Digital Diversity: Youth, Equity, and Information Technology is about youth, schools, and the use of technology. Youth are instrumental in finding novel ways to access and use technology. They are directly affected by changes such as the proliferation of computers in schools and elsewhere, and the increasingly heavy use of the Internet for both information sharing and for communication.The contributors to this volume investigate how the resources provided by information an...

In At Risk, Karen J. Swift and Marilyn Callahan examine risk and risk assessment in the context of professional practice in child protection, social work, and other human services. They argue that the tools, technologies, and practices used to measure risk to the individual have gone unquestioned and unstudied and that current methods of risk assessment may be distorting the principles of social justice.Central to this study is an examination of the everyday experiences of...

In today's colleges and universities whether students succeed depends in large part on access to effective services that can support and guide them in pursuit of their educational goals. Policy and practice in the field of student services has been largely based on professional literature from US sources. Donna Hardy Cox and Carney Strange offer the first comprehensive description of professional student services in Canadian colleges and universities from the perspective of the practitio...

Child protection is one of the most high profile and challenging areas of social work, as well as one where children’s lives and family life are seen to be at stake. Vital as child protection work is, this book argues that there is a pressing need for change in the understanding and consequent organization of child protection in many English speaking countries.The authors present compelling evidence from around the globe demonstrating that systems across the Western world are faili...

Early childhood education is critical for preparing children for success in formal school settings, and as such, is a major concern throughout the world. This volume brings together ground-breaking research in this area to help practitioners, students, policy makers, curriculum designers, and intervention program developers understand the latest ideas and advances in the field.Recent Perspectives of Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada centres on three key themes. ...

Studies of public policy in Canada are traditionally narrow, focusing on a particular policy area or jurisdiction without giving consideration to the significant procedural commonalities that can be identified across the public policy spectrum. Canadian Public Policy provides the first comprehensive, theoretically informed, empirical evaluation of the development of public policy in Canada. It represents the culmination of a fifteen-year program of large-scale primary research int...

Although the field of deliberative civic engagement is growing rapidly around the world, our knowledge and understanding of its practice and impacts remain highly fragmented. Democracy in Motion represents the first comprehensive attempt to assess the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement. Organized in a series of chapters that address the big questions of deliberative civic engagement, it uses theory, research, and practice from around the world to explore what we ...

This first full account of curriculum policy formulation in 1990s Ontario helps readers understand the real-life experiences of policymakers both within the province and internationally.Having worked as a policy analyst for the Government of Ontario, a public school teacher, and a university professor, author Laura Elizabeth Pinto is uniquely positioned to tackle the key issues of policy formulation: the politics and tensions among different policy actors; the relationships between...

Forming part of the Understanding Organizational Change series, Managing Organizational Change in Public Services focuses on the organizational dimension of change management in public services. Combining aspects of change management theory with ‘real life’ practice in the form of organizational cases from different regions and sectors, this edited collection identifies and analyzes significant issues regarding the development, implementation and evaluation of public service chan...

Many tools are on offer to politicians and other policy-makers when they seek to change policy outcomes. Often they choose to concentrate on one set of tools, but fail to see the costs as well as the benefits – and may not consider the available evidence regarding their effectiveness. This innovative new textbook clearly sets out the main tools of government, and provides an analysis of their efficacy when applied to public problems.Each chapter examines the relative benefits and c...

Public services touch the majority of people in advanced and developing economies on a daily basis: children require schooling, the elderly need personal care and assistance, rubbish needs collecting, water must be safe to drink and the streets need policing. In short, there is practically no area of our lives that isn't touched in some way by public services. As such, knowledge about strategies to improve their performance is central to the good of society. In this book, a group of leadin...

Grappling with ethical issues is a daily challenge for those working in organizations that deliver public services. Such services are delivered through an often bewildering range of agencies and amidst this constant change, there are fears that a public service ethos, a tradition of working in the public interest, becomes blurred.Using extensive vignettes and case studies, Ethics and Management in the Public Sector illuminates the practical decisions made by public officia...