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AbstractThis article discusses the poor performance of women candidates in Solomon Islands elections and potential aid policy responses. The article outlines women candidates' performance, details challenges faced by women, examines existing aid work designed to help women candidates and provides policy suggestions. The article argues that existing aid policy focused on candidate training and voter education has achieved little because the main impediments women candidates face are access to finance and local gatekeepers, alongside more subtle normative constraints. These are barriers that are not easily shifted by training or education programs. Meanwhile, for reasons of political economy, another area of aid‐supported engagement, a parliamentary gender quota, is unlikely to be enacted. Reflecting this, and the nature of the challenges women candidates face, the article recommends donors also undertake work to help prospective women candidates engage with communities over time, building ties and reputations as providers of assistance.

Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), students with significant intellectual disabilities (ID) are allowed to take alternate assessments based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS) in lieu of the standardized assessments taken by their peers, however evidence suggests that IEP teams inconsistently and sometimes inaccurately apply established participation criteria in finding students eligible to participate in AA-AAS. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to describe the decision-making process used by Individual Education Program (IEP) teams to identify students eligible to participate in AA-AAS. Thirteen case managers of students taking the Virginia Alternate Assessment Program (VAAP) from central Virginia participated in in-depth interviews. The findings resulted in the Influences on the Process of AA-AAS Eligibility Decisions (IPAED) Model describing a three-phased eligibility decision-making process. Implications suggest the need for training for all IEP team members, with a particular focus on parent education and involvement.

Participatory action research has been used by Latin American social sciences researchers in order to deal with social and community problems to encourage social changes. Participatory action research experiences with industrial workers have been less visible. This paper focuses on workers' research experience at state-owned Venezuelan metallurgical industries. The methodological approach is based on workers' educational needs with participation in their own emancipation process. Workers and researchers share experiences, knowledge, and set the basis for increased democracy at industry through workshops, meetings, and other educational activities. These experiences allowed the emergence of an industrial participatory action research project that is being deepened through participatory appraisal and education research programs with readings, "generating questions," working roundtables, consensus and dissent, experience systematization, and a living language of participation to strengthen local and national education-research network with people, especially workers, increasing their voice through knowledge democracy and technology democracy which implies industrial democracy too.

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how occupational structure is associated with economic inequality in Brazil in comparison to the United States. Changes in the Brazilian and American occupational structures between 1983 and 2011 are investigated in order to assess how closely they generate high socioeconomic inequalities. The effects of education, age, gender and race on occupational attainment are taken into account. Highlights of the results include: (1) a higher level of socioeconomic development in the American occupational structure, reflecting huge socioeconomic differences between these countries; (2) a tenuous convergence between the Brazilian and American occupational structures; (3) a significant decrease in the net impacts of education, age, gender and race on occupational attainment (i.e., reduced social stratification) in both countries. These results suggest the analytical worth of considering occupational structure as a significant intermediate variable affecting the level of socioeconomic inequality within a country over time, as well as between two countries at a given point in time.

Classical political economy in Great Britain was broadly supportive of education, but limited government's role to modest assistance for charitable schools. The early classical economists in the United States, men like Thomas Cooper and Francis Wayland, in addition to supporting free trade, took this classical position with respect to education. But a more aggressive democratic claim was being advanced by the American common school movement and its supporters among Whig protectionists. The early economic tracts of William Jennison, Willard Phillips, Calvin Colton, and Henry Carey envisioned a larger role for government and advocated support for publicly financed common schools. Most notably, the leader of the common school movement, Horace Mann, built a defense for public financing based on a radical theory of property, derived from distinctly Puritan economic doctrine. If his radical positions received little support from post-Civil War mainstream economists, Mann's practical advocacy of public taxation for public schools very much carried the day.

Father involvement is a salient predictor of children's cognitive development and recent studies suggest that African American and Hispanic fathers, who are highly involved, have children who enter school more poised to succeed. Little is known, however, about contextual barriers to positive father involvement in ethnic minority families. This study examined prospective relations between fathers' work characteristics (i.e., total work hours per week, job satisfaction, and work shift) and children's cognitive development in preschool (i.e., reading and math scores). A total of 2,340 children were included in the study (35% African American, 65% Hispanic). Fathers' total work hours per week positively predicted children's reading and math scores. Fathers' work shift (i.e., nonstandard) positively predicted reading, but not math. In contrast, fathers' job satisfaction negatively predicted children's math achievement. Findings were evident even after controlling for a host of demographic factors (e.g., father education, mother education, home-learning environment, and family income).

Companies are managing more diverse work forces, and pay systems must be designed to attract, retain and motivate employees who may have very different pay preferences from employees of even a decade ago. This study examines how employee characteristics (i.e., gender, age, education, work experience, annual pay and number of dependents) are related to pay preferences. We found that older respondents with more education and more dependents had a stronger preference for variable pay than did respondents who were younger, less educated and had fewer dependents. Older respondents and those with higher pay preferred less pay transparency than did younger and lower paid respondents. Pay differences based on capability were preferred by better educated employees. When controlling for the other demographic characteristic, we found significant differences among nationalities for all four measures of pay preferences, that is, pay differences, pay variability, bonus plans and pay transparency.

