Achieving top management support with business knowledge and role of IT/IS personnel

The business-IT gap is still present in many companies and IT/IS professionals often impute the responsibility for this to management and claim they lack top management's support for their initiatives. The aim of this paper is to show how IT/IS personnel can achieve top management support. Based on more than 50 in-depth interviews with CIOs and CEOs in the last 10 years we hypothesize that top management support can be attained with the business and managerial knowledge and skills of IT/IS personnel as well as with the business-oriented role of the IT/IS department. The impact was empirically tested via structural equation modeling (SEM) using data from 152 Slovenian companies with more than 50 employees. Based on findings some implications for top managers and IT/IS professionals are given, especially for CIOs, on how IT/IS personnel can contribute to bridging the gap.     

What can we do to support reading for young adolescent students?

Young adolescents are at a critical stage in their schooling. They are consolidating and improving their reading skills. By exploring what supports these 11- to 13-year-old students in reading from a wider systemic perspective, educators and policy-makers can better understand the complex factors which support reading development. This article presents a conceptual framework model to illustrate how teachers, principals and wider support agencies can effectively interact with the students and their parents. The framework highlights the impacting roles of ministries of education, governmental policies, and how study at postgraduate level can support reading development for these young adolescents.     

Exploring intercultural competence through the lens of self-authorship

Intercultural competence among educators has long been recognised as important, especially in contexts characterised by growing and shifting cultural diversity such as Australia. However, the capacity to be interculturally competent has only recently been enshrined in teacher standards in Australia, and research into this field among early childhood educators is fledgling. Through the theoretical lens of self-authorship, this case study integrated a developmental model of intercultural maturity with a compositional model of intercultural competence. Combining these two models allowed for a holistic exploration of the complexities of intercultural experiences in an early childhood educational setting. This new integrated framework is applied to a case study that focuses on Heidi, an early childhood educator in a culturally diverse kindergarten. Data were collected through interviews, classroom observations and analysis of philosophy, policy and observational documents. The findings indicated the importance of critical reflection and internal meaning making, as part of a self-authored identity, in relation to intercultural competence. Implications are discussed with a focus on the potential significance of the integrated framework to explore as well as enhance educators’ critical reflection about their intercultural experiences.     

Children learning to use technologies through play: A Digital Play Framework

Digital technologies are increasingly acknowledged as an important aspect of early childhood education. A significant problem for early childhood education has been how to understand the pedagogical use of technologies in a sector that values play‐based learning. This paper presents a new framework to understand how children learn to use technologies through play. The Digital Play Framework is based on the sociocultural concept of tool mediation and Corrine Hutt's work regarding epistemic and ludic activity as basis for understanding play. The Digital Play Framework presents a series of indicators for how children learn to use technologies as cultural tools, first by exploring the functionality of technologies through epistemic activity, and second by generating new content through ludic activity.     

Four‐ to Six‐Year‐Old Children's Sensitivity to Reliability Versus Consensus in the Endorsement of Object Labels

Recent studies have demonstrated that young children use past reliability and consensus to endorse object labels. Until now, no study has investigated how children weigh these two cues when they are in conflict. The two experiments reported here were designed to explore whether any initial preference for information provided by a consensual group would be influenced by the group's subsequent unreliability. The results show that 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children were more likely to endorse labels provided by an unreliable but consensual group than the labels provided by a reliable dissenter. Six‐year‐olds displayed the reverse pattern. The article concludes by discussing the methodological implications of the two experiments and the developmental trajectory regarding the way children weigh consensuality versus reliability.     

Collective commitment and collective efficacy: a theoretical model for understanding the motivational dynamics of dilemma resolution in inter-professional work

This paper presents a new theoretical model which conceptualizes inter-professional and multi-agency collaborative working, at the level of the individual within a group. This arises from a review of the literature around joint working, and is based on social psychological theories which refer to shared goals. The model assumes that collective commitment, collective efficacy, and process and outcome beliefs interact and feed into the development and maintenance of collaborative processes and outcomes. This is situated within an ecological framework that summarizes the context of inter-professional and multi-agency collaboration. The model illustrates working resolutions of specific inter-professional dilemmas around identity, role and control. This paper extends the literature around theoretical approaches to collaborative work in a multi-agency or inter-professional context, with its specific social-psychological focus on the motivations of the individual within the group.     

A critical reflection on using food as learning materials

Abstract

As early childhood teacher educators, we are thoroughly immersed in conversations about developmentally appropriate practice. Whether teachers should incorporate the use of food as learning materials is a case in point. As with many other concerns we ponder in our field, our task must be to define, clarify, and consider multiple perspectives in the pursuit of a rational justification of our position. In this paper we report the results of our careful review of theory and research that leads us to propose that using food as art material violates principles of best practice for three main reasons, because it: (1) teaches young children that it is acceptable to eat play materials and to play with food, (2) teaches young children that it is acceptable practice to waste limited resources, (3) violates many premises of multicultural education, or teaching children about diverse ethnic groups.