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Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are either in the public domain or published on an open licence which permits various forms of redistribution, reuse and repurposing. Many organisations and higher education institutions around the world are using such resources, and anecdotally many believe this is supporting innovations in practice. However, there is scant research into how such innovations should be understood or evaluated conceptually. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework that can describe and evaluate innovative practice as well as results from a study of 44 cases using this framework in the context of the ENCORE+ (European Network for Catalysing Open Resources in Education) project (2021-2023). This conceptual framework provides a rich qualitative description for instances of innovation which use OER. Our examples cover many countries, including Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, UK, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Kenya, the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, USA, and Zanzibar. The sample includes organisations of all sizes and maturities of implementation. This allowed us to differentiate OER value propositions for a range of stakeholders at different levels of maturity of OER use. We explore whether variables such as the size and maturity of an organisation influences innovation strategies and the perception of stakeholder relationships. Our data indicates four elements to the development of OER value propositions as innovation vectors. Firstly, OER value propositions tend to be transformative, and focused on modifying or redefining pedagogical activity. Secondly, they are practical, targeting users/providers and influencing behaviour in direct and achievable ways. Thirdly, OER users and advocates emphasise observability, simplicity and compatibility as key aspects for communicating OER value propositions. Fourthly, OER innovation is aspirational in that greater maturity of organisations using OER sees the OER value proposition widened to include more stakeholder types.

The higher education efficiency evaluation model using the data envelopment analysis method has interested many researchers. This paper uses bibliometric analysis on publications extracted from the Scopus database to provide a comprehensive overview of research publications on the measurement of higher education efficiency based on data envelopment analysis: its growth rate, major collaboration networks, the most important and popular research topic. A total of 169 related publications were collected and analyzed from 1988 to 2021. The analysis results show that: Publications published every year have increased sharply in the last six years; The quality of publications is relatively high as publications tend to be published in journals with high-ranking indexes; Countries with the most influence in studies on this topic are: Italy, China, Spain, the USA, and the United Kingdom; Authors with the most influence in this research direction are Agasisti T., Abbott M., Doucouliagos C., Avkiran N.K., and Johnes J.; The research cooperation among countries and among affiliations is not strong. Finally, the paper has provided recommendations for future studies based on the findings.

The various possibilities that social media offers to language learners and teachers have long been recognized by researchers within the field of language instruction, and many studies have been carried out in an attempt to address and unpack its potential contributions. This paper aims to review such research on the use of mainstream social media in language teaching and learning published in "Computer Assisted Language Learning," a top tier (i.e., Q1) journal indexed in major citation index systems (e.g., Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and Scopus), between the years 2016-2020 inclusive. For the purposes of the study, a total of 23 articles that meet the selection criteria is reviewed and presented in five sections. The first section deals with the majority of the articles, which are found to be on the use of social networking in language teaching and learning. In the following sections, studies on the use of videoconferencing, wikis, blogging and forums are discussed. Collectively, the studies reviewed in this paper outline a critical role for the use of social media in language instruction and the study aims to provide valuable insights for researchers, teachers and learners.

Previous research on bilingual mathematics education has proposed that as children "language mathematics" they use multiple sources of meaning. In this paper, we focus on lexical inventions--bilingual children's made up words that are not formally defined or used but follow the phonology and morphology of a language--as a source of meaning. Consistent with tenets from translanguaging, we recognize lexical inventions as a creative language practice defying idealized language norms. A raciolinguistic theoretical perspective informs our interpretation of children, teachers, and researchers as listening subjects. The purpose of this paper is to explore how mathematical lexical inventions can prompt a translanguaging space where children, teachers, and researchers resist listening subject positions that predispose them to listen for predetermined language practices. Drawing on two lesson transcripts, one from a fourth-grade English-immersion classroom in Colombia and one from a third-grade Spanish-immersion classroom in the United States, we used moment analysis in translanguaging spaces to identify spontaneous and critical moments where lexical inventions prompted mathematical explorations. We argue for adopting listening subject positions as learners of transgressive language practices that are part of interactions between children and mathematics.

