Thèse--Université de Paris. / Also published under title: La politique des mandats dans le Levant. "Bibliographie": leaf at end.

Thesis (D.Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2009. / Supervisor: Dr Eugene Rogan. Bibliography: leaves 355-380.

A growing body of research supports the idea that large-scale school reform efforts often fail to create sustained change within the public school sector. When implementing deep organizational change, both novice and veteran educators are challenged to learn new skills, reexamine their instructional practice and content knowledge, and re-shape their underlying beliefs and values about schools. This qualitative study explored principals’ perceptions of their leadership roles in the school system. Data collection was done through a series of three interviews with three elementary school principals in Central Florida. In addition to their perceptions, it also studied factors that may influence their perceptions, including revised curriculum standards, new teacher evaluation models, and state assessments mandates. The findings of this research considered the demographic, educational, and professional background of each participant as well as the school to which they are assigned. It also examined the principals’ self-reported responsiveness to current educational reform mandates and their perceptions of areas of leadership strength and weakness with their teachers and staff at their school.

No description available.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) declared the Federal government's commitment to comprehensive environmental protection. The cutting-edge of NEPA is its requirement for including an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for all major Federal actions significantly affecting the environment. Opinions about the effectiveness of NEPA's EIS requirement range along a continuum. On one extreme are those who view the NEPA process as essentially procedural and overshadowed by other environmental legislation which provide explicit standards of environmental protection for specific environmental values. On the other extreme are those who believe that NEPA provides substantive, comprehensive, and holistic environmental protection of all environmental values. Most of the research on NEPA and its EIS reqUirement has revolved around the act's procedural and substantive mandates. However, despite the proliferation of non-NEPA environmental legislation mandating the protection of such environmental values as air and water quality, land use, and wildlife and endangered species, very little attention has been paid to the role of the mandates and requirements of these legislation in the EIS process. This research effort characterizes the role of NEPA's EIS process in light of the mandates and requirements of this body of non-NEPA legislation to determine the extent to which it addresses the substance of environmental impact evaluation. Specifically, this research focuses on the following questions: • Is the body of non-NEPA legislation sufficiently comprehensive to cover the entire spectrum of environmental values making NEPA's EIS requirement redundant? • Does NEPA enhance the avenues for public participation in government decision-making provided by non-NEPA legislation? • Does NEPA address the impacts of large scale projects, public programs and policy decisions, and cumulative impacts in a more comprehensive manner than non-NEPA legislation? • Does NEPA enhance coordination and integration among Federal agencies in ensuring that environmental issues are addressed comprehensively? The study focuses on the civil works program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps). As such, all conclusions are applicable only to the Corps and are not generalized to other agencies to which NEPA's requirements apply. The study involved a literature review on the role of NEPA in Federal agency planning and decision-making and the development of five research hypotheses with respect to the questions outlined earlier. These hypotheses were then evaluated through a critical review of NEPA and of the role of NEPA and other legislation in Corps activities, and a case-study of a Corps-directed EIS of the Metropolitan Denver Water Supply System. This research effort concluded that there is a relative lack of redundence among the environmental policy and requirement provisions of NEPA and those of non-NEPA legislation—what exists is a complementary, albeit tenuous relationship. Complementary, because in theory and intent: • NEPA proclaims a national policy for all environmental values while specific legislation focus only on specific environmental values; • NEPA does not contain specific standards or requirements but draws from those contained in other legislation; • in the absence of NEPA, assessments of a project's impacts to specific environmental values would be disjointed and incomplete; • the antagonistic and synergistic impacts to various values preclude individualized assessments—such impacts may not be fully addressed in the absence of NEPA; and • NEPA's public participation mechanisms as well as its requirements to ensure coordination among agencies are necessary and complementary to the focused provisions of other legislation. Tenuous, because this complementary intent has not been fully realized in practice. While the intent of NEPA was to ensure the complete and comprehensive alignment of NEPA and non-NEPA legislation, the realities of NEPA’s implementation have brought to light a variety of obstacles. These include: • inadequate guidance on NEPA compliance with other legislation; • inadequate integration among agency planning procedures and procedures for compliance with the requirements of various legislation, and inadequate inter-agency integration mechanisms; • redundant pubic participation procedures; and • a general lack of internalization in Federal agencies of the true intent of NEPA’s national policy declaration. Recommendations to surmount these obstacles include among others: developing comprehensive guidance on NEPA compliance with other legislation; ensuring that agencies’ compliance procedures are standardized and consistent with one another; developing processes whereby NEPA's public participation procedures subsume those of other legislation; and creating a fully represented Federal task force to develop and recommend detailed options for streamlining NEPA implementation. / Ph. D.

