Skill formation in Britain and Germany: Recent developments in the context of traditional differences. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No.06.1, 2006

This paper proposes a comparison of skill formation in Germany and Britain over the last decades. Taking historical trends into account, the two cases can be regarded as representing different types of skill production regimes. Institu-tional features include a relatively low degree of standardization of training and a larger amount of on-the-job training in Britain. In Germany, post-compulsory training has been conducted predominantly within the dual system of vocational training, underlining the vocational specificity of a large part of the labor market. As a consequence, international differences in individual skill investments, transitions from school to work and other life-course patterns can be observed. At least in Britain, however, the situation seems to have changed considerably during the 1990s. The paper argues that the divergence in more recent developments can still be understood as an expression of historical path-dependency given the traditional connections between the post-compulsory training system and the broader societal context in which it is embedded. These concern, in particular, links with the system of general and academic education as the basis for – and also a possible competitor with – vocational training; links with the labor market as they are indicated by specific skill requirements and returns to qualifications; and, links with the order of social stratification in the form of the selective acquisition and the social consequences of these qualifications. The links manifest themselves as typical individual-level consequences and decisions. Founded on the basis of these distinctions, the aim of this paper is to investigate the preceding conditions for recent developments in the qualification systems of Britain and Germany, which have adapted to specific challenges during the last decades.

How European Integration Impacts on National Legislatures: The Europeanization of The German Bundestag. CES Germany and Europe Working Papers, No. 06.2, 2006

In looking at the Europeanization of the German Bundestag, the paper brings together two different debates: the well-established debate on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union sees national Parliaments as guarantor of one branch of a "dual" legitimacy. The more recent debate on "Europeanization" addresses the impacts that European integration has had on its Member States. Analyzing the Europeanization of the German Bundestag, the paper identifies and analyzes three dimensions: legislative Europeanization – the extent to which legislative decision making by the German Bundestag has been influenced by European stipulations over the last twenty years; institutional Europeanization – how the Bundestag as an institution reacted to this loss of function by establishing institutional and procedural provisions for influencing the government's Euro-politics; and strategic Europeanization – the ways in which individual MPs started more recently to develop euro-political strategies that go beyond controlling the national government. The paper shows that the Bundestag only hesitantly reacted to the increasing loss of functions through legislative Europeanization by establishing effective institutional and procedural provisions for controlling the government's Euro-political activities. What is more, the establishment of institutions does not guarantee their effective use. All in all, Euro- politics continues to remain the activity of few MPs. These few, however, have more recently started to europeanize their strategies. The empirical findings support the claim that the traditional concept of chains of legitimacy is inadequate, both in conceptual and in empirical terms. With regard to the democ- ratic legitimacy of EU governance, this indicates that, apart from major reform projects, especially with regard to everyday legislation, not too great a burden should be placed on national Parliaments.

Do Changes in Regulation Affect Employment Duration in Temporary Work Agencies? CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 07.1, 2007

Over the past three decades Germany has repeatedly deregulated the law on temporary agency work by stepwise increasing the maximum period for hiring-out employees and allowing temporary work agencies to conclude fixed-term contracts. These reforms should have had an effect on employment duration within temporary work agencies. Based on an informative administrative data set we use a mixed proportional hazard rate model to examine whether employment duration has changed in response to these reforms. We find that the repeated prolongation of the maximum period for hiring-out employees significantly increased average employment duration while the authorization of fixed-term contracts reduced employment tenure.

Localizing EU Gender Policy: The Diffusion of Gender Mainstreaming across Feminist Movements in Eastern Germany. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 08.1, June, 2008

Gender mainstreaming emerged in the mid-1990s as an innovative and controversial policy tool for reducing gender inequalities. The European Union seeks to propagate the practice of gender mainstreaming both within EU institutions and among member states. Feminist scholars and policy elites discuss and debate gender main-streaming widely, but have yet to consider how local feminist activists, who could play a central role in diffusing gender mainstreaming, understand, interpret and respond to this agenda. This paper examines whether and why local feminist movements in two cities in eastern Germany adopt gender mainstreaming. Consideration of the characteristics of the contexts in which local feminist movements are embedded clarifies the conditions under which social movements rally round new policy paradigms.

The Drivers of Current Account Surplus in Germany and the Politics of Rebalancing in the Eurozone. EU Centre, Singapore Working Paper No. 24, April 2015

Current account deficits have caught the public’s attention as they have contributed to the European debt crisis. However, surpluses also constitute an issue as a deficit in any country must be financed through a surplus in another country. In 2013, Germany, now the world’s largest surplus economy, registered a record high US$273 billion surplus. This paper looks at what accounts for Germany’s surplus, revealing that the major driving factors include strong global demand for quality German exports, domestic wage restraint, an undervalued single currency, high domestic savings rate and interest rate convergence in the euro area. This paper echoes the US Treasury’s view that a persistent German surplus makes it harder for the eurozone as a whole and the southern peripheral economies in particular to recover from the current financial crisis by imposing a Europe-wide “deflationary bias” through pushing up the exchange rate of the euro, exporting feeble German inflation and projecting its ultra-tight macroeconomic policies onto crisis economies. This paper contends that Germany’s trade surplus is likely to endure as Germany and other eurozone countries uphold diverging views on the nature of the surplus engage in a blame-game amidst a sluggish rebalancing process. Prizing the surplus as a reflection of hard work and economic competitiveness, German authorities urge their southern eurozone colleagues to undertake bold structural reforms to correct the imbalance, while the hand-tied governments in crisis-stricken economies call on Germany to do its “homework” by boosting German demands for European goods and services.

