Public Education Services Research Articles

Education for Public Service: Traditional Approaches and New Challenges

Foreign and domestic political challenges facing Russia actualize issues of improving the education system. Public and municipal administration can only be effective if it relies on the real needs of society, which evolve all the time. In turn, education is a universal way to ensure compliance with public demand and public necessity. Education for public service is a special part of the youth vocational training system. In this case, the tasks of professional training themselves are combined with the priority of educational goals.

Educating public servants for a post-COVID-19 world: MPA/MPP curricular implications in Ghana

ABSTRACT As the world marked the second anniversary of COVID-19 in March, “Build Back Better” had impacted the policy lexicon that played out in real people’s lives. But what does it take to implement such policy? In public administration education discourse, developing nations do not receive as much attention in mainstream outlets. The article extends the discourse by exploring and connecting public sector work force policy to public administration education and public service training in Ghana. After reviewing literature and analyzing MPA/MPP curricula there, it discusses learning outcomes and assesses the quality of competence, while extrapolating lessons learned. The article concludes by proposing a critical pedagogy-inspired curriculum that integrates social equity and blends unique domestic need with global concerns.

DESENVOLVIMENTO DO ESTILO DE VIDA ATIVO NA CHINA: LIMITAÇÕES E CONTRAMEDIDAS

ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the reality of the development of the national active lifestyle, clarify its limitations and countermeasures. Methodology: Official data and consultations in updated bibliographic references were employed for the survey of the main problems with a sedentary lifestyle and their possible solutions. Results: The three urgent problems to be solved in public services are the construction of sports facilities, the organization of regular sports activities, and the establishment of sports organizations. Only a few sports have been promoted in concrete operations. Inadequate physical education and deficient essential public services are also factors affecting national health. Conclusion: Building sports facilities and providing environments with sports equipment are not sufficient against sedentary lifestyles. Relevant policies must be implemented along with massive advertising about the benefits of active lifestyles. Continuous orientation of social workers in community sports groups to promote mass participation is also key to health promotion through sports interventions.

Assessing the relationship between service quality, satisfaction and loyalty: the Vietnamese higher education experience

PurposeService quality has been widely recognized as the core value of any higher education institution (HEIs), especially in the context of higher education reform in Vietnam. The paper aims to assess the student’s perceived service quality using SERVPERF scale and to find the relations between perceived service quality, satisfaction and loyalty in one public university in Vietnam.Design/methodology/approachThe self-structured questionnaire using SERVPERF scale was administered to 350 students currently attending full-time courses at the university. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to certify the elementary factors. The regression models were applied to determine the relationship between service quality, student satisfaction and student loyalty.FindingsThe findings revealed the significant relationships between student perceived service quality with satisfaction and loyalty. However, this relationship is mediated by student satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to public university education service and examined the perspective of student as “primary customer”; therefore, generalizing the results to other service industries and other role of student as stakeholder or citizen should be used with caution.Practical implicationsThe SERVPERF scale could be delivered regularly to get the student’s perception on the HEIs performance. The results should be taken for purpose of continuing quality improvement to enhance the satisfaction and loyalty, particularly in the context of highly competitive environment and university autonomous in Vietnam.Originality/valueThis is believed to be the first study in Vietnam with sufficient evidence to support the concept that service quality positively related to students’ satisfaction and loyalty and satisfaction as mediating factor.

New challenges for women workers in Brazil facing the wave of Industry 4.0 technologies

ABSTRACT This paper aims to understand how women’s work tends to be particularly affected by the new wave of Industry 4.0 technologies in Brazil and how public policies could actuate to reduce work gender inequalities throughout this process. We examine the 20 largest occupations for women and cross-check with estimates of automation for the Brazilian labour market from previous studies. We also analyse the women’s insertion in professional fields that have great growth potential. Among the main occupations, we identify a dual trend with high automation chance for jobs that require low or no qualifications and are low paid, and low displacement probability for caring-related professions. Furthermore, even though in Brazil women have higher education levels than men, they are under-represented in STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) areas. We point out that the main challenges for Brazil include the lack of investment in innovation and that gender-aware policies should be designed to overcome structural barriers and guarantee an equal insertion of women and men. Paid parental leave, equal pay for equal work, and public health and education services are essential to overcome inequalities based on traditional gender roles. Unemployment insurance, financial support, and incentives for qualification and requalification, as well as gender parity in educational and research institutions, are key for women to have full involvement in this new digital economy.

