Leadership and inclusion: a special school perspective

In July 2002, the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) held a 'Leading Edge' seminar focused on the contribution that leaders in special schools can make to the development of Inclusive policies and practices. The day gave colleagues working in specialist contexts an opportunity to share examples and experiences of current initiatives and to speculate about future trends and developments in inclusive education. In this article, Robin Attfield and Chris Williams, Assistant Directors in Programmes and Research respectively at the NCSL, explore the context in which the seminar took place and some of the themes and issues that emerged from discussion on the day. At the end of their paper, they summarise the key messages that the special school leaders who attended the seminar wished to communicate to a wider audience and articulate a further role for leaders in special schools in the development of inclusion.     

Expert systems: aspects of and limitations to the codifiability of knowledge

The creation of expert systems is one way in which knowledge is codified. In creating an expert system, in general there are three aspects to the codification process: creating a model of the knowledge to be codified; creating the language in which to express the model; and writing messages representing the knowledge in that language. These aspects have different relative importance in different contexts. Referring to four case studies, the paper argues further that codification through creating expert systems is not uniformly successful and part of the variation has to do with the nature of the knowledge, or intellectual process or activity being codified, and the difficulty in creating the model. Activities with fixed goals and linear processes lend themselves very well to this form of codification. Processes of categorization and analogy, such as fault detection and repair, are partially successful, tending more often to create systems for experts. Processes involving balancing conflicting goals have, to date, tended to be unsuccessfully codified. These process types involve knowledge or understanding at deeper and deeper levels of abstraction of the overall processes and overarching goals. The more abstract and less concrete the knowledge involved in the task, the more difficult it is to codify it.     

Neurocognitive predictors of reading outcomes for children with reading disabilities

This study reports on several specific neurocognitive process predictors of reading outcomes for a sample of 278 children with reading disabilities. Three categories of response (i.e., poor, average, and good) were formed via growth curve models of six reading outcomes. Two nested discriminant function analyses were conducted to evaluate the predictive capability of the following models: (a) an intervention and phonological processing model that included intervention group, phonological awareness, and rapid naming and (b) an additive cognitive neuropsychological model that included measures of memory, visual processes, and cognitive or intellectual functioning. Over and above the substantial explanatory power of the base model, the additive model improved classification of poor and good responders. Several of the cognitive and neuropsychological variables predicted degree of reading outcomes, even after controlling for type of intervention, phonological awareness, and rapid naming.     

The forgotten promise of e-government maturity: Assessing responsiveness in the digital public sector

Assessing e-government responsiveness is one of the major gaps in the currently dominant e-government maturity models. While we have a relatively large pool of models focusing on technological and organizational integration from a supply side perspective, measures of responsiveness of e-government systems from a user perspective are still lacking. Replicating a study from New Zealand and Australia, this study explores the response time and quality of e-mail response in Danish local and central governments (N = 175). Despite that Denmark is high ranking in international benchmark studies, we find that one third of central government agencies did not respond at all, and close to 80% of the ministries provided none or incomplete answers. Local government responds faster and provides answers that are more complete and accurate than those provided by central government. Implications for e-government are discussed.     

Mandatory provisioning of digital public services as a feasible service delivery strategy: Evidence from Italian local governments

Several governments are actively encouraging their administrations to deliver public services exclusively through digital channels. This strategy consists of putting in place a series of complex and specific actions that bring into play numerous actors, to ensure that users are willing to accept digital channels and that weaker users are not disadvantaged. Although this strategy is being increasingly adopted in various countries, scholars have scarcely begun to explore its logic. This research explores how to define a service delivery strategy that forces users to adopt digital channels. Four in-depth case studies have been conducted on Italian local governments that started delivering their non-educational school services through digital channels alone. We found that a mandatory service delivery strategy is feasible when the starting point is to understand the users' characteristics, skills and behaviours and, as a consequence, whether they perceive the service as complex and/or ambiguous. With this in mind, public organisations can select the proper mix of channels for each category of users and combine their change in approach with behavioural-type interventions, i.e. by creating the right conditions to modify the users' behaviour.     

Future Sex Educator Perceptions of Rural Versus Urban Instruction: A Case for Community-Centered Sexual Health Education

Instructors of sexual health courses in rural areas face unique challenges as they are often forced to use school-based prevention curricula field-tested in urban areas. Research has yet to consider what future sex educators’ regional expectations are for their profession and how those expectations might have an impact on the classroom. Drawing from interviews with 26 sex-educators-in-training, we find that future educators tended to expect that rural communities would be less diverse, more conservative, and less informed about sexual health matters, even though research demonstrates that today's rural communities inconsistently align with those perceptions.