Behavioral Economics and Workforce Development: A Review of the Literature from Labor Economics and the Broader Field

Literature Reviewhere is mutual benefit for employers and workers when workers improve their skills beyond the minimum requirements for their position—a fact not lost on employers, many of who are willing to provide education and training opportunities to staff, including frontline workers. These opportunities typically include on-the-job-training, tuition reimbursement for postsecondary courses, and paid leave to attend classes. Despite often generous budgets for these activities, relatively few workers take advantage of these opportunities, potentially limiting increases in productivity, wages and longer-term career advancement (Tompson, Benz, Agiesta, & Junius, 2013). This dilemma raises an interesting research question: Can emerging lessons from behavioral science experiments be applied to cutting the Gordian Knot of worker participation in education and training programs? This review of current literature on the topic is intended to explore the strengths and limitations of applying tools of behavioral sciences to increase the participation and completion rate of training for lower-wage, frontline incumbent workers in ways that benefit both workers and sponsoring firms.The Hitachi FoundationRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Evaluation of Travis County Investments in Workforce Development: 2020 Update

For more than fifteen years, Travis County has invested between $1-2.5 million in workforce development programs for disadvantaged residents. The purpose of the evaluation is to examine outcomes and impacts for participants in Travis County-funded community-based workforce programs over time and to provide recommendations and support for County and provider staff based on data analysis and best practice research. Seven providers with long standing County contracts have been the focus of an ongoing evaluation of the outcomes and impacts of local workforce services investments.Travis CountyRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Evaluation of Travis County Investments in Workforce Development 2018 Update

This evaluation examines outcomes and impacts for participants in the Travis County-funded community-based workforce programs exiting services in FY 2016 – FY 2017. To understand the impact of these services, the county has contracted with the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources (RMC) at the University of Texas at Austin to conduct a longitudinal evaluation of its investments. This Workforce Development (WFD) evaluation will present the analysis of outcomes and estimated net impacts of these investments in the programs funded the first two years of a five year on-going evaluation (FY 2016 – FY 2020).Travis County Health and Human ServicesRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Texas Early Childhood Care and Education Institutions of Higher Education Capacity Survey Final Report

Texas Early Childhood Care and Education Institutions of Higher Education Capacity Survey Final ReportThe Ray Marshall Center in collaboration with the Child and Family Research Institute at the UT Social Work department are conducting The Institutes of Higher Education (IHE) Capacity Survey funded by the Texas Early Learning Council. The purpose of the survey is to assess the level of preparedness of new professionals in the early childhood care and education (ECCE) field. The project will survey providers of ECCE working in different settings as well as administrators of higher education programs offering certificates and degrees in the field of ECCE. The research team led by Dr. Heath Prince includes Drs. Monica Faulkner and Daniel Schroeder who have extensive experience in conducting research in the field of ECCE.University of Texas Health Science Center, and the Texas Early Learning CouncilRay Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resource

Action Research in Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice: A Study of the Evaluation and Reporting of Student Achievement

The theory and practice of evaluating student academic performance has been a source of concern in academia for over a century. The challenge of successfully implementing assessment practices that reflect the true measure of a student’s academic achievement, and that accurately and effectively communicate the student’s level of mastery to stakeholders, has not been met according to measurement specialists. This study was designed to examine the implementation process of research-based classroom assessment practices that both accurately measure the academic achievement of students and effectively communicate the students’ level of mastery. Interviews were conducted to examine the practicality of the assessment practices and whether the evidences gathered from these practices support performance grades that accurately articulate student achievement. The study showed that recommendations from measurement specialists are practical assessments for the classroom, accurately measure the academic achievement of students, and effectively communicate the students’ level of mastery. However, training in pre-service teacher programs that continue to be supported by in-service professional development is critical to the successful implementation of the recommendations, and to bridging the gap between theory and practice

Hydrogen migration at restructuring palladium-silver oxide boundaries dramatically enhances reduction rate of silver oxide.

Heterogeneous catalysts are complex materials with multiple interfaces. A critical proposition in exploiting bifunctionality in alloy catalysts is to achieve surface migration across interfaces separating functionally dissimilar regions. Herein, we demonstrate the enhancement of more than 104 in the rate of molecular hydrogen reduction of a silver surface oxide in the presence of palladium oxide compared to pure silver oxide resulting from the transfer of atomic hydrogen from palladium oxide islands onto the surrounding surface formed from oxidation of a palladium-silver alloy. The palladium-silver interface also dynamically restructures during reduction, resulting in silver-palladium intermixing. This study clearly demonstrates the migration of reaction intermediates and catalyst material across surface interfacial boundaries in alloys with a significant effect on surface reactivity, having broad implications for the catalytic function of bimetallic materials

Changes in Muscle Metabolism are Associated with Phenotypic Variability in Golden Retriever Muscular Dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is an X-chromosome-linked disorder and the most common monogenic disease in people. Affected boys are diagnosed at a young age, become non-ambulatory by their early teens, and succumb to cardiorespiratory failure by their thirties. Despite being a monogenic condition resulting from mutations in the DMD gene, affected boys have noteworthy phenotypic variability. Efforts have identified genetic modifiers that could modify disease progression and be pharmacologic targets. Dogs affected with golden retriever muscular dystrophy (GRMD) have absent dystrophin and demonstrate phenotypic variability at the functional, histopathological, and molecular level. Our laboratory is particularly interested in muscle metabolism changes in dystrophin-deficient muscle. We identified several metabolic alterations, including myofiber type switching from fast (type II) to slow (type I), reduced glycolytic enzyme expression, reduced and morphologically abnormal mitochondria, and differential AMP-kinase phosphorylation (activation) between hypertrophied and wasted muscle. We hypothesize that muscle metabolism changes are, in part, responsible for phenotypic variability in GRMD. Pharmacological therapies aimed at modulating muscle metabolism can be tested in GRMD dogs for efficacy

The Care Work of Access

Current approaches to AI and Assistive Technology (AT) often foreground task completion over other encounters such as expressions of care. Our paper challenges and complements such task-completion approaches by attending to the care work of access—the continual affective and emotional adjustments that people make by noticing and attending to one another. We explore how this work impacts encounters among people with and without vision impairments who complete tasks together. We find that bound up in attempts to get things done are concerns for one another and how well people are doing together. Reading this work through emerging disability studies and feminist STS scholarship, we account for two important forms of work that give rise to access: (1) mundane attunements and (2) noninnocent authorizations. Together these processes work as sensitizing concepts to help HCI scholars account for the ways that intelligent ATs both produce access while sometimes subverting people with disabilities