Web 2.0 technologies in remote community schools in Western Australia

Web 2.0 Technologies are increasing in their use, particularly as tools for social networking. Their uptake has been pioneered by Generation Y, also known as the ‘Net’ Generation, or ‘Digital Natives’ as tools to enhance online collaboration and communication but the extent to which educators embracing such technologies to enhance teaching and learning is less evident. The purpose of this paper is to report on the research findings of a survey undertaken by teachers in remote community schools in Western Australia focussing upon their use of Web 2.0 technologies in their teaching and learning programs. The results present a number of scenarios that differ from the main stream of belief with regard to both Generation Y and Generation X use of Web 2.0 Technologies suggesting that contexts of learning have a major impact on the integration of such technologies in the classroom and questioning the salience of generational differences in their use

Burnout in Ghanaian hospitals: Phase model findings in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This replication shows the expected covariation of the phases of burnout with a set of 5 marker variables. As the phases progress I ---> VIII, so do decreases or deficits occur on all the marker variables. All covariants far surpass usually-accepted levels of statistical significance, although the magnitudes are not as great as in much other research with the phases. The Ghanaian incidence of the phases is also compared with several panels of populations. Those comparisons at once indicate a substantial Ghanaian incidence of advanced phases, as well as a distribution comparable to North American worksettings and more favorable than a panel of global worksettings

Diversity and Citizen Participation: The Effect of Race on Juror Decision Making

Juries rarely receive attention in public administration despite the explicitly “public” nature of their function and the determinative nature of their decision-making. Applying the theoretical construct of public participation to jury decision making, we find that Black defendants are less likely to be convicted by juries composed of a higher percentage of Black jurors and are more likely to be convicted by juries composed of a higher percentage of White and Hispanic jurors. Thus, analysis of public participation must account for the relative inclusivity and diversity of participants as this will likely affect the output of the process. In short, diversity matters in public participation

A New Era of Protection Against Disability Discrimination? The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 and “Regarded As” Disabled

Several U.S. Supreme Court rulings have substantially narrowed the coverage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) since its passage in 1990. Congress amended the ADA in 2008 to restore the original congressional intent of providing broad coverage for people with disabilities.This article seeks to determine whether the 2008 amendments are a mere technical adjustment of the ADA, or constitute significant legislation in their own right.A review of existing law, resulting regulations, and federal cases reveals that the amendments may promise much but deliver more of the same. Nevertheless, employers are well-advised to renew their efforts to cooperate with applicants and employees with disabilities, if for no other reason than to avoid a costly lawsuit that employers are perhaps now more likely to lose

Measuring Customer Service: Georgia’s Local Government Mystery Shopper Program

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Race and the Georgia Courts: Implications of the Georgia Public Trust and Confidence Survey for Batson v. Kentucky and its Progeny

Put simply, there is a perception among many Georgians that the court system treats minorities worse than whites. This Essay considers implications of the Georgia findings for a line of United States Supreme Court decisions designed to prevent racial discrimination by trial lawyers in the selection of trial juries

Extreme Outsourcing in Local Government: At the Top and All but the Top

The prevailing paradigm of outsourcing in local government assumes high-level professional administrators make systematic assessments of program areas to determine whether a selected number could be delivered for a reduced cost and at a higher quality by an external provider. This article examines two fundamental deviations from this model occurring in local governments. First, a handful of newly incorporated cities have adopted a wholesale approach to contracting out, relying almost exclusively on private firms and other governmental jurisdictions for the production of core programs while employing only a handful of in-house staff. Conversely, several small towns and cities across North Carolina deliver most services and programs in house by permanent staff but contract out the highest-level administrative position, that of town or city manager. These strategies represent outsourcing at its most extreme and present important practical and paradigmatic challenges to public human resource management in contemporary subnational governance

Continuity Amid Discontinuity? George W. Bush, Federal Employment Discrimination, and “Big Government Conservatism”

One of the major substantive components of “big government conservatism” was a decided predisposition against public employee unions, toward privileging managerial discretion, and yet still maintaining equal opportunity in the workplace. However, could this predisposition be resolved in practice without harming federal employees’ rights, benefits, and morale in the workplace? To address this question, this article examines whether the attitudes of federal employees toward variants of subjective discrimination in the workplace changed significantly during the George W. Bush presidency. We find that trends related to perceptions of retaliation and discrimination have improved in recent years. However, perceptions of retaliation and discrimination are found to exist among minority and female employees and managers in the federal workplace that require vigilance. These results suggest that big government conservatism’s predisposition to pursue equal opportunity as opposed to affirmative action—while diminishing the power of public employee unions and enhancing managerial prerogatives—either succeeded on its own merits or that the earlier momentum could not be stopped

Representative Bureaucracy: Assessing the Evidence on Active Representation

The theory of representative bureaucracy suggests that a public workforce representative of the people in terms of race, ethnicity, and sex will help ensure that the interests of all groups are considered in bureaucratic decision-making processes. The theory posits that the active representation of group interests occurs because individual bureaucrats reflect the views of those who share their demographic backgrounds. Research in the public administration literature, however, includes only a relatively small number of studies providing evidence consistent with active representation. In addition, that literature is, for the most part, composed of studies that are conducted at an organizational level, making it impossible for us to draw inferences about the behavior of individual bureaucrats without committing an ecological fallacy. Researchers in the field of criminal justice studies, on the other hand, have long tested the relationship between workforce demography and government outcomes and have done so at the individual level and in contexts that allow confidence that the outcomes observed are indeed the product of action by minority or female public servants. Those studies are reviewed, and their findings provide the first definitive evidence of a connection between the presence of diversity in the public workforce and the representation of minority interests