How information systems came to rule the world: Reflections on the information systems field

Abstract

Over some seven decades, a rather mundane transition that in its thoroughness and consequences has gone largely unacknowledged, has taken place, namely the revolution in modern information systems (IS) that guide organizations in their actions. Today, it is fair to say that IS have come to rule the world. They do this literally, by the rules they embody, which dictate how much of everyday life, as it relates to individuals and organizations and the transactions they engage in, takes place around the globe. In essence, IS have become important social and economic infrastructure. Seeking an understanding of how this has come about, I review historical developments in IS, focusing in particular on accounting systems, enterprise systems, retail automation, and electronic commerce. I argue that it is transactions and their facilitation that lie at the heart of IS and its development as a field of practice. I reflect on why this has gone mostly overlooked as such. I consider where we have now arrived with transaction facilitation as infrastructure and its importance in the light of current issues. I suggest how future studies might contribute to our learning more about where we should want to be with our transaction facilitation infrastructure.     

Re-bordering spaces of trauma: auto-ethnographic reflections on the immigrant and refugee experience in an inner-city high school in Toronto

The objective of this research study is to offer a glimpse into the lives of some newly-arrived students of different racial, linguistic and religious backgrounds as they confront the process of immigration and therefore personal and social displacement within the context of a Toronto inner-city high school. These students carry with them hidden but enduring scars that influence all aspects of their educational lives. In many cases their experience is steeped in trauma. Using auto-ethnographic methodology, this research is devoted to giving voice to these students who inhabit a space filled with suffering and loss but also resilience and cautious hope. If we really care about these vulnerable students in our classrooms, we must rethink and reshape our understanding of teaching and learning that is more fundamentally linked to the lived experiences of students coming from places of war and other oppressions. These issues are crucial for the future of nation-building and citizenship education in pluralistic Western societies such as Canada, both in and out of school.     

Introducing e-portfolios to pre-service teachers as tools for reflection and growth: lessons learnt

E-portfolios are being introduced into initial teacher education programmes internationally to help pre-service teachers build records of their learning journeys and develop into reflective practitioners; to allow them to assemble collections of evidence of their achievements against graduate standards, which can function as digital CVs; and to facilitate the seeding of personal learning networks that will support lifelong learning after graduation. Despite certain tensions between these aims, the potential benefits of e-portfolios make them an increasingly popular choice in teacher education. In this article, we discuss the introduction of Wi-Fi-based e-portfolios into a Master of Teaching programme at an Australian university. These served primarily as developmental e-portfolios, or personal learning environments (PLEs), and were designed to place particular emphasis on reflective practice. We describe how the e-portfolios were perceived and used by pre-service teachers in the first year of their implementation, and indicate the challenges and limitations encountered. Lessons learnt from the implementation are outlined and recommendations are proposed.     

Statewide Initiative to Embed Consumer Health Librarians in Public Libraries: A Case Study

In 2004 a collaborative, statewide outreach project in Delaware was undertaken where consumer health librarians were embedded in public libraries. In order to explore the effect of the embedded librarians on the quality of health information provision, unobtrusive reference visits were made to half of the public libraries in the state. The query “Do vaccines cause autism?” was posed to library staff; resources provided were recorded. In 67 percent of visits, public library staff provided authoritative health information resources. It appears the embedded librarians had a positive residual effect on the provision of authoritative health resources for addressing an ambiguous query.     

Initial-link duration and acquisition of preference in concurrent chains

Initial-link response allocation in concurrent chains becomes less extreme as the absolute duration of the initial links increases (Fantino, 1969). The present study asked whether initial-link duration affected how quickly response allocation reached asymptote (i.e., acquisition of preference). Six pigeons were trained on a concurrent-chains procedure in which the terminal links were fixed-interval (FI) 8 sec FI 16 sec or FI 16 sec FI 8 sec and were reversed every 20 sessions. Across conditions, all possible combinations of transitions between variable-interval (VI) 8-sec (short) and VI 24-sec (long) initial-link schedules were studied. Overall, the rate of acquisition was faster when the durations of the initial links preceding the reversal were short rather than long, and when the durations of the initial links following the reversal were long rather than short. By contrast, initial-link duration had no effect on acquisition or asymptotic measures of temporal control of terminal-link responding. These results support the core principle of delay-reduction theory (Fantino, 1969) that the impact of a conditioned reinforcer varies directly with initial-link duration, but also suggest that temporal learning during the terminal links proceeds independently of initial-link duration. nt]mis|These data were presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Boston, May 2004.     

“They cannot seem to get past the gender issue”: Experiences of young female athletic trainers in NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletics

Within Division I intercollegiate athletics, women hold 46.4% of graduate assistant and 47% of assistant athletic trainer positions, yet hold only 18.8% of head athletic trainer positions. The purpose of this study was to explore whether issues of power and gender stereotyping contribute to the lack of women in head athletic training positions in intercollegiate athletics. Data were gathered from 14 female athletic trainers at Division I universities through semi-structured interviews and follow-up questions based on those interviews and were analyzed using post-structural feminism as the theoretical framework. The findings revealed that male coaches used gender stereotypes to challenge the professional competence of our participants along with formal and informal work practices to reinforce power over the professional lives of our participants.     

Using autobiographical queer life narratives of teachers to connect personal,political and pedagogical spaces

Autobiographical queer life narratives are communicative spaces where queer teachers take up personal issues of being, becoming, and belonging in contextual and relational analyses of their situated experiences. In this work w/e consider the challenges and risks involved in this research, which, when shared and probed in classroom spaces, is a dangerous exposition of the queer self. With these challenges and risks in mind, w/e examine how our narratives provide fugitive knowledge to inform a pedagogy of ‘resist-stance’ that recognizes, respects, and engages queer identity, difference, history and culture. W/e provide examples of this pedagogy, discussing teaching strategies currently being used to connect the personal, the political and the pedagogical in classroom spaces. W/e also speak of the difficulties of living out this pedagogy as transformative teaching to transgress queer erasure in hetero-normative educational practice.     

Higher education as a self‐guiding society

Abstract

Over the last two decades, there has been a significant change in the financing of higher education in the United States. A decrease in student and institutional support in real terms, tuition increases at all types of institutions, along with the view that students are the primary beneficiaries of higher education has resulted in policies that reduce the proportion of higher education costs borne by the federal and state governments. This paper will describe this financing shift in the United States, and analyse its impact on college participation with a particular focus on equity and opportunity. It will also provide an analysis of some questions that European countries should address as they implement their own policies that shift the burden of paying for college from the government to individuals, and as they consider various forms of financial assistance to help students pay for college.     

Analysing the professional development of teaching and learning from a political ethics of care perspective

This paper uses Tronto's political ethics of care as a normative framework to evaluate a model of teaching and learning professional development. This framework identifies five integrated moral elements of care – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust. This paper explicates on each of these elements to evaluate the piloting and implementation of a teaching and learning professional development model at a South African higher education institution. The political ethics of care was found to be a useful normative framework for a group of higher educators to reflect on the process of engaging in teaching and learning professional development in that it revealed the importance of differential power relations, the importance of working collaboratively and being attentive to the needs of both caregivers and care receivers.