In 2010 the Louisiana legislature adopted the Louisiana Granting Resources and Autonomies for Diplomas (GRAD) Act, a statewide performance-based funding policy designed to improve performance among public colleges. This study, utilizing data collected from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) on 15 two-year public colleges over eight years, applied Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression to retention rates, graduation rates, and degree productivity. Results suggest that the introduction of the policy had little immediate effect on overall institutional performance; however, there were some modest increases in long-term certificate productivity. Additionally, there were significant improvements in data quality throughout higher education after the introduction of the policy.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The study was concentrated on the period following the first democratic elections for a new government in South Africa, that is, post -1994 up to the year 2000. The change from a system based on fixed apartheid ideology to a more open and democratic one meant that the political scene became more characterized by fierce competition and volatility. The aim of the research was to understand the nature of the contestation as it manifests itself in both the development and implementation of school governance policy at national, provincial and local levels in a climate of political change and turbulence. / South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study is an investigation into the scope, role, and function of student development and support (SDS) within higher education in South Africa. The underpinnings and frameworks of SDS were explored during the research, as well as its integration into the institution and into organisational structures, the relationship between SDS and the policies of the Department of Higher Education and Training, and the influences from the national and international context of SDS. Policies emerging from the Department of Higher Education and Training heralded dramatic changes after the first democratically elected government in South Africa. The changes were amplified by the shifts in the international context of global explosion of knowledge production and neo-liberal influences on higher education in general and SDS in particular. The higher education system in South Africa has changed from an elite system to broad “massification”, which addresses issues of equity, access, participation and relevant skills development at medium and high level (DoE, 1997, p. 4). Changes have not only been in terms of governance and institutional mergers but also in terms of notions and discourses in education, teaching and learning, student development, and student support. The higher education system has become open, responsive, and relevant, and knowledge is understood to be relative and context-bound, co-created within the relationship to a heterogeneous group of students who have a range of capabilities and challenge traditional notions of inclusivity and diversity. The findings are extensive and liberal use of quotations from the participants substantiates the emerging themes. The key themes that emerged are clustered under the headings of: scope, role and function; theoretical framework; professionalisation; paradigms and alignments; SDS integration into the organisational structure; SDS in relation to the Department of Higher Education and Training; and SDS within the national and international context of globalisation. The discussion synthesises the findings and reveals that SDS is facing many challenges which require attention. Some challenges concern the lack of clarity around scope, role, and function, as well as issues around the lack of theoretical grounding and the paucity in local theory development. Challenges also surfaced regarding the integration of SDS into the academic life of the institution. Similar concerns appeared around the exclusion of SDS from governance issues. Tensions emerged from discussions on the need for a guiding framework for SDS, while preserving autonomy and acknowledging the heterogeneous character of institutions. The findings also suggest that non-elective operational standards and some kind of monitoring and evaluation systems for SDS are required. Despite these challenges, it appears that SDS is perceived as a key contributor to the shared goal of student success and that an expressed commitment to and alignment with national and institutional goals exists. This utilisation-oriented study, it is hoped, will make significant contributions to the understanding of the scope, role and function of student development and support within higher education. It may help illuminate the challenges and provide suggestions to enable more articulated contributions to the shared goals of higher education in South Africa. Recommendations include the development of an epistemic community which can generate contextual and constructivist paradigms for SDS in South Africa. This research study reveals the pressing need for a normative framework for SDS and identifies areas which need to be given serious consideration when developing such a framework.