In this work, a bibliometric analysis of the investigations of the last 54 years focused on the teaching of topology and its applications in the learning of other areas of knowledge was carried out. The articles that appear in the SCOPUS database were taken into account under the search criteria of the words topology and teaching, connected with the Boolean expression AND in the search field ABS. As a result, 329 articles were obtained which, based on the PRISMA methodology, were reduced to 74 papers. In them publication trends, impact of publications, citation frequencies, among others, were compared. In addition, its use was identified for learning topology at different levels of training, areas of knowledge where this discipline is most applied and strategies used to teach these applications.

Purpose: This study aims to identify the strategic leadership and change management used to obtain the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accreditations as well as the research development on AACSB in the past decade. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a systematic literature review following Petticrew and Roberts' study. The articles were limited to empirical studies published from 2013 to 2022, taken from the Dimensions AI database. Findings: The findings suggested that two leadership styles were used to obtain AACSB accreditation: dominance-oriented transformational and financial leadership, alongside three traits of academic leaders: commitment, engagement and encouragement. Additionally, three change management models/processes were found in the articles: teaching evaluation framework, temporary isomorphism and authenticity. Finally, they discovered that the object of the studies on AACSB accreditation had been narrowed down from the organizational level to smaller objects consisting of schools' identity, teaching, learning and business schools' key players. Research limitations/implications: As this study only used Dimensions AI, potential articles related to the topic outside the database could not be obtained. Thus, it limits the scope of the findings of this paper. Practical implications: This study informs academic leaders in business schools about the role of strategic leadership and change management in obtaining AACSB accreditation. Originality/value: Through a systematic scoping review, this study presented a decade of research development on AACSB in addition to the strategic leadership and change management needed to obtain it.

Assessment is a central feature of teaching and learning. It is both complex and challenging in ordinary times, and these aspects are magnified in an online learning environment. Given its central role, it is crucial that its design and purpose is rigorous and robust. This paper presents justification for using interactive oral assessment as an online, innovative, authentic assessment approach that prepares students for professional life, combats plagiarism and promotes academic integrity. It shares findings through four brief case study examples of using interactive oral assessments in computing, education, French literature, and aviation. This study also demonstrates the value of a Community of Practice in developing expertise, confidence, and resources to support the effective application of interactive oral assessment.

While internationalization is among the top strategic priorities of universities and colleges globally, research into the expanse of internationalization in the kinesiology discipline is not well researched. Given this gap, critical consideration of the state and status of the phenomenon is needed. Knowing more about what is being done in the name of internationalization within kinesiology and reflecting on how those actions and outcomes are aligned, or not, with key theoretical guidance is necessary in order to plan for improvement accordingly. For these reasons, this paper first provides a primer on internationalization in higher education, including how the phenomenon has come to be defined as well as key contemporary critiques associated with it. In particular, we highlight Beck's (2012) theoretical concept of 'eduscape' to critically consider the influences of globalization on internationalization within higher education kinesiology as well as Khoo, Taylor, and Andreotti's (2016) principles of intelligibility, dissent, and solidarity to consider the ways kinesiology scholars engage critically with internationalization processes. Presented next is a review of the kinesiology literature that is explicitly focused on internationalization. Then, the results of a pilot survey into the views of National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education (NAKHE) members and other Western kinesiology scholars on internationalization is reported next. The paper concludes with recommendations as to how NAKHE and the broader community of Western kinesiology scholars might best navigate internationalization moving forward. We recommend the complexity-informed and principle-driven approach of inclusive leadership as a means of pursuing cognitive justice in the 21st century.

This practitioner inquiry article examines the role that multimodal literacy plays in the organizing of Latinx immigrant youth in the U.S. Co-written by two of the youth who participated in this research, alongside the fellow immigrant activist who designed and carried out the year-long study, this paper analyzes a subset of qualitative data from the research and argues that young Latinx immigrant organizers are organic intellectuals who, as grassroots educators, mobilize their coalitional multimodal literacies to critically examine the common sense, meaning the dominant and taken-for-granted assumptions, of the immigrant rights movement in the U.S., and transform it into one that is inclusive, intergenerational, and challenging of colonial logics that separate oppressed and racialized communities from each other. Implications include conceptualizing socioemotional relational intuition as a component of multimodality and engaging young Latinx immigrants as grassroots educators whose coalitional multimodal literacies envision and enact a decolonial world.

