Professional Criteria Research Articles

Backing Australia's Future: Teaching and Learning in Social Work

It is universally expected that universities will strive for quality in teaching and learning. Over the past 25 years, massive changes to higher education have impacted on these institutions. We now have a mass higher education system, a knowledge-based economy, increased technology, and the internationalization of education accompanied by increased student enrolments and political expectations of enhanced graduate outcome measures. These changes pose challenges to developing, updating, and improving the quality of teaching and learning. This new policy environment confronts social work educators as they determine how best to deliver quality professional education. The present paper discusses the concepts underpinning the Australian government's paper Our Universities: Backing Australia's Future as a background to exploring the tensions arising in current professional expectations and criteria for social work programs as they make the transition from old to new paradigms in classroom teaching and field education.

Crónicas periodísticas: relatos e inmigración

In this study, immigration is a pretext giving a point of focus in order to analyse in depth the narrative used in interpretative journalism. The message is analysed as the centre of informative activity and also as the news report which narrates, explains and shows a reality selected by professional criteria. The study of a selection of articles on immigration in the Canary Islands in 2006 fulfills the main objective of recognizing in this genre the essential features which give identity to and guarantee the future of the news story as the nucleus of journalistic credibility. In addition, the study contextualises the situation in one small part of immigration, which affects around 195 million people worldwide, giving a journalistic point of view to the context opened by different social disciplines for the revision of the concept of citizenship.

Consent probability

The quality of a risk analysis depends on the quality of its constituent probabilities, which are often subject to doubt. The passe (but still widely accepted) dichotomy between subjective and objective probabilities is shown to be inadequate for decision making. Invoking Karl Popper's three-world ontogeny, two other concepts of particular relevance to engineering decision making are introduced: judgemental probability and consent probability, which should satisfy the professional criterion of 'due diligence'. Criteria are suggested to help assess the quality of given probabilities.

Moral capacity and its dilemmas

The book contains an interesting collection of essays focusing on the definition of moral capacity and the problems involved in determining whether a particular individual or a particular category of individuals has moral capacity. The book is divided into three parts. Part one discusses problems with the definition of moral capacity and various challenges to the concept. Part two carries the title ‘‘Professional Morality and Criteria for Health Care Decision’’. Part three discusses categories of individuals whose moral capacity is in question. The book does not systematically discuss q\uestions of moral ontology and epistemology. These questions are, however, implicit in the various conceptualizations and criteria for moral capacity presented in the book. As is to be expected, the various authors in the book take different standpoints with regard to these basic issues. It would have helped the reader if these differences in fundamental starting points had been made more explicit and their implications pursued in more detail. There are two questions that crucially influence the issues under consideration. The first question deals with the moral realism – antirealism debate. Is there anything real in the fabric of the world that serves as the foundation for moral capacity? The second deals with the question of reductionism. Is morality a relatively autonomous aspect of human experience that can serve as the basis for explaining human behavior? Or are moral phenomena to be explained in terms of some other aspect? Reductive explanations of moral phenomena assume that moral phenomena are not ontologically basic but need to be explained in terms of nonmoral data and principles. The nonreductive view of morality assumes that

Joint optimization of hardware and network systems

Multiple combinations of hardware and network components can be selected to design an information technology (IT) infrastructure that satisfies requirements. The professional criterion to deal with these degrees of freedom is cost minimization. However, a scientific approach has been rarely applied to cost minimization, especially for the joint optimization of hardware and network systems. This paper provides an algorithm combining hardware and network design issues in a single cost-minimization problem. The algorithm is empirically verified with a database of costs that has also been built as part of this research. Results show how a joint cost-minimization approach provides significant cost reductions with respect to the separate optimization of hardware and network sub systems. This indicates that the generally adopted divide et impera professional principle can be cost inefficient with respect to a rigorous scientific approach. Sensitivity and scalability analyses show that the algorithm's results are also robust and do not involve cost disadvantages over time.

