Education and Skills Development in China-Africa Cooperation

Education, skills, and the development of an African workforce are at a critical moment. While it is recognized that Chinese firms hire local people, the focus of the debate is more on the position and opportunities for training and advancement. As such, the paper tries to answer the following questions. Does China really contribute to skills development in Africa? Does China employment, education, and skills transfer pattern contribute to Africa’s own structural transformation and benefit African workforce? In attempting to answer these questions, this paper first lays out the current magnitude of demand for skills in Africa and the priorities for education and skills transfer that can successfully address Africa’s skills shortage. Significantly, this will enable researchers and non-researchers to understand the diversity of Chinese firms’ skills transfer patterns and the reasons behind these patterns. In order to present a comprehensive and precise picture as well as understand the context for China and Africa education and skills transfer development, the paper draws from various data collected from diverse sources, including government statistics, firm reports, second-hand academic literature, local and international news media, official government reports, and research studies. The paper suggests that the assessment of skills transfer pattern should not only consider employees’ and employers’ direct interests, but also in the short run, skills transfer should focus on offering short, practical courses to secondary and higher education graduates involving primarily on-the-job training. In the long run, there is a need to change the way employees and students are trained, including curriculum reforms that favor science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Emphasis should also be placed on critical thinking, problem-solving, discovery, and experiential training.     

A theory of grand innovation prizes

The past decade has witnessed a resurgence in innovation awards, in particular of grand innovation prizes (GIPs) which are rewards to innovators developing technologies reaching performance goals and requiring breakthrough solutions. GIPs typically do not preclude the winner also obtaining patent rights. This is in stark contrast with mainstream economics of innovation theories where prizes and patents are substitute ways to generate revenue and encourage innovation. Building on the management of innovation literature which stresses the difficulty to specify ex-ante all the technical features of the winning technologies, we develop a model in which innovative effort is multi-dimensional and only a subset of innovation tasks can be measured and contracted upon. We show that in this environment patent rights and cash rewards are complements, and that GIPs are often preferable to patent races or prizes requiring technologies to be placed in the public domain. Moreover, our model uncovers a tendency for patent races to encourage speed of discovery over quality of innovation, which can be corrected by GIPs. We explore robustness to endogenous entry, costly public funds, and incomplete information by GIP organizers on the surplus created by the technology.     

Reliability and validity of a modified 3-minute all-out swimming test in elite swimmers

Critical speed (CS) testing is useful in monitoring training in swimmers, however, completing a series of time trials (TTs) regularly is time-consuming. The 3-minute test may be a solution with positive initial findings. This investigation examined whether a modified 3-minute test (12?×?25?m) could assess CS and supra-CS distance capacity (D’) in swimmers. A series of 12?×?25?m intervals were completed unpaced at maximal effort, interspersed with 5?s rest periods. The model speed?=?a e^{b t}?+?c was fitted to the data and integrated to calculate D’. The slowest two of the last four efforts were averaged to calculate CS. To assess reliability, 15 highly trained swimmers (9 females, 6 males) completed the 12?×?25?m twice within 72?h. Four measures were deemed reliable: peak velocity (0.01?m?s^?1; 0.5%, typical error and % coefficient of variation), CS (0.02?m?s^?1; 1.2%), D’ (1.22?m; 5.7%) and drop off % (0.70% points; 4.5%). To assess criterion validity, 21 swimmers (9 from reliability, 12 other) completed two competition races within 2 weeks of a 12?×?25?m in the same stroke. Traditional CS and D’ measures were calculated from competition performances (TT method). TT CS and 12?×?25?m CS were highly correlated (adj. R²?=?0.92, p?D’ values were moderately correlated (adj. R²?=?0.60, p?D’ accurately. The 12?×?25?m all-out swimming test is a reliable method for assessing CS and D’ in swimmers, however, the validity of D’ requires further investigation.     

Paradigm Shifts in and around Special Education in New Zealand

There are few sectors in New Zealand education that have been as frequently reviewed and subjected to such wide-ranging policy changes as special education. The evolution of special education policy that has taken place in the past decade reflects the coalescence of several paradigm shifts. Some of these have been in the field of special education, where there has been an international shift away from categorising students in terms of their disabilities to making judgements on their needs for educational support, and away from segregated educational provisions to more inclusive approaches. Others reflect changes in the broader education system, in particular the shift towards more local control of decision making about resource allocation. This paper will examine the tensions inherent in these paradigm shifts and the interactions between them.     

Research parks: Instrument,or harbinger of a new university paradigm?

This paper examines research, or science, parks as indicators of a possible change in the concept and role of modern universities. The battle for knowledge-intensive industry and enterprise among world economic superpowers and universities' control over educational manpower has led to a closer scrutiny of those institutions by the state and private enterprise.The private and public sectors are urging universities to respond rapidly to a strategic need for skilled human resources and relevant research. Universities will experience increasing pressures to direct energies and resources to collaborative relationships among universities, industry, and government for the public good. Those who do not will risk reduced freedom and control of their own affairs whereas those who do are likely to prosper and play their part in influencing society in this information age and be transformed themselves. Research and science parks are becoming powerful and valued agents of change in bridging this university-industry gap.     

Evidence-based retrieval in evidence-based medicine.

OBJECTIVE: Clinical decisions based on a meta-analysis that is based on an ineffective retrieval strategy may have serious negative consequences for patients. The study objective was to investigate the extent to which meta-analyses report proof of their retrieval strategies' effectiveness. METHODS: The authors examined a random sample (n = 100) of articles in the 1996 to 2002 full-text subset of Ovid MEDLINE indexed as "meta-analysis." We classified the articles in three ways: the article (A) reported both a retrieval strategy in sufficient detail (such that it could be repeated) and with evidence of the strategy's effectiveness, (B) reported a retrieval strategy in sufficient detail but not with evidence of the strategy's effectiveness, or (C) neither reported a strategy in detail nor evidence of the strategy's effectiveness. Articles classified as (A) were further classified according to the level of evidence reported. RESULTS: Of the eighty-nine articles in our final analysis, six (6.7%) were classified as category (A), fifty-seven (64%) as (B), and twenty-six (29%) as (C). Articles in category (A) reported a previously validated search, a published strategy, or strategy based on expert opinion. CONCLUSION: Peer-review standards must be developed that require authors of meta-analyses to report evidence for the effectiveness of their retrieval strategies.