The Role of Mentorship in Shaping Public Library Leaders

published or submitted for publicatio

Relationship between Teachers\u27 Attitudes Toward Inclusion and Professional Development

Integration of general and special education students in the classroom has become common in many educational systems. Researchers have found that some general education teachers may have negative attitudes of inclusion when they are inadequately prepared to instruct in an inclusion setting. The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to investigate the relationship of teachers\u27 professional development (PD) on their attitudes about teaching in an inclusive classroom at a northeast Georgia middle school. Using Vygotsky\u27s sociocultural developmental theory, the research question examined the difference in teachers\u27 attitudes toward inclusion as measured by the Scale of Teachers\u27 Attitudes Toward Inclusive Classrooms (STATIC) based on the number of PD workshops taken. All 150 general and special education teachers at the study site were invited to participate and the sample included 74 teachers who completed the STATIC. Analysis of variance results indicated that teachers who completed 3 or more PD courses had significantly more positive attitudes toward teaching in inclusive classrooms than teachers who took fewer than 3 courses. As an outcome of the study, a PD workshop was created that provided teachers with strategies to operate within an inclusive classroom. Informing administrators about the necessity to expose teachers to PD if they teach inclusion classes is essential to improving teacher attitudes, which creates an environment that promotes student success

Semantic browsing of digital collections

Visiting museums is an increasingly popular pastime. Studies have shown that visitors can draw on their museum experience, long after their visit, to learn new things in practical situations. Rather than viewing a visit as a single learning event, we are interested in ways of extending the experience to allow visitors to access online resources tailored to their interests. Museums typically have extensive archives that can be made available online, the challenge is to match these resources to the visitor’s interests and present them in a manner that facilitates exploration and engages the visitor. We propose the use of knowledge level resource descriptions to identify relevant resources and create structured presentations. A system that embodies this approach, which is in use in a UK museum, is presented and the applicability of the approach to the broader semantic web is discussed

Innovation in services: corporate culture and investment banking

The article discusses service innovation in the investment banking industry. Service industry innovations differ from innovations in industries that produce physical products because they rarely have intellectual property and patent protections. However, investment banking services are typically a series of interrelated businesses such as consulting, wealth management and accounting, and innovations require a business wide coordinated approach. The authors argue that a strong corporate culture can support rather than hinder innovation. The creation of such a culture requires strong leadership and an emphasis on innovation in hiring and promotions

Can the United States Be a Party to Binding Arbitration - The Constitutional Issues Re-Evaluated - Tenaska Washington Partners II v. The United States

It has long been assumed that the Constitution prohibited the United States government from entering binding arbitration as a party. The Department of Justice recently re-examined the issue and concluded that there is no absolute constitutional bar to government participation in binding arbitration.\u27 Tenaska is the first reported court decision to adopt the Department of Justice\u27s new reasoning. The court in Tenaska Washington Partners II v. The United States held that a dispute between a private party and a governmental agency must be submitted to binding arbitration when the parties\u27 voluntary agreement contains an arbitration clause.\u2

We Shouldn\u27t Need Roe

In the face of state-by-state attacks on the right to choose, which result in regular challenges to Roe v. Wade in the U.S. Supreme Court, this essay asks whether Roe is needed at all. Decades of state law encroachments have caused Roe to fail to properly protect the right to choose. Building on prior works that challenge the premise of fetal personhood and highlighting the status of Roe-based rights after decades of challenges, this essay proposes an alternative solution to Roe. Federal legislative and executive efforts, including the Women’s Health Protection Act, are necessary to ensure the right to choose remains accessible to all pregnant persons

Mandatory Arbitration of Title VII Claims: A New Approach - Prudential Insurance Co. of America v. Lai

Many employees sign arbitration agreements as part of the hiring process. Often, these agreements are standardized forms composed by an employer or industry, and presented to the prospective employee as yet another form essential to employment. When the dispute that arises involves Title VII claims, should the employee be compelled to arbitrate those claims? This note examines one court\u27s approach to safeguarding judicial resolution of Title VII claims, as well as alternative approaches