for teaching for creativity. Training has been designed to address this, although a pervading emphasis on schools’ performativity will mean creativity is not embedded into daily learning to the extent it can be a twenty-first-century competence unless there is a major policy change.     

When neighboring disciplines fail to learn from each other: The case of innovation and project management research

As knowledge production becomes more specialized, studying complex and multi-faceted empirical realities becomes more difficult. This has created a growing need for cross-fertilization and collaboration between research disciplines. According to prior studies, the sharing of concepts, ideas and empirical domains with other disciplines may promote cross-fertilization. We challenge this one-sided view. Based on an analysis of the parallel development of the neighboring disciplines of innovation studies and project management, we show that the sharing of concepts and empirical domains can have ambivalent effects. Under conditions of ideological distancing, shared concepts and domains will be narrowly assimilated ? an effect we call ‘encapsulation’ – which creates an illusion of sharing, while promoting further self-containment. By comparison, reflexive meta-theories and cross-disciplinary community-building will enable a form of sharing that promotes cross-fertilization. Our findings inform research on research specialization, cross-fertilization and effectiveness of interdisciplinary collaboration.