Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Reaching Across the Communication Gulf: Reflections on the Challenges of Environmental Assistance Programs

Several experiences in international environmental cooperation and assistance are examined to understand how communication across differing traditions, legal systems, cultures, history, and language has impacted joint efforts to develop stronger environmental regimes. The article concludes that efforts to build more effective environmental protection regimes in support of both domestic and international environmental goals must become much smarter to overcome communication barriers and related impediments to effective joint activities. Different traditions can coexist and even work productively together where there is strong and equal motivation on both sides. But when these conditions are absent, the international partners need to find additional bridging tools and must work explicitly to identify genuinely common goals.

Salford postgraduate annual research conference (SPARC) 2012 proceedings

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2012 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC). They reflect the breadth and diversity of research interests showcased at the conference, at which over 130 researchers from Salford, the North West and other UK universities presented their work. 21 papers are collated here from the humanities, arts, social sciences, health, engineering, environment and life sciences, built environment and business

Urban food strategies in Central and Eastern Europe: what's specific and what's at stake?

Integrating a larger set of instruments into Rural Development Programmes implied an increasing focus on monitoring and evaluation. Against the highly diversified experience with regard to implementation of policy instruments the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework has been set up by the EU Commission as a strategic and streamlined method of evaluating programmes’ impacts. Its indicator-based approach mainly reflects the concept of a linear, measure-based intervention logic that falls short of the true nature of RDP operation and impact capacity on rural changes. Besides the different phases of the policy process, i.e. policy design, delivery and evaluation, the regional context with its specific set of challenges and opportunities seems critical to the understanding and improvement of programme performance. In particular the role of local actors can hardly be grasped by quantitative indicators alone, but has to be addressed by assessing processes of social innovation. This shift in the evaluation focus underpins the need to take account of regional implementation specificities and processes of social innovation as decisive elements for programme performance.

National Systems of Innovation and Entrepreneurship: In Search of a Missing Link

The literature on national systems of innovation (NIS) has neglected the issue of entrepreneurship because of several incompatibilities between the two notions. The Schumpeterian legacy, the current person-centric view of entrepreneurship, and methodological problems related to treating entrepreneurship at the macro-level, have made it difficult to integrate entrepreneurship into the NIS perspective. At national level it is more appropriate to treat entrepreneurship as a 'property' (dimension) of NIS. In order to link NIS and entrepreneurship we must establish a common conceptual basis. Our argument is that the functional view of NIS and entrepreneurship presents a common basis for such an approach. We develop criteria for the entrepreneurial NIS which we define as being those that can change balance between individual and cooperative entrepreneurship; that enhance both the opportunity and skill aspects of entrepreneurship; and that can balance generation of uncertainty with support to business models and other organisations which pool uncertainty. From the NIS perspective, we explain entrepreneurship as a systemic phenomenon driven by complementarities between technological, market and institutional opportunities. This framework builds on three research traditions in the entrepreneurship/NIS literature (Schumpeterian, Kirznerian and Listian) which jointly form a multi-level, multi-dimensional framework for understanding entrepreneurship from a NIS perspective. This framework could be useful as a heuristic for empirical research on entrepreneurship. Finally, we analyse policies for entrepreneurship and find that they are highly dependent on underlying and previously discussed conceptions of entrepreneurship

Good governance and territorial marketing – two sides of the same coin? Development of market orientation through governance mechanisms in local government.

The scope of the paper is to discuss the role of good governance in improving responsiveness of local government to the needs of the selected target markets (investors, tourists, students). The criteria of good governance and governance indicators are analysed with regard of their applicability in building customer orientation of local authorities i.e. increasing market intelligence, disseminating knowledge about current and prospect users of the territory and fostering organizational culture conducive of gathering, sharing and applying market information for satisfying local demand. The objective is to assess usefulness of governance mechanisms in improving marketing management process (i.e. analysis, planning, implementation and control) of the local authorities towards selected groups of target customers (investors, tourists, students). The paper will create the analytical framework for the future research in selected Polish cities. The main good governance rules will be tested both from the governors’ perspectives and from the customer one. The issues below should be taken into consideration n terms of governors’ performance: • focusing on the organisation’s purpose and on outcomes for citizens and service users • performing effectively in clearly defined functions and roles • promoting values for the whole organisation and demonstrating the values of good governance through behaviour • taking informed, transparent decisions and managing risk • developing the capacity and capability of the governing body to be effective • engaging stakeholders and making accountability real Different approaches to public service quality at the operational level and territorial marketing at the strategic level as well as methodologies of measuring governance will be taken into account as a theoretical background.

From stationary to remote: Employee risks at pandemic migration of workplaces

The first lockdown due to COVID-19 in the year 2020 created a particular scenario that forced a change to telework among diverse professions and social groups. This article presents the results of research carried out among samples of Polish, Lithuanian and Spanish remote workers concerning working conditions in organizations and at home, and the potential impact of some professional hazards from home-based telework. On the contrary to earlier published papers on pandemic-induced telework that focused on how the limitations at home of first-time remote workers impacted on their well-being and work–family balance, our research contributes to a more recent endeavor that focuses the analysis on the work design perspective. The results of the survey indicate that employees felt more stressed and in conflict at their remote workstations when they had to telework during the lockdown, and that this negative output was significantly related to the deterioration of some working dimensions like space, quality and design but not to the perception of professional hazards from home-based telework. According to our research, the forced situation seemed not to be a favorable factor for implementing changes in light of the insufficient technical and organizational preparation of employers as well as the employees’ mental preparation. It should be necessary to update sequentially the results of the epidemic-induced telework and conduct research for various stages of the pandemic and the subsequent economic recovery. This could help popularize remote work as one of the tools of the labor market in the future and as a tool for treating labor resources as an element of sustainable development. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

HAZARD is over! : Project HAZARD on seaport safety and security in the Baltic Sea Region 2016–2019

Project HAZARD on Seaport Safety and Security in the Baltic Sea Region 2016–2019 HAZARD was an international EU-funded project to mitigate the effects of emergencies in major seaports in the Baltic Sea Region. It brought together various safety & security authorities, logistics operators and established knowledge partners. As a result of their collaboration, better preparedness and coordination to reduce damages in emergencies and post-emergency situations were achieved in the region. HAZARD was also an amazing 3-year journey with the most wonderful crew. The book is a tribute to the various Partners whose expertise, cooperativeness and synergy not only enabled reaching the goals but made it fun and interesting as well. Although HAZARD is now officially over, its legacy lives on in the form of enhanced safety & security procedures, various publications, enhanced expertise, new networks, and future projects. This book will pass on the learning experiences, outcomes and memories of HAZARD to future Project Partners of port safety & security undertakings