Digitalisation, globalisation, demographic shifts and other changes in work organisation are constantly reshaping skill needs. This can lead to persistent skill shortages and mismatch which are costly for individuals, firms and society in terms of lost wages and lower productivity and growth. These costs can be reduced through better assessment…

The CEFR encourages teachers to resort to task-based activities in the language classroom. However, some resistance has been offered to this approach, due to lack of appropriate training and difficulty in meeting some basic practical conditions, as well as in finding resources and examples of good practices, as shown in a survey conducted within…

The maintenance management function requires staff to possess a truly multidisciplinary set of skills. This includes competencies from engineering and information technology to health and safety, management and finance, while also taking into account the normative and legislative issues. This body of knowledge is rarely readily available within a…

This book explores the Capability Approach (CA) as an alternative critical lens through which to regard early childhood education (ECE) curricula. The CA framework is a counter narrative to the narrow instrumentalism that reduces education to a mere process of academic skills acquisition for a future workplace. Primarily the book draws on the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that affect the level of job satisfaction that school principals experience and, based on the findings, to suggest policies or techniques for improving it. Design/methodology/approach: Questionnaires were administered to 180 primary school heads in 13 prefectures--one from each of…

This paper examines the perceptions of Greek secondary education teachers on effectiveness in teaching. Through a structured questionnaire, 340 teachers reported their views on the tactics which are considered to contribute to effective teaching and on the behaviour and personal traits attributed to effective teachers. Descriptive and factor…

The stated mission of the Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders (CCBD) includes ''supporting the professional development and enhancing the expertise of those who work on behalf of children with challenging behavior and their families'' (http:// www.ccbd.net/About/OurMission). The stated goal of CCBD's journal "Behavioral…

The purpose of the study was to compare the influences of a training programme's instructional delivery method (synchronous and asynchronous) on Greek in-service physical educators' cognitive understanding on student assessment. Forty nine participants were randomly divided into synchronous, asynchronous, and control group. The experimental groups…

Over the last decade the idea of inclusion of students with disabilities and special educational needs (SEN) in general schools has become increasingly the focus of national and international policies. Inclusive education has also made enormous progress in Greece recently. The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of Physical…

Purpose: This paper aims to present some of the persistent gender issues that cause inequities in teachers' professional development and keep women away from reaching higher levels of educational administration, although they are the majority of teaching personnel. The interest seeks to focus on the under-representation of female teachers in…

The life orientation test-revised (LOT-R) (Scheier et al. in "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology" 67:1063-1078, 1994) is a brief measure for assessing dispositional optimism. The aim of this study was to develop a Greek language version of the LOT-R and to assess the instrument's psychometric properties. The LOT-R was…

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effect of a cross-curricular programme for the teaching of traditional dances on the attitudes and perceptions of Greek pupils in the First Year of Secondary School. At the outset we anticipated that the programme would have positive results in terms of: (a) the pupils' enjoyment of the activity;…

The introduction of the Internet at schools has raised new pedagogical challenges facing educators trying to ensure children's awareness of the possible dangers when surfing the Web. This article aims to investigate how teachers evaluate the possible dangers that students might face when surfing the Net for various educational or interpersonal…

This paper reports on work undertaken within a pilot study concerned with the design, development, and evaluation of online computer science training courses. Drawing on recent developments in e-learning technology, these courses were structured around the principles of a learner-oriented approach for use with adult learners. The paper describes a…

The purpose of the study was to explore the influence of family characteristics (family function and parental authority styles) and core self-evaluations (CSE), in adolescents' career formation. Drawing on the relational framework of Cutrona and Russell, the study examined the mediating role of CSE on the relationship between family and parental…