Tasks Skills And Institutions

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The book investigates the trends in earnings inequalities in developing countries to determine the main drivers. Particular attention is paid to extending the most conventional explanations of changes in earnings inequality, based on the relative abundance of skilled and unskilled labour, with recent theories that put the nature of tasks performed by workers in their jobs, rather than their skills, at the centre of the analysis. The latter approach has helped to explain relevant patterns recently observed in the trends in earnings inequality in the US and other industrialized countries. Developed countries have experienced a polarization in earnings and in employment, namely stronger growth in the earnings and jobs for the most and least skilled workers at the expense of those in the middle. This pattern has been attributed to differences in tasks-whether a given job is routine and can be automated or offshored-rather than skills, and has reduced employment and incomes in typical middle-class jobs in manufacturing and services. However, this narrative has been developed in the context of mature industrialized economies on the frontier of technological change that have also seen a large set of activities offshored to emergent economies. Evidence for developing countries, however, is still scarce and faces bigger challenges, both conceptual, and in terms of gathering the necessary data on earnings and task content of jobs. This book presents the main results of the UNU-WIDER project, The Changing Nature of Work and Inequality, aiming to fill this knowledge gap.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The book investigates the trends in earnings inequalities in developing countries to determine the main drivers. Particular attention is paid to extending the most conventional explanations of changes in earnings inequality, based on the relative abundance of skilled and unskilled labour, with recent theories that put the nature of tasks performed by workers in their jobs, rather than their skills, at the centre of the analysis. The latter approach has helped to explain relevant patterns recently observed in the trends in earnings inequality in the US and other industrialized countries. Developed countries have experienced a polarization in earnings and in employment, namely stronger growth in the earnings and jobs for the most and least skilled workers at the expense of those in the middle. This pattern has been attributed to differences in tasks-whether a given job is routine and can be automated or offshored-rather than skills, and has reduced employment and incomes in typical middle-class jobs in manufacturing and services. However, this narrative has been developed in the context of mature industrialized economies on the frontier of technological change that have also seen a large set of activities offshored to emergent economies. Evidence for developing countries, however, is still scarce and faces bigger challenges, both conceptual, and in terms of gathering the necessary data on earnings and task content of jobs. This book presents the main results of the UNU-WIDER project, The Changing Nature of Work and Inequality, aiming to fill this knowledge gap.

`This is a useful book and well written reflecting the author's considerable experience in the field' - National School Improvement Network News `Management Skills in Schools is a terrific digest of many important issues, built around a clear structure that helps the reader absorb information quickly. For the sheers scale of the references to educational gurus, it's worth the cover price: here is everything you need to quote' - Geoff Barton, Friday Magazine, Times Educational Supplement `This book provides an invaluable resource for everyone who is concerned with leadership and management in schools. As well as dealing with key issues and concepts it gives practical advice on strategies and techniques which can be deployed. It will enhance and complement existing skills as well as importing new ideas which will provide professional stimulus for the reader' - Sir Geoff Hampton, Dean of Education, Director of the Midlands Leadership Centre, University of Wolverhampton `For the discerning leader wanting to develop their personal management skills this is a "must have" resource. Whether working through Personal Management Skills independently or used as a professional development tool with a group of middle managers in a school this book will make a difference to how leaders work in schools' - Coleen R Jackson, Director, Roehampton Education Leadership Centre University of Surrey Roehampton `This is a timely collection of resources for those in middle management positions in schools. It brings together ideas on self management in addition to a comprehensive collection of materials on leading teams of staff. Particularly noteworthy are the sections on strategic decision making, action research in school improvement, and dealing effectively with conflict' - Brian Fidler, Professor of Education Management, The University of Reading Team leadership is vital element of school success, whether at the level of department, the curriculum area, the key stage, the phase, or in relation to pastoral and leadership teams. The Team leader must be skillful in creating cultures of success, and personal management skills are at the heart of getting the best from team members. In this book Jeff Jones shows how managers in education can contribute to school improvement, and focuses on the essential personal and practical management skills needed to instill a positive team culture, and support colleagues effectively. This book is an essential resource for those who lead and manage teams, at all levels within schools. Dr Jeff Jones has been a senior consultant and head of training and consultancy unit at the Centre for British Teachers CfBT in Reading since 1998, and is the well known author of such books as Monitoring and Evaluation for School Improvement, (2000), and Performance Management for School Improvement (2001)

This book explores stakeholders’ perspectives, their practices, and engagement with enacting the employability agenda in the context of a rapidly changing world. It explains the need for developing graduate employability under socioeconomic, cultural, and political pressure exposed to the higher education sector. Largely framed within Bourdieu’s concepts of social field, habitus, and capital, it explores international stakeholders’ perspectives and experiences with graduate employability agenda in different contexts, which serves as a point of reference for the adoption of such initiatives. Based on empirical evidence, the authors develop a new graduate employability framework seeing it as a lifelong process, denote the relationships between types of employability capital, and shed light on the consequences of different strategies to translate employability capital to employment and career outcomes. Overall, this book generates both theoretical and practical insights which help to advance employability programs, better prepare the future workforce, and anticipate turbulence in the labour markets.

The evolution of information technologies, mobile devices, social media, and the needs of students, workers, and academics has experienced rapid changes in the past several years. This complex and dynamic reality requires new forms of education delivery and teaching methodologies for academics. Old teaching practices must be refreshed to provide customized and context-adapted learning opportunities. Additionally, there are drivers, barriers, and success factors within distance and mobile learning devices and systems that need to be explored and tested. The Handbook of Research on Education Institutions, Skills, and Jobs in the Digital Era aims to foster an international dialogue of approaches, methodologies, and tools for the transformation of education in the digital era and broaden the visibility of new technologies for education, establish an international scientific platform for collaboration on digital education, and accelerate innovation in education technology. Covering critical topics such as faculty training, online teaching, and talent management, this major reference work is ideal for government officials, industry professionals, policymakers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

An argument for reimagining skill in a way that can extend economic opportunity to workers at the bottom of the labor market. America has a jobs problem--not enough well-paying jobs to go around and not enough clear pathways leading to them. Skill development is critical for addressing this employment crisis, but there are many unresolved questions about who has skill, how it is attained, and whose responsibility it is to build skills over time. In this book, Nichola Lowe tells the stories of pioneering workforce intermediaries--nonprofits, unions, community colleges--that harness this ambiguity around skill to extend economic opportunity to workers at the bottom of the labor market.