Emagining change : English teachers and technology

This textually playful study focuses on gaining a deeper understanding of teacher beliefs about English and the influence of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). Because English is in transformation, these insights into teachers' perpectives of their subject, technology and change will contribute to the productive rethinking of the profession. It employs narrative research, diaglogics and Actor Network Theory techniques.

Clean technology, willingness to pay and market size

This paper extends Salop’s model of localized competition by introducing the consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for clean products and allows an individual firm to choose between a clean or a dirty technology. We assume that a clean technology is relatively costly to adopt. The consumer is willing to pay more for a product produced with clean technology and the model can also be interpreted as a world economy model where each firm represents a country. There exists a critical value of m (proportion of firms adopting the clean technology), m*, such that if m < m* then no country adopts the clean technology, all countries adopt the clean technology only if m > m* while some countries will adopt the clean technology and some will not adopt the clean technology if m = m*. Our results also identify an example of coordination failure. Since symmetric technology adoption delivers the same level of profits as non-adoption, global coordination will be necessary to achieve the clean technology adoption outcome. Finally, we demonstrate that the
private and public (social planner) incentives to adopt clean technology differ.

Re-conceptualizing disability and assistive technology : Australian consumers driving policy change

For people living with a disability, enablers such as assistive technologies, environmental modifications and personal care can make the difference between living fully and merely existing. This article is written from the standpoints of people with disabilities and professionals in one Australian State who found their government and service system to be a constraining rather than an enabling force. It presents two key components of policy and practice change in the area of assistive technology: challenging understandings of disability, assistive technology, and the desired life outcomes that assistive technology contributes to; and building a public evidence base through consumer-focussed research. In short, government funding of assistive technology needs to move beyond a limited focus on functional needs and take responsibility for fully equipping people to live the lives they aspire to.

Illegal immigration, technology adoption and welfare

A debate in the illegal immigration and technology adoption literature suggests that hiring illegal immigrants may be hindering the adoption of new technology, which in turn harms a country’s productivity growth. This paper analyses an individual firm’s behaviour regarding new technology adoption in the presence of illegal immigrants. We assume a Ricardian economy and analyse immigration of illegal unskilled workers in a model of Cournot duopoly where firms are producing homogenous and non-traded goods, and hiring illegal immigrants. A two-stage simultaneous move game is set up: in Stage 1, given the opportunity of hiring illegal immigrants, an individual firm decides whether to adopt the new technology or not, where technology adoption is costly. In Stage 2, each firm will choose the Cournot output level. Solving this two-stage game, we conclude that (i) given the opportunity of hiring illegal immigrants, an individual firm may adopt the new technology and (ii) in the case of zero tolerance of illegal immigration, technology adoption may increase but such technology adoption is immiserizing as it reduces the total surplus.