The policy agora:how power inequalities affect the interaction between researchers and policy makers

This paper examines notions of power in relation to evidence-informed policy making and explores four key areas. Firstly, I outline contemporary conceptualisations of how power operates in society; secondly, I spotlight the implications of power inequalities for how evidence is used by policy makers (and present the policy ‘agora’; a discursively controlled paradigm of ideology and epistemology which serves to distinguish between the types of evidence that policy makers will and won’t engage with); thirdly, I then define what I consider as evidence ‘misuse’; before finishing with an analysis of why evidence misuse materialises and how its enactment might be minimised

What factors affect the adoption of research within educational policy making? How might a better understanding of these factors improve research adoption and aid the development of policy?

This study addresses two questions: 'What factors affect the adoption of research within educational policy making?' and 'How might a better understanding of these factors improve research adoption and aid the development of policy?' In investigating the concept of research adoption, which I regard as vital to the successful creation of ‘evidence-informed’ policies/policy instruments, it is hoped that the study’s conclusions will assist researchers seeking to influence policy development, whilst also aiding policy-makers who wish to inform their policies with evidence. I begin the study by critically engaging with the concept of evidence-informed policy making. I then shift my focus to the theoretical field of knowledge transfer/exchange. The assumptions that subsequently emerge from this engagement and which form the conceptual basis of the thesis are that: evidence-informed policy is dependent on the prior adoption of research by policy-makers, and; that adoption itself depends both upon effective communication by research ‘suppliers’ and effective reception on the part of research audiences. Building on these assumptions, I then establish the individual factors that are considered to be vital in facilitating the research adoption process. These adoption factors are afforded further explanatory power through their combination with the theoretical framework I have employed for the thesis; Social Activity Method (SAM). In brief, SAM argues that the social world comprises people undertaking actions that lead to them building, maintaining or destroying relationships with one another. For this study, I regard research adoption as the establishment of a successful relationship between policy-makers and researchers. Consequently, the processes involved in the communication of research are seen to represent the actions employed by researchers in order to establish such a relationship; these can be juxtaposed against the research reception (or audience) actions displayed by policymakers. Combining these research adoption factors together with SAM enables me to construct a new model of research adoption which, I propose, provides a more nuanced and effective way of explaining how and why research might be adopted than existing work in this area. In summary, the model promotes the idea that adoption will depend on sociological uestions: is the researcher privileged by the policy-maker in question? is the area of study situated within a wider corpus of knowledge? The answers to these questions affect the specific adoption ‘scenario’ faced by researchers and policymakers and, consequently, the nature and type of any factors affecting research adoption which researchers and policy-makers will need to develop strategies to overcome. The primary methodology I employ is that of the in-depth, semi-structured interview. To inform these interviews, key issues from the literature review were identified and rhetorical analysis also utilised. As a result of undertaking 24 interviews with researchers, policy-makers and other knowledge providers within the education sector in England, I identify four key research adoption strategies that could be used by academic researchers to improve the knowledge adoption process. These are: the creation of ‘policy ready’ outputs (designed to increase demand for a given study by improving understanding of how its findings might be applied or utilised); traditional outputs (which serve to enhance perceptions of the study’s quality and rigour); promotional strategies (which relate to the way research is disseminated, both in terms of its communication and in terms of the techniques or modes employed), and; ‘contextual’ strategies (which attempt to improve the reputation of the researcher or the social robustness of the idea to which their research pertains). At the same time I critically examine the assumptions which underlie why these strategies are regarded as key and outline how inequalities in power relations between policy-makers and researchers might be redressed

How effective is the research and development ecosystem for England’s schools?