Resource Cache Sharing System of Education Information Center Network Based on Internet of Things

The development of the internet of things has spawned new information concepts such as educational information sharing. Due to the openness of the internet of things, all kinds of mobile terminal devices can rely on the internet of things for data communication, information interaction, and resource sharing. Although the development of the internet of things has brought convenience to people’s lives, the internet of things is facing severe challenges in the fields of internal data sharing and cache sharing of educational information. The existing resource sharing systems do not fully consider the problems of privacy, shared data security, and data access control. This paper mainly studies the network integrated resource cache sharing system of the education information center based on internet of things. The data management system of the network education information center is developed on the basis of the school teaching management system and lifelong education public service platform, combined with the actual situation of student information. This paper combines the enrollment and information workflow of the student information management website, analyzes the problems existing in the current workflow, and then uses computer technology to standardize and transform the workflow, realize the information of the built-in resources in the data management, and solve the problems of data cache sharing and data statistics in the management of the education information center. The simulation results show that with the increase in the number of concurrent threads, the average response time of the edge cloud system deployed with two servers is smaller than that of the edge cloud system deployed with a single server, and the cloud system has good scalability.

The Accessibility of Educational Public Service Facilities with Two-Step Mobile Search Taking Hetao District of Ganzhou City as an Example.

By using the two-step mobile search method of time and distance cost combined with Internet map data, taking the old urban district of Ganzhou city as research object, the spatial accessibility of primary and secondary schools from residential sites to residential areas was studied. The research shows that the reachability of primary and secondary schools in the old urban district of Ganzhou city is low, and most of the population fails to enjoy better education resources and the spatial distribution of education resources is not balanced. The reachability of primary education resources is high in geospatial area. The gathering area is the intersection of Ganjiang Street and Jiefang Street. The low-value areas are mainly the southwestern part of Nanwai Street and the northwestern area of Dongwai Street. The reachability of education resources shows a decreasing trend from the center to the surrounding areas. The education resources are concentrated in Ganjiang Street. Compared with traditional methods, the two-step mobile search method using Internet map data can more effectively and accurately reflect the accessibility of residential areas to primary and secondary schools in real time and can obtain the real conditions of traffic and roads more conveniently and also more accurat data acquisition.

Эффективность региональных бюджетных расходов на образование и здравоохранение: оценка с позиции граждан

International comparisons demonstrate that Russia lags behind OECD countries in terms of citizen satisfaction with the quality of public services in education and healthcare. However, traditionally public perceptions of the quality of service delivery are not taken into account when evaluating public expenditures. Given the overall client centricity trend in the Russian public administration, the assessment of public expenditures on the basis of citizens’ satisfaction with the quality of public services is highly relevant. The paper proposes and implements an approach to evaluating the efficiency of public expenditures on primary and secondary education and primary healthcare based on the ratio of citizens’ satisfaction with the quality of public services and per capita expenditures from regional consolidated budgets. The authors demonstrate that citizens’ perceptions weakly correlate with the level and dynamics of budget expenditures on primary and secondary education and primary healthcare services. Thus, citizens’ priorities and expectations are not fully accounted for in the budgeting process. The proposed approach helped to identify Russian regions with high and low efficiency of public spending on primary and secondary education and primary healthcare. It is recommended to use this approach as a diagnostic tool for identifying regions and sectors requiring in-depth public expenditure review and to expand the proposed approach to evaluate public spending from citizens’ perspective in other areas.

Public service values education: A call to service for public affairs programs

ABSTRACT Public affairs programs have long aimed to advance public service education. First defined as preparing public servants for government employment, public affairs programs have expanded to advancing the public interest and governance across all sectors. While modern public affairs programs have become more expansive in how they define public service education and the mechanisms they use to advance education (e.g. applied learning, skills training, professionalization, service learning), they continue to follow a general model of limiting training to those who select into a singular disciplinary track. We outline a new approach to public service education – Next Generation Service – which seeks to cultivate public service education to undergraduates outside the core discipline and across campus. We call on public affairs programs to expand their service to the university and broader community by advancing public service values across campus regardless of major.

