Mentoring Programmes as a successful instrument for career development of people with disabilities and disadvantaged

[Excerpt] For many years the Mentoring, as a form of support for young people without work experience, is well-known practice. In the past ten years the Mentoring has proved itself as a wide-applied method of support in the career of people with disabilities. A good example of successfully held Mentoring programme in Europe is the “Equal Employment Opportunities: Mentoring and Training for Disabled People and Employers” Project. It is a transnational initiative supported by the “Leonardo da Vinci” Programme of the European Commission. The project includes 3 European countries: Bulgaria, Greece and the UK. The duration of the project was 24 months

DigitalCommons@ILR Collection Development Policy

DigitalCommons@ILR offers electronic access to unique material that encompasses every aspect of the workplace. The Martin P. Catherwood Library provides this service as part of its ongoing mission to serve as a comprehensive information center in support of the research, instruction, and service commitments of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Cornell community

Defining and identifying the knowledge economy in Scotland: a regional perspective on a global phenomenon

The development and growth of a knowledge economy has become a key policy aim forgovernments in all advanced economies. This is based on recognition that technologicalchange, the swift growth of global communications, and the ease of mobility of capital across national borders has dramatically changed the patterns of international trade and investment. The economic fate of individual nations is now inseparably integrated into the ebb and flow of the global economy. When companies can quickly move capital to those geographical locations which offer the best return, a country's long term prosperity is now heavily dependent on its abilityto retain the essential factors of production that are least mobile. This has led to apremium being placed on the knowledge and skills embodied in a country's labourforce, as it has become a widely accepted view that a country which possesses a high level of knowledge and skills in its workforce will have a competitive advantage overothers with a lower domestic skill base. Knowledge and skills are thought to be thebasis for the development of a knowledge economy

Young children learning in Gaelic: Investigating children's learning experiences in Gaelic-medium pre-school. Research Briefing 6E. Stirling

Gaelic-medium (GM) education is an important part of current efforts to re-vitalise the language in Scotland. Beginning Gaelic-medium education in preschool is seen as a crucial entry point, enhancing the numbers entering GM primary education and facilitating transition to the school learning environment. However, it is essential that GM preschool is of high quality. Government-funded provision is expected to offer children the same learning opportunities as their peers who attend English-medium settings. Meeting these expectations is challenging because most children enter Gaelic-medium preschool from English-speaking homes so that the nursery or playgroup is their only exposure to Gaelic. Our earlier study mapped the range and extent of Gaelic-medium early education and childcare provision but in the research reported here our focus was on what happens within settings, the children’s activities in the playroom and the ways in which practitioners help them to learn Gaelic, as well as ensuring that national expectations about curriculum and learning outcomes are met

Towards the estimation of the economic value of the outputs of Scottish Higher Education Institutions

This report is the outcome of a preliminary scoping study undertaken for the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council and Universities Scotland Knowledge Transfer Taskforce during the three month period April - June 2005. The study focussed on the feasibility of developing an economically meaningful approach to measurement of Scottish higher education institutional outputs in monetary terms. The growing policy emphasis on higher education's role in the economy has led to an increasing need for quantitative analysis of the value to the economy of what a HEI does (that is, as a producer of specifically educational goods) - over and above the economic benefits that arise from the mere fact of the HEI doing something (that is, as a producer of general unspecified goods)

Higher-order Representation and Reasoning for Automated Ontology Evolution

Abstract: The GALILEO system aims at realising automated ontology evolution. This is necessary to enable intelligent agents to manipulate their own knowledge autonomously and thus reason and communicate effectively in open, dynamic digital environments characterised by the heterogeneity of data and of representation languages. Our approach is based on patterns of diagnosis of faults detected across multiple ontologies. Such patterns allow to identify the type of repair required when conflicting ontologies yield erroneous inferences. We assume that each ontology is locally consistent, i.e. inconsistency arises only across ontologies when they are merged together. Local consistency avoids the derivation of uninteresting theorems, so the formula for diagnosis can essentially be seen as an open theorem over the ontologies. The system’s application domain is physics; we have adopted a modular formalisation of physics, structured by means of locales in Isabelle, to perform modular higher-order reasoning, and visualised by means of development graphs.

Reading projects

"By reading only six hours a day", says Marianne Dashwood, outlining her plan of future application to her sister Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, "I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want." She adds: "Our own library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Colonel Brandon" (301). We know, to some extent, what was in the Dashwoods' own library – volumes of Cowper, Scott and Thomson are mentioned. But what might Marianne have borrowed at Barton Park and Delaford? Which publications would Colonel Brandon have considered most appropriate for her project of self-improvement? Elinor considers Marianne's plan excessive, but what would have been a more realistic amount of time for her to spend reading each day, and where might she have done it