Les carrières des directeurs d'hôpital

Hospital directors constitute a statutory profession in the French sense. Analysis shows how the link has slowly been forged between a career in the sense of rank or hierarchy and one based on professional experience. Historically, career management can be divided into three periods : first a pre-bureaucratic period characterised by the mobilisation of a professional group which, between 1941 — 1969 continually demanded improved status (the competitive examination for access to the profession had no real impact on the constitution of the professional body and there was no definite career profile); then, during the bureaucratic period, from 1969 to 1988, a hospital policy led by the state was gradually put in place, along with the constitution of a true career model (recruitment by an effective, impartially marked competitive examination, and the appearance of differentiated functions); and finally a third period under the banner of modernisation and the adoption of the categories of new public management : from 1988 onwards, career strategies and profiles became diversified and a recognition of competencies slowly emerged. Although this last period has continued to align itself along the bureaucratic rationale of a statutory career, it now takes into account the career itself, assessed in terms of the posts occupied. So far, whatever opposition may exist between these two notions has been overcome thanks to the fact that the corps of hospital directors has been in control of the production of its elites and that the recognition of competence has been based on professional criteria.

Toxicologie d'urgence. Quelle réglementation ?

In France, basic medical emergency services are mainly provided by public hospitals (88% for the year 2001). The way emergency cases are managed is regulated by various official governmental decrees or memoranda. Emergency units are organized into three different emergency units: Admissions and Emergency Care (SAU), whether a Local Admissions Unit, for Treatment and Emergency Guidelines (UPATOU) or Specialized Emergency Satellites (POSU). Each unit must contain a test laboratory and each must adhere to the Standard Guide for the proper execution of analyses (GBEA). In addition, there are specific laws for blood alcohol determination or toxicological expert evaluation. Most of these laws are rather out-dated. Nevertheless, for the past three years many new texts have been adopted. Since October the 1st 2001 drugs of abuse screening and determination have been performed within the framework of twelve highway traffic laws. On December the 24th 2002, drug facilitated crime (sexual assault, robbery) a further official decree established guidelines for both medical and analytical personnel regarding toxicological investigation to be taken into consideration in cases of psychoactive drug administration without the victim's knowledge. The authors stress that forensic toxicology is quite different from clinical toxicology as regards professional criteria and legal characteristics.

ACCF/AHA/HRS/SCAI Clinical Competence Statement on Physician Knowledge to Optimize Patient Safety and Image Quality in Fluoroscopically Guided Invasive Cardiovascular Procedures

ACCF/AHA/HRS/SCAI Clinical Competence Statement on Physician Knowledge to Optimize Patient Safety and Image Quality in Fluoroscopically Guided Invasive Cardiovascular Procedures

Using Organizational Mission, Vision, and Values to Guide Professional Practice Model Development and Measurement of Nurse Performance

An organization's mission, vision, and values statements are the guiding forces behind the institution's administrative strategic planning and performance assessment activities. Linking nursing professional practice model components and performance evaluation criteria with each of these foundational documents assures that their values, beliefs, and intentions are evident in daily work life.

A Cost-Oriented Approach for the Design of IT Architectures

Multiple combinations of hardware and network components can be selected to design an information technology (IT) infrastructure that satisfies organizational requirements. The professional criterion to deal with these degrees of freedom is cost minimization. However, a scientific approach has been rarely applied to cost minimization and a rigorous verification of professional design guidelines is still lacking. The methodological contribution of this paper is the representation of complex infrastructural design issues as a single cost-minimization problem. The approach to cost-minimization is empirically verified with a database of costs that has also been built as part of this research. The paper shows how an overall cost-minimization approach can provide significant cost reductions and indicates that infrastructural design rules previously identified by the professional literature can lead to sub-optimal solutions.

Los medios de comunicación y la formación de la agenda pública

The mass media filters, structures information, emphasizes some issues and omits others. With this mechanism it creates a powerful symbolic effect on society, as it structures and shapes the image of reality that people have in relation to public events. This ability to define the public agenda has been called the agenda-setting hypothesis. This article reflects on the mechanisms the mass media has in order to turn a fact into a public issue and the devices it uses to create a meaningful symbolic context that gives the issue a socially intelligible meaning. It also investigates the professional criteria or the “newsability” criteria that determine the selection of the parts of social reality that are taken by the mass media to be presented as social problems of public interest.