Mass Shootings in America: Consensus Recommendations for Healthcare Response.

In 2021, 702 people died in mass shooting incidents (MSIs) in the US. To define the best healthcare response to MSIs, the Uniformed Services University's National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health hosted a consensus conference of emergency medical services (EMS) clinicians, emergency medicine (EM) physicians, and surgeons who provided medical response to six of the nation's largest recent mass shootings. The study consisted of a 3-round modified Delphi process. A planning committee selected 6 MSI sites with the following criteria: the MSI occurred in 2016 or later, and must have resulted in at least 15 people killed and injured. The MSI sites were Orlando, FL, Las Vegas, NV, Sutherland Springs, TX, Parkland, FL, El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH. Fifteen clinicians participated in the conference. All participants had EMS, EM, or surgery expertise and responded to 1 of the 6 MSIs. The first round consisted of a 2-part survey. The second and third rounds consisted of site-specific presentations followed by specialty-specific discussion groups to generate consensus recommendations. The 3 specialty-specific groups created 8 consensus recommendations in common. These 8 recommendations addressed readiness training, public education, triage, communication, patient tracking, medical records, family reunification, and mental health services for responders. There were an additional 11 recommendations created in common between 2 subgroups, either EMS and EM (2), EM and surgery (7), or EMS and surgery (2). There are multiple common recommendations identified by EMS, EM, and surgery clinicians who responded to recent MSIs. Clinicians, emergency planners, and others involved in preparing and executing a response to a future mass shooting event may benefit from considering these consensus lessons learned.

Research Review on Accessibility and Equalization of Public Cultural Services in Chinese Rural Areas

Geographers have conducted a lot of research on the accessibility of public service facilities and the equalization of public services based on the perspective of human-land relationship. The common feature is to analyze the accessibility and equalization of a specific type of public service facilities, to understand the current spatial pattern of service facilities, to evaluate the spatial balance of facility distribution, to identify the scarcity areas of facility supply, and to optimize the overall deployment pattern by selecting sites for new facilities with other measurement methods. In terms of research area, there are more large-scale spatial accessibility studies in favor of urban areas, but few studies specifically focus on accessibility in rural areas; there is also a lack of research on the spatial pattern of equalization based on the rural perspective. From the perspective of public service facility types, medical and education are the main research objects, while cultural service facilities are less involved. Therefore, research on the spatial accessibility and equalization of public service facilities should be extended more to cultural facilities, especially the spatial equity of public cultural service facilities in rural areas. The focus should be on how to visually express the layout of public cultural services as well as comprehensively consider factors such as the location of rural settlements, distance to facility sites, transportation networks, travel modes, and choice preferences. It is suggested to introduce the analysis of multiple quantitative indicators of accessibility into the planning and construction of public service facilities to further strengthen the realism and scientificity of public service facility planning. Reasonable site selection and optimization of layout patterns for public cultural facilities is also a key factor to improve the construction of basic public service system in rural areas.

Artificial Intelligence-Based Family Health Education Public Service System.

Family health education is a must for every family, so that children can be taught how to protect their own health. However, in this era of artificial intelligence, many technical operations based on artificial intelligence are born, so the purpose of this study is to apply artificial intelligence technology to family health education. This paper proposes a fusion of artificial intelligence and IoT technologies. Based on the characteristics of artificial intelligence technology, it combines ZigBee technology and RFID technology in the Internet of Things technology to design an artificial intelligence-based service system. Then it designs the theme of family health education by conducting a questionnaire on students’ family education and analyzing the results of the questionnaire. And it designs database and performance analysis experiments to improve the artificial intelligence-based family health education public service system designed in this paper. Finally, a comparative experiment between the family health education public service system based on artificial intelligence and the traditional health education method will be carried out. The experimental results show that the family health education public service system based on artificial intelligence has improved by 21.74% compared with the traditional family health education method; compared with the traditional family health education method, the health education effect of the family health education public service system based on artificial intelligence has increased by 13.89%.