This paper analyses the current state of postcolonial and decolonial science teaching, based on a systematic review of the literature, with a special focus on the European context. It shows that currently, a very narrow view on postcolonial science teaching prevails, limiting its scope to former colonies. A total of 227 articles published 2013-2022 were identified using meta-interpretation combined with systematic searches. 43 of these articles were selected for the sample and analysed. Included were only articles reporting on teaching practice in regular science classes in secondary school. The analysis identified as the main theme the question of how to coordinate Indigenous knowledge systems and Western science in the classroom. Further, translanguaging and pedagogy of justice are used as approaches toward decolonising science education. One striking finding in the analysis is the absence of de-/postcolonial approaches from European countries. This indicates that teaching practice in Europe might currently not undergo decolonisation. This contradicts Aimé Césaire's observation that both the colonised "and" the colonisers were decivilised during colonialism and need decolonisation [Césaire, A. (1955). "Discours sur le colonialisme" [Discourse on colonialism] (6th ed.). Présence Africaine]. In this article, the different approaches toward decolonisation and an outline of decolonial science teaching for the European context are presented.

EARLI SIG 24, Researcher Education and Careers (SIG-REaC), was founded because increasing interest has emerged within the EARLI community into understanding different aspects of doctoral and post-PhD researcher educational and career development. This special issue brings together the outcome of our first scholarly discussion at the SIG-REaC inaugural meeting in September 2014 in Barcelona. The goal of each of the five co-authored papers is to make visible what has been overlooked, and to attend to methodological considerations in order to draw out future lines of research. As a collection, the papers address multiple levels and issues of researcher education: establishing the multifaceted phenomenon that is researcher education and careers and providing key concepts that others might take up, e.g., informal/invisible curriculum; the personal as a sphere of activity that may collide with the sphere of work; drivers of education that can provide cross-national points of comparison. Further, by identifying gaps in the literature, these papers together lay out an ambitious research agenda in a number of areas related to researcher education. In the process, they provide an extensive list of references well worth exploring since they represent the knowledge networks of over thirty researchers. In this editorial paper the Sig-REac is presented, and the characteristics of the papers, their limitations and some future challenges of researcher education are discussed.

This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP), a therapy based on radical behaviorism, establishes the priority of the therapeutic interaction as a mechanism of change in psychotherapy. Since the first book on FAP appeared in 1991, it has been the focus of many papers and has been incorporated by the community of behavior therapists. This paper is a review of 80 international publications on FAP from 1990 to 2010, including publications from Brazil, the United States, Spain, Switzerland and Colombia. The goal was to analyze how FAP has been treated and developed across these 20 years, and also to propose some directions for further studies. The analysis suggests a diverse range of FAP publications, points to the necessity of more empirical studies with tighter control of variables and objective measurement of data to better understand FAP's process and effectiveness, and highlights the importance of increased communication between international research groups to increase the potential benefits of singular and collective research efforts on FAP. (Contains 2 tables and 7 figures.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify workforce skills that protect an occupation from elimination due to automation technology. Design/methodology/approach: The authors apply a Gaussian process (GP) classifier, based on the level of non-automatable work activities in an occupation, to USA and Colombian occupational datasets. Findings: The authors find that communication, interpersonal relationship management and decision-making skills are most important in occupations that are resistant to automation. Research limitations/implications: The results are based on work activities data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database developed for the USA labor market. This dataset does not capture significant differences in work activities, where they exist, for the same occupation between the two countries. The findings are also limited to Colombia. Readers should be careful to extrapolate the findings outside of this geography. Originality/value: The authors discover that automation is likely to be a global phenomenon that can only be slightly mitigated by cultural and political factors.

Over the last two decades, education privatization has become a widespread phenomenon, affecting most education systems and giving place to a consistent increase in private school enrolment globally. However, far from being a monolithic phenomenon, privatization advances through a variety of context-sensitive policy processes that translate into multiple policy outcomes. This paper aims at understanding why and how education privatization unfolds in a broad variety of settings and, to this purpose, examines the different manifestations of education privatization on the light of Cultural Political Economy (CPE). The conceptual and analytical tools provided by CPE prove to be particularly well suited to explore such a multi-faceted and multi-scalar phenomenon. CPE has helped us to capture the intersect and tension between different drivers (global and local, material and ideational) of education privatization through the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention. On the basis of a systematic literature review methodology, encompassing 227 research papers, the article identifies and systematizes six different paths towards education privatization--understood as groups of frequently associated circumstances, mechanisms and courses of action leading to privatization. Conceived as ideal types, these different paths ultimately allow for a richer understanding of education privatization and show that the international diffusion of education privatization norms and discourses is far from producing policy convergence at a global scale.