We investigated acculturative hassles in a community cohort of Vietnamese refugees in Norway ( n = 61), exploring cross-sectional data and longitudinal predictors of acculturative hassles using data from their arrival in Norway in 1982 (T1), with follow up in 1985 (T2) and in 2005–2006 (T3). To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study of predictors of acculturative hassles in a refugee population. Results indicated that more communication problems and less Norwegian language competence were related to most hassles at T3. Higher psychological distress, lower quality of life, lower self-reported state of health, and less education at T3 were associated with higher levels of hassles at T3. More psychological distress at T2 and less education at arrival (T1) were significant predictors for more acculturative hassles at T3. These data suggest that addressing psychological distress during the early phase in a resettlement country may promote long-term refugee adjustment and, in particular, reduce exposure to acculturative hassles.

Based on interviews with students and teachers at one electronics company, we analyse the use of student interns to do regular manufacturing work in China. We argue that student workers need to be seen as a distinct category of constrained labour; part of a growing insecure workforce in China. We find that students enrolled in vocational schools are moved into internships, without their consent, to suit the needs of employers. This results in a misalignment between interns and their area of study that invalidates the basic principle of vocational education, which is to combine theory and practice within a sector or occupationally-focused education programme. Teachers in vocational schools follow their students into the factory and become 'teacher-supervisors', receiving a second salary for co-managing the utilization of student interns' labour power. Thus, within such an unfree labour regime, student workers are subject to dual control in the workplace from managerial and teacher-supervisors.

This paper is a reflective-reflexive examination of provisions of trustworthiness in critical narrative research. The author presents her understanding of provisions of trustworthiness as a science and as an art, and blurs these boundaries as she acknowledges their tension in practice. She weaves between theory and her experience in two studies first the study of the Texas-Spain Visiting Teachers Program and secondly the study of Amish culture and education where the author felt a deep sense of responsibility that she maintain trustworthiness. This paper examines the provisions of trustworthiness as evidence of research accountability and shared responsibility and brings to the forefront an intersubjective understanding of fidelity that emerged through understanding participants struggles, seeing researcher as a co-struggler for cultural-political identity, and recognizing the role of politics in the work of action research for democratic education. In short, the author presents an intersubjective understanding of fidelity issues within multiple identities.

The authors have investigated teachers' reactions towards an imposed reform initiated by the Israeli Ministry of Education in collaboration with one of two teachers' unions based on the messages and letters sent by high school teachers to an internet forum during a teachers' strike which took place between October and December of 2007. This study is the result of collaborative work between a teacher educator and a veteran teacher studying towards her Master of Education degree in Learning and Instruction. The research question was: What were the teachers' attitudes regarding the "New Horizon" reform as conveyed on an internet forum during the strike? The article focuses on the teachers' opposition to the proposed reform. The authors explore the use of the internet for sustaining this strike while also discussing the methodological issues related to this type of analysis and relation to collaborative research. Recommendations are suggested for successful implementation of educational reforms.

Debate in the literature has been ongoing about whether to teach English language grammar explicitly, implicitly or integrate both approaches to achieve optimal learning. This research paper, hence, discusses this issue from an ideological perspective with a particular reference to the Omani English language teaching (ELT) education system. The paper triangulates data from various semi-structured interviews made with different agents involved in the Omani ELT education system, the pertinent literature, The Philosophy and Guidelines for the Omani English Language School Curriculum, which I will herewith refer to as the National English Language Policy/Plan (NELP), other policy texts and the English language national syllabus – Our World Through English (OWTE) Teacher's Guide. The critical discussion revealed various contesting ideologies about teaching grammar in the Omani ELT system and the crucial role of teachers in the effective policy implementation or otherwise. The study has important implications for other similar contexts around the world.

Abstract The present study aims to examine the attitude of B.Ed. students towards ICT. The investigator has adopted the survey method of research. The sample consists of 250 B.Ed. students from four colleges of education selected by stratified random sampling technique. The investigator developed a self-made questionnaire of 25 items to measure the attitude of the B.Ed. students towards ICT. The investigator established content validity and reliability by the split-half method, and the value is 0.76. To find out the meaning, interpretation of the raw scores, the data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation 't' test. The findings show (a) there is no significant difference in the attitude of B.Ed. students towards ICT with regard to (i) gender, (ii) discipline, (iii) course of study, and (iv) locality, and (b) aided colleges of education B.Ed. students are better than government college students in their attitude towards ICT.

According to the strategy for Nordic co-operation in education and research the Nordic countries should remove obstacles for free movement for students and researchers in the Nordic region. One goal with this report has been to identify obstacles for organizing joint programmes on master level. The Nordic Council of Ministers has until now financed, in co-operation with universities, 23 Nordic Master Programmes. Minimum of three higher education institutions develop joint programmes, that will attract both Nordic and non-Nordic students. The report gives an overview of the legislation in relation to joint degrees in the Nordic countries. It also has recommendations for the Nordic Master Programme and offers separate thematic documents like a template for a joint diploma. The report will hopefully serve as practical guide book for those in the process of planning or building up joint master programmes. Hopefully, the report also makes a contribution to developing other international joint programmes.

The key objective of the scientific research paper is to identify the key factors of knowledge management that have a direct impact on the economic growth of the national economy within the framework of the European Union. Analyzing named variables through the implementation of primary research in the insurance sector (insurance companies) to create a model of competitiveness in terms of the knowledge economy based on the above research and proven hypotheses in research conducted. Through the analysis of the results is necessary to determine the most important groups of variables that affect the economic growth and competitive advantage. Setting the research is based on three key variables: education, knowledge and human resources. By analyzing the results of research will be determined statistically significant association between elements of the aforementioned variables, and will analyze the mutual influence of key variables on the competitive advantage of the observed insurance companies. Keywords: management, education, knowledge, insurance, Croatia