Teachers' assessment of students' research skills

Today, teachers are expected to develop complex skills, such as research skills, in their students while implementing new views on learning and teaching and using authentic assessment strategies. About these new assessment strategies there is much debate and teachers are vulnerable in using them. We studied upper secondary education natural and social science teachers' practices using two surveys and two rounds of expert panel judgement on teacher‐submitted assessment‐related material and information. Our study shows that there are grounds for concern regarding the clarity of teachers' assessment criteria, the consistency between teachers' goals, assignments, and criteria, and the validity and acceptability of teachers' assessment practices. The extent to which it is justifiable to judge teachers' assessment practice by professional quality criteria is discussed, and suggestions are given as to the main quality criteria for formative and summative assessment and as to ways in which teachers could improve their assessment practices.

Agents or Trustees? International Courts in their Political Context

In international relations applications, theorists employing Principal-Agent (P-A) theory have posited that the fact of delegation defines a relationship between states (collective Principals) and international organizations (Agents) where recontracting threats are the predominate way states influence IOs. Developing a category of delegation to international Trustees, I argue that recontracting tools will be both harder to use and less effective at influencing the Trustees. Trustees are 1) selected because of their personal reputation or professional norms, 2) given independent authority to make decisions according to their best judgement or professional criteria, and 3) empowered to act on behalf of a beneficiary. These three factors account for the different politics between Principals and Trustees, a politics aimed at either keeping issues outside of the domain of the Trustee or at rhetorically engaging the Trustee's authority in an effort to persuade the common beneficiary whose loyalty and respect both States and the Trustee seek. In explaining why recontracting threats are not central to Principal-Trustee relations, the analysis provides a theoretical basis to question the rational expectations claim that ICs are tailoring their decisions to reflect the wishes of powerful states and avoid adverse recontracting.

Stylistic directions in Stevan Hristic’s oratorio Vaskrsenje, Resurrection: The question of crossroads-traditions in Serbian music at the beginning of the twentieth century

Vaskrsenje (Resurrection) which was composed by Stevan Hristic (libretto Dragutin Ilic) was a first oratorio in Serbian music. The libretto was published in a journal Odjek (Echo) in 1909, with the first performance in 1912 at the Belgrade National Theatre. During the period 1909-1912, the young composer studied church music in Moscow and Rome. He studied with Dom Lorenzo Perosi in Rome, who was a director of the Sistine Chapel at the time, and a leading composer of church music. Perosi also composed two oratorios with the Resurrection as a subject-matter. His stay in Rome, as well as the encounter with the contemporary Italian style of church music left a strong impression on Hristic and his later opus. The oratorio Resurrection is freely permeated with both romantic and impressionist elements, hence the impression of the typically Western fin-de-si?cle style. Compared to Serbian performances until that time, Hristic?s work represented a complete novelty in its style and genre; it was considered as one of the first works of Serbian musical Modernism. Despite the audience?s positive reception, the oratorio was faced with a highly negative criticism of Jovan Zorko and Miloje Milojevic. Both of them criticized Hristic for not having composed the work in the spirit of "national music". Hristic defended his poetics claiming that the idea of composing a national music did not comprise the use of folk melodies, but rather composing according to the highest professional and aesthetic criteria. A debate which was anticipated concerning the meaning and the importance of "national" poetics arose as a reaction to Resurrection. This debate remained important in two ways: 1) it remained a "typical" debate for the dynamic development of Serbian music following the World War I and 2) it became the central characteristic of the overall artistic development in Serbia during the interwar period, which was "coming close" and eventually became the part of Europe.

Proxies in the New Political Economy: Caveat Emptor

Some common professional criteria for evaluating econometric tests that use proxies for political, social, and institutional variables as regressors may lull scholars into a false sense of security about specious results. The highly publicized correlations between income and economic freedom based on the economic freedom indexes supplied by the Fraser Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House are used as illustrations. Because these correlations bear strong resemblances to one another, most economists would consider them mutually supportive. Yet this is not so, implying that mutual resemblance and consistency are not criteria for judging econometric results. (JEL B49, C19)

Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Challenging the Property Rights Paradigm in Botswana

Recent work in international studies and comparative politics scrutinizes the relative importance of ideas, interests, and institutions as sources of policy change. A growing body of scholarship identifies ideas as the main causal factors, influencing perceived interests as well as perceived policy options. Others contend that policies can best be understood as products of institutions. Neither explanation can account for both policy choice by politicians and the implementation strategies of administrators. In Botswana, the use of professional criteria for hiring and advancement encourages adherence to international professional norms within the bureaucracy, but electoral competition gives politicians more reason to be attentive to local political concerns. The institutions that define relations of authority among actors with different motivations shape the outcomes of policy choice and implementation. Institutions influence the attentiveness of policy‐makers to ideas when making decisions, the degree of attention particular policy‐makers give to ideas from particular sources, and the degree of acceptance that ideas must achieve to affect policy. Better evaluations of political development can be achieved through attentiveness to the mix of actors involved in policy decisions, the diversity of institutions and ideas that affect their policy preferences, and the relations of authority that shape their relative influence over policy choice and implementation.

