Time Management

Time management is an essential component of leadership. Leaders need to develop strategies to maximize time in order to achieve personal and organizational goals. While there are numerous time saving methods, leaders will need to test and determine which patterns are most effective for their personal style. There are some organizational strategies that will benefit the individual leader as well the organization such as planning, goal setting, delegation, decision authority, and work life balance. By managing time, the leader is accounting for the important commodity of time within an organization.     

Leadership Reflections: Advisory Bodies

An important component of librarianship is the connection between a library and its community. Advisory committees or boards are a valuable tools for a leader to manage this connection and provides a leader with external expertise that can make a significant impact on a library community. However, advisory bodies need to be established for specific purposes and require a significant time commitment to ensure that members are contributing in a meaningful way. There are cautions in working with advisory bodies but the benefits of tapping into the potential benefits are worth the time and effort in working with community volunteers.     

Leadership Reflections: Leadership Skills for Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is a process that infuses knowledge and decision making across an organization. It not only encourages decision making based on data but also fosters communication among personnel for informed practices and processes. The social connections within an organization facilitate the formal structure and encourage personnel to share expertise, insights, and past experiences to inform decision making. Such a highly interactive organization requires leadership that supports and encourages knowledge management practices. A successful knowledge management organization depends on certain leadership characteristics in order to foster interactions that contribute to the processes. A variety of characteristics and patterns will offer leaders understanding on how to lead within a knowledge management library.     

‘Think about what our industry stands for….’: exploring the impact of external factors on line manager perceptions of graduate employability

ABSTRACT

Increasing emphasis is being placed upon employer expectations in research on graduate employability, in response to the widely claimed gap between employer expectations and graduates’ understanding of these expectations. For graduates, being uncertain of their employer’s expectations may threaten the ease of their transition into the workplace and their job satisfaction, even leading to issues around graduate retention for employers. External influences on the graduate labour market such as differences in industry/sector level expectations and economic/political factors, can pose further complications. This paper presents a cross-industry analysis of employer expectations of graduates, drawing from four selected case study vignettes aimed at uncovering insights into these variances. Findings offer implications for policy makers and higher education providers around the design and delivery of a curriculum that appropriately prepares students for the graduate labour market, whilst also catering for industry-level expectations particularly in light of the UK’s forthcoming departure from the EU.     

Differential relationships between RAN performance,behaviour ratings,and executive function measures: Searching for a double dissociation

Abstract. In this study, we investigated the relationships between rapid naming of letters, digits and colours, and reading ability and executive function. We gave fifty-six grade three and four children rapid automatised naming tasks using letters and digits as stimuli, executive function measures including the Stroop task, a working memory task and the Trailmaking B task. The latter three tasks were used as measures of executive function. We also administered tests of verbal ability, reading and a behaviour checklist. The rapid naming of letters and digits was significantly correlated with reading, but not with executive function or behaviour ratings. The rapid naming of colours (from the Stroop task) was significantly correlated with the executive function tasks and the behaviour ratings but not with reading. We discuss the implications of this double dissociation for further studies of RAN.     

On the Closure of English Public Libraries

This article challenges the conventional assumptions about the serious decline of public libraries in England. The author asserts that, as shown by the comparative data for the United States and Australian public libraries, it has not been caused by changes in society or technology. Nor has government austerity been the driving force. The loss of public interest originated in the years from 1990 to 2010 when major alterations were made to the ethos of the service. The current budget cuts and moves to ‘hollow out’ and close library services have come because of the consequent fall in public affection.     

Strengthening early childhood and school sector continuities in producing the lifelong learner in Aotearoa New Zealand

Recent education policy analysis has revealed the standardisation of education systems and an intensified focus on learners and learning to meet the requirements of the global economy and neo-liberalism. In this paper we analyse the way that early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand has become increasingly entangled with school sector priorities and international discourses of lifelong learning as it has encountered these requirements. We trace the shift from an explict rejecting and countering of school sector pedagogy to the promoting of increasing continuity with school sector priorities. We draw attention to dynamic, contrasting and competing interests and entities that have shaped the construction of learning and learners and curriculum and assessment priorities. We argue the need to attend to the complex mix of constitutive forces at work in the formulation and enactment of early childhood sector priorities, in particular to these crucial entanglements with school sector priorities, international discourses of lifelong learning and neo-liberal economic rationalities.     

Advocates for Access: Do We Really Need a European Access Network?

The “European Access Network” is the only European‐wide non‐governmental body that focuses exclusively on widening participation in higher education, but in an age of “mass” higher education, who needs advocates for access? Surely the case for greater equity has already been made and won? A close look at the evidence, however, indicates that those who were under‐represented before are often under‐represented still. The European Access Network highlights this problem, demolishes the myths by examining the evidence, identifies solutions, promotes good practice, and puts on pressure for a more equitable higher education. This article investigates the progress that is being made, identifies what remains to be done, and suggests the most effective strategies for success.