Governance Dynamics and the Application of the Multilevel Governance Approach in Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the European Neighbourhood Countries: the case of the ENPI South region     

J. Manuel Galvin Arribas 《European Journal of Education》2016,51(4):495-512

This article analyses moves towards good multilevel governance approaches in Vocational Education and Training (VET) as an effective way to improve VET policy making in transition and developing countries, focusing on the Southern Neighbourhood of the EU (ENPI South). The centralised approaches in public administration and to VET governance still prevail in this region. The new modes of governance applied by the EU in the policy area of education and training are based on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). They are a source of inspiration to improve VET governance, taking into account the complexity of VET policies and systems. According to current European and international experiences, the most effective, relevant and attractive VET models and systems are demand‐driven. They rely on the effective and accountable participation of both state (national/local public actors) and non‐state VET stakeholders (e.g. employers, sectoral actors, unions) in decision‐making and policy implementation processes. This could also pave the way towards self‐governed and performance‐based VET provider institutions which would give quicker responses to rapidly changing labour market skills, competences and qualification needs. Thus, this means putting in practice more and better inclusion and effective cooperation and coordination of regional and local voices of VET actors and developing stronger social partnerships to engage employers, unions and civil society in shaping and investing in skills development. Furthermore, the role of methodological tools for VET governance is not only to provide an analytical ground to capture data and structure further policy advice. These tools can also be used as ice‐breakers to improve collaboration, inclusiveness, multi‐participation and trust‐building among policy makers as they work together on very sensitive issues such as reviewing country VET governance models, modes and institutional arrangements, and/or planning policy thinking and/or learning for implementing coordination mechanisms for VET policy making. The European Training Foundation (ETF) has implemented a methodology to map, analyse and self‐assess good multilevel governance in VET, inspired by how EU governance soft tools in education and training are being used. This methodology has been applied to the Governance for Employability in the Mediterranean (GEMM) project in the ENPI South region, which is a regional project implemented by the ETF and financed by the European Commission's Directorate General for Neighbourhood and Enlargements Negotiations (NEAR).  相似文献   

Learning to select the correct answer in multi-stream question answering     

Alberto Téllez-Valero  Manuel Montes-y-Gómez  Luis Villaseñor-Pineda  Anselmo Peñas Padilla 《Information processing & management》2011

Question answering (QA) is the task of automatically answering a question posed in natural language. Currently, there exists several QA approaches, and, according to recent evaluation results, most of them are complementary. That is, different systems are relevant for different kinds of questions. Somehow, this fact indicates that a pertinent combination of various systems should allow to improve the individual results. This paper focuses on this problem, namely, the selection of the correct answer from a given set of responses corresponding to different QA systems. In particular, it proposes a supervised multi-stream approach that decides about the correctness of answers based on a set of features that describe: (i) the compatibility between question and answer types, (ii) the redundancy of answers across streams, as well as (iii) the overlap and non-overlap information between the question–answer pair and the support text. Experimental results are encouraging; evaluated over a set of 190 questions in Spanish and using answers from 17 different QA systems, our multi-stream QA approach could reach an estimated QA performance of 0.74, significantly outperforming the estimated performance from the best individual system (0.53) as well as the result from best traditional multi-stream QA approach (0.60).  相似文献   

Journal coverage of the Emerging Sources Citation Index          下载免费PDF全文

Marta Somoza‐Fernández  Josep‐Manuel Rodríguez‐Gairín  Cristóbal Urbano 《Learned Publishing》2018,31(3):199-204

The Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) was created recently, in 2015, but few assessments of its journal coverage have been made. The present study tries to fill that gap by comparing its coverage with that of other international abstracting and indexing (A&I) databases. Using this measure, it is feasible to benchmark this index against the other citation indexes for acceptance criteria. We analysed 6,296 ESCI‐indexed journals, 8,889 Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), 3,258 Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), 1,784 Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), and 22,749 Scopus journals as indexed in July 2017 to determine their inclusion in 105 databases. We found that 19.3% of the ESCI journals are not covered by any other A&I databases, a high figure compared with only 0.5% SCIE, 0.3% SSCI, 0.3% AHCI, and 5.5% Scopus journals. This low coverage suggests that the selection criteria for ESCI journals are not consistent with the overall trend in the other classical citation indexes.  相似文献   

Is There a Gendered Path to Tenure? A Multi-State Approach to Examine the Academic Trajectories of U.S. Doctoral Recipients in the Sciences     

Karen L. Webber  Manuel González Canché 《Research in higher education》2018,59(7):897-932

With a focus on possible gender differences, this study used 2003–2013 data from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients to examine individual, institutional, and early employment factors that contribute to career paths of recent doctorates who enter postsecondary academic appointments. Findings showed some noteworthy differences by gender including lower salary and longer time to degree for women, but overall results indicated no strong, comprehensive evidence of a gendered path to tenure during the first decade after degree completion. Scholarly publications and activities such as research and a postdoctoral appointment in early years following degree completion were the most important contributors for both men and women. Implications for policy and planning are discussed.  相似文献   

Employment outcomes and satisfaction levels in graduates of the gerontology master's programs in Spain     