This article examines the role of research and development within England's school system. From a range of literature past and present we argue that six features (three dimensions) should form the focus for action at the institutional, systemic and policy levels. Applying these stress tests to the current system, we suggest that an effective ecosystem of research-informed schools is as yet not being fully realized. We argue that the keys to improving this are to change the structures, cultures and incentives that bridge the research–practice divide, and to align accountability arrangements to allow schools to learn through enquiry

A trustworthy framework for resource-aware embedded programming

Funding: EU Horizon 2020 project, TeamPlay (https://www.teamplay-h2020.eu), grant number 779882; UK EPSRC Discovery, grant number EP/P020631/1.Systems with non-functional requirements, such as Energy, Time and Security (ETS), are of increasing importance due to the proliferation of embedded devices with limited resources such as drones, wireless sensors, and tablet computers. Currently, however, there are little to no programmer supported methodologies or frameworks to allow them to reason about ETS properties in their source code. Drive is one such existing framework supporting the developer by lifting non-functional properties to the source-level through the Contract Specification Language (CSL), allowing non-functional properties to be first-class citizens, and supporting programmer-written code-level contracts to guarantee the non-functional specifications of the program are met. In this paper, we extend the Drive system by providing rigorous implementations of the underlying proof-engine, modeling the specification of the annotations and assertions from CSL for a representative subset of C, called Imp. We define both an improved abstract interpretation that automatically derives proofs of assertions, and define inference algorithms for the derivation of both abstract interpretations and the context over which the interpretation is indexed. We use the dependently-typed programming language, Idris, to give a formal definition, and implementation, of our abstract interpretation. Finally, we show our well-formed abstract interpretation over some representative exemplars demonstrating provable assertions of ETS.Postprin

An Empirical Analysis of the Economic Impact of Federal Terrorism Reinsurance

This paper examines the role of the federal government in the market for terrorism reinsurance. We investigate the stock price response of affected industries to a sequence of thirteen events culminating in the enactment of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) of 2002. In the industries most likely to be affected by TRIA banking, construction, insurance, real estate investment trusts, transportation, and public utilities the stock price effect was primarily negative. The Act was at best value-neutral for property-casualty insurers because it eliminated the option not to offer terrorism insurance. The negative response of the other industries may be attributable to the Act's impeding more efficient private market solutions, failing to address nuclear, chemical, and biological hazards, and reducing market expectations of federal assistance following future terrorist attacks.

Athletic Training Students\u27 Perceptions of Electronic Textbooks and Computer use in the Classroom

Purpose: Academia is currently seeing a surge in technology integration in the classroom. Electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) is expected to grow exponentially in the future. Although there is a rush in use of technology in academia, few studies have evaluated perceptions of electronic textbooks especially among athletic training students. The purpose of this study is to identify athletic training student computer use, if athletic students are using electronic textbooks, and to help understand their perceptions of those electronic texts. Method: A cross sectional survey design was utilized. Participants completed a self-reported online survey. A survey link was emailed to athletic training faculty in 360 undergraduate programs to be forwarded to their students. The survey contained an informed consent item followed by 37 items (6 demographic) related to perceptions of electronic textbooks. Data analysis used descriptive statistics. Results: A total of 861 athletic training students completed the survey. When students were asked about their preference for e-textbooks or traditional textbooks, 69% prefer a traditional textbook while 22% state they had never had the opportunity to work with an e-textbook. A majority of students (96.4%) feel comfortable with computers. A large number of students (43.1%) respond they are not aware e-textbooks exist for athletic training courses. The primary reasons students prefer traditional textbooks over e-textbooks are ease of reading, followed by ease of note taking. Conclusions: The majority of athletic training students, who fall in the age range of the Millennial Generation, prefer traditional textbooks over e-textbooks. Educators should continue to utilize traditional textbooks as a primary method of learning while incorporating technology such as e-textbooks as secondary methods

Going for broke: a multiple case study of brokerage in education

Although the central role of educational intermediaries that can connect research and practice is increasingly appreciated, our present understanding of their motivations, products, and processes is inadequate. In response, this multiple-case study asks how and why three large-scale intermediaries—Edutopia, the Marshall Memo, and Usable Knowledge—are engaging in brokerage activities, and compares the features of the knowledge they seek to share and mobilize. These entities were deliberately chosen and anticipated to reveal diversity. Multiple data sources were analyzed based primarily upon Ward’s knowledge mobilization framework. These entities contrasted widely, especially in relation to core knowledge dimensions, enabling us to identify two distinct brokerage types. To conclude, theoretical (how to conceptualize brokerage) and practical (how to foster interactive knowledge exchange) implications are presented. This study also reveals certain innovative mobilization approaches, including skillful use of social media and the production of videos depicting how and why to adopt particular strategies