Early murmurs concerning teacher attrition in the United States have risen to an alarming level since the 1990s. Given that half of the 1990s teaching force were/are expected to retire between 2000 and 2010, the cry has been heard loud and clearly throughout the nation. Furthermore, today's fledgling teachers are fleeing at astronomical rates,…

Parental leave is a complex area of public policy. Concerns include health protection for working mothers, equal employment opportunities for women, access to adequate antenatal and birthing care, maternal recovery, optimal nutrition for infants, and gender equality within families. Given this complexity, the design of parental leave schemes,…

This paper reports findings from a survey of former students from six Australian rural school clusters. It compares the experiences and outcomes of students who had participated in a school vocational education and training (VET) program with those who had not. School VET courses intended to provide a pathway to local employment appear to be…

There are increasing calls for more child specific measures of poverty in developing countries and the need for such measures to be multi-dimensional (that is not just based on income) has been recognised. Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs) are now common in international development research. Most PPAs have been undertaken with adults and…

As resources become more constrained in the library community, many organizations are finding that they need to have a better understanding of their costs. To this end, this article will present one approach to conducting a cost analysis (including questions to ask yourself, project team makeup, organizational support, and data organization). We…

As is true for human resource development (HRD), the field of organization development (OD) draws from numerous disciplines to inform its theory base. However, the identification and selection of theory to inform improved practice remains a challenge and begs the question of what can be used to inform and guide one in the identification and…

Historically, rural General Practitioners (GPs) in Australia tended to be male, Anglo, middle-class and in nuclear family structures, whereas the contemporary workforce demographic is increasingly female and of diverse ethnicity. Demographic trends and changing social values of university-educated professionals directly affect services in rural…

Organisations devise training programmers to ensure that employees make an effective contribution to enterprise success. Not all organisations are likely to provide training, however, because there are significant trade-offs involved in terms of both costs and benefits. This article discusses the organisational determinants of training: larger…

The present study sought to add to our knowledge about forces that negatively affect an individual's decision to start a business by identifying barriers they encounter. By identifying barriers to starting a business, we stand to learn much about how an individual identifies, confronts, and responds to decisions which may seem to be beyond their…

With pervasive and persistent changes affecting education, educators are called to challenge current paradigms about best practices in instructional design and delivery and redefine how they are integrated into the curriculum. The purpose of this article is to introduce a model designed to support the new paradigm for best practices in education.…

One of the most significant societal changes over the past few decades has been the growing number of women in the paid work force. As a direct result of this sociological phenomenon, childcare centres have been providing long day care for vastly increasing numbers of very young children. The speed of this change has created a societal dilemma…

The shortage of special education teachers is due in part to high attrition, especially among new entrants. Improving teacher retention and quality requires a holistic view of new teachers' needs, an understanding of the contexts in which they work, as well as the types of support that are needed. A leader's model highlights major considerations…

The paper traces the inability of the curricula of LIS schools in Africa to respond to the immediate job environment in Africa. The main weakness of the curricula is that they reflect essentially the curricula of LIS schools in the Western World. Thus, while most of the LIS curricula are relevant to the traditional library setting, the curricula…

This paper explores the landscape of training and development in the Republic of Ireland, a country with an impressive economic record in recent years. Both the Irish economic context and business context are explored. The national system for training and development and the surrounding policy and strategy context are set down. Survey data are…

This paper explores the inclusive discourse in Greece at a period characterized by change in policy and practice. The aim is to discuss critically the distance between the strong voices and weak practices that characterizes the Greek inclusive discourse. The first part focuses on disability and presents the ways that a "common sense"…