From 2006-2008, both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia proposed changes to their French second language (FSL) policies and programs. In observing the cases, it becomes clear that government officials made use of policy instruments to both implement policy and navigated the policy process. This work builds off existing literature that seeks to understand the instrument selection process, as well as the impact of policy tools on the policy-making process and more specifically, on the actors involved directly and indirectly in it. Using a framework that incorporates components of Contextual Interaction Theory and elements of procedural policy instrument scholarship, the project endeavours to identify what instruments were used to develop and implement FSL policy in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as well as to comprehend why the tools were selected. The dissertation relies on document analysis and semi-structured interviews conducted with government officials and stakeholders to determine that instrument selection is based on the actors’ cognitions, motivations, and available/accessible resources. Furthermore, legitimacy plays an integral role in the selection of instruments. Government policymakers are faced with varying degrees of legitimacy, as expressed by actors indirectly involved in the policy process. Inevitably, these actors react to policy content and the policy process, which leads to sometimes contentious interactions. The current research expands on the educational policy literature by using a lens that accounts for the role of instruments in the policy process and provides a nuanced understanding of how the actors’ interactions shape and influence policy-making. It makes an original contribution to the policy instruments literature by developing a framework that accounts for the selection criteria used by both policymakers and stakeholders when choosing policy tools and resources. This dissertation contributes to the discipline of public administration and the field of public policy primarily by expounding the explanatory value of policy instruments regarding what they can tell us about the policy process, policy-making and policy outcomes. It does this by looking at how it is actors both directly and indirectly involved in the policy process interpret policy instruments and shows how government’s policy-making capacity is constrained not only by the resources available to it but by the resources accessible to actors indirectly involved in the policy process. Looking at the reciprocal nature of tool selection and tool implementation helps to explain policy-making and outcomes, as well as accounts for the roles of actors both proximately and peripherally involved in the process.

Different forms of professional development online are becoming increasingly common for teachers and the aim of the thesis is to contribute knowledge about online professional development for mathematics teachers and the relationship between professional development, educational policy, and mathematics teaching practice. In the thesis, professional development refers to organized professional development in terms of university courses. The thesis consists of four studies, each of which has been presented in the form of an article. The four studies together explore transnational and national policy discourses, meaning-making activities that can be distinguished in online professional development, discourses pertaining to mathematics teaching in the classroom and in the subsequent seminar discussions in the course, and teachers’ experience of professional development online. The different arenas have been explored using the concept of discourse with reference to Fairclough, Gee, and Sfard. The term ”discourse” refers primarily to communication and language in use. The result of the studies indicates that the participants have not been offered enough opportunities to reflect on how or whether the use of several concepts and everyday life connections really deepened the students’ understanding of the mathematical content. Moreover, the analysis of the interviews with the participants shows that it was difficult for them to deepen their reflections in the synchronous communication online. There is a lack of reciprocal participation and reflection in the conversation and it is hard for the participants to get an idea of how the others respond to their messages. When a participant has completed his or her message the next speaker continues with a new message and as a result, the communication often takes a new direction instead of allowing in-depth reflection.

The New Labour government’s (1997-2010) policy of personalised learning was announced as an idea ‘exciting’ the profession and promising ‘radical implications’ for the shape of education in England. The policy attracted much debate and criticism and its enactment is a site worthy of research. This study makes a contribution to knowledge through researching the rarely heard stories of young people in this policy enactment. It makes a further contribution to policy scholarship through the interplay of the data from school practices and moral philosophy drawn from Alasdair MacIntyre.Qualitative interviews and focus group activities were conducted with young people in three different secondary schools in order to understand their stories of personalised learning some two years into New Labour’s third term of government. To understand more of the context for the stories of the young people, some strategic actors in policy dissemination were interviewed, as were the headteachers of the three schools.Personalised learning promised to engage the voice of the learner in learning practices. The research finds a young peoples’ story that is consistently one of a mute and invisible identity within the schools. An argument is presented that the purposes of schools ought to be judged on standards of excellence definitive of, and extended by, a concept of virtues. A distinction is made between effectiveness in producing exam results and a richer sense of excellence in education practice. It is argued that virtues that define standards of excellence at the institutional level of practice can enrich and prefigure wider concepts of justice than are contained in policy. Young peoples’ stories in this research indicate that, contrary to policy ideals, they often perceived unfairness and arbitrariness in their school experiences. Personalised learning needs to be set within the narrative of the personalisation of public services: a reforming rubric, employing the motif of the citizen-consumer as a proposition about social justice and modernisation. New Labour’s ideology and models of governance are explored and related to the testimony of headteachers to understand more about the young peoples’ perceptions. Literatures are drawn upon to place personalisation in a historical context, linking it to moral orders of contemporary social imaginaries. New Labour made a case for personalised learning as furthering the cause of social justice and is thus a policy in need of ethical examination. Following MacIntyre, it is argued that modernity has left few moral resources by which to evaluate the personal, but the experiences of young people suggested that a richer moral agency is glimpsed within their stories of schooling. The social practice at the level of schools is thus critical but requires policy to enable ethical spaces for schools to re-invigorate their purposes. I argue that in the light of some critical fault lines, such as neoliberalism and a reconfiguration of tiers of local governance, personalisation as a ‘modernising’ policy proposition could do little to extend the goods of schooling beyond some narrow conceptions of effectiveness.

