Going solo: lifelong nonparticipation amongst the NCDS cohort

Some Western societies, it has been claimed, are experiencing an unparalleled downward trend in participation with manifold grave consequences predicted. In the UK, for instance, politicians and commentators, arguably influenced by Robert Putnam’s warnings of a collapse in community, have spoken of Britain’s broken society and disintegrating social ties with opting out, or nonparticipation, presented as a pressing social problem. Set against this background, and engaging directly with Putnam’s thesis, we explore the scale, characteristics and causes of an ‘extreme’ variant of nonparticipation – lifelong nonparticipation – amongst members of a national birth cohort, the UK’s National Child Development Study (NCDS) (1958). Joining structured survey data collected over the lifecourse, with biographical interview data collected from cohort members at age 50, we identify lifelong nonparticipation as a minority disposition associated with distinctive demographic traits being, for example, highly gendered and related to lower educational attainment. In terms of causes, time pressures arising from work and caring duties or, more precisely, the feeling of being ‘pressed for time’, appeared critical. The implications for policy and practice are considered.     

Teaching the nature of technology: determining and supporting student learning of the philosophy of technology

This paper reports on findings related to the Nature of Technology from Stage Two of the Technological Knowledge and Nature of Technology: Implications for teaching and learning (TKNoT: Imps) research project undertaken in 2009. A key focus in Stage Two was the trialing of different teaching strategies to determine how learning related to the components Characteristics of Technology (CoT) and Characteristics of Technological Outcomes (COTO) could be supported. These components fall within the Nature of Technology (NoT) strand of technology in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007) and as such, reflect a philosophical understanding of technology as a discipline. During this stage of the research further exploration was undertaken to determine how student understanding of these two components of technology education progressed from level 1 to level 8 of the NZC (Ministry of Education, 2007). Common misconceptions and partial understandings related to these components are identified and explained and four case studies are presented to illustrate strategies employed by teachers and their impact on student learning related to these two components. The Stage Two outcomes resulted in the revision of the Indicators of Progression for CoT and CoTO in order to clarify the progression expected of students in each component and provide increased teacher guidance to support such progression.     

Enhancing Technological Practice: An Assessment Framework for Technology Education in New Zealand

The stated aim of technology education in New Zealand is to develop students' level of technological literacy. This paper introduces the Technology Assessment Framework (TAF) as an organisational tool for the development and delivery of technology programmes that focus on increasing students' technological literacy through the enhancement of their technological practice across technological areas and contexts. The TAF was developed and refined in 1999 and 2000 as part of a two year New Zealand Ministry of Education funded research project, and integrated within a national professional development programme in 2000 designed for preservice and inservice teacher educators in New Zealand.This paper backgrounds the sociocultural theoretical position of the TAF and explains how it reflects and furthers the aim of technology education in New Zealand. The TAF is then presented and explained with the aid of illustrative examples from classroom practice.     

Choice in Computer-Mediated Environments

In the last several years, the increased diffusion of computer andtelecommunications technologies in businesses and homes has produced newways for organizations to connect with their customers. These computermediated environments (CMEs) such as the World Wide Web raise new researchquestions. In this paper, we examine the potential research issuesassociated with CMEs in five areas: (1) decision processes, (2) advertisingand communications, (3) brand choice, (4) brand communities, and (5)pricing.     

Order isomorphisms for preferences with intransitive indifference

An order isomorphism from one preference relation to another is a function between their underlying sets that preserves both preference and indifference. A utility function is an order isomorphism, as is a well-known two-function representation for preference relations with intransitive indifference. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the existence of an order isomorphism from a given preference relation to the set of sequences of zeros and ones ordered by Pareto dominance. This means of preference representation is shown via examples to be quite general.     

Women, social skill and interactive service work in telephone call centres

This paper contributes to current debates about gender, work and skill in the service economy, focusing specifically on the case of women's employment in telephone call centres. The paper asks whether call centre employers are capitalising on women's 'feminine' social skills, and examines the degree to which these skills are being developed, acknowledged and recognised.     

On the profitability of collusion in location games

In this note we take a first step towards the analysis of collusion in markets with spatial competition, focusing on the case of pure location choices. We find that collusion can only be profitable if a coalition contains more than half of all players. This result holds for location games played in k-dimensional Euclidean space as long as consumers are distributed via atomless density functions. For competition on the unit interval, unit circle, and unit square we also derive sufficient conditions for collusion to be profitable. The results have immediate implications for mergers in spatial markets.     

The power of incrementalism: environmental regulation and technological change in pulp and paper bleaching in the US

This article explores environmental regulation as a driver of technological change through a case study ofthe US pulp and paper industry. It analyses two sets of variables that influence the pace and direction of environmentally oriented technological change: industry structure and regulatory design. As would be expecded from a mature productive unit, when confronted with environmental challenges, the US pull, and paper industry demonstrates a strong preference for incremental technological change. The case suggests that the traditional approaches to standard-setting in the US have not challenged this preference. For the pulp and paper industry, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the strategic advantages of alternative technologies, due to uncertainly in further environmental regulation and the relatively small difference in cost between incremental and radical innovations for may mills. This case suggests that an alternative approach for promoting the diffusion of environmental enhancing radical innovations in mature productive units is to long-term goals for environmental improvement.     

The power of incrementalism: environmental regulation and technological change in pulp and paper bleaching in the US

This article explores environmental regulation as a driver of technological change through a case study ofthe US pulp and paper industry. It analyses two sets of variables that influence the pace and direction of environmentally oriented technological change: industry structure and regulatory design. As would be expecded from a mature productive unit, when confronted with environmental challenges, the US pull, and paper industry demonstrates a strong preference for incremental technological change. The case suggests that the traditional approaches to standard-setting in the US have not challenged this preference. For the pulp and paper industry, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the strategic advantages of alternative technologies, due to uncertainly in further environmental regulation and the relatively small difference in cost between incremental and radical innovations for may mills. This case suggests that an alternative approach for promoting the diffusion of environmental enhancing radical innovations in mature productive units is to long-term goals for environmental improvement.