Manuel Ruiz-Adame Reina 《Educational gerontology》2013,39(8):533-539

ABSTRACT

There has been an increase in the aging population in developed countries. This has led to a need for trained people in the gerontological field. The most common academic way of specializing in this field in Spain is via a master's program. It is well known that investing in human capital increases knowledge, productivity, and the probability of getting a job. The question is if these kinds of educational programs are useful to provide real preparation for students and if the programs are useful for getting into the job market. We asked graduates to supply the answers. A survey was completed by 144 graduates from the Universities of Salamanca and Seville. Most graduates selected these master's programs to increase their probability of getting a job. A total of 64.6% reported that they had got a job, 38.8% of which got one in the first 2 years after graduating. A total of 55.6% felt that they had got a job thanks to having done the master's program. The usefulness of the acquired knowledge (47.9%) and social networks (28.8%) was seemingly high when getting a job. A high percentage of students (67%) found a job in this field after completing the master's program, and they got their first experience in a relatively short period after graduating. Investment in human capital is considered useful by graduates. The labor market is interested in highly qualified specialists. To have a postgraduate degree is still an advantage in getting a job, even after the 2008 economic crisis.  相似文献   

Swimming Between: An examination of the Inherent Complexity within Social Justice     

Israel Aguilar  Sarah Nelson  Juan Manuel Niño 《The Teacher Educator》2013,48(3):250-265

Classrooms tend to be absolute spaces, places where fluidity is rejected and nearly everything—from people, to ideas, to practices and policies—is viewed and organized through binary logic. Because binary logic is implicitly accepted as the natural order in schools and the structures resulting from it are highly unmalleable, individuals who differ from the norm are expected to assimilate and adapt so as not to disrupt the structure. Those who are too different from the norm to fit in or who refuse to accept the binary structure are viewed as problems and are often ostracized or blamed for disturbing the system. Even when evidence to dispute the binary logic emerges, such evidence is often ignored or rejected in favor of maintaining the status quo. As such, the need for educators with a social justice orientation is needed. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the process one teacher used to create inclusive spaces for students who identify with differences in order to develop a more critical understanding of the work of social justice teachers. The findings suggest the teacher enacted behaviors and maintained beliefs that contradicted her espoused social justice orientation and her classroom was at once both inclusive and exclusive. The findings illustrate the complexities inherent within the work of equity-oriented educators. Implications for educator preparation is discussed.  相似文献   

Iterative co-evaluation with a rubric of narrative texts in Primary Education / Coevaluación iterativa con rúbrica de textos narrativos en la Educación Primaria     

Manuel Montanero  Manuel Lucero  María-Jesús Fernández 《Infancia y Aprendizaje》2013,36(1):184-220

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‘Power on’: Googlecracy,privatisation and the standardisation of sources     

Manuel Souto-Otero  Roser Beneito-Montagut 《教育政策杂志》2013,28(4):481-500

The paper aims to contribute to the sociological analysis of power through the study of the structuration and retrieval of information on the internet. The main argument of the paper is that, paradoxically, in an age when the availability of information has increased exponentially, there is a risk that diversity in the use of sources for the construction of knowledge becomes more restricted than in the past and that information search moves towards greater objectification and centralisation. Knowledge management systems increasingly shape the ways in which we think about the questions we ask and how we try to answer them, which raises fundamental and largely neglected questions for education policy. The paper illustrates these trends with particular reference to the use of Google and Google Scholar.  相似文献   

A fuzzy linguistic model to evaluate the quality of Library 2.0 functionalities     

Rubén Heradio  Francisco Javier Cabrerizo  David Fernández-Amorós  Manuel Herrera  Enrique Herrera-Viedma 《International Journal of Information Management》2013

Libraries incessantly undergo change determined by evolving user needs. These are often induced by the emergence of previously unavailable tools. Web 2.0 represents an example of such a need-shifting technology, which has led to an embrace of new user interactivity services for many library websites, thus coined Library 2.0. This paradigm shift calls for new evaluation models to include the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies. The aim of this paper is to present such a model, and to evaluate the quality of Library 2.0 functionalities, measuring the quality of the 2.0 services offered through the websites based on user perception. We adopt fuzzy linguistic modeling to represent user perception, and apply aggregation operations to linguistic labels in order to evaluate the quality of the new services. Furthermore, our model subsumes the LibQUAL+ methodology, allowing for the identification of specific 2.0 functionalities in need of improvement and of those outstandingly satisfied by the system.  相似文献   

Effects of 6-month soccer and traditional physical activity programmes on body composition,cardiometabolic risk factors,inflammatory, oxidative stress markers and cardiorespiratory fitness in obese boys     

André Seabra  Peter Katzmarzyk  Maria José Carvalho  Ana Seabra  Manuel Coelho-E-Silva  Sandra Abreu 《Journal of sports sciences》2016,34(19):1822-1829

Physical activity is important in obesity prevention, but the effectiveness of different physical activity modalities remains to be determined among children. The main purpose of this study was to compare the effects of a 6-month soccer programme and a traditional physical activity programme on changes in body composition, cardiometabolic risk factors, inflammatory and oxidative markers, cardiorespiratory fitness and perceived psychological status in obese boys. Eighty-eight boys (8–12 years; BMI > +2 standard deviations of WHO reference values) participated in one of three groups: soccer, traditional activity and control. Soccer and traditional activity programmes involved 3 sessions per week for 60–90 min at an average intensity of 70–80% of maximal heart rate. Control group participated in activities of normal daily living. All boys participated in school physical education, two sessions per week of 45–90-min. Measurements were taken at baseline and after 6 months, and included body size and composition, cardiometabolic risk factors, inflammatory and oxidative markers, cardiorespiratory fitness and perceived psychological status. Physical activity and dietary intake were assessed before and immediately following the intervention. The three groups had similar characteristics at baseline. After 6 months, both intervention groups had significantly lower relative fatness (% fat), waist circumference and total cholesterol, and higher cardiorespiratory fitness, self-esteem, perceived physical competence and attraction to physical activity compared with control group. In conclusion, physical activity interventions over 6 months positively influenced several indicators of health status among obese boys. The results also suggested that soccer has the potential as an effective tool for the prevention and reduction of childhood obesity and associated consequences.  相似文献