Background: An equitable and democratised higher education system should, in principle, be permeable to the flow of populations with different social and/or cultural backgrounds, allowing access to any parts of the system. However, despite the democratisation efforts that took place in Portugal after the 1974 revolution, and although the student…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the meaning that Swedish preschool teachers ascribe to systematic quality work. In Sweden, all preschools are required to work systematically with quality issues. This involves several interdependent steps that follow each other in a specific order. Although the concept of systematic quality work might…

Virtual worlds like Second Life are emerging technologies that have gained popularity among educators. As these worlds emerged, greater focus has been placed on the design of the environments themselves rather than the design of instruction within them. Educators have begun using these environments for teaching and instructional designers are now…

A wide range of work has reported on the outcomes of public engagement activities and the views expressed by public participants towards specific areas of science and technology. Such work has rarely gone on to explore with public participants their attitudes to the engagement experienced itself, often focusing instead on more practical or…

The field of curriculum evaluation is a key part of the educational process. This means that this area needs to be developed continuously and requires ongoing research. This paper highlights curriculum evaluation in Oman, different evaluation procedures and methods and instruments used. The need for a framework for curriculum evaluation is a vital…

The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) literature suggests that effective training is one of the key reasons for success in ERP implementations. However, limited research has been conducted on what constitutes effective training in an ERP environment. A case study approach was used to explore the effectiveness of traditional training and to…

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological research study was to explore the effectiveness of programs and strategies used to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) from the perspective of highly qualified teachers in a rural school district in Central Virginia. The data…

The user perspective of image search remains poorly understood. The purpose of this study is to identify and investigate the key issues relevant to a user's interaction with images and the user's approach to image search. A deeper understanding of these issues will serve to inform the design of image retrieval systems and in turn better…

In the 21st century, school libraries are under pressure to innovate. Library budgets are frequently slashed as districts struggle with limited fiscal resources, while library personnel are increasingly expected to provide students with resources they need to help them pass high stakes tests. In an effort to meet student needs with limited…

This study explored the effect race has on the daily work of white student affairs professionals, how invested participants feel in being multiculturally competent, and their awareness of racial identity, racial attitudes, and racial privilege. Semi-structured interviews were used to gather responses from 12 white, student affairs, mid-level…

Public school districts in Pennsylvania use varying teacher screening and interviewing processes for hiring teachers. In order to hire the best teacher candidates for vacancies, the qualities of effective teachers such as those cited by the Council of Chief State School Officers Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Model…

Uncontrollable costs, schedule overruns, and poor end product quality continue to plague the software engineering field. Innovations formulated with the expectation to minimize or eliminate cost, schedule, and quality problems have generally fallen into one of three categories: programming paradigms, software tools, and software process…

This study explored factors that influenced persistence in expatriate academic assignments in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Specifically, the problem that was addressed was an investigation of the reasons why some expatriate academics declared their intent to leave an academic position within one year of arrival while others choose to extend…

An economy struggling to rise out of recession presents a difficult time for institutions of higher education as state and federal support for higher education is not keeping pace with costs (Newman, Couturier, & Scurry, 2004; Wellman, Desrochers, & Lenihan, 2009). It is essential for colleges and universities to raise funds from external…

Institutions of higher learning face challenges in accessing the effectiveness of workforce advisory committees. State governing bodies supply broad guidelines and are the only measuring tool given to these institutions to assess the effectiveness of their committees. Organizational models found in the literature do not include state guidelines…