Changing patterns of transition from school to university mathematics

There has been widespread concern over the lack of preparedness of students making the transition from school to university mathematics and the changing profile of entrants to mathematical subjects in higher education has been well documented. In this paper, using documentary analysis and data from an informal case study, we argue the antecedents of this changed profile in the general shift across all subjects to a more utilitarian higher education, alongside the more specific changes in A-level mathematics provision which have been largely market driven. Our conclusions suggest that, ironically, changes put in place to make mathematics more widely useful may result in it losing just those features that make it marketable

Managing the civil service : what LDCs can learn from developed country reforms

The author examines current civil service management (CSM) practices in advanced countries to provide guidance for developing country governments that face the dilemma of how to recruit, retain, and motivate appropriately skilled staff at affordable costs, given a limited human resource base. Advanced country administrations are following two distinct paths to improving CSM. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, are engaged insweeping"managerialist"reforms to decentralize civil service functions and make them more responsive to the client public. By introducing complex financial reporting systems, managers have increased autonomy; some functions are spun off into semi-autonomous agencies operating on an increasingly commercial basis. By contrast, other industrialized countries, such as Singapore, have retained more traditional, largely centralized civil service structures, pursuing only incremental improvements in specific aspects of CSM. The author speculates about what is likely to work best in developing country administrations: Centralized civil service management models provide the best starting point for most developing countries because decentralized agency systems require technological and human resources beyond their capabilities. Some better-endowed countries could use certain agency-type features selectively. Such administrations could establish strategic plans to move toward a fuller agency system as their institutional capabilities increase. Developing countries face trade-offs in choosing which CSM functions should be strengthened first. Two functions - personnel establishment control and staff recruitment - are essential for civil service performance and should get top priority. Senior Executive Services have proved difficult to design and implement in advanced countries, but many flaws can be corrected in adapting them to developing countries, where there is often an urgent need to groom higher-level staff. Assuming minimal, essential levels of personnel establishment and budgetary control, unified pay and classification could be relaxed in developing countries, following the lead of increasing numbers of advanced countries that have done this. Given the urgency of other CSM tasks, lower priority should be assigned to reform involving performance pay, the benefits of which have yet to be demonstrated in the public sectors of developed countries. The management requirements and costs of installingperformance pay systems can be considerable and employee resistance may subvert such efforts. But performance-related promotion systems, even if imperfectly implemented, can help move developing country civil service values toward standards of competence and merit.National Governance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Work&Working Conditions,Governance Indicators,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Where Is Science Going?

Do researchers produce scientific and technical knowledge differently than they did ten years ago? What will scientific research look like ten years from now? Addressing such questions means looking at science from a dynamic systems perspective. Two recent books about the social system of science, by Ziman and by Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartzman, Scott, and Trow, accept this challenge and argue that the research enterprise is changing. This article uses bibliometric data to examine the extent and nature of changes identified by these authors, taking as an example British research. We use their theoretical frameworks to investigate five characteristics of research said to be increasingly pervasive-namely, application, interdisciplinarity, networking, internationalization, and concentration of resources. Results indicate that research may be becoming more interdisciplinary and that research is increasingly conducted more in networks, both domestic and international; but the data are more ambiguous regarding application and concentration. CR - Copyright © 1996 Sage Publications, Inc

Maritime education policy for the years to come

A sound and comprehensive education policy is one of the key elements of a national maritime transportation system and its related activities. Technological innovations in the maritime industry, together with changed shipboard organisation and job functions which have modified attitudes towards the seafaring profession, require careful re-examination of maritime education as a whole and such reappraisals have recently been undertaken in several maritime countries with a view to the rationalisation of existing systems. The main purpose of this paper is to identify and evaluate the major factors to be considered in the formulation of a sound and comprehensive policy for maritime education. The research undertaken has been focussed on various maritime education systems in different parts of the world. The principal conclusion reached is that a healthy maritime education policy can be established if, and only if, decisions on its formulation are taken, or at least heavily influenced, by an organisation which is primarily concerned with maritime training in its entirety, which is representative of all interested parties! such parties being shipowners, seafarers unions, educationalists and the appropriate Government Departments