Showing papers on "Specialization (logic) published in 2015"

The future of knowledge and skills in science and technology higher education

Abstract: This paper begins from the assumption that knowledge specialisation and differentiation will continue to increase, and that these features of contemporary STEM knowledge will increasingly pose questions which science and engineering education must address. Two typical responses are outlined. The first response, the default position, has come to be known as traditionalism, a minimal response that attempts to shore up a high-selectivity, low curriculum change elite template by means of repair services, which is where Academic Development in the universities began. The second response, a ‘progressive’ one reacting to traditionalism, strove to put the learner and the act of learning in the spotlight, inadvertently thereby foregrounding skills and backgrounding the knowledge to be taught and learnt. The paper goes on to discuss de-differentiating features of this second response and argues that this will over time undermine the capacity of the university to deal effectively with rapidly evolving specialisation and differentiation. The paper concludes by considering a third way to address the issue.

Regional specialization and geographic concentration of industries in Romania.

Abstract: There are many studies in the regional economics literature which have approached the issues of regional specialisation and industrial concentration. Regional specialisation depicts the distribution of the sectoral shares in one region, usually compared to the rest of the country, while geographic concentration of a specific industry reflects the distribution of its regional shares. In order to explore the main characteristics and the interaction between regional specialisation and sectoral concentration in Romania and to achieve a better understanding of the topic, we have used “traditional” statistical measures like the Herfindahl Index and Krugman Dissimilarity Index. Concentration of industries and specialisation of regions were measured for the 1996-2005 period on the basis of the Gross Value Added and employment data, by branch and by region, provided by Romanian official statistics.

Linguistic explanation and domain specialization: a case study in bound variable anaphora

Abstract: The core question behind this Frontiers research topic is whether explaining linguistic phenomena requires appeal to properties of human cognition that are specialised to language. We argue here that investigating this issue requires taking linguistic research results seriously, and evaluating these for domain-specificity. We present a particular empirical phenomenon, bound variable interpretations of pronouns dependent on a quantifier phrase, and argue for a particular theory of this empirical domain that is couched at a level of theoretical depth which allows its principles to be evaluated for domain-specialisation. We argue that the relevant principles are specialised when they apply in the domain of language, even if analogues of them are plausibly at work elsewhere in cognition or the natural world more generally. So certain principles may be specialised to language, though not, ultimately, unique to it. Such specialisation is underpinned by ultimately biological factors, hence part of UG.

Role of Smart Specialisation in Financing the Development of Regions in Perspective 2020

Abstract: The aim of this article is to present the role of smart specialization concept in the process of providing funds for regional development. The systematic literature review was conducted in order to identify the role of smart specialisation concept in the process of providing funds for regional development. The methodology followed for the literature review included two main phases: selection and analysis. The article presents: (i) the idea of smart specialisation, (ii) characteristics of the areas of specialisation in the European Union, (iii) the creation of smart specialization strategies in the regions, (iv) the role of smart specialization in financing the development of regions, (v) examples of methodological approaches to identify smart specialisation at the regional level. The research examines the relationship between smart specialisation and process of providing funds for regional development.

Specialised Content Knowledge: Evidence of Pre-Service Teachers' Appraisal of Student Errors in Proportional Reasoning.

Abstract: That the quality of teachers’ knowledge has direct impact on students’ engagement and learning outcomes in mathematics is now well established. But questions about the nature of this knowledge and how to characterise that knowledge are important for mathematics educators. In the present study, we examine a strand of Specialised Content Knowledge, SCK (Ball, Thames and Phelps, 2008) of a group of pre-service teachers in the domain of proportional reasoning. In particular, we were concerned with teachers’ knowledge of evaluation of the plausibility of students’ claims and errors. Our preliminary results indicate that the participants, as a group, had developed a sense of student error but experienced difficulty in explaining the source of these errors.

Augmented Gravity Equation and Incomplete Specialization in Production

Abstract: After several decades of research theoretical foundations of gravity equations are still not well understood. Many studies use gravity equations in its basic form that relates bilateral trade flows to GDPs of trading partners and distance between them. However, to improve the fit of regressions empirical gravity equations are often augmented with other characteristics of trading partners. While the gravity equation in its basic form can be derived from several competing theories that assume complete specialization in production, factor proportions augmented gravity equations are still perceived as having less theoretical justification. The main goal of this paper is to derive augmented gravity equations from models that assume incomplete specialization in production and to provide a theoretical justification for the inclusion of factor proportion measures in empirical gravity equations.

Knowledge Relatedness and Knowledge Space Based on EPO Patents

Abstract: How is knowledge distributed over space and how are different types of knowledge related? These questions have so far received little attention. In this paper we measure knowledge relatedness based on the relationship between individual patent categories by using coclassification information obtained from EPO patents. We also follow specialization of countries and its evolution over the past three decades. We focus on the EU, the United States and China. The objective of this paper is to identify the knowledge relatedness between technological fields and to map knowledge produced in selected countries. For visualization of knowledge relatedness network analysis has been used.