Decision Tree Model for Educational Services Predicting Children’s Academic Performance by Income Group

Background and objective This study used the decision tree analysis among data mining techniques to determine whether children’s academic performance can be classified and predicted by income group based on factors of educational services. Methods For empirical analysis, data from the 10th Panel Study on Korean Children collected in 2017 was utilized. A F test was conducted to analyze the differences in variables by income group, and a decision tree analysis was conducted on the cost and time of private education services utilized by children to predict their academic performance by income group. Results First, as a result of analyzing the research variables by income group, there was a significant difference in institute time, community center time, institute cost, lesson cost, after-school cost, and culture center cost. Second, as a result of the decision tree analysis that predicts children’s academic performance by income group, it was found that for children in the low-income group, institute cost, institute time, visiting cost, and after-school time were important variables that predict their academic performance. For children in the middle-income group, institute cost, after-school time, and after-school cost were important variables for predicting academic performance. For children in the high-income group, the important variables were institute time, institute cost, after-school time, and after-school cost. Conclusion There was no significant difference in children’s academic performance in the earlier grades of elementary school, but there was a significant difference in the private education service they utilized, which may affect future income gaps as well as education gaps. This suggested the need to diversify and improve the quality of public education services as a countermeasure for the fact that parental income will cause an academic gap among children through private education.

Building MPA Student Competence in the New 4Es through Teaching Cases

Public service education aims to prepare students to serve in the “public interest,” historically encompassing the “3Es” of efficiency, economy, and effectiveness. However, modern public servants must apply practical and moral wisdom to answer calls for administrators to address inequities and advance social justice. The field is thus implored to elevate social equity as a normative foundation and connect it to complementary values—including engagement, empathy, and ethics—comprising a set of “new 4Es” often overlooked in public administration curricula. But how might instructors teach the new 4Es in Master of Public Administration (MPA) coursework? Review of diverse literatures suggests the case teaching method, which assigns narrative case readings putting learners in the role of participant in a realistic dilemma and asks them to make a critical decision, holds promise for cultivating the new 4Es. Through an example of a foundational MPA management course, this article equips instructors with strategies for implementing the case teaching method and connecting cases to each of the new 4Es. The design, delivery, assessment strategies, and preliminary outcomes of the course are discussed. The article concludes with challenges and opportunities for public service educators to adopt the pedagogical approach within their own contexts.

Minimum Wage as Foundation for Dignified Life in the EU

The COVID 19 pandemic has disclosed various pockets of low level of social protection of the EU parts of populations working for the minimum or even sub-minimum salary. This concerned mainly workers and employees in public health-care, education, social and care services as well as the service sector – such as retail, repair, hospitality, trade and small enterprise. The issue of differences in the level of the minimum salary in various member states of the EU has repeatedly come to the fore, posing a question of adequacy of the minimum salary or wage able to secure a life of human dignity across the EU.

The evolution of organizational forms for public service education

ABSTRACT This article investigates transformations in public service education over the past 50 years, specifically: How have organizational forms evolved, and what lessons can we draw from that evolution? The organizational form construct originates in population ecology theory. We draw from a variety of evidentiary sources in answering the research questions, specifically extant literature, quantitative analysis of longitudinal data about organizational forms, and interviews with public service education opinion leaders. Among the findings are that formal structures, program activities and delivery, and the norms that underpin public service education have changed significantly over time. Organization environments influence organizational forms in public service education. Stand-alone university units, typically colleges and schools, offering a comprehensive portfolio of teaching, research, and service are increasing and have become a preferred form for public service education. Educational leaders in US universities should note emerging organizational forms as they seek to adapt to changing environments.