An address to the working men of New England, on the State of education, and on the condition of the producing classes in Europe and America.

Mode of access: Internet.

Cost of living in German towns. Report of an inquiry by the Board of trade into working class rents, housing and retail prices, together with the rates of wages in certain occupations in the principal industrial towns of the German Empire. With an introductory memorandum and a comparison of conditions in Germany and the United Kingdom. Presented to both houses of Parliament by command of His Majesty.

Mode of access: Internet.

Using concept mapping to scaffold learning for students who experience learning difficulties in science classes

In order to develop scientific literacy students need the cognitive tools that enable them to read and evaluate science texts. One cognitive tool that has been widely used in science education to aid the development of conceptual understanding is concept mapping. However, it has been found some students experience difficulty with concept map construction. This study reports on the development and evaluation of an instructional sequence that was used to scaffold the concept-mapping process when middle school students who were experiencing difficulty with science learning used concept mapping to summarise a chapter of a science text. In this study individual differences in working memory functioning are suggested as one reason that students experience difficulty with concept map construction. The study was conducted using a design-based research methodology in the school’s learning support centre. The analysis of student work samples collected during the two-year study identified some of the difficulties and benefits associated with the use of scaffolded concept mapping with these students. The observations made during this study highlight the difficulty that some students experience with the use of concept mapping as a means of developing an understanding of science concepts and the amount of instructional support that is required for such understanding to develop. Specifically, the findings of the study support the use of multi-component, multi-modal instructional techniques to facilitate the development of conceptual understanding with students who experience difficulty with science learning. In addition, the important roles of interactive dialogue and metacognition in the development of conceptual understanding are identified.

An examination of communication across cultures in news media and at informal/personal levels : with concentration on relations among two South East Asian countries and Australia and those two countries and Germany

In the age of globalisation dominated by mass communication, the flow of information contributes to a big extent to the worldviews of its "global citizens". From this point of view the mass media can be seen as one of the most salient sources of cross-cultural communication. This study investigates mass communication across cultures, focusing on South East Asia (Malaysia and Singapore), Australia and Germany. The centre of attention is the Western media coverage of South East Asia and vice versa. In this context a content analysis of newspapers of the three regions has been conducted. In addition, working practices and conditions of Western foreign correspondents in South East Asia have been examined. Apart from the investigation of inter-cultural media coverage, another focus of attention will be the examination of two levels of communication: The business level, concentrating on issues like e.g. the Asian business etiquette; and the private level, looking into the transition to a different culture from the perspective of Australian and German expatriates. Apart from investigating mass communication across cultures and to provide a written analysis of the findings, a series of radio documentaries in English and in German has been produced. They cover the following issues: Foreign correspondents in South East Asia, the expatriate-lifestyle of Australians and Germans in South East Asia, business etiquette in Asia, student exchange Germany-Asia, image and prejudices East-West and Tourism.

WaterFieldWork : a working lexicon for critical refugia in arid landscapes

Algebuckina Waterhole exists as a permanent waterhole near a north-south dirt road and an old trainline on the Oodnadatta Track - lines that once opened up the arid lands of central South Australia but are now bypassed. It also exists as the final and largest freshwater waterhole at the end of the Neales River system. It is a critical biodiversity site, a cultural place and a working environment. It is seen to need a resilient management plan that encompasses diverse interests and impacts. Its managers sense that the theories and practices emerging out of landscape disciplinary systems may be of help. Work-in-progress research towards a management methodology are presented through posing scenarios on how landscape thinking and design, informed by an emergent textual and visual lexicon for water landscapes, can intersect with scientific fieldwork to produce useful and transferable outcomes for Algebuckina.

Sustainable assessment for large science classes : non-multiple choice, randomised assignments through a Learning Management System

This paper reports on the development of a tool that generates randomised, non-multiple choice assessment within the BlackBoard Learning Management System interface. An accepted weakness of multiple-choice assessment is that it cannot elicit learning outcomes from upper levels of Biggs’ SOLO taxonomy. However, written assessment items require extensive resources for marking, and are susceptible to copying as well as marking inconsistencies for large classes. This project developed an assessment tool which is valid, reliable and sustainable and that addresses the issues identified above. The tool provides each student with an assignment assessing the same learning outcomes, but containing different questions, with responses in the form of words or numbers. Practice questions are available, enabling students to obtain feedback on their approach before submitting their assignment. Thus, the tool incorporates automatic marking (essential for large classes), randomised tasks to each student (reducing copying), the capacity to give credit for working (feedback on the application of theory), and the capacity to target higher order learning outcomes by requiring students to derive their answers rather than choosing them. Results and feedback from students are presented, along with technical implementation details.

She'll be right mate : inclusivity experiences of men and women working in projects

Occupational segregation is a major source of labour market rigidity and economic inefficiency due to a waste of human resources. Organisations are repeatedly recognised as gendered constructs exhibiting sustained work segregation, income and status inequality, as well as cultural and individual images of gender, and these are perpetuated through their processes, practices and pressures (Acker, 1990). A large percentage of Australia’s workforce is now employed in project-based or project-oriented organisations, leading to the claim that Australia is a project-based economy. For a continued strong performance in this economy, organisations that employ project personnel will need to consider how they address inclusivity and equality in diversity in project based temporary organisations to ensure the supply of high quality project professionals into the future. This paper investigates the inclusion processes experienced and exercised by men and women working in temporary organisations in project situations through a review of reports on the inclusion processes experienced by 60 project managers and project workers in three project based industries in Australia. Results indicate that temporary organisations are not implementing equality and diversity management strategies at the macro level and project workers are accepting this lack of recognition. However inclusivity and equality at the micro level of the team is seen as vital.