Information technology investment governance: What is it and does it matter?

Teacher agency: what is it and why does it matter?

The concept of teacher agency has emerged in recent literature as an alternative means of understanding how teachers might enact practice and engage with policy (e.g. Lasky, 2005; Leander & Osbourne, 2008; Ketelaar et al., 2012; Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2013). But what is agency? Agency remains an inexact and poorly conceptualised construct in much of the literature, where it is often not ...

Social Mobility : What is it and why does it matter ?

Macroeconomic uncertainty : what is it , how can we measure it and why does it matter ?

Since mid-2008, the UK economy has faced an unprecedented series of large adverse shocks that have led companies and households to become more uncertain about future economic prospects. These shocks include one of the United Kingdom’s largest ever financial crises, continuing headwinds from the euro-area debt crisis and the implementation of the Government’s fiscal consolidation programme. The ...

What is a genetic test, and why does it matter?

How the term 'genetic test' is defined, matters for social policy. The past few years have witnessed many efforts to enact legal barriers specifically against genetic discrimination. To the extent that information derived from genetic tests receives special protection, both enthusiasts for genetic medicine and those who stress its perils have an incentive to adopt a broad interpretation of gene...

What Is Probabilty and Why Does It Matter

___________________________________________ The idea that probability is a degree of rational belief seemed too vague for a foundation of a mathematical theory. It was certainly not obvious that degrees of rational belief had to be governed by the probability axioms as used by Laplace and other prestatistical probabilityst. The axioms seemed arbitrary in their interpretation. To eliminate the a...