Theorizing Risk and Research: Methodological Constraints and Their Consequences

Conflict, postconflict settings, and other risky research sites are important with wide-ranging policy implications. Microlevel, field-based research lends critical insights to how conflicts work and the mechanisms behind macrolevel correlations that underpin quantitative political science. This article identifies how the risks associated with conflict and postconflict contexts influence researchers’ choices by theorizing the existence of distinct adaptive strategies. Specifically, researchers facing elevated risk generally manage it through three main strategies: outsourcing risk, avoiding risk, and internalizing risk. We argue that these strategies systematically shape and circumscribe outputs. We conclude by discussing how the relationship between risky fieldwork and what we know about conflict is poorly acknowledged. Thinking about how we manage risk should play a larger role in both our preparation for and interpretation of research, particularly in conflict and postconflict contexts

Connect the Dots: Using Evaluations of Teacher Effectiveness to Inform Policy and Practice

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has long advocated that any meaningful understanding of "effective" teaching must be rooted in results for kids. Whatever else they accomplish in the classroom, effective teachers improve student achievement. It seems like commonsense. Yet, until recently, it has been an exceptional way of thinking about teacher quality, totally out of step with teacher policy across the states. As part of the annual State Teacher Policy Yearbook, NCTQ has systematically collected and analyzed state policies on teacher preparation, training, retention, compensation and other personnel policies. In this paper we provide: 1. A detailed and up-to-date lay of the land on teacher evaluation policies across the 50 states and the District of Columbia Public Schools; 2. An in-depth look at policy in states promising ambitious teacher evaluation systems (states requiring student growth and achievement to be a significant or the most significant factor in teacher ratings), including states' efforts to "connect the dots" and use teacher evaluation results in meaningful ways to inform policy and practice; 3. A compilation of some of the important lessons learned, pitfalls and successes states have experienced on the road to improving teacher evaluation systems

Post-macroeconomics -- reflections on the crisis and strategic directions ahead

For decades, many researchers argued that economics had nothing to fear from enriching itself with lessons and advances from other disciplines. Unfortunately, these suggestions were either neglected or dismissed upfront in what was then arbitrarily considered mainstream economics. The global crisis has led even Nobel Prize winners to acknowledge that the problem facing economists and policy makers today is mostly intellectual - it is the need to confront the systematic failure of thinking, especially on the part of macroeconomists. Despite its unprecedented magnitude and heavy financial, human, and intellectual cost, the crisis certainly does not invalidate everything that has been learned about macroeconomics. However, the costs highlight some of mistakes of the dominant intellectual macroeconomic framework. Post-macroeconomics should not be understood as another metanarrative of the end of metanarratives. The use of the prefix post here suggests and emphasizes much more than temporal posterity. Post-macroeconomics should follow from macroeconomics more than it follows after macroeconomics. The theorizing of post-macroeconomics is therefore neither systematically oppositional nor hegemonic. It does not advocate a - dialectic opposition - between macroeconomics and post-macroeconomics. Rather, it suggests that the latter builds on the former and goes beyond it.Economic Theory&Research,Debt Markets,,Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance

foresight for crisis prevention

As part of their efforts to professionalize crisis and conflict prevention, foreign policy-makers are investing more in foresight, early warning or prediction. Different approaches and their products are suited for different purposes, based on distinct strengths and weaknesses. This policy paper provides an overview of the most common methods used in the context of preventing violent conflict and governance breakdown, and offers guidance on what to look out for when thinking about and planning for the future of crisis prevention

Applying Optimality Findings: Critique of Graham Taylor's Critique of RCUK Self-Archiving Mandate

Graham Taylor, director of educational, academic and professional publishing at the Publishers Association, criticises the Research Councils UK (RCUK) proposal to require that the author of every published article based on RCUK-funded research must “self-archive” a supplementary “open access” version on the web so it can be freely read and used by any researcher worldwide whose institution cannot afford the journal in which it was published. The purpose of the RCUK policy is to maximise the usage and impact of research. Taylor argues that it may have an adverse affect on some journals. This critique points out that there is no evidence from 15 years of open-access self-archiving that it has had any adverse affect on journals and a great deal of evidence that it enhances research impact

