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Building permitting is mostly a manual, labor intensive and time-consuming process. Initiatives for streamlining the process are not always helpful since they often fail to address the core problems within the process. A framework for modeling the permitting process can be useful to identify bottlenecks, core challenges and best practices. Hence, the authors aim to demonstrate and validate a previously suggested workflow for permit process modeling using the permitting process in Israel as a test case.

The authors implement qualitative expert interviews for data acquisition. The collected data are then processed for a qualitative data analysis. The results of the analysis are then validated using a focus group workshop in the field of building permits. In the test case the focus group consisted of Israeli experts.

The authors present a detailed overview of the as-is building permit process in Israel and the existing challenges. Through this test case, the authors found that the framework is applicable in different countries and that it can provide valuable insights into the core problems within the process. In addition, application of the same framework in different countries can provide comparable results that would allow the authors to identify best practices.

The major contribution of this work is the development and validation of a framework for building permitting process modeling which can be used to identify existing challenges and bottlenecks in the process. Implementing a structured and unified approach provides an opportunity to easily compare processes in different countries to identify best practices.

The Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as Welfare Reform, implemented, in addition to many other features, a 60-month lifetime limit for welfare receipt. Research to date primarily documents individual-level barriers, characteristics, and outcomes of those who time out. Very little scholarly work considers experiences of mothering or carework after timing out. In this chapter, I ask, what kinds of carework strategies are used by women who have met their lifetime limits to welfare? What do the ways mothers talk about these strategies tell us about the discursive forces they are resisting and/or engaging? Using in-depth interviews at two points in time with women who have timed out of welfare (n = 32 and 23), this analysis shows how mothers’ strategies and the ways they discuss them reveal covert material and symbolic resistance to key discourses – negative assumptions about welfare mothers and a culture of work enforcement – and the conditions shaping their lives (Hollander & Einwohner, 2004). Mothers use carework strategies very similar to those identified in many other studies (e.g., London, Scott, Edin, & Hunter, 2004; Morgen, Acker, & Weigt, 2010; Scott, Edin, London, & Mazelis, 2001), but they provide us with an understanding of carework in a new context. The three groups of strategies explored here – structuring employment and non-employment, protecting children, and securing resources – reveal raced, classed, and gendered labor in which women engage to care for children in circumstances marked by limited employment opportunities and limited state support. The policy implications of mothers’ strategies are also discussed.

The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis of the teacher education program focused on the development of the research competence of the preservice teachers, difficulties they encountered in conducting action research and the need to provide them with realistic research opportunities.

This qualitative study made use of data sources taken from observations, feedback sessions, presentations and follow-up written interview of 133 randomly selected preservice teachers.

Findings reported that the multicultural preservice teachers have novice research skills and that the real-world application of their research skills developed their research competence. However, they encountered difficulties creating their action research, such as in the literature review and the research conceptualization.

Aside from the self-reported experiences of the students, the training on the action research mainly focused on the conceptualization, design formulation of interventions and proposal writing stage but were not implemented due to course constraints.

This study can assist policymakers to integrate a mandatory research course as part of the curricular offerings and for the university to create space for students to practice their research skills based on real-life problems in the basic level institutions.

Understanding the challenges, difficulties, and basic competence in the research development of the preservice teachers would strengthen the research practice of the future teachers for evidence-based teaching in the schools.

The limited literature focus on the development of research competence on teacher education students using action research, including the difficulties that university students experience in doing research based on a societal context.