For most of the 20th century the dominant aim of Swedish educational policy was an integrated public school system under national state control. During the post-war era (1945–1989) this policy led to Sweden having one of the most centralized and integrated school systems in the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, there was a profound change in Swedish education policy towards decentralization, deregulation and marketization of the school system. The aim of this thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of the nature and causes of this shift in education policy. The thesis draws from a theoretical framework consisting of Critical Realism, curriculum theory and Neo-Marxism. From a Neo- Marxist perspective the configuration of state education policy is understood as a dominant education ideology. The empirical material consists of state policy documents which are understood as an expression of the dominant education ideology in society. The results indicate a shift in the dominant education ideology in Sweden between 1969 and – 1999: from an emphasis on state governance and goals of equivalence, equality and participation in the school system during the 1970s, towards increasing skepticism regarding state regulation and an emphasis on decentralization and aims to increase parental and pupil influence in the school system during the 1980s, to a dominance of private influence via school choice and competition in the school system during the 1990s. From a theoretical perspective consisting of Critical Realism and curriculum theory, this shift in education policy and restructuring of the school system is understood in relation to economic crises, a rightward shift in politics and the dominance of neoliberal ideas in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s.

Orientador: Valério José Arantes / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T09:23:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lucena_RobertoMarden_D.pdf: 2516082 bytes, checksum: 4f97b040aa8cc4fbcf4769455e49dcdf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: A tese tem por objetivo especificar uma prática política que é desenvolvida por força de uma determinada formação sócio-educacional de pessoas e a relação destas com a docência, tendo por fulcro as potencialidades de teores da interação entre educação e trabalho, teoria e prática, bem como sujeito e objeto. Trata-se de prática política devida a uma peculiar abertura a novas perspectivas, estas propiciadas por uma prática especificamente educativa cujo próprio desenvolvimento emerge mediado por determinado saber a respeito da interdependência entre política e economia. O método da especificação em foco corresponde àquele que é seguido em ontologia do ser social: têm-se circunstâncias reais, objetivas ou sempre pós-ocorridas, nas quais se observam aspectos mais historicamente desenvolvidos e suas causalidades, de forma ulteriormente categorizados. Mediante teleologização destas causalidades, há como realizar alternatividade de objetivos. Assim, obtiveram-se saberes alternativos para compor princípio educativo, os quais facultam uma educação superior de intensificada qualidade e mediada por ideias claras sobre os sentidos de se tornar pública e/ou privada. Entretanto, estes sentidos e tal qualidade se encontram fragilizados pelo hegemônico e continuado embate ideológico sobre implicações da exterioridade da relação entre educação e política ou vice-versa. Este embate urge ser caracterizado por distanciar-se da questão dos limites no atendimento das necessidades culturalmente criadas de poder e de patrimônio, atendimento a depender de trabalho que tende a se processar de modo incoerente na sua indiretitude (instrumentalização) com o intercâmbio entre sociedade e natureza livre. Alternativamente a tal distanciamento ideológico, aprofundam-se referências sobre aspectos sócio-ontológicos que desvelam novas perspectivas para a relação externa entre educação superior e política, com desdobramentos em termos de trabalho e humanização. É do desenvolvimento da prática educativa, em coerência sócio-ontológica com intercâmbio entre sociedade e natureza livre, que há de provir desenvolvimento de especificidade de prática política externamente relacionada com educação superior / Abstract: This dissertation examines a practice that developed within a certain socio-educational context of people and their relationship with teaching, centering on the potential levels of interaction between education and work, theory and practice, and subject and object. This practice came about from a particular openness to new perspectives which were afforded by an educational practice based on specific knowledge regarding the interdependence of politics and economics. The method of the practice in question corresponds to that of the ontology of social being: there are real, objective, or previously occurring circumstances in which more historically developed aspects and their causalities can be observed through post-hoc categorization. Through the teleologization of these causalities, alternative means of realizing objectives are possible. In this way, alternative knowledge can be gained from which to construct educational principles, providing higher education of enhanced quality through clear reasons for making universities public and/or private. However, these reasons and quality are undercut by the continued hegemonic ideological conflict surrounding the implications of outside perspectives on the relationship between education and politics or vice versa. This conflict must be characterized by distancing oneself from limitations in meeting the culturally constructed needs of power and heritage which may depend on work that tends to be incoherent in its indirectness (instrumentalization) with interplay between society and nature. As an alternative to this ideological separation, references to socio-ontological aspects are further developed which reveal new perspectives on the external relationship between higher education and policy, with implications for work and humanization. It is through the development of educational practice in socio-ontological coherence with interplay between society and nature that practice externally related to higher education is developed / Doutorado / Psicologia Educacional / Doutor em Educação

