The Key Role of the School Principal’s Leadership in the Schooling of Newly Arrived Immigrant Pupils in Sweden : Experiences from an Interactive Action Research Project

When newly immigrated children and young people begin school in Sweden, certain challengesarise. These may result from weak Swedish-language skills and different schooling backgrounds,as well as organizational and pedagogical limitations in the schools. This generates demands onschool leaders to lead and develop the organization and teachers competences to meet these pupils’needs. This situation was behind the initiation of the project “New Immigrants and Learning—Competence Development for Teachers and School Principals.” The project ran in schools infour Swedish municipalities, its aim was to develop leadership, organizational and pedagogicalskills that would facilitate the schooling and integration of newly arrived pupils. This article aimsto describe and discuss a Participant Action Research (PAR) based on a think tank and researchcircles, drawing special attention to the role of the school leaders. It will also examine whether theresearch circles and the project overall served to develop educational and intercultural leadership,organizational conditions, collegial learning, pedagogical methods and competence in terms ofschooling for this pupil group.

Library Privacy Policies in 2015: Strategies for Renewed Relevance

In recent decades, library associations have advocated for the adoption of privacy and confidentiality policies as practical support to the Library Code of Ethics with a threefold purpose to (1) define and uphold privacy practices within the library, (2) convey privacy practices to patrons and, (3) protect against potential liability and public relations problems. The adoption of such policies has been instrumental in providing libraries with effective responses to surveillance initiatives such as warrantless requests and the USA PATRIOT ACT. Nevertheless, as reflected in recent news stories, the rapid emergence of data brokerage relationships and technologies and the increasing need for libraries to utilize third party vendor services have increased opportunities for data surveillers to access patrons’ personal information and reading habits, which are funneled and made available through multiple online library service platforms. Additionally, the advice that libraries should “contract for the same level of privacy reflected in their privacy policies” is no longer realistic given that the existence of multiple vendor contracts negotiated at arms length is likely to produce varying privacy terms and even varying definitions of what constitutes personal information (PII). These conditions sharply threaten the effectiveness and relevance of library privacy policies and privacy initiatives in that such policies increasingly offer false comfort by failing to reflect privacy weaknesses in the data sharing landscape and vendor contracts when library-vendor contracts fail to keep up with vendor data sharing capabilities. While some argue that library privacy ethics are antiquated and rendered obscure in the current online sharing economy PEW studies point to pronounced public discomfort with increasing privacy erosion. At the same time, new directions in FTC enforcement raise the possibility that public institutions’ privacy policies may serve as swords to unfair or deceptive commercial trade practices – offering the potential of renewed relevance for library privacy and confidentiality policies. This dual coin of public concern and the potential for enhanced FTC enforcement suggests that when crafting privacy polices libraries must now walk the knife’s edge by offering patrons both realistic notice about the limitations of protections the library can ensure while at the same time publicly holding vendors accountable to library privacy ethics and expectations. Potential solutions for how to walk this edge are developed and offered as a subject for further discussion to assist the modification of model policies for both public and academic libraries alike.

Education, preferences for leisure, and the optimal income tax schedule

Recent advances in dynamic Mirrlees economies have incorporated the treatment of human capital investments as an important dimension of government policy. This paper adds to this literature by considering a two period economy where agents are di erentiated by their preferences for leisure and their productivity, both private information. The fact that productivity is only learnt later in an agent's life introduces uncertainty to agent's savings and human capital choices and makes optimal the use of multi-period tie-ins in the mechanism that characterizes the government policy. We show that optimal policies are often interim ine cient and that the introduction of these ine ciencies may take the form of marginal tax rates on labor income of varying sign and educational policies that include the discouragement of human capital acquisition. With regards to implementation, state-dependent linear taxes implement optimal savings, while human capital policies may require labor income taxes that depend directly on agents' schooling.

Two essays on education and governament policies

Whether human capital increases or decreases wage uncertainty is an open ques- tion from an empirical standpoint. Yet, most policy prescriptions regarding human capital formation are based on models that impose riskiness on this type of invest- ment. We slightly deviate from the rest of the literature by allowing for non-linear income taxes in a two period model. This enables us to derive prescriptions that are robust to the risk characteristics of human capital: savings should be discouraged, human capital investments encouraged and both types of investment driven to an e¢ cient level from an aggregate perspective. These prescriptions are also robust to what choices are observed, even though the policy instruments used to implement them are not.

The risk-properties of human capital and the design of government policies

Whether human capital increases or decreases wage uncertainty is an open question from an empirical standpoint. Yet, most policy prescriptions regarding human capital formation are based on models that impose riskiness on this type of investment. In a two period and finite type optimal income taxation problem we derive prescriptions that are robust to the risk characteristics of human capital: savings should be discouraged, human capital investments encouraged and both types of investment driven to an efficient level from an aggregate perspective. These prescriptions are also robust to the assumptions regarding what choices are observed, despite policy instruments being not.

Should educational policies be regressive?

In this paper, we show that when the government is able to transfer wealth between generations, regressive policies are no longer optimal. The optimal educational policy can be decentralized through appropriate Pigouvian taxes and credit provision, is not regressive, and provides equality of opportunities in education (in the sense of irrelevance of parental income for the amount of education). Moreover, in the presence of default, the optimal policy can be implemented through income-contingent payments.

Intellectual property and competition as complementary policies: a test using an ordered probit model

Este Artigo Testa a Proposição da Teoria Econômica de que Propriedade Intelectual e Defesa da Concorrência são Políticas Complementares. um Modelo Probit Ordenado é Utilizado para Estimar os Efeitos Marginais do Uso e Qualidade do Enforcement dos Direitos de Propriedade Intelectual em uma Medida da Gravidade dos Problemas Relacionados À Concorrência. os Resultados Obtidos Reforçam a Noção de que as Políticas de Concorrência e Propriedade Intelectual não são Contraditórias.