1,722,005 research outputs found
Initial training policies and transferability of skills in Britain and Spain
No full textThis paper analyses the relationship between initial vocational education and training (VET) and life-long learning by looking at the way and extent to which different training policies foster the acquisition of general and transferable skills. General and transferable skills are defined in contrast to specific skills, as not being tied to any particular firm, sector or work process but as being applicable to a wide range of educational and professional situations. The term covers many different skills such as entrepreneurial (creativity, risk-management, responsibility, decision-making skills and initiative), interpersonal skills (flexibility, conflict-handling, team-building capacities), communication skills (reading comprehension, writing, foreign languages, negotiation skills) and other intellectual skills (mathematics, problem-solving, quality awareness and the up-dating of knowledge). General skills or qualifications are broader conceptually and they are usually defined in contrast to firm-specific ones. Both general and core skills have become increasingly valuable in labour markets that are characterised by change and where there is a constant need to adapt to new developments in technology and working methods. Concrete, specific or technical skills may become obsolete very rapidly and in addition the value of overly narrow vocational qualifications is diminishing in the light of technological innovation.
The paper is organised as follows. Firstly, we consider some of the factors that particularly affect the investment in training and the investment in transferable skills. Secondly, we place the training reforms in Spain and in Britain in a contextual framework and give an outline of the direction of these reforms in relation to those intervening factors. We argue that with the reform of their national training systems, which in both cases started in the late eighties, Spain and the UK have followed different routes in order to foster precisely an increase in the investment on the type of transferable or core skills mentioned above. Those pathways differ in two main dimensions: on the one hand, the extent to which policy strategies have aimed at reducing either individual or firms' constraints to receive or invest in transferable training; on the other hand, the extent to which the emphasis for certification focused on "demonstrated learning outcomes" (as opposed to "particular learning processes or places"). Finally, we present some of the policy lessons from the experience of both sets of reforms identifying the characteristics that might contribute and those that might hinder such investment
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Cualificaciones, desigualdad y empleo: respuestas políticas divergentes al problema de la formación
No full textEste artículo analiza la relación entre las políticas de formación profesional y el mercado de trabajo en España y Gran Bretaña desde principios de los ochenta hasta mediados de los noventa, prestando atención a la distinta evolución de la desigualdad de ingresos y empleo por nivel educativo. En ambos países se llevaron a cabo políticas divergentes destinadas a influir sobre los niveles de cualificación de la población, y a resolver el dilema entre igualdad y empleo en épocas de crisis. Se argumenta que las diferencias entre los dos casos se explican principalmente por los objetivos distributivos de los gobiernos, y por las diferencias en la interpretación del funcionamiento del mercado de trabajo, las causas del paro, y los determinantes y efectos de los distintos tipos de formación. Esta hipótesis explicativa es contrastada con otras hipótesis rivales relacionadas con el ciclo político-económico y las instituciones del mercado de trabajo.
This article analyses the relationship between vocational training policies and labour markets in Spain and Great Britain since the early eighties to the mid- nineties, paying atention to the different evolution of earnings and employment inequality by educational levels. Both countries developed divergent policies in order to influence the qualification levels of the population and to solve the trade off between equality and employment during economic crisis. It is argued that the differences among the two cases are better explained by the distributive objectives of the governments, and by the different interpretation and ideas about the functioning of the labour market, the causes of unemployment, and the determinants and effects of different types of training. This causal hypothesis is contrasted to other rival ones related to the political and economic cycle and the labour market institutions
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
The internationalsation of public sector research though international joint laboratories
No full textThis paper analyses the emergence of public sector international joint laboratories as an increasingly important new phenomenon in the internationalisation of public sector research. Using a survey and interview-based qualitative methodology, it explores the trends in the establishment of such labs, the aims for which they are established and the extent to which these aims are met. We find a considerable degree of organisational diversity among them in terms of size, structure, resources and legal status. Since the French CNRS and the German MPG have been very active organisations in the set up of joint laboratories, the paper undertakes two case studies of instruments of these organisations based on background literature and in depth interviews. We argue that the joint labs they establish are examples of the institutionalisation of previously self-organised international collaboration dynamics and that these public research organisations have developed these international collaboration instruments with specific organisational goals.Peer reviewe
Estabilidad y cambio en las políticas andaluzas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación
Full text linkPublicado en: Revista Internacional de Sociología, 35: 7-51, 2003[EN] This article describes and analyses the Andalusian Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) policy evolution from the mid eighties up to 2001, using an analytical framework that takes on board several variables such as models and ideas, interests, political preferences, institutions and socio-economic factors. Andalusia was one of the first Spanish Autonomous Communities to initiate a regional science, technology and innovation policy. The isolation of the scientific and technological domains has been one of the key features of STI policy in this region, with a clear predominance of the first over the second. It is argued that the key explanatory factor of the initial academic orientation of Andalusia STI regional policy and of its consolidation and stability over time has been the strength of university and scientific interests within the region al political game.[ES] En este artículo se describe y analiza la evolución que ha seguido la política regional de ciencia, tecnología e innovación de Andalucía desde la primera mitad de los 80, a partir de la consideración de diversas variables tales como los modelos e ideas, los intereses, las preferencias políticas y el contexto socioeconómico e institucional. Andalucía fue una de las primeras Comunidades Autónomas que emprendió una política regional de ciencia, tecnología e innovación. En esta comunidad se ha desarrollado un modelo de política caracterizado por la separación de las esferas de la política científica y de la política tecnológica con un predominio de la primera sobre la segunda. Se argumenta que el factor decisivo que explica tanto la adopción en Andalucía de un modelo de política regional de I+D de orientación académica, como su estabilidad a lo largo de los años, ha sido la fuerza que han tenido en esta región los intereses universitarios en el juego político andaluzFinanciación del Programa Marco de I+D de la UE, del PRICIT de la Comunidad de Madrid, y del III Plan Nacional de I+D (SEC 1999-0829-C02-01)Peer reviewe
The PRO (Public Research Organization) Database. RISIS WP23.3 [DATASET]
No full textBuilt as part of the RISIS.EU project at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies of the Spanish National Research Council (IPP-CSIC), the PROs database provides basic statistical information about a sample of European Public Research Institutions (PROs). The underlying data is not based on information reported in questionnaires filled out by representatives from the institutional units, but it is the result from searching and collecting publicly available data from annual reports and other public data sources as well as freely internet available resources. The information available in this new data platform is presented in the form of a number of variables providing comparable information across institutions with the aim to allow monitoring, analysing and studying the dynamics of PROs in the European research system.Peer reviewe
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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