Being the University: Liaison Persons' Reflections on Placements with Off-Site Supervision

Social work as a profession, social work practitioners and organisations, as well as social work educators are under strain due to global, economic, social and political changes and workplace pressures. Field education is recognised as pivotal in preparing social work students for professional practice. As social work practitioners, organisations and social work educators are exposed to external and internal pressures, social work practice learning with off-site supervision is becoming more prevalent. This paper reports on research that explored the experiences of key stakeholders in social work practice learning with external or, in other words, off-site supervision. This paper explores the experiences of university liaison persons who provided supported field education arrangements with off-site supervision. A range of themes have emerged, including reflections about bringing the university to the placement experience, creating student centred placement opportunities, the complexity of connecting the various players and the extra support and resources needed to support placements with off-site supervision. Findings suggest that quality learning experiences are about more than modes of supervision, that placements with off-site supervision increase the workload of liaison persons and that clear models and structures need to be developed to support emerging field education models.     

Annick Laruelle and Federico Valenciano: Voting and collective decision-making

The book ‘Voting and Collective Decision Making’ by A. Laruelle and F. Valenciano provides a critical revision of the theoretical foundations of collective yes-or-no decisions. It is a study of the theory of bargaining and voting power, revolving around a fundamental question: given a committee, what voting rule should be used?     

What I like about living in Hong Kong...

I have been to Hong Kong twice,in spring and in fall,and I have always had a great time.The weather was very nice,so I did some sightseeing.I went to the peak,which is the highest point     

A Special Case of Penrose’s Limit Theorem When Abstention is Allowed

In general, analyses of voting power are performed through the notion of a simple voting game (SVG) in which every voter can choose between two options: ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Felsenthal and Machover [Felsenthal, D.S. and Machover, M. (1997), International Journal of Game Theory 26, 335–351.] introduced the concept of ternary voting games (TVGs) which recognizes abstention alongside. They derive appropriate generalizations of the Shapley–Shubik and Banzhaf indices in TVGs. Braham and Steffen [Braham, M. and Steffen, F. (2002), in Holler, et al. (eds.), Power and Fairness, Jahrbuch für Neue Politische Ökonomie 20, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 333–348.] argued that the decision-making structure of a TVG may not be justified. They propose a sequential structure in which voters first decide between participation and abstention and then between ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, we compare the two approaches and show how the probabilistic interpretation of power provides a unifying characterization of analogues of the Banzhaf (Bz) measure. Second, using the probabilistic approach we shall prove a special case of Penrose’s Limit Theorem (PLT). This theorem deals with an asymptotic property in weighted voting games with an increasing number of voters. It says that under certain conditions the ratio between the voting power of any two voters (according to various measures of voting power) approaches the ratio between their weights. We show that PLT holds in TVGs for analogues of Bz measures, irrespective of the particular nature of abstention.