Implementing Educational Reform

2021 ◽  

There is constant pressure on governments and policy makers to raise the standard of education, and to develop appropriate curriculum and pedagogies for students. It is no easy task. This book presents eight specific case studies of education reform implementation which capture how the design and implementation choices of policy makers are shaped by national and historical contexts. They offer real examples of the choices and constraints faced by policymakers and practitioners. The cases are a mix of nationally and locally mandated reforms with five examples from nations where the state initiated and guided reforms. The concluding synthesis chapter highlights commonalities and differences across the cases and disparate responses to shared concerns. Providing a breadth of real-world research, it will assist policy makers, practitioners and other stakeholders interested in system change.

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 437-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Stephens ◽  
George Onofrei

Graduate development programmes such as FUSION continue to be seen by policy makers, higher education institutions and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as primary means of strengthening higher education–business links and in turn improving the match between graduate output and the needs of industry. This paper provides evidence from case studies. The findings indicate that the practical application of academic principles in real-world settings provides a useful learning vehicle for academics, graduates and SMEs. Key success factors and strategies for overcoming obstacles emerged from the case studies. In light of these findings, the authors make tentative recommendations to aid the future delivery of similar programmes.


2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Mike Calver

AS Stankey and Allan explain in their concise but informative introduction, “Adaptive management is characterized by both a compelling and intuitive simplicity (we learn by doing) as well as a growing sophisticated and elegant theoretical discourse.” It offers the promise of using policy implementation to improve understanding of natural systems and thereby to direct future changes to policy and practice. The challenge for managers is to identify the operational practicalities that lie between the attractive concept and the theory. The aim of this book is to examine that challenge through case studies of the real-world application of adaptive management in a range of settings, including examples relevant to managers, policy makers and environmental scientists. The approach is not prescriptive, but rather to reflect on experience as a guide to future practice.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Abraham ◽  
Hazel Jones

ABSTRACT With the emergence of new sets of technological tools, university students are now offered more authentic learning experiences involving real-world, complex problems and their solutions. This focus on problem-based activities and case studies has produced a learning environment that is inherently multidisciplinary. This paper reports on the development of a scaffolded learning assignment with blended components applied in an accounting subject that was taught in a cross-disciplinary setting. The assignment was developed in a sociocultural context, based on a Vygotskian approach, and this paper details its design and development. The five stages of the assignment were carefully scaffolded and included elements of individual and group tasks, finishing with an individual reflection on the process. Formative assessment and associated feedback are important elements of the scaffolding and thus the paper reports both the design and implementation of the assignment, and provides qualitative feedback from students regarding how completing the assignment enhanced their learning in accounting. The paper concludes with suggestions for further applications for the learning design of the assignment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5491
Author(s):  
Melissa Robson-Williams ◽  
Bruce Small ◽  
Roger Robson-Williams ◽  
Nick Kirk

The socio-environmental challenges the world faces are ‘swamps’: situations that are messy, complex, and uncertain. The aim of this paper is to help disciplinary scientists navigate these swamps. To achieve this, the paper evaluates an integrative framework designed for researching complex real-world problems, the Integration and Implementation Science (i2S) framework. As a pilot study, we examine seven inter and transdisciplinary agri-environmental case studies against the concepts presented in the i2S framework, and we hypothesise that considering concepts in the i2S framework during the planning and delivery of agri-environmental research will increase the usefulness of the research for next users. We found that for the types of complex, real-world research done in the case studies, increasing attention to the i2S dimensions correlated with increased usefulness for the end users. We conclude that using the i2S framework could provide handrails for researchers, to help them navigate the swamps when engaging with the complexity of socio-environmental problems.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (S1) ◽  
pp. 11-12
Author(s):  
Paula Corabian ◽  
Charles Yan ◽  
Susan Armijo-Olivo ◽  
Bing Guo

IntroductionThe objectives of this study were to systematically review published research on the relationship between nursing staff coverage, care hours, and quality of care (QoC) in long-term care (LTC) facilities; and to conduct a real world evidence (RWE) analysis using Alberta real world data (RWD) to inform policy makers on whether any amendments could be made to current regulations.MethodsA systematic review (SR) of research evidence published between January 2000 and May 2018 on the relationship between nursing staff coverage, care hours, and QoC in LTC facilities was conducted. Panel data regressions using available RWD from Alberta, Canada, were performed to assess associations between nursing care hours and LTC outcomes. Outcomes of interest included quality indicators related to resident outcomes, hospital admissions, emergency room visits and family satisfaction. Nursing care hours considered in SR and RWE analysis included those provided by registered nurses (RNs) and licensed practical nurses (LPNs).ResultsThe SR found inconsistent and poor quality evidence relevant to the questions of interest, indicating a great uncertainty about the association between nursing staff time and type of coverage and QoC. Although some positive indications were suggested, major weaknesses of reviewed studies limited interpretation of SR results. RWE analysis found that impact of care hours on LTC outcomes was heterogeneous, dependent on outcome measurements. There was evidence that total staff, RN, and LPN hours had positive effects on some resident outcomes and magnitude of effect differed for different nursing staff.ConclusionsNo definitive conclusion could be drawn on whether changing nursing staff time or nursing staff coverage models would affect residents’ outcomes based on the research evidence gathered in the SR. RWE analysis helped to fill a gap in the available published literature and allowed policy makers to better understand the impact of revising current regulations based on actual outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (169) ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Jennifer Brown Urban ◽  
Miriam R. Linver ◽  
Lisa M. Chauveron ◽  
Thomas Archibald ◽  
Monica Hargraves ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 027836492098785
Author(s):  
Julian Ibarz ◽  
Jie Tan ◽  
Chelsea Finn ◽  
Mrinal Kalakrishnan ◽  
Peter Pastor ◽  
...  

Deep reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as a promising approach for autonomously acquiring complex behaviors from low-level sensor observations. Although a large portion of deep RL research has focused on applications in video games and simulated control, which does not connect with the constraints of learning in real environments, deep RL has also demonstrated promise in enabling physical robots to learn complex skills in the real world. At the same time, real-world robotics provides an appealing domain for evaluating such algorithms, as it connects directly to how humans learn: as an embodied agent in the real world. Learning to perceive and move in the real world presents numerous challenges, some of which are easier to address than others, and some of which are often not considered in RL research that focuses only on simulated domains. In this review article, we present a number of case studies involving robotic deep RL. Building off of these case studies, we discuss commonly perceived challenges in deep RL and how they have been addressed in these works. We also provide an overview of other outstanding challenges, many of which are unique to the real-world robotics setting and are not often the focus of mainstream RL research. Our goal is to provide a resource both for roboticists and machine learning researchers who are interested in furthering the progress of deep RL in the real world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 806-823
Author(s):  
Anna Ciepielewska-Kowalik

Merton’s law on unintended consequences (1936) warns against the undesirable and unanticipated outcomes of every action and policy. More recent research (Zhao, 2017) in the field of education, in relation to Merton, claims that these consequences are usually treated as inconvenient side effect of a policy, but are, in fact, planned by policy-makers or other stakeholders to benefit them. It is therefore more appropriate to call them ‘(un)intended consequences’, which are not written into the policy but are a result of how the policy translates into practice. This paper, in relation to the above approaches, aims at revealing (un)intended consequences and hidden agendas of the educational reform conducted by the Polish government in 2016, with a special focus on their impact on ECEC. (Un)intended consequences are investigated here in four dimensions, including ECEC: organisational changes, curriculum, management and educators.  The paper is based on the review of literature and on the author’s qualitative and quantitative research among parents, teachers and representatives of local authorities, carried out in the 2018/2019 school year.


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