Joining forces for public value creation? Exploring collaborative innovation in smart city initiatives

Creating public value is a key goal of public administrations, both in their daily business and in the growing field of smart government and smart cities, which focuses on IT-enabled innovations in the public sphere. However, many public administrations still struggle with such innovations due to complex technologies, high investments, and the numerous stakeholders involved. To address this issue, some local governments in continental Europe have turned to collaborative innovation approaches, partnering with (semi-)public utility companies in the hope that their additional innovation assets will boost innovativeness. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how exactly such collaborations should be governed to ensure that the focus remains on creating public value, as utility companies may have their own agendas. To explore this question, we conducted a comparative case study in the context of smart city initiatives with four cases in Swiss local governments. Drawing on agency and stewardship theory, we then propose a model of public-value-focused collaborative innovation, enabling us to explore various collaboration characteristics and their effects on public value creation. Our findings suggest that both agency- and stewardship-based collaborations increase innovativeness. However, while agency collaborations tend to produce smart city innovations that mainly serve the utility companies' business interests, stewardship relationships lead to innovations that are focused more on public value creation. As such, our study extends the literature on the effects of collaborative innovation on public value, and it provides practical recommendations on how such collaborative innovation should be designed.     

The impact of the Wolf reforms on education outcomes for lower-attaining pupils

Between 2004 and 2012, there had been a significant rise in so-called ‘equivalent’ qualifications taken by young people in England in the final years of their compulsory schooling. These were qualifications other than GCSEs that were approved for young people under the age of 16 under Section 96 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. This rise was checked by the Wolf review of vocational education, which led to wholesale changes in the set of qualifications that schools offered to pupils, and which primarily affected lower-attaining students. We quantify the impact of this reform on these pupils with respect to the qualifications they entered and what they achieved. We do so by comparison to previous national cohorts of pupils unaffected by the reform, including the estimation of counterfactual outcomes for the group of pupils most likely to be affected. These pupils tended to enter fewer qualifications overall after the reform than their predecessors, but with a higher fraction of GCSEs. Age-16 attainment fell, with a lower percentage achieving level 2 of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). This finding is repeated in the post-16 outcome measures, which were stable throughout this period. There is no evidence from the attainment data that these reforms helped low-attaining pupils.     

UNDERSTANDING PARTICIPATION RATES IN POST-16 MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS: CONCEPTUALISING AND OPERATIONALISING THE UPMAP PROJECT

We report on a project currently in progress that aims to identify through research the range of factors (individual, school and out-of-school, including home) and their interactions that influence post-16 (i.e. post-compulsory) participation in mathematics and physics in the UK and to assess their relative importance among different student populations. In this project, we are beginning to elucidate the views of students and examine the sources of these views by exploring the contexts in which both school and university students experience barriers or opportunities and form their identities with regard to participation in mathematics and physics. Our focus in this paper is on our methodology, the reasons for it and how and why our approach to data collection developed during the project. We situate our work within a mixed-methods approach, using multilevel modelling and discourse analysis to analyse and interpret our findings that derive from our own questionnaires, interviews and ethnography and from existing large-scale datasets. We argue that greater acknowledgement in the education literatures that investigate student participation in mathematics and science needs to be made than is usual of the range of factors, including unconscious forces that may affect participation.     

Gender,student perceptions,institutional commitments and academic dishonesty: who reports in academic dishonesty cases?

The academic dishonesty literature generally focuses on the causes of academic dishonesty, and outlines deterrence strategies, as well as the punishment methods used in formal sanction. Student self-monitoring techniques are becoming a more visible alternative that places greater emphasis on proactive prevention methods as opposed to reactive punishment policies. Increasing the formal level of student responsibility in deterring academic dishonesty assumes that students will actively monitor the behavior of their classmates. Our findings indicate that student perceptions of campus climate and gender differences are important factors when explaining student reporting of suspected academic dishonesty and may illustrate important prerequisite conditions that must exist prior to the establish of a successful student self-monitoring programme.     

