Identifying and Modelling Trustworthiness Competencies of Cluster Development Agents (CDAs)

While trustworthiness is seen as an important factor in success of cluster development agents (CDAs), its antecedent competencies were not identified. Against this gap, the current study seeks to explore the scope and sequence of CDAs’ trustworthiness competencies, highlighting the importance of paying attention to cultivating those competencies. Conducting a number of semi-structured interviews as well as one Interactive Management (IM) session which was empowered by using Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) software, 6 trustworthiness competencies seem to be important for CDAs were identified, including: Proficiency, Altruism, Acceptability, Ability to alert stakeholders, Expectation identification ability, and Ability to make cooperation. More importantly, the interdependencies amongst those 6 competencies were identified and modelled, shedding light on the priority and weight of each of those competencies as antecedents of CDAs’ trustworthiness. As the theoretical implementation, this study expressed the importance of trustworthiness for CDAs and modelled the antecedent competencies which need to be obtained by CDAs if they are to be trusted by their clients. If a cluster clients do now trust their agent, they should not be blamed. The trustee need to cultivate those pre-requirement competencies if s/he wants to be trustworthy. As the practical implementation, the findings of this study provide a coherent curriculum for enhancing CDAs’ trustworthiness competencies. This curriculum should be implemented by the economic and development organisations who are dealing with training and preparing agents to take role in activating and extending industrial clusters in different countries.

Implementation of the NCTM Curriculum Focal Points: Concept versus Content

On September 12, 2006, the NCTM released a new lens through which to view the content presented in Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM 2000). In Principles and Standards, the Curriculum Principle calls for a mathematics curriculum to be coherent, focused on important mathematics, and well articulated across the grades. This means that an effective curriculum “gives teachers guidance regarding important ideas or major themes, which receive special attention at different points in time. It also gives guidance about the depth of study warranted at particular times and when closure is expected for particular skills or concepts” (NCTM 2000, p. 16). With the publication of Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics: A Quest for Coherence, NCTM has taken a major step toward defining the mathematics that every student should know and be able to do. Where the Principles and Standards presented content across multiple grade bands, this new publication applies the Curriculum Principle to create a specific example of a focused and coherent curriculum, prekindergarten through grade 8.