Yes / As multinational enterprises (MNEs) increasingly disaggregate and disperse corporate headquarters (CHQ) activities, the allocation of regional management mandates (RMMs) to local operating subsidiaries is becoming more common. RMMs explicitly break with the traditional assumption of a clear separation between centralised and local decision-making. Yet we know little of how RMMs are enacted by the units involved, or how they evolve over time. Based on a case study of Unilever, we find that RMMs are inherently ambiguous, and identify circumstances under which ambiguity manifests and triggers cycles of sensemaking and sensegiving about the meaning of the mandate. These cycles result in the co-construction of the mandate by multiple units, with changes in RMM scope and governance over time. We also find that sensemaking and sensegiving are most intense among boundary-spanning middle managers. Our work challenges prevailing assumptions that mandates are largely unambiguous when assigned and are unilateral or dyadic accomplishments; demonstrates the importance of sub-unit level analysis in MNEs; and highlights the potential of structuration theory to enrich our understanding of sensemaking and sensegiving in organisations. / Funding from the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies (SAMS)

The purpose of this narrative inquiry study was to investigate the influence of curricular mandates on the teaching practices of high school mathematics teachers. Narrative inquiry, philosophically based on John Dewey’s theory of experience (Dewey, 1938), provides the intimate study of an individual's experience over time and in context(s) (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). This study focused on the experiences of three high school mathematics teachers’ stories of educational change with data collected through interviews and personal documents. Socio-cultural narrative analysis was used to interpret the participants’ stories of adaptation. The data, presented as an ethnodrama, is composed of scenes taken from the interviews and interweaves the participants’ stories of evolution as they tackled the struggles of change on multiple levels: curriculum, student assessment, and teacher evaluation. Results indicated teachers adopt both traditional and reform strategies when deciding on appropriate teaching practices. Collaboration and professional development were two important aspects used by the participants to enlarge their toolbox of teaching practices when forced to challenge their existing beliefs. This study contributes to the scarce research on the impact of curricular mandates on teaching practices. It also highlights the experiences of high school mathematics teachers as they embrace the paradigm shift associated with the mandates and implement changes to their practices to promote a more student-centered, collaborative environment.