Social capital has recently emerged as an effective approach to rethink schools as wider learning ecosystems where students, teachers and families have greater access to learning resources through social interaction. Literature has not provided research-based assessment tools that document school leaders' abilities to weave social relationships between actors within the school and across the community. This paper presents an international experts' validation of the SchoolWeavers Tool, an online resource that supports school leaders to assess the health and potential of their school ecosystem and provides meaningful feedback to weave social and professional capital and lift learning opportunities and educational goals. Theoretical validation was conducted in the first round by 15 experts from 8 countries with prior experience in network leadership in education, and in the second round, with 54 school actors from the same 8 countries. The final model provides an internationally validated tool that supports school leaders' capacities to improve collective effectiveness, internal and external collaboration, innovation and equity. Furthermore, the Tool creates research opportunities by allowing school leaders and researchers to collaborate and support systemic impact and sustainable improvement.

In the last decade, doctoral education has undergone a sea change with several global trends increasingly apparent. Drivers of change include massification and professionalization of doctoral education and the introduction of quality assurance systems. The impact of these drivers, and the forms that they take, however, are dependent on doctoral education within a given national context. This paper is frontline in that it contributes to the literature on doctoral education by examining the ways in which these global trends and drivers are being taken up in policies and practices by various countries. We do so by comparing recent changes in each of the following countries: Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, the UK, and the USA. Each country case is based on national education policies, policy reports on doctoral education (e.g., OECD and EU policy texts), and related materials. We use the same global drivers to examine educational policies of each country. However, depending each national context, these drivers are framed in considerably different ways. This raises questions about (1) their comparability at a global level and (2) the universality of the PhD. Also we find that this global-local nexus reveals unresolved tensions within the national doctoral educational frameworks.

This paper has as its aim to analyze how CityVille, a videogame hosted on Facebook and oriented to the construction of a virtual city, can favor collaboration between gamers along with the exchange of strategies, equally contributing to learning transfer and skill acquisition. The first step consists in identifying the opportunities which the said game can offer in order to develop skills and promote learning formats linked with planning and resource management, after which a presentation is made of the opinions expressed by a sample of gamers (N = 105)--belonging to the Fans-CityVille community--about the priorities established by them to communicate with their neighbors and the skills that they believe to have acquired playing this game. 85.7% of them state that they communicate with others to share strategies and expand their city. Unlike women, who value collaboration, men prioritize competition. Designing their city has enhanced a number of gamer skills in different proportions: creative skills (71.4%); organizational ones (68.0%); skills associated with decision-making and problem-solving (67.0%); and interpersonal skills through interaction with others (61.9%). The CityVille game mode favors skill development and helps to create a ludic atmosphere of collaboration and optimal strategy exchange through communication between neighbors by strengthening their mutual relationships. Its formula moves away from the often-criticized competitive practices of other games.

The paper examines if there has been an increase in the attention paid to social and environmental issues (SEI) in accounting curricula. Using schools participating in the Aspen Institute's Beyond Grey Pinstripes (BGP) program, we measure the increase in the number of accounting courses incorporating SEI across the biennial application years of 2005, 2007 and 2009. We also examine the percentage of SEI coverage in accounting courses between 2007 and 2009. Our findings suggest that there was not an appreciable increase in the number of accounting courses dealing with SEI between 2005 and 2007, but that the increase was significant during the period from 2007 to 2009. Further, the increase over the four-year period from 2005 to 2009 was also significant. In addition, there is a significant increase in the percentage of SEI coverage in accounting courses between 2007 and 2009. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Purpose: Determining the attributes of effective business teachers is critical to schools as they strive to attract and retain students, assure learning, obtain and maintain reputation and accreditations, and place their alumni in the competitive job market. The purpose of this paper is to examine students and faculty perceptions of teaching effectiveness in five culturally disparate countries: Colombia, France, Lebanon, Sweden, and the USA. Design/methodology/approach: A survey was designed based on previous research complemented by an extensive literature review as well as personal communications with faculty in different international business schools. The survey considered 39 teaching attributes related to three specific dimensions: class delivery, class preparation and design, and instructional traits and personal characteristics. The survey targeted students and faculty from seven business schools located in five countries. Findings: This study offers new conceptual and analytical analyses from a cross-country comparative perspective. Rankings of the importance of perceived teaching attributes for both major groups involved in the teaching of business, faculty and students, are reported. The attributes are also ranked by teaching taxonomy and examined across countries. Practical implications:This study provides practical results that can be useful to instructors wishing to increase their teaching effectiveness and to universities considering revising their student evaluation forms. Originality/value: This study includes data collected from faculty and students from several schools located in culturally disparate countries and, thus, increases the applicability of the results in a cross-cultural manner and provides implications for practice internationally.

