Enabling integrated knowledge acquisition and management in health care teams

Basing treatment, policy and planning decisions on the best available research knowledge remains a central principle in modern health care around the world, yet many health professionals find acquiring and managing published research knowledge challenging. In this paper, we report on a Soft Systems Methodology-based collaborative action research initiative with a specialist mental health service from the United Kingdom's National Health Service. Our objective was to design and implement improvements to their knowledge acquisition and management activities in order to facilitate sustained and effective evidence-based practices. We report on both the factors found to impede effective research knowledge acquisition and management and the development of more integrated knowledge management processes designed to improve the situation.     

Globalisation,modernisation and competitiveness: A critique of the new labour project in education

In this article, the author begins by examining the ubiquitous concept of 'globalisation' - a key theme of the New Labour Government. He question whether developments named as such are as widespread as proclaimed and whether the assumptions underlying the concept are misleading and occlude more than they reveal. The author concludes that, rather than 'globalisation' being viewed as a new epoch, the global movement of capital, which informs and underpins the globalisation thesis, might more accurately be described as an ongoing process, one which began 400-500 years ago. 'Globalisation', however, he suggests, is used ideologically to justify the New Labour programme, or the 'Third Way', which has two major anchors; competitiveness and modernisation. The former entails an economy in which everyone works, where the need for the untrammelled expansion of the free market is promoted as natural and inevitable and where there is the requirement for flexibility in the labour market and for low wages, in the context of the diminution of the welfare state. Since Keynesian demand management has been abandoned, one of the few strategic levers available to the New Labour Government to achieve these ends is to police the education and training of the workforce in the economy and in the educational market-place. This is all carried in the spirit of the 'essential modernisation' of British capitalism.     

The Cross-Curriculum Manager: Maximizing the Potential of Learners

Mike Reading happened to visit the NAPCE stand at the Education Show, and commented that his school had found the NAPCE resource pack From Head of Year to Year Curriculum Coordinator? very useful in their developments. So a while later he was contacted to write an account for the journal!
This account gives a sense of the particular flavour of the school, which Mike himself suggests is unusual, and also the ways in which one role can become more highly connected and central to the school, especially if it is contributing to an explicit focus on learning.
Mike is Key Stage Manager at George Spencer Foundation School and Technology College. He trained at The University College of Ripon and York St John, and started his career in education as a Religious Education teacher in Oldham before being Head of Department in Grantham. From this position he was appointed to a senior role in his present school. He has studied the contribution which Quality Management makes to secondary school management and gained a Masters degree at Nottingham Trent University.     

U.S. academic departmental Web-site interlinking in the United States Disciplinary differences

This article explores disciplinary differences in academic Web-site interlinking using the university departments of chemistry, psychology, and history. Research has suggested that Web-link counts are related to research productivity and geographic distance between source and target, but no previous Webometric studies have comparatively analyzed academic departments from different disciplines. This study shows large differences in Web use by discipline for both Web-site size and the extent of interlinking, with the history department making little use of the Web and the chemistry department the most. There are significant correlations between in-links and research impact for the psychology and chemistry departments, with a stronger association for the psychology department. There was little evidence, however, of a geographic trend in interlinking.     

集成化的项目管理方法

围绕项目管理已经有许多方法和理论。这些方法和理论各有所长,适用于不同的环境,可以解决不同的问题。Sun公司专业服务顾问Mike Ward根据自己服务于英国政府项目管理的实践经验指出,将几种典型的项目管理方法集成起来,可以更好地确保大型项目的成功。本文介绍了几种重要的项目管理及集成化管理方法,可以为我国政府和企业大型项目管理提供有益的参考,并且具有很好的借鉴意义,     

Interfaith education: A new model for today’s interfaith families

With societal changes rapidly transforming cultures that had been largely homogenous, today’s multi-cultural – and in particular interfaith – families need new educational strategies to help them understand their cultural roots and identify and clarify what aspects of their heritages they wish to nurture and transmit to their children. This paper focuses on a new model for religious education, namely non-doctrinaire “dual-faith” education, which the principal author has helped to develop in the United States (US) through the Interfaith Community (IFC), a small, independent non-profit organisation created and led by dual-faith Jewish/Christian families. The model is premised on the notion that families can have two different faiths in one household and that – with respect and education – families can be harmonious, religion can be transmitted, and tolerance broadly nurtured. While the model is particular to the US and to families with Jewish and Christian heritages, its premises and structure have significant potential to be adaptable to other religious combinations and other cultures and countries. After reviewing relevant literature and situating the IFC model in the global and US contexts, the paper sets out to clarify the importance of the concept, describe its elements, and discuss its implications for religious education in this time of changing ethos and demography.