Competency-Based Talent Management: Three Perspectives in an Academic Library

ABSTRACT

This article describes how the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library implemented a competency-based talent management system across the organization to address organizational, departmental, and individual needs. Success of the implementation was mixed. Designing human resources systems around core competencies made organizational values and goals concrete but proved unsustainable in the long-term. Using core competencies to shape departmental goals, coach staff and library faculty, and onboard new employees proved beneficial at the middle management level.     

Explaining Individual Differences in Reading: on the orthographic component of word recognition

This article first presents a conception of word recognition involving both phonological and orthographic processes. Three different explanations about the origin of orthographic processes in word recognition are then discussed. These explanations are: (1) differences in orthographic memory, (2) differences in phonological processes and (3) differences in leisure time reading. In accord with the third explanation, it is argued that automatic orthographic word recognition is directly dependent on children's amount of reading practice in an out‐of‐school setting. Educational implications of this emphasis on leisure time reading effects are also discussed.     

Ways of thinking associated with mathematics teachers’ problem posing in the context of division of fractions

Twenty-four mathematics teachers were asked to think aloud when posing a word problem whose solution could be found by computing 4/5 divided by 2/3. The data consisted of verbal protocols along with the written notes made by the subjects. The qualitative analysis of the data was focused on identifying the structures of the problems produced and the associated ways of thinking involved in constructing the problems. The results suggest that success in doing the interview task was associated with perception the given fractions as operands for the division operation and, at the same time, the divisor 2/3 as an operator acting over 4/5. The lack of success was associated with perception of division of fractions as division of divisions of whole numbers and using the result of division of fractions as the only reference point. The study sheds new light on the teachers’ difficulties with conceptualization of fractions.     

Introductory courses in research

The purpose of this article is to describe the ways in which intending teachers in the United Kingdom are acquainted with the principles and methods of educational research. Two points must be emphasized at the outset. The first is that the discussion is intentionally limited to the content of courses of initial training; the more intensive treatment of the topics under review that can undertaken in advanced courses of in-service training is not considered. The second point to be noted is that the institutions-colleges of education and university departments of education-that are responsible for initial training in the United Kingdom are free to fashion their own curricula and methods of instruction. The absence of any central control or direction in these respects leads to a wide variety of practices and, indeed, the content of the initial training programmes in a particular college is determined, to a considerable extent, by the experience, qualifications and predilections of the members of its staff. The account that follows refers to the procedures adopted by some of the best qualified and most farsighted of those responsible for the training of teachers. Alfred Yates, formerly Senior Research Officer at the National Foundation for Educational Research, is at present Senior Tutor in the Departmen of Educational Studies at Oxford University. His educational writings includeAdmission to Grammar Schools, Grouping in Education, An Introduction to Educational Measurement (with D. A. Pidgeon), andThe Role of Research in Educational Change     

The focus of responsibility for education of the severely and profoundly retarded

The current concern for the extension of a free public education to the severely and profoundly retarded has precipitated a general assumption among many persons that the public schools will play a major role in providing educational services for this population. In view of the past failures of programs for the mildly (EMR) and moderately (TMR) retarded in the public schools, the authors advocate a new concept in delivery systems and teacher training that more appropriately reflects the needs of the severely and profoundly retarded.