With the Program for International Student Assessment and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study surveys, competency assessment became an important policy instrument in the school sector; only recently has international competency measurement gained attention in higher education with the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) feasibility study. As AHELO showed, measurement of competencies in higher education is a complex and multidimensional task, which poses great methodological challenges. These challenges arise out of the high diversity of degree courses, study programs, and institutions of higher education. Nevertheless, we need to address these challenges immediately if we aim to create evidence-based high-quality educational systems. This paper overviews the field of international research on competency measurement in higher education. Our analyses revealed a substantial lack of research in this area. Nonetheless, existing studies and assessment practices in various countries provide orientation on how to model competencies based on curricular and professional requirements, design assessments following the assessment triangle, and validate them comprehensively.

This paper examines the decisions and motivations of graduate students in cultural anthropology when defining the field sites and topics of their final projects. The decisions among students at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia are contrasted with those at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States. A review of recent final projects in both universities was conducted, along with a survey and some follow-up questions with students in both institutions. A main difference found is that students at los Andes are more willing to do applied fieldwork at "home", while students at Pittsburgh are far more reluctant to do so and prefer to go to distant fields. This distinction is partly explained by the histories of the anthropologies practised in each locale, and of what have been considered "proper" field sites in cultural anthropology. In particular, a vision of anthropology as an applied enterprise emerged at different historical moments in these two geo-political locations, and those visions are associated with quite different, opposed values today. (Contains 2 figures, 1 table, and 6 notes.)

In this paper, we examine the nature of interest in science as represented in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2006 data. We discuss the interconnections between measures of knowledge, affect, and value as components of interest in science. Working from a perspective acknowledging that many of the models of motivation represented in the literature have been developed in Western countries, we investigated whether the ways that knowledge, affect, and value combine in the structure of students' interest in science might vary in line with historical and cultural traditions. Four countries were chosen to represent contrasting cultural values as defined in analyses of the World Values Surveys and the European Values Surveys--Colombia, Estonia, USA, and Sweden. Models are described showing variations in fit across the four countries. Efforts to increase the attractiveness of science to students should take heed of the fact that all models indicated a central role for enjoyment of science in the paths linking personal value, interest, and current science activities with intentions for future participation in science. Differences in the strength of the associations between science knowledge and interest in science support the proposition that the interconnections between knowledge, affect, and value need to be understood in relation to students' broader historical and cultural context. (Contains 5 tables, 4 figures, and 2 notes.)

The eight contributions to this special issue provide an informative focus on many aspects of peer-based victimization in schools. Often using sophisticated quantitative and analytic procedures, they advance our knowledge in several important domains, pointing out important contextual variables, interactions, and mediating factors in the negative impact that experiences of victimization can bring about. Besides some comments on individual articles, this commentary raises some general issues about this and other research in the area, including the conceptual and definitional issues around victimization and the possibility of supplementing findings with insights from more qualitative methodologies.

The authors summarize the presentations and discussions contributed to the symposium "International Perspectives on Career Development" by members of Group 5, who considered the topic of the structure and organization of career development programs in different nations. A capsule picture of the national setting, primary goals, components, objectives, and implementation strategies is presented. Papers fell largely into 4 categories: (1) national programs with several components; (2) large, but more specific programs, serving a national population; (3) smaller programs serving diverse populations; and (4) focused programs. One theme emerged strongly from virtually every presentation: There is a gap, often profound, between policy or vision and reality. Although every nation about which participants heard had laudable policies and had made genuine attempts to assist its people with life career development, many individuals do not have access to quality, or even any, services.