Introduction: Access to family planning services is a major public health issue. State policies and funding for family planning services may increase access to contraceptive services and help women avoid unintended pregnancies. Study Design: We identified sexually active, fertile women participants of the National Survey of Family Growth (2006-2008). Women were categorized as consistent or inconsistent users of contraceptives based on self-report. States were classified based on 2006 Medicaid family planning waiver status (income expansions, limited expansions, or no Medicaid family planning expansions), 2006 public funding for family planning in dollars per woman, and insurance coverage of contraceptive mandate status (comprehensive mandate, partial mandate, or no mandate). Multi-level logistic regression was used to estimate the extent to which state-level constructs increase consistent contraceptive use among reproductive aged women at risk of unintended pregnancy. Results: Women living in states with an Medicaid family planning income expansion waiver had 44% increased likelihood of consistent contraceptive use relative to women living in states with no Medicaid expansions (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.44; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06-1.96). Limited Medicaid expansion was also associated with consistent contraceptive use (aOR: 1.30; 95% CI: 0.91-1.87). Nationwide a median of $86 (Interquartile range: $59-$133) of total public family planning funding was spent per woman in 2006. Higher levels of total public funding per woman for family planning services were not associated with an increase in the odds of consistent contraceptive use among all women (OR:1.05; 95% CI:0.98-1.12) or among women with incomes <250% of the federal poverty level (OR:1.06; 95%CI: 0.96-1.17). Comprehensive insurance coverage of contraceptives mandates increased the likelihood of consistent contraceptive use for privately insured women (aOR: 1.64; 95% CI: 1.08-2.50). Partial mandates were not associated with consistent contraceptive use. No association was observed among uninsured women (aOR: 0.77; 95%CI: 0.38-1.55). Conclusions: Comprehensive insurance mandates and income-based Medicaid eligibility expansions are associated with increased likelihood of consistent contraceptive use. More research is needed to understand the association between public funding for family planning and contraceptive use among women in need of publicly funded services.

Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / This practitioner research longitudinal study examines the effects of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law and the Race To The Top (RTTT) initiative on a high performing middle school in Massachusetts between 2003 and 2013. Utilizing a theoretical framework that combines Cochran-Smith and Lytles (2009) "inquiry as stance" and Ball's concept of (1990b) "policy cycles," the study analyzes the programmatic and structural changes enacted in response to NCLB, RTTT and their effects on special education and low income students, their teachers, parents, and the principal. The study's findings show that federal mandates and related state regulations placed unrealistic, unfair and unreasonable demands on students, teachers and the school. Staff often felt as if we were riding on a rollercoaster. Massachusetts' rating of "High" and "Very High" performance on the state test contrasted with the NCLB school report cards that labeled the school as in need of "improvement," "corrective action," and eventually "restructuring" because of the failure of special education or low income students to meet constantly rising targets. NCLB's and RTTT's requirements caused the school to prioritize courses providing remediation in tested subjects--English language arts and mathematics--reducing the availability of related arts classes and thereby narrowing the curriculum. The school's obsessive focus on the annual state tests produced an atmosphere of anxiety for all stakeholders. Unwanted changes in the school culture eventually generated a schoolwide movement to resist the obsession with testing, reduce anxiety and expand interdisciplinary learning. The study concludes with recommendations for further research of the effects of federal mandates on "good" schools across the US. It recommends that policymakers recognize that "one size fits all" school reform is detrimental to public schools and calls for the recognition of local knowledge in the making of policy. A further recommendation encourages school leaders to study their own practice, becoming practitioner researchers for the benefit of their schools. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This thesis is a study of the coerciveness of legal systems. I defend two main claims: that typical legal systems are much less coercive than most legal and political philosophers think, and that legal systems are not necessarily coercive. My defence is developed in three parts. The first is dedicated to building the necessary theoretical framework to defend the main claims of this thesis. This is where I offer a rigorous formulation of the questions that this thesis addresses and contextualise them within broader debates about the relationship between law and coercion. A substantial portion of the first part of the thesis is devoted to the development of two accounts: an account of coercion and an account of the conditions legal systems must satisfy in order to be coercive. The second part is where I advance two arguments for the claim that typical legal systems are much less coercive than it is usually thought. The first is an argument that establishes that our legal systems rarely issue conditional threats. Given that issuing conditional threats is a necessary condition for any legal system to be coercive - or so I claim in the first part of the thesis - the fact that our legal systems rarely do so undermines the view that our legal systems are pervasively coercive. The second argument is based on the reasons why citizens comply with legal mandates. I analyse the relevant empirical data and show that compliance is not frequently owed to the threat of unwelcome consequences. This should not have been the case had our legal systems been as coercive as philosophers generally think. The third part deals with the claim that legal systems are necessarily coercive. There I address some methodological concerns that this claim gives rise to and propose two arguments for viewing coerciveness as a contingent feature of our legal systems.