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In the Summer 1981 edition of The Journal of Educational Administration James D. Kaminsky published a philosophical analysis of the celebrated “Freedom and Authority Memorandum” delivered to South Australian public schools in the early 1970s by the then Director‐General of Education, A. W. Jones. In a later edition of the J.E.A. (Winter 1983) Smithson took issue with Kaminsky on several aspects of his analysis. A rejoinder from Kaminsky accompanied Smithson's paper. In this article (which closes off the debate) Smithson seeks to clarify some of the issues debated and, in particular, his own position.

The opportunity to return to some of my thoughts on the relationship of philosophy to the practice of education and the evolution of educational policy provided by Alan Smithson's paper is most appreciated. And, after careful consideration of Smithson's remarks about conceptual confusions and not unmindful of his remarks about factual errors, I believe things are not as bad‐off as he would fear. The Addendum is basically sound and so is its philosophy.

In recent years the credo that small schools are superior to large schools has gained wide, and often uncritical support. The purpose of this paper is to indicate serious shortcomings in the case for small secondary schools as presented in the past several years in South Australia. Moreover, in the light of these shortcomings, the need for a reappraisal of the concept of school is emphasized, particularly in view of the fact that an unwarranted acceptance of the argument in favour of small secondary schools could exert a deleterious effect on secondary school provision.

This paper has five objectives. First, to draw attention to serious weaknesses in Kaminsky's analysis of the South Australian “Freedom and Authority” memorandum. Second, to sketch out how Kaminsky could have presented a more realistic picture of A.W. Jones's position both with regard to the memo, and school governance in general. Third, to show that had Kaminsky pursued this suggested line of analysis he would have found that Jones confused ends‐type policy‐making with technico‐professional decision‐making, which led Jones into error concerning the respective roles of lay people and professionals in educational policy‐making. Fourth, to illustrate how Jones's radical indictment of the lack of “democracy” in Australian schools in the mid 1970s was conjoined with conservative and technocratic decisional proposals. Finally, to suggest that the issues raised in my criticism of Kaminsky and Jones are of crucial importance to all those interested in school governance.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine what it means for students with extensive support needs (ESN) to have opportunities to learn (OTL), why OTL is inexplicably tied to inclusive practices, and the in-school and post-school outcomes when students have OTL. Research will be provided that supports positive in-school and post-school outcomes, when students are provided equitable learning opportunities in inclusive contexts. Given the difference in possible outcomes for students with ESN when they do and do not have OTL, excluding them from general education contexts, where they have the best access to the intended and enacted curricula, is both unethical and limiting to society as a whole.

The purpose of evaluating enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems ought to be to improve the systems' life cycles. In this paper, narratives are proposed as a means of improving ERP systems as a complement to traditional evaluation methods. The potential of narratives is that they can convey meanings, interpretations, and knowledge of the system, which may lead to action. Even though narratives belong to an interpretive research tradition, this paper takes a pragmatic view of evaluation on the basis of three assumptions about evaluation: evaluations should form the basis for action; narratives can make evaluation more relevant; and evaluations should be made with the purpose of improving selection, implementation and use of the system. The conclusion reached is that narratives can advance evaluation practice by providing a richer evaluation picture which conveys meanings not included in traditional evaluations, and improve the use of ERP systems by changing users' mental maps.

Introduction: Public administration has always been at the forefront of promoting sound and ethical values in society. The myriad of events that are shaping our world, such as global warming, deforestation, poverty and economic instability, calls for a shift from government to governance. This change demands a collaborative type of governance on the quest to implement sustainability. Collaborative governance can be initiated by its workforce, who are the individuals closest to the structures of public administration and can act as agents of change in this mission. Thus, personnel need to be equipped with the required knowledge, attitudes and skills, about and for, sustainable development. This can be addressed through education for sustainable development (ESD), a lifelong tool which requires adaption to national requirements, but most importantly to societal needs.

Aim: This research focusses on a longitudinal case study from the Maltese islands, the smallest state of the European Union. Since enacting the Sustainable Development Act in 2012, through which sustainable development has been mainstreamed in the Maltese public sector, never was the need felt to educate public officers for sustainable development. Hence, this research aims at shedding light on the curriculum design process of an education module called ‘Public Administration and Sustainability’ as part of a Bachelor of Art’s programme at the University of Malta.

Method: Framing an educational module in a tertiary institution requires tact in aligning the syllabus, not only to the pedagogical requirements, but also to the place of work. In this exploratory study, two research questions, each linked with a set of original hypotheses are tackled through a pool of data obtained from a variety of methodological tools employed, by analysing two important variables – the curriculum and the student. The former is reviewed through a content analysis exercise whereas feedback from the latter is scrutinised through a questionnaire.

Findings: Data triangulation demonstrates that the curriculum design of the educational module promotes a holistic learning experience, since it integrates effectively the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of the Bloom’s Taxonomy. Furthermore, the different student cohorts share common positive views about this module.

Originality of Study: Previous studies indicate that there is a lacuna in research regarding curriculum design and review, especially regarding sustainable development. This research is significant as it attempts at filling this void by scrutinising closely curriculum design in higher ESD.

Implications: Drawing upon the results, a number of recommendations are provided, among them is ‘The Multiplier Transformation Triad Model’, which portrays the institutional, educational and individual transformations needed to promote sustainability. Moreover, this research might provide more insights about governments’ commitment towards sustainability but should also serve useful to researchers or practitioners in various fields such as public administration, governance, sustainability and even higher education.

This paper seeks to promote a people‐oriented approach to place management. The author asks: Why do we need place management? What can place management do? How are place managers responding? and What should place management do?

The author reviews theoretical problems and the solutions that are implied. The author analyses policy with respect to these theories to provide practical recommendations for place managers.

The author finds that people‐managed places: are developed through use not by function; foster cooperation and collaboration; are inclusive and open to newcomers; and have infrastructure for bottom‐up management.

Although this paper draws upon evidence and policy from the UK, the recommendations are broadly applicable to any location. Place managers should: start with current place users; consider the needs of potential place users; define place‐based rights and responsibilities; encourage collaboration between those with different uses of place; cross boundaries and work with their neighbours; and internalise externalities through place‐making and leadership.

The paper explains and supports the principle of people‐managed places through demonstration with practical recommendations. The paper draws upon the concepts of market externalities, cooperative game theory, social solidarity, cluster theory and emergence, to explain the importance that civil society plays in place management.

Mounting primary full text information into an online database requires journal text be segmented into the proper fields and indexed. The American Chemical Society keyboards its primary research journals for publication directly into a publishing database with all of the fields identified. Using this database, photocomposition software inserts the appropriate typesetting codes based on data type to produce the printed journals. Database building routines use this same resource to create an online full text file that allows for search and display of text based on data type. This dual purpose of the initial keyboarding step affords substantial savings in using the journal information for multiple purposes in electronic publishing. Many publishers of scholarly journal information, however, keyboard their journals with the primary intent of composition for publication in hard copy form. In order to mount these journals into a full text database, their computer composition files must be preprocessed to identify the field elements (authors, text, tables, figures, references, and so on), sentences, paragraphs, and special characters not included in the standard ASCII character set. This paper contains a description of the use of a generalized markup format for primary information that facilitates its conversion into an online full text database or other media for electronic publishing.