Skill Formation and the Production of Environmental Goods:The Role of Public Education

We construct a model to examine the impacts of an increase in the skilled labor input to public education on the output of final goods, environmental goods, and pollution emissions, in which skill formation is incorporated into the traditional Ricardo-Viner (RV) model. Due to the inclusion skill formation, one of the specific factors (skilled labor) and a mobile factor (unskilled labor) are endogenously determined, unlike in the traditional RV model. We then show that an increase in public education service may have negative effects on the output through changes in the wages of skilled and unskilled labor, as well as the rental rate of real capital, all due to the skill formation process. However, we also show the conditions that must be met in order for public education to promote environmental protection.JEL Classification:F10, F18, Q58

Measures aimed at supporting families during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

This article provides an overview of the main measures adopted by the Italian government to support families during the COVID-19 pandemic. The package of measures included the extension of possibilities to take paid or unpaid parental leave, monetary allowances, and incentives to use remote work. These measures are aimed at ensuring safe working conditions and curbing the spread of the virus, supporting family incomes, as well as maintaining overall economic stability, and avoiding mass layoffs and interruptions in the provision of basic services. Thus, extraordinary parental leave is granted to a wider range of people than “standard” leave, and it provides a higher amount of payments with protection during the leave period from dismissals and with the preservation of the workplace. In cases where the use of leave is not possible, as an alternative measure, funds are provided to pay for child care, and they can be paid during the period of annual paid leave, maternity leave, and parental leave, but they are not provided for remote work and suspension from work. One of their most popular tools is the transfer to remote work, which allows you to ensure the continuity of work in a safe environment and guarantee the combination of work with personal life. All these measures make it possible to compensate for the lack of public and private educational and childcare services, as well as to provide economic support to parents.

Albania’s urban and territorial dimension was a product of the savage communist past and the difficult transition of the country

Albania of the fourth decade of transition presents a series of problems related to the urban and territorial development. This paper analyzes the initial causes of urban and territorial problems, which are correlated to the savage communist past and beginnings of the political and economic transition of the country. At the end of the communist regime, Albania was one of the countries of the socialist camp with the highest level of implementation of the ideology, principles and practices of Stalinist socialism, which made the Albanian political transition very difficult. Lack of democratic heritage, high level of indoctrination of society and especially the ruling elite of the transition, were the main reasons for this delay. The economic transition of the country also presented a strong challenge. The central planning economy, in the last years of its implementation, would fail in many respects. This would bring, not only an extreme poverty of Albanian families in the moments of transition, but also a real lack of economic activities, which in a private management could bring more employment to the population in the future. This general context of the transition would reflect the same difficulties in the transition of territorial governance, as an integral part of the transition as a whole. The liberal and democratization reforms pursued in the early years would include land ownership, buildings, housing, urban planning and development processes. As a consequent, the country has experienced a high decline in the resident population, as a result of foreign emigration. But what influenced the strong changes of the urban, territorial and spatial dimension of the country, was internal migration. This massive internal migration would reshape the territorial model of population distribution across national territory, the spatial structure of the inhabited centers and the urban quality of life in Albanian cities. There are four most important preconditions that would produce this massive internal migration, which originate from the savage communist past and the political and economic transition reforms: the inability of the territorial government to understand its new role in urban and territorial issues; the decline of basic public services (education, health) as a result of the departure of ‘nominees’ from the party-state in cities different from those of their origin; loss of employment of citizens in state-owned, bankrupt, closed or in-the-process–of-privatization enterprises; free movement of citizens and freedom to choose residence. Two would be the main financiers of this construction development that shaped the urban and territorial model of the country, which originate from the political and economic transition reforms: income provided by interaction in the free market of real estate from citizens who had privatized state-owned housing in their use; remittances provided in emigration, after allowing the free movement of citizens outside the national territory.

Research on the Construction of Volunteer Service Team for Family Education in Shaanxi Province

The construction of family education volunteer service team is the key to realize the level of family education public service supply, enhance the coverage of family education services, and promote the high-quality development of family education. It is an important measure to build a socialized family education guidance service system. On the basis of clarifying the necessity of building a family education volunteer service team, this paper deeply analyzes the practical problems in the construction of the family education volunteer service team in Shaanxi Province, and finds that the family education volunteer service team is not perfect and the degree of specialization needs to be improved. And other issues. To this end, this paper puts forward suggestions for improving the construction of the family education volunteer service team.