We present the argument that the meaning of child care and the policies that address it are explicitly linked with national ideologies, work force participation, economic success, and child outcomes. The relationship between family and child care policies is cyclical in nature, with a nation's ideology and vision of family often driving child care…

This book examines the effectiveness and distributive ramifications of the institutions of German skill provision as they functioned at home in the 1990s and as they served as a template for reform in other industrialized countries. The volume relies on multiple sources of data, including in-firm case studies, larger-scale surveys of companies,…

After German unification in 1990, more than 3 million jobs disappeared in eastern Germany and the obsolescence of eastern German capital stock became apparent. Further escalation of mass unemployment was successfully held in check; however, it soon became clear that labor market policies appropriate for western Germany were not, in and of…

Although education and training should be a source of relative advantage for Australia, the competitive benefits expected from the nation's "clever country" strategy have been slow to emerge. When 22 countries including Australia, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, United States, and New Zealand were compared from the standpoint of…

This document contains three papers on challenges facing human resource development today. "In Difficult Times: Influences of Attitudes and Expectations Towards Training and Redeployment Opportunities in a Hospital Retraction Programme" (Sandra Watson, Jeff Hyman) presents reasons behind the low uptake of training and redeployment…

This document contains 95 papers and summaries of 5 poster sessions from an Australian conference on putting vocational education and training (VET) research to work. The following are among the areas covered in the papers: factors affecting VET graduates' employability over time; technical and further education (TAFE) institutes as models of…