Establishing Croatia’s lifelong career guidance service

On July 1st 2013, Croatia became the 28th member state of the European Union. One requirement for Croatia’s accession to the EU was the establishment of comprehensive life-long career guidance (LLCG) provision. In 2011, the Croatian Employment Service, the traditional provider of career guidance services to the unemployed, embarked on a programme to establish eight public facing pilot LLCG centres funded through EU transition funding. This article uses the results of an early evaluation of the new LLCG centres undertaken at the end of the pilot stage to explore the inter-relationship between this EU imperative and the policy and practice developments required to establish LLCG in a post-conflict and post command economy emerging EU country

The Determinants of Lateness: Evidence from British Workers

Using a sample of male and female workers from the 1992 Employment in Britain survey we estimate a generalised grouped zero-inflated Poisson regression model of employeesÕ self-reported lateness. Reflecting theoretical predictions from both psychology and economics, lateness is modelled as a function of incentives, the monitoring of and sanctions for lateness within the workplace, job satisfaction and attitudes to work. Various aspects of workplace incentive and disciplinary policies turn out to affect lateness, however, once these are controlled for, an important role for job satisfaction remains.

Alien Registration- Peters, Simon (Orono, Penobscot County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/5910/thumbnail.jp

Language Shift and Development: A Case Study of Zhongdian Southern Khams Language Vitality

The fields of language endangerment and maintenance address language shift overwhelmingly in the context of a local language being replaced by that of a surrounding oppositional dominant cultural group. There are, though, situations in which a local language is competing with the dominant variety of the wider cultural group to which it belongs. How a situation like this is dealt with by linguists and language planners depends largely on the recognition of participant tongues as their own languages or one as a dialect of another. Reversing language shift for a “dialect” is difficult to garnish institutional and financial support for if its “mother language” is not endangered. This paper is a case study of one such language: the variety of Tibetan local to Zhongdian, Shangri-la County of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan. Through an examination of the linguistic vitality of the local Tibetan variety, I discuss factors that have contributed to the language shift of local Tibetans to the regional Chinese variety. Reviewing Zhongdian Tibetan’s localized maintenance reveals the threat posed to it by Literary Tibetan and other prestigious forms

Subtype-specific plasticity of inhibitory circuits in motor cortex during motor learning.

Motor skill learning induces long-lasting reorganization of dendritic spines, principal sites of excitatory synapses, in the motor cortex. However, mechanisms that regulate these excitatory synaptic changes remain poorly understood. Here, using in vivo two-photon imaging in awake mice, we found that learning-induced spine reorganization of layer (L) 2/3 excitatory neurons occurs in the distal branches of their apical dendrites in L1 but not in the perisomatic dendrites. This compartment-specific spine reorganization coincided with subtype-specific plasticity of local inhibitory circuits. Somatostatin-expressing inhibitory neurons (SOM-INs), which mainly inhibit distal dendrites of excitatory neurons, showed a decrease in axonal boutons immediately after the training began, whereas parvalbumin-expressing inhibitory neurons (PV-INs), which mainly inhibit perisomatic regions of excitatory neurons, exhibited a gradual increase in axonal boutons during training. Optogenetic enhancement and suppression of SOM-IN activity during training destabilized and hyperstabilized spines, respectively, and both manipulations impaired the learning of stereotyped movements. Our results identify SOM inhibition of distal dendrites as a key regulator of learning-related changes in excitatory synapses and the acquisition of motor skills

The rich world of children's working theories.

Working theories, and disposition are key learning outcomes of New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 2017). In Te Whāriki working theories are described as “the evolving ideas and understandings that children develop as they use their existing knowledge to try to make sense of new experiences” (Ministry of Education, p.23). A number of projects have explored what this means in practice and the pedagogical approaches that help to explore, support and stretch children’s thinking. This presentation revisits the working theory lens to consider the surprising depth of young children’s ideas and ways to recognise and enhance creative and critical thinking

GRINDING A DIAMOND – THE ITERATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF CITIZEN-INITIATED SERVICES

Many city administrations follow the smart city concept to grasp the potential of citizen participation. However, most participation concepts are not developed thoroughly, this leading to unexploited potential. Citizens are experts of their everyday life and are best aware of their personal needs. However, current forms of citizen participation stop at the idea phase of service engineering. Following design science research, we iteratively build and evaluate a so-called “digitalization street” which aims to systematically guide the citizens through the refinement and further development of their services. This digitalization street is implemented in a mid-size European city and integrates five modules which let citizens (1) describe their project proposal, (2) concretise according strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, (3) identify the gain creators and pain relievers, (4) create their solution, (5) present their solution. Based on literature and a requirement elicitation workshop, a first instantiation of the artefact was developed. We contribute to the existing body of knowledge by presenting a framework for creating services based on a citizen-centric approach. We exhibit how the digitalization street can be implemented into existing processes in the city administration and help to increase the citizen participation from a project to an evaluated prototype

Analysing Questionnaires on IT Project Status - Complexity Reduction by the Application of Rough Concepts

Since its introduction half a century ago IT has become one of the most important infrastructure components of virtually any organisation. An important key area of qualitative research in information systems is interviewing decision makers. These interviews aim to disclose hidden structures within IT projects and usage to increase their efficiency and effectiveness. In this context, the definition and analysis of critical success factors for information technology projects are well established areas for qualitative research in information systems. The analysis of critical success factors is of special importance since the IT projects still suffer from high failures rates. Therefore it is an important research goal within information systems to better understand IT projects to improve their success rates. The interviews of critical success factors provide a good data basis to disclose hidden structures in this domain. Besides only quantitatively interpreting such interviews the analysis can be enriched by some qualitative methods to support quantitative analysis and may disclose formerly hidden structures within the data. Therefore the objective of the paper is to enrich the analysis of IT projects and evaluate rough sets based quantitative analysis techniques for symbolic data which are characteristic in the domain of critical success factors analysis