Researchers and international organisations recognise that the quality of ECEC services is related to a professional and competent workforce. The latter should be part of a "competent system" that is capable of linking staff's initial good education to the possibility of constantly reflecting on ideas and practices. Continuous…

The availability of technological tools is promoting a shift toward more student-centered online instruction. This article describes the implementation of a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) model and the technological tools used to meet the expectations of the model as well as the needs of the students. The end product is a hybrid course with eight…

Employers seek employees who possess soft skills. Employees who do not have excellent soft skills may not experience success in obtaining and sustaining employment. McEwen's (2010) framework for skill-building--introduce, explain, practice, and reinforce--was used to describe activities for enhancing soft skills. Soft skills building activities…

Purpose: Employees' work in innovation processes generates ideas, but more often it serves to create conditions so that new products or services can be effectively produced or delivered. Self-organizational activities involve proactively handling new possibilities, unexpected situations, problems or tasks. The aim of this paper is to provide…

While many studies have sought to understand challenge courses and their benefits, less emphasis has been focused on understanding participants' perceptions of these programmes. In this study, 16 adults working at a dental office attended a one-day challenge course programme designed to teach lessons about co-operation. Data were collected via "in…

Purpose--What is required of job design and production planning, if they are to result in a work group taking a self-starting approach and going beyond what is formally required of it? This paper aims to contribute to group research by testing a theoretical model of relations between job design on the one hand (captured as completeness, demand on…

Effective problem-solving skills are critical in dealing with ambiguous and often complex issues in the present-day leaner and globally diverse organizations. Yet respected, well-established problem-solving models may be misaligned within the current work environment, particularly within a team context. Models learned from a more bureaucratic,…