Thinking differently about strategy: comparing paradigms

Our paper shows that mainstream strategic thinking and research already challenges the established Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm. Newtonian thought is the customary mode of western thinking, but is that about to change? Some papers from a complexity standpoint have appeared in the mainstream journals but its precise implications and merits have yet to be systematically spelled out and debated. We aim to facilitate this debate by comparing the established Newtonian and emergent complexity paradigms, clarifying the implications of this new perspective for strategy research. We suggest that the complexity paradigm is better attuned to current strategic realities than its Newtonian-Cartesian counterpart

The Effects of Deliberative Polling in an EU-wide Experiment: Five Mechanisms in Search of an Explanation

Deliberative Polls simulate public opinion in a given policy domain when members of the relevant mass public are better informed about the issues involved. This article reports on the results of a three-day Deliberative Poll, conducted before the June 2009 European Parliament elections, to evaluate the effects of deliberation on a representative sample of EU citizens. Findings show that, compared with a control group, deliberators changed their views significantly on immigration (becoming more liberal), climate change (becoming greener) and the EU itself (becoming more pro-European). Five different explanations of why deliberation appears to work are tested: sampling bias, increased political knowledge, discussion quality, small group social conformity pressure and the influence of other Deliberative Poll actors, but none is satisfactory.</jats:p

School Effectiveness Framework pilots: an evaluation (research document)

"This report looks at the pilot to introduce the School Effectiveness Framework in schools in Wales. The School Effectiveness Framework (SEF) is an ambitious Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) programme that aims to raise attainment, to close the gap in attainment and improve children and young people’s well-being (WAG, 2008a). It has been developed through three phases and this external evaluation focuses upon the second phase, in which school pilot programmes were established in each of the four regional consortia (Central South Wales, North Wales, South East Wales and swamwac)..." - introduction

Beyond Biology: The Politics of Adoption & Reproduction

It is exciting simply to be having this conference focused on adoption law and policy. I remember some nine years ago starting to plan a course dealing with adoption issues and wondering whether I would be able to justify its place in the Harvard Law School curriculum. It is also exciting to look around the room at the wonderfully diverse and knowledgeable group of people the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy gathered here to participate in these discussions of important issues involving adoption and the meaning of family. My topic today has to do with adoption and, more particularly, adoption in relation to reproduction. By reproduction I mean three different things: (1) traditional reproduction, or the production of a child through normal intercourse between one man and one woman; (2) infertility treatment, or the use of medical technology to assist a man and a woman to produce a child using his sperm and her egg and womb; and (3) a variety of child producing and parenting arrangements that I have collectively termed technologic adoption. By the latter, I mean arrangements that result in the social equivalent of either step-parent adoptions or full adoptions, where the child is produced in order to be raised by one or more parents who will not be genetically or biologically related. I am referring to such practices as donor insemination, surrogacy, both in its traditional and gestational form, egg donation or sale, and embryo donation or sale. One thing I ..

Bill Shughart, First J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice

This year, the Huntsman School welcomed Dr. William Shughart, the first J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice. A syndicated columnist and respected economist, Dr. Shughart has over 200 published scholarly articles, book chapters, and reviews. Dr. Shughart is also the editor of Public Choice, a distinguished public policy journal which will now be based at USU. Students in Dr. Shughart’s classes are challenged to think critically about how economics and law intersect, and he provides key insights that help them both understand and apply principles to real world issues. We’re honored at the Huntsman School to welcome Dr. Shughart; like so many professors in the school, he tasks his students to systematically study the world around them to develop vital critical thinking skills that prepare them to make effective, strategic decisions after they leave the Huntsman School.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/huntsman_news/1023/thumbnail.jp