According to the Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education, more than a half million international students are currently studying in the United States. Over half of the international students are from Asia, both the subcontinent (India is the leading sending nation of students) and the Far East (China, Korea, and Japan leading in numbers sent). Following Asia, 13% of our international students are from Europe, 12% from Latin America, 6% from Africa, 6% from the Middle East, and 1 % from Oceania. Open Doors reports that international students contribute over $13 billion to the U.S. economy. The author believes that the contributions of these students are much more far-reaching than monetary, however. The author stresses that Americans are blessed to have their lives enriched by other cultures and their minds broadened by insightful students. People might have stories about compelling, perspective-changing experiences by or with international students. In this article, the author shares a few of the students that enrich the author's life every day.

This paper compares labor market flows between a developing economy, Colombia, and a developed one, the United States (US). In a comparative framework, we explore measures of labor market flows across dimensions such as firm size, age, and economic sector. This comparison allows us testing, for both countries, a series of interesting hypothesis suggested in the literature, namely the negative systematic relationship between firm size/age and employment growth rate. We find that labor market fluidity in the US labor market is substantially higher than in Colombia and that the churning rate is twice as high for the US market as it is for the Colombian one. We argue that this fluidity gap between the two economies can be explained by, among other factors, the rigid nature of Colombian labour market institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The War on Mexican Drugs is a now international security crisis continuing to threaten the stability between the US and its economically and politically significant southern neighbor. To assess how this conflict has escalated for decades and effectively respond to factors which exacerbate it, it is important to analyze early interactions between the US and Mexico. This paper responds to the historical relationship between the two nations, overviewing how US's early stance toward Colombia and NAFTA geared the US toward ambivalent cross-border policy. It then draws implications for the current security crisis, discussing how aggressive military tactics, the current Colombian state, endemic corruption, and inaccurate intelligence should help shape future policy in the region. Finally, the paper gives seven policy recommendations based on what has and has not worked in these historic interactions and how history should help shape cross-state interactions in the future of US-Mexican relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of colonization in the Chiriquí region of Colombia (now Panamá), conventionally known as one of just two places that he seriously considered with respect to his policy of relocating African Americans. Challenging the standard account of the scheme's demise around October 1862 due to vehement Central American protest, this piece questions whether such a development really took the president by surprise. The two weak threads running through the Chiriquí proposal were its scope for diplomatic upset and the embarrassment that might arise from its corrupt proponents’ links to the administration. The author argues that Lincoln was aware of both issues from an early date – even if they each became more complicated than he had initially realized – but that he made persistent attempts to address them. The administration was also more concerned about the ramifications of divisions within Colombia than the widespread isthmian outcry at colonization. Lincoln accordingly tried to place colonization policy on a sounder diplomatic and legislative footing as it became apparent that his contract with a domestic businessman also carried international implications. Yet ultimately, it was the Chiriquí venture's corruption that killed it when the president discovered that it went all the way to the cabinet. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The evaluation of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) systems is a highly recommended strategy for enhancing their effectiveness and quality. This paper describes an evaluation of EIA in Colombia, using the model and the control mechanisms proposed and applied in other countries by Christopher Wood and Ortolano. The evaluation criteria used are based on Principles of Environmental Impact Assessment Best Practice, such as effectiveness and control features, and they were contrasted with the opinions of a panel of Colombian EIA experts as a means of validating the results of the study. The results found that EIA regulations in Colombia were ineffective because of limited scope, inadequate administrative support and the inexistence of effective control mechanisms and public participation. This analysis resulted in a series of recommendations regarding the further development of the EIA system in Colombia with a view to improving its quality and effectiveness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Sectoral concentration of exports has been a longstanding matter of concern for policymakers in developing countries. According to economic theory and recent empirical evidence, improved market access through trade agreements is likely to favor export diversification. In this article, it is assessed whether this has been the case for Colombian exports to the United States and whether an FTA with the United States would help Colombia diversify their exports. We find that lower tariffs have indeed favored exports of new products from Colombia. Predictions suggest that the FTA is likely to induce further diversification, but only up to a certain point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]