From the standpoint of a MOOC practitioner (i.e., a MOOC provider) instead of a rigorous comparative law researcher, this article attempts to analyze the potential legal issues and risks underlying instruction via MOOCs and compare these legal issues and risks between the small jurisdiction Macao and such major jurisdictions as the United States,…

In March 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court decided "Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association," a case addressing the constitutionality of "agency fees" for non-union teachers in California. Although the Court's 4-4 decision in the wake of Justice Scalia's death upheld the constitutionality of agency fees, several similar…

We present enetCollect, a large European network project funded as a COST Action that sets ground for combining crowdsourcing with IT technologies used in areas such as language learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This project tackles a major challenge of bringing together interdisciplinary researchers to foster language learning of…

This paper aims to present the role, values, and legal policy issues facing public Library resources in supporting students to achieve academic success. Research indicates that majority of people that own or work in the Library tend to ignore some of the vital roles, values and legal policy issues paramount to libraries. Some of these issues are…

The authors propose that theoretical confusion and clinical inadequacy regarding child abuse is due, in part, from medical and legal ambiguity concerning child abuse and from dilemmas surrounding social policy and the professional response toward families and children. The dilemmas of social policy (family autonomy versus coercive intervention)…

Providing an extensive, factual account of the controversy regarding the sale of a television station in Bloomington, Indiana, this paper presents a description of the legal issues involved, discusses the correspondence between the author and the purchasers of the station, outlines the justification for filing a Petition to Deny the transfer, and…

The author discusses the legal and administrative concerns, best professional practices concerns, and political concerns related to the use of physical restraint and time out procedures with seriously behaviorally disordered children. Among the points made are that the courts may consider such approaches to be cruel and unusual; that direct…

This paper briefly describes the history of the Golden Fleece Award given monthly by Senator William Proxmire for "the biggest waste of taxpayers' money" in the form of grants for research. It particularly focuses on the case brought by Dr. R. R. Hutchinson who was the recipient of the Golden Fleece Award for his research on the…

In a speech on the current criticism leveled against testing programs, the speaker states that attacks on testing are partially motivated by the public's reluctance to acknowledge unpleasant truths about society's weaknesses and problems. Some of these weaknesses are described as the inadequacy of public education; the incompetence of a portion of…

Five papers from a 1980 conference on normalization reflect contemporary thinking about the principle's implication for mental retardation. G. Dybwad begins with "Normalization and Its Impact on Social and Public Policy," in which he cites progress in the popular attitude towards individuals with retardation. A panel discussion by S. Kaplan, V.…

The legal problems faced by publishers of alternative newspapers are often compounded by the limited availability of the funds they have either for legal defense or for initiating lawsuits. Although both the courts and journalism's professional associations theoretically support the position that the alternative press possesses rights identical to…

The central failure of conventional, or positivistic inquiry has been the inability to handle deception in research and the violation of societal ethics, moral and legal caused by such deception. Moral dimensions include tests for whether the research would be approved by reasonable persons, whether it might pass the test of publicity, and whether…

The new board member will always have concerns about his/her forthcoming trusteeship, such as determining how much time he/she is willing to devote to the job; how he/she should obtain orientation for the job; and what he/she should know about the controversial issues in which the board has previously been involved. In addressing the first of…

Merit pay is now in the midst of a renaissance. Hundreds of school districts are experimenting with some type of performance-based pay system. At least six states have statewide or pilot programs, and the federal government has spent close to $100 million on the Teacher Incentive Fund. Whether such programs will last, encourage the start of…

Opposition to corporal punishment in the United States has increased over the last 2 decades. This paper explores the legal implications of the maltreatment of children in schools, particularly corporal punishment. Despite the general opposition to corporal punishment, several issues must still be resolved. The first of these is one of definition:…