After COVID-19: What Can We Learn About Wicked Problem Governance?

Traditionally, education policy focuses on reforms that address class size, teaching and learning within classrooms, school choice, and changes in leadership as ways to improve students’ educational outcomes. Although well intentioned, education policy can distract from the multi-layered causes that impact achievement and opportunity gaps, and how students’ life circumstances can affect their school attendance. Students who miss school frequently are less likely to be impacted by even the most robust and comprehensive education reforms. This paper discusses how the root causes of chronic absenteeism are complex and that policy distractions can stifle solutions to solve school attendance issues. As a wicked problem, chronic absenteeism, requires a conceptual framework that helps to organize policy responses within all levels of the educational system, as well as expansive to include other social sectors within public policy.

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The wicked problem of delivering primary health care to people with intellectual disabilities. Commentary on “Attitudes and experiences of general practitioners who provided health care for people with intellectual disabilities: a South Australian perspective” (Smith & Laurence, 2021)

Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities ◽

10.1080/23297018.2021.1910987 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Teresa Iacono

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Primary Health Care ◽

Intellectual Disabilities ◽

General Practitioners ◽

Wicked Problem ◽

Primary Health ◽

People With Intellectual Disabilities

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Citizen Science Contributions to Address Biodiversity Loss and Conservation Planning in a Rapidly Developing Region

Diversity ◽

10.3390/d13060255 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (6) ◽

pp. 255

Author(s):

Diana L. Soteropoulos ◽

Caitlin R. De Bellis ◽

Theo Witsell

Keyword(s):

Citizen Science ◽

Biodiversity Loss ◽

Wicked Problem ◽

Herbarium Specimens ◽

Rare Plant ◽

Conservation Action ◽

Plant Populations ◽

Management Planning ◽

Natural Heritage ◽

Northwest Arkansas

Biodiversity data support conservation research and inform conservation decisions addressing the wicked problem of biodiversity loss. However, these data often need processing and compilation before use, which exceed the time availability of professional scientists. Nevertheless, scientists can recruit, train, and support a network of citizen scientists to prepare these data using online platforms. Here, we describe three citizen science projects sponsored by the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission to transcribe and georeference historic herbarium specimens and document current biodiversity through iNaturalist for two highly biodiverse and rapidly developing counties in Northwest Arkansas, USA. Citizen science-generated data will be used in a county natural heritage inventory (CNHI) report, including a comprehensive list of taxa tied to voucher specimens and records for rare plant populations. Since the CNHI project started in 2018, citizen scientists have transcribed 8,855 and georeferenced 2,636 specimen records. From iNaturalist observations, 125 rare plant populations of 39 taxa have been documented. This CNHI report will determine the most critical taxa, habitats, and sites for conservation action in the region and will inform conservation stakeholders at the local, state, and federal levels as they engage in land acquisition, ecological restoration, natural resource management, planning of growth and development, and environmental review/regulation.

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Public Value Is Unknowable; Public Authority Makes Every Government Decision a Wicked Problem

Administration & Society ◽

10.1177/00953997211022685 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 009539972110226

Author(s):

Mark Prebble

Keyword(s):

Necessary Conditions ◽

Public Authority ◽

Wicked Problem ◽

Value Proposition ◽

Public Value ◽

Government Decision ◽

Course Of Action

Knowability is the ability to identify a preferable course of action with sufficient confidence to justify adopting that course. This article shows it is not possible to judge the value of a public value proposition with sufficient confidence to justify the use of public authority. The indeterminacy of public value is shown by demonstrating that the necessary conditions to justify a public value proposition include that the evidence sustaining it is not impossible, circular, or unsubstantiated opinion. Those criteria are applied to an exhaustive set of possible concepts of public value, all of which fail at least one of those conditions so public value is unknowable. The implication is not that government is impossible, but that it requires humility, discourse, and compromise.

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