Inventive and uninventive clusters: The case of Canadian biotechnology

We examine factors influencing the relative productivity of different geographic locations. Our analysis of the Canadian biotechnology industry during the 1990s reveals that inventive and uninventive locations are distinguishable within small geographic areas corresponding to roughly 7000 postal addresses. Inventive locations exhibit greater resource scale and technological focus, as well as greater emphasis on R&D investment and public and private collaboration. Comparison of inventive locations across three major metropolitan areas – Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal – indicates, however, that inventive locations vary in their emphasis on technological scale and focus relative to collaboration, and thus that location advantages can develop in distinctive ways.     

Dispositions Toward Families and Family Involvement: Supporting Preservice Teacher Development

This article highlights the importance of nurturing preservice teachers as they develop the dispositions essential to establish empowering relationships with children’s families. The authors identify and describe several key dispositions necessary for working with families and offer suggestions for ways that these elements might be integrated into early childhood teacher preparation programs.     

Inequality of educational opportunity: the relationship between access,affordability, and quality of private schools in Lagos,Nigeria

Using data from a census of private schools in one of Lagos, Nigeria’s administrative jurisdictions, this paper explores the linkages between a heterogeneous sector of private schools and issues of school access, affordability, quality, and ultimately social mobility for households at the bottom of the income distribution. Although a large private education market has buoyed Lagos’s growth towards near-universal primary enrolment, this heterogeneous school sector appears to be providing socially stratifying paths towards educational attainment. We apply Lucas’s theory of effectively maintained inequality to assess the extent to which access to higher quality education services within the private sector is determined by cost. We find that higher-cost private schools provide students with greater opportunities to study in institutions with higher quality inputs and increased potential for progression within the educational system. As such, it is highly likely that these schools are primarily accessible to students at the upper ends of the income distribution.