'Du und deine Elite!': Leitungskader im Elektroniksektor der DDR-Industrie zwischen fachlicher Qualifikation und politischer Loyalität

This article summarises an in-depth-analysis of the qualification level, political loyalty, and careers of 4.451 higher executives in the electronic industry of the GDR. Data were taken from the ZKDS, the Central Cadre Data base of the Council of Ministers. Electronic industry was one of the few high-tech sectors of GDR economy. Thus, its development was a matter of pres tige for the SED. In order to overcome blatant backward ness, the sector received enormous subsidies. Productivity was to be measured with regard to the world market. It is argued that conflicts between technocracy and the claims of party rule were likely to become more obvious in electronic industry than in many other sectors. The question is raised to what degree recruitment and career patterns of the execu tive personnel were biased by that. Data reveal a high level of formal qualification but also an extraordinary amount of political loyalty (e.g., cf. percent age of SED members). It is shown that - even in electronic industry as a relatively modern and competitive sector of GDR economy - criteria of professionalism were second to political criteria in personnel recruitment and development.

Legal Theory and Practice in Eleventh-Century Italy

As I understand it, Susan Reynolds's article is meant to address the longstanding habit among legal historians of equating professional approaches to the law with the emergence of a school-based study of Roman law. In the course of the twelfth century, she argues, legal practitioners developed their own kinds of expertise that, though less bookish, might have had a practical significance equal to, if not greater than, the learning produced in the schools. Although these observations seem on the mark for Europe north of the Alps, Reynolds errs, I think, in assimilating Italy to this chronological and conceptual schema. Already by the ninth and tenth centuries, there existed in northern Italy a corps of royal notaries and judges who possessed both literacy and legal expertise unparalleled elsewhere in Europe. Distinguished from other laymen by their titles, learning, and even their handwriting, the legal experts already appear to have met the criteria of professionalism generally proposed for the late twelfth century in the rest of Europe.

The role of the UKEMS in the development of testing guidelines.

Twenty years ago UKEMS established a sub-committee to determine the minimal professional criteria that should be achieved to comply with mutagenicity testing requirements in the UK. Recommendations on the conduct of basic and supplementary tests were published in 1983 and 1984, respectively. Despite their local distribution, these recommendations had an impact around the world. Further guidelines for statistical evaluation of mutagenicity test data and revisions to the first two volumes followed. By the early 1990s the mood was for international harmonization rather than national or regional isolation. The processes by which UKEMS had achieved its testing recommendations in the 1980s and early 1990s were successfully employed in the International Workshops for Genotoxicity Testing, of which three have now been held, and made a significant impact on OECD guidelines and ICH guidance. Summary outcomes from the latest meeting (2002 Plymouth Workshop) are given.

Characterization of the occupational noise environment of the Portuguese textile sector

In this study we aim to characterize the occupational noise environment of five large industrial companies of the textile and apparel sector, as well as the audiometric profile of the exposed workers. All individual exposures were classified into three categories: namely (1) acceptable risk: personal noise exposure level below 85 dB(A); (2) moderate risk: personal noise exposure level between 85 and 90 dB(A); and (3) high risk: personal noise exposure level greater than 90 dB(A). It was observed that the majority of the workplaces presented personal exposure levels greater than 90 dB(A), thus involving a high risk of bilateral hypoacusia. In some areas, such as weaving, that percentage exceeded 90%. Workers’ audiometric profiles were analyzed according to the professional disease criteria presented by the Portuguese legislation. An effort should be made for developing Hearing Conservation Programs leading to the implementation of collective and personal protective measures. [Work supported by the Portuguese Institute for Development and Inspection of Working Conditions (IDICT).] (To be presented in Portuguese.)