Abstract

This reflection focuses on the role of the public library in providing leadership to the social construction of cultural needs and values and offering services beyond the concrete demands of the users, and on how ignorance of the library’s potentialities limits the demands made on the public library. The need for a coherent public library project is defended as essential to obtaining the cultural leadership of our community.

Abstract

Many European governments, including Norway, have ambitious educational policies regarding digitalisation. Many businesses and policymakers pay great attention to the use of digital technologies in education in order to meet the future demands for a competent and qualified workforce. Among researchers and policymakers, there is a general consensus that the professional teacher is a key figure for the successful implementation of digital technologies in schools. Many expectations have been placed upon professional teachers regarding the implementation and use of digital technologies. The professional teacher is, to a certain degree, supposed to independently decide how digital technologies should be used in the classroom. This paper discusses what the concept of a ‘professional digitally competent teacher’ may mean in the context of schools. It also argues the need for a greater understanding of professional digital competence, one which takes into consideration various social and cultural aspects with regard to technology, schools and the teaching profession. In unpacking the social and cultural conditions for implementing technology in a professional teaching context, I will draw on concepts from the constructivist understanding of technology, namely, the ‘domestication of technology’.

Abstract

frica’s population is young and growing at twice the pace of other continents. A youth bulge presents a series of development policy opportunities and challenges. In this context, simplistic linkages between the youth bulge, high unemployment, and fragility have gained traction and given rise to a youth policy agenda that targets urban male youth as the problem and emphasizes formal sector development as the solution. This paper questions some of the core assumptions that underpin mainstream perceptions of the linkages between youth, employment, and fragility in West Africa, and presents an alternative analysis. The study will use the language of livelihoods to reflect on youth employment experiences, as livelihoods take into account the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources), and activities required for a means of living beyond traditional ideas of employment, and thus enable a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the realities of many young West Africans. The paper argues that a nuanced understanding of specific groups of young people and their livelihood activities in their specific social, cultural, political, and economic context is necessary to understand how young peoples’ lives intersect with fragility dynamics. The paper aims to highlight that the relationship between youth, unemployment, underemployment, livelihoods, and fragility is far more complex than is often recognized and should not be exaggerated or taken out of context.