Social class and educational decision-making in a choice-driven education system: a mixed-methods study

Social class differences in educational decision-making form an important explanation for persisting educational inequalities, particularly in choice-driven systems with early tracking. Nevertheless, little is known about the process preceding these choices, especially when school and track choice are interrelated. Building on school choice literature, this study aims to explore how parents from different social backgrounds shape their decision-making process at the transition from primary to secondary education in Flanders (Belgium). To this end, we adopt an explanatory mixed-methods design. Quantitative findings from a parent survey conducted in 36 primary schools were complemented with 32 in-depth interviews with parents. Our findings show two parental profiles regarding educational decision-making, which can be traced back to differences in social and cultural capital. Although effective navigation of the complex field of educational decision-making proved to be strongly class related, parents’ educational and immigrant biographies led to specific approaches, transcending the middle class versus working class binary.     

Nation-building universities in a global environment: The case of Australia

The mass system of higher education in Australia is a product of the publicly financed nation-building strategies of the 1955–1990 period. The nation-building university is now undergoing a three way crisis brought on by the governmental retreat from nation-building and from the funding that sustained it, the stand-off between corporateand academic practices inside universities, andthe need for new strategies in a globalisingenvironment, in which national policies arerelativised but remain important. The crisis isexacerbated by Australia's location on theAmerican `periphery', associated with globalvulnerability and fluctuating economic andcultural dependence. In response the primarystrategy should not be to imitate Americanuniversities, a course of action which islikely to deliver modest returns, but tostrengthen the academic identity andplace-based identity of Australianinstitutions, enabling them to make adistinctive contribution to global highereducation underpinned by a renewed partnershipbetween nation and university.     

A critical review of the advantages and limitations of using large-scale national surveys to examine childcare patterns and the ECEC workforce in Britain

OECD countries have established statistical collections to ensure quality within Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Focusing on one part of ECEC – preschool ‘childcare services’ – this paper critically reviews statistical collections specifically designed to measure childcare patterns in England alongside UK data collected for other purposes which can be used to examine childcare patterns. The paper evaluates how far these data provide a reliable basis for examining the childcare workforce, how well childcare usage and provision patterns can be analysed and the degree to which the data provide comparable geographical coverage. Results show analysis is restricted by the various ways data-sets count and classify occupations. Differences in geographical coverage make them difficult to compare. More refinement of occupation categories would make existing sources more useful. The themes discussed here are relevant for other countries seeking to understand how best to utilise their statistical collections for examining childcare patterns.     

Similarity and difference in fee-paying and no-fee learner expectations,interaction and reaction to learning in a massive open online course

The new pedagogical opportunities that massive open online course (MOOC) learning environments offer for the teaching of fee-paying students on university-accredited courses are of growing interest to educators. This paper presents a case study from a postgraduate-taught course at the Open University, UK, where a MOOC performed the dual role of a core teaching vehicle for fee-paying students and also as a “free-to-join” course for open learners. An analysis of survey data revealed differences between the two groups in respect to prior experience, knowledge, expectations and planned time commitment. The nature and experience of interaction was also examined. Fee-paying student feedback revealed four conditions in which MOOCs could be considered a pedagogic option for taught-course designers. These are: when there is a subject need; when used to achieve learning outcomes; when there is acknowledgement or compensation for the financial disparity; and when issues of transition and interaction are supported.     

Cirriculum and assessment innovation in science

Concerns about pupils' underachievement have stimulated various curriculum and assessment innovations in recent years. One such innovation is the British Graded Assessments in Science Project (GASP). Research focusing on the implementation of GASP highlights issues about the process of educational change, and raises the question of whether innovators take into account lessons learned from past innovations. This paper reports on two case studies of GASP implementation, showing the degree to which teachers took on board the philosophy of the scheme. The results show that even volunteer teachers, familiar with GASP, exhibit barriers to change which are well documented in the literature. One conclusion is that those developing and supporting curriculum and assessment innovation should be informed by past experience, and find real ways of helping teachers to make the changes which are required to meet the demands of the innovation. Specializations: assessment, investigations in science, progression in learning science.     

Outdoor education in Hong Kong: Past, present and future

This paper examines the development of outdoor education in Hong Kong from its colonial roots to the challenges of its uncertain future. The scene is set by a synopsis of Hong Kong's geography, history, economy, and culture. Next, we trace the history of organised outdoor education from the early 1900s to the present day. This is followed by a critical exploration of issues facing youth adventure education programmes and management development programmes. The paper closes with recommendations to return to “real” outdoor courses in natural environments, to raise the standards of training available to outdoor leaders, and finally, to create a governing body that would facilitate inter-organisational learning, raise standards of programme design and delivery, and help build a body of literature that is specific to experiential learning in Hong Kong.