Voices of lay principals: Promoting a Catholic character and culture in schools in an era of change

This paper reports a qualitative study of the practice of leadership in Catholic schools to ascertain the perceptions of lay principals, who as positional leaders play a critical role in embracing and creatively rebuilding the Catholic vision of life within the reality that the Catholic school principalship is now a ministry of the laity. The methodology included semi-structured interviews, field notes, reflexive journals, direct observation, and document nalysis. The study examined both individual human behaviour and the structure of the social order in Catholic schools. The findings point towards successful leadership in Catholic schools being highly influenced by the cultural and spiritual capital that a principal brings to a school signifying a fundamental importance of appointing principals who are not only professionally competent but spiritually as well. In an era of unprecedented social, educational and ecclesial change, and with an ever widening role description, lay principals are challenged to redefine and re-articulate their Catholic character and identity, and will need to look for new ways to make this explicit. Embracing a new leadership paradigm of shared leadership, the preparation and on-going formation of lay principals were identified as critical for the continuance of the Catholic school’s distinctive mission in the future.

Liberalization and the public sector:the pre-eminent role of governments in the ‘sale’ of higher education abroad

Much recent scholarship concerning liberalization has emphasized the role of regulatees, rather than governments, in promoting liberalization. This article examines such scholarship in the light of an important development in the British and French public sectors—the creation of new agencies (the Education Counselling Service and EduFrance) to ‘sell’ British and French higher education to potential international students. The new agencies attempted to induce two things: competition amongst higher education institutions for the recruitment of international students from developed and emerging economy countries, and the commodification of these students. This article shows that, contrary to existing theories of liberalization, governments were pre-eminent in pushing forward this liberalization, while higher education institutions attempted to hold it back.

Critical approaches to care:understanding caring relations, identities and cutures

What does ‘care’ mean in contemporary society? How are caring relationships practised in different contexts? What resources do individuals and collectives draw upon in order to care for, care with and care about themselves and others? How do such relationships and practices relate to broader social processes? Care shapes people’s everyday lives and relationships and caring relations and practices influence the economies of different societies. This interdisciplinary book takes a nuanced and context-sensitive approach to exploring caring relationships, identities and practices within and across a variety of cultural, familial, geographical and institutional arenas. Grounded in rich empirical research and discussing key theoretical, policy and practice debates, it provides important, yet often neglected, international and cross-cultural perspectives. It is divided into four sections covering: caring within educational institutions; caring amongst communities and networks; caring and families; and caring across the life-course. Contributing to broader theoretical, philosophical and moral debates associated with the ethics of care, citizenship, justice, relationality and entanglements of power, Critical Approaches to Care is an important work for students and academics studying caring and care work in the fields of health and social care, sociology, social policy, anthropology, education, human geography and politics.

Advanced education and training in bioenergy in Europe

The paper explains how bioenergy education and training is growing in Europe. Employment estimates are included for renewable energy in general, and bioenergy in particular, to highlight the need for a broadly based education and training programme that is essential to build a knowledgeable workforce that can drive Europe's growing bioenergy sector. The paper reviews current provisions in bioenergy at Masters and PhD levels across the 27 members of the EU (EU27) plus Norway and Switzerland. This identifies a very active and expanding bioenergy education provision. 65 English-language Masters Courses in bioenergy (either focussing completely on bioenergy or with significant bioenergy content or specialisation) were identified. 231 providers of PhD studies in bioenergy were found.Masters Course offerings have grown rapidly across Europe during the last five years, but where data is available, enrolment has been quite low suggesting that there is an oversupply of courses and that course organisers are being optimistic in their projections. Existing provisions in Europe at Masters and PhD levels are clearly more than sufficient for short term needs, but further work is needed to evaluate the take-up rate and the content and focus of the provisions. To ensure talented graduates are attracted to these programmes, better promotion, stronger links with the research community and industry, and increased collaboration among course providers are needed. Short Courses of two to five days are an excellent way of meeting post-experience training needs but require further growth and development to serve the needs of the bioenergy community. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.

Is Bologna working? Employer and graduate reflections of the quality, value and relevance of business and management education in four European Union countries

This article focuses on the relevance of undergraduate business and management higher education from the perspectives of recent graduates and graduate employers in four European countries. Drawing upon the findings of an empirical qualitative study in which data was collated and analysed using grounded theory research techniques, the paper draws attention to graduates' and employers' perceptions of the value of higher education in equipping students with discipline-specific skills and knowledge as well as softer 'generic' skills. It also highlights the importance of formal 'work-based' learning within undergraduate curricula in providing students with the skills and experiences required by employers operating within a global workplace. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Medical error:a discussion of the medical construction of error and suggestions for reforms of medical education to decrease error

Introduction: There is a growing public perception that serious medical error is commonplace and largely tolerated by the medical profession. The Government and medical establishment's response to this perceived epidemic of error has included tighter controls over practising doctors and individual stick-and-carrot reforms of medical practice. Discussion: This paper critically reviews the literature on medical error, professional socialization and medical student education, and suggests that common themes such as uncertainty, necessary fallibility, exclusivity of professional judgement and extensive use of medical networks find their genesis, in part, in aspects of medical education and socialization into medicine. The nature and comparative failure of recent reforms of medical practice and the tension between the individualistic nature of the reforms and the collegiate nature of the medical profession are discussed. Conclusion: A more theoretically informed and longitudinal approach to decreasing medical error might be to address the genesis of medical thinking about error through reforms to the aspects of medical education and professional socialization that help to create and perpetuate the existence of avoidable error, and reinforce medical collusion concerning error. Further changes in the curriculum to emphasize team working, communication skills, evidence-based practice and strategies for managing uncertainty are therefore potentially key components in helping tomorrow's doctors to discuss, cope with and commit fewer medical errors.

Education Complex "Multi-agent Technologies for Parallel and Distributed Information Processing in Telecommunication Networks"

The paper describes education complex "Multi-agent Technologies for Parallel and Distributed Information Processing in Telecommunication Networks".

Software and Services − Research and Education in Bulgaria

Доклад по покана, поместен в сборника на Националната конференция "Образованието в информационното общество", Пловдив, май, 2010 г.

Education in Computer Science and the Role of the Teacher in the Environment of Open Educational Resources

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2013