THE AGING POPULATION AS A CHALLENGE FOR THE HELPING PROFESSIONS: SOME OBSERVATIONS ON A RECENT CONTINUING EDUCATION PROGRAM

This article reviews a recent continuing education program held at the University of Western Australia, Perth. The program addressed some of the crucial issues facing professionals in the field of aged services and comprised a one‐day seminar and a series of workshops. It was hosted by the Department of Social Work and Social Administration over a six‐week period and examined a wide range of issues in gerontological social work practice.     

Commitment in the Context of a Merger

The University of Eastern Finland was established through a merger at the beginning of the year 2010. The article focuses on the commitment of the personnel to the organization prior to and after the merger process. The data are based on 42 theme-interviews. The study discusses the merger and its impacts on the personnel’s commitment by analysing: (a) the interviews with members of staff, and (b) key intentions, messages and choices by the university management. The differences between the orientations and viewpoints of the personnel and university management will be discussed in relation to the changing operational environment of universities. Implications for the leadership in the context of a merger will be discussed, especially from the point of view of the impact of leadership and governance on research, teaching and learning.     

Proactive strategic recruitment in research groups

Higher education is facing increasing expectations on accountability, better quality, outcomes and social relevance. Recruitment of academic staff is often considered the single most important component in creating a successful university. This paper describes a model for proactive strategic recruitment that can be seen as a way to improve strategic academic recruitments and, consequently, outcomes of academic work.     

Orthographe Grammaticale et Justification Orthographique d’Enfants de 8 et 11 Ans

European Journal of Psychology of Education -     

Implications for academic workload of the changing role of distance educators

The changing work roles and resulting workloads of distance educators hold significant implications for the wellbeing and mental health of academics. New work roles include redesigning curricula for online delivery, increasing staff-student ratios and demands for student-support, management of part-time staff, and 24-h availability. This research was conducted to investigate the perceived importance of various job roles constituting the quantitative and qualitative workload of distance educators at an open and distance learning university in South Africa. A quantitative, cross-sectional self-report survey design was employed. A stratified random sampling technique was used to ensure generalisability. The questionnaires were completed online, and the results were statistically analysed. The findings include a priority list of 40 distance educators’ work roles that may impact on their perceived workload. The article offers recommendations for policy development to facilitate a healthy workload allocation for distance educators.     

Completion of knowledge codification: an illustration through the ISO 9000 standards implementation process

This paper looks at the role played by the ISO 9000 registration process in contributing to the knowledge codification within the firms. The ISO 9000 standards concern the way a company should elaborate a quality system by providing guidelines and models. They are considered as a code, i.e. a common language, which leads to communication and industrial relationship. This paper focuses on how this code might be used within the firms to enhance knowledge codification. It explains the standards implementation process by studying the three steps needed to complete codification within the firm: (1) the starting point of the implementation; (2) the subject of the codification, that means the material and behavioural characteristics of the production process; (3) the impact of the ISO 9000 implementation on knowledge accumulation within the firm. This paper addresses the fact that the ISO implementation is related to knowledge codification through a learning process, which includes both individual and collective knowledge conversions.     

Talking about cultural diversity at school: dialogical tensions and obstacles to secondarisation

European Journal of Psychology of Education - In Switzerland, as elsewhere, issues dealing with cultural diversity raise major challenges in education. At present, little is known about how...     

Relational language influences young children’s number relation skills

Relational language is thought to influence mathematical skills. This study examines the association between relational language and number relation skills—knowledge of cardinal, ordinal, and spatial principles—among 104 U.S. kindergartners (5.9 years; 44% boys; 37% White, 25% Black, 14% Asian, 24% other) in the 2017–2018 academic year. Controlling for general verbal knowledge, executive function, and counting and number identification skills, relational language predicted later number relation skills, specifically number line estimation, β = .30. Relational language did not differentially predict number line estimation performance in children with low or high number relation skills, likely due to the restricted ranges of data within subgroups. Number relation skills, specifically number line estimation and number ordering, may be a pathway between relational language and mathematical skills.     

Networking theoretical frames: the ReMath enterprise

In this article of the special issue devoted to the European project ReMath, we present and discuss the affordances of this project in terms of networking between theoretical frameworks. After clarifying the vision of theories and networking adopted in this project, we introduce the methodological constructs that have been developed and used in ReMath for performing the planned networking enterprise. We then present its outcomes, focusing on different facets of this networking activity: the identification of possible connections and complementarities between frameworks, the identification and elaboration of boundary objects between cultures, and the progressive building of a shared theoretical framework regarding semiotic representations. In the last part of this article, we review the whole networking enterprise from the perspective of research praxeology.