This qualitative study was a means to identify what motivated Black students to serve in the supplemental instruction (SI) leader role, the challenges they experienced, and what they learned while serving in the peer educator role within the context of an historically Black college or university (HBCU). Research targeting the experiences of SI leaders is limited, and there had yet to be a study completed on the experiences of SI leaders of color in any institution type. This research was an assessment of the perceptions of peer educators, providing a benchmark for further exploration on the impact SI can have at other HBCUs as well as how Black students are trained and supported in academic peer educator roles. Twelve SI leaders at Xavier University of Louisiana participated in interviews during the fall 2019 semester. The desire to help others and the position’s connection to their individual professional goals emerged as the primary themes when participants described what motivated them to serve in the SI leader capacity. Participants discussed the struggles of setting expectations and boundaries while serving in the SI role, as well as the positions of peer, friend, classmate, and leader when working with students in their SI sessions. Last, participants credited the SI leader position for helping them to develop and enhance the following skills: networking and relationship-building, communication, organization, emotional intelligence, critical and creative thinking, and leadership and teamwork skills. This study showed the what and how about SI peer educators are developing and enhancing themselves to graduate and professional schools and potential employers. More importantly, this study adds to the literature regarding students of color as the facilitators of the Supplemental Instruction program as most studies targeting the experiences of peer educators have been taken place at predominantly White institutions or samples. The results of this dissertation about SI leaders’ experiences at HBCUs can inform how training could better meet the needs of students of color as recipients and facilitators of peer educator programs. By presenting what peer leaders and SI programs at HBCUs are doing well, the findings can provide insight for peer education programs not accustomed to serving or hiring first-generation students and students of color effectively. This research contributes to addressing the gap in the literature regarding students of color serving in the peer educator role as well as showing the value of mentoring through academic peer education programs.

abstract: Over the past 20 years in the United States (U.S.), teachers have seen a marked shift in how teacher evaluation policies govern the evaluation of their performance. Spurred by federal mandates, teachers have been increasingly held accountable for their students’ academic achievement, most notably through the use of value-added models (VAMs)—a statistically complex tool that aims to isolate and then quantify the effect of teachers on their students’ achievement. This increased focus on accountability ultimately resulted in numerous lawsuits across the U.S. where teachers protested what they felt were unfair evaluations informed by invalid, unreliable, and biased measures—most notably VAMs. While New Mexico’s teacher evaluation system was labeled as a “gold standard” due to its purported ability to objectively and accurately differentiate between effective and ineffective teachers, in 2015, teachers filed suit contesting the fairness and accuracy of their evaluations. Amrein-Beardsley and Geiger’s (revise and resubmit) initial analyses of the state’s teacher evaluation data revealed that the four individual measures comprising teachers’ overall evaluation scores showed evidence of bias, and specifically, teachers who taught in schools with different student body compositions (e.g., special education students, poorer students, gifted students) had significantly different scores than their peers. The purpose of this study was to expand upon these prior analyses by investigating whether those conclusions still held true when controlling for a variety of confounding factors at the school, class, and teacher levels, as such covariates were not included in prior analyses. Results from multiple linear regression analyses indicated that, overall, the measures used to inform New Mexico teachers’ overall evaluation scores still showed evidence of bias by school-level student demographic factors, with VAMs potentially being the most susceptible and classroom observations being the least. This study is especially unique given the juxtaposition of such a highly touted evaluation system also being one where teachers contested its constitutionality. Study findings are important for all education stakeholders to consider, especially as teacher evaluation systems and related policies continue to be transformed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Policy and Evaluation 2020