Research capacity for local innovation: the case of conservation agriculture in Ethiopia,Malawi and Mozambique

Purpose: The limited uptake of improved agricultural practices in Africa raise questions on the functionality of current agricultural research systems. Our purpose is to explore the capacity for local innovation within the research systems of Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique.

Design/methodology/approach: Using Conservation Agriculture (CA) as a case study, we qualitatively explore with 26 locally based agricultural researchers the context of CA research and promotion, including their perceptions on persistent research gaps and issues in closing them.

Findings: Respondents identified that CA was not yet a finished product, with concerns regarding the benefit, feasibility and relevance of CA implementation. They asserted that while further adaptation was required, they were unable to do this due to institutional constraints within their research, extension and policy contexts.

Practical implications: We find that CA continues to be considered a donor-driven intervention in its current form and requires substantial further adaptation to local contexts before researchers will deem it ready for farmer uptake. The five research gaps identified by respondents highlight practical areas where further adaptations must occur.

Theoretical implications: Our findings suggest a lack of participatory research and extension most likely reflects limited financial, human and social capital to implement more participatory approaches. Without addressing these capacities, widespread adoption of complex farming systems change appears unlikely.

Originality/Value: Whilst many studies have identified a need for local innovation to enable CA utilisation, few have qualitatively explored directly with local researchers the capacity of such systems to do so. We address this gap in the literature.     

BLIND MARKING AND SEX BIAS IN STUDENT ASSESSMENT

Three studies are reported which investigated the existence of sex bias in the marking of undergraduate degrees. Study 1 failed to find any evidence that females were marked less extremely than males by second markers, as has been found in previous research. Study 2 found that marker disagreements were not resolved upwards more frequently for male candidates, again contradicting the results of some previous research. Study 3 failed to find any of the expected differences between an institution using blind marking and one using non‐blind procedures. In the light of this negative evidence and of the confusing picture presented by. previous research, it is concluded that there is little firm evidence for sex bias in marking. Despite this, it is likely that there will be increasing pressure to adopt blind marking in the future.     

‘Educare’ in Australia: analysing policy mobility and transformation

Abstract

Background: Early childhood education and care has been an area of significant policy attention, public investment and private market activity in Australia over the past three decades. Australian educationists and policy-makers have looked to international examples for evidence, policy design and institutional models. However, this area is under-researched in Australia, with regard to how these knowledge flows are theorised, and how policy is implemented on the ground.

Purpose: The paper’s purpose was to contribute new Australian-focussed conceptual and empirical insights on the trajectories, development and implementation of evidence-based policy in the field of early childhood education and care.

Sources of evidence: The paper is based on three main sources of evidence: ? the critical literature on policy transfer and policy mobility

? policy statements, reports and planning documents produced by national- and state-level governments

? data from fieldwork analysis of new capital works and programmes in the early childhood field.

Main argument: International research and evidence on the benefits of investment in early learning has had a significant impact on the framing of Australian policy. So too has a move in several countries to align early childhood institutions with schools. However, a dominant paradigm of policy transfer, reliant on pluralist and rationalist frameworks of policy-making, fails to account for the dynamics of policy development and implementation across and within jurisdictions and geographical space. Conceptualising a new alignment in Australia between children’s centres and schools as ‘educare’, this article employs the theoretical lens of policy mobility to account for the circulation and transformation of educare policy in Australian settings. Through an empirical analysis of a new educare centre in the growth corridor of western Melbourne, the article demonstrates the extent to which neoliberal policy settings outside the educational sphere, around public finance, partnership, place and infrastructure provision, influence the implementation of ‘educare’ policy.

Conclusions: The educare discourse in Australia addresses a complex and multiscalar set of policy problems that associate child development with concerns around human capital formation, economic efficiency and productivity, place making and community building, and the role of the public sector in neoliberal democracies. International circuits of knowledge, policy design and institutional models in the educare field have been significant in shaping recent Australian policy, despite well-publicised views expressed in Australia on the disconnection between academic research and policy. The strength of policy mobility as a theoretical lens to assist our understanding of these influences lies in its critique of formalism in policy-making and in its attention to fluidity and transformation. The mobility lens encourages new empirical research that focuses on spatial and institutional dynamics, assisting our reading of on-the-ground developments in Australia’s fastest growing city.     

Inter-subject comparability of examination standards in GCSE and GCE in England

Results from Rasch analysis of GCSE and GCE A level data over a period of four years suggest that the standards of examinations in different subjects are not consistent in terms of the levels of the latent trait specified in the Rasch model required to achieve the same grades. Variability in statistical standards between subjects exists at both individual grade level and the overall subject level. Findings from this study are generally consistent with those from previous studies using similar statistical models. It has been demonstrated that the alignment of statistical standards between subjects based on the Rasch model would likely result in substantial change in performance standards of the examinations for some subjects evidenced here by significant changes in grade boundary scores and grade outcomes. It is argued that the defined purposes of GCSE and A level qualifications determine how their results should be interpreted and reported and that the existing grading and results reporting procedures are appropriate for supporting these purposes.     

Are British Universities in a Position to Consider Implementing Total Quality Management?

Accompanying the removal of the binary divide between polytechnics and universities, the Department of Education and Science (DES) also specified the requirement that the British higher education sector should give more emphasis to the effective management of quality. Some writers have suggested that this can be achieved by institutions introducing the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM). A vital aspect of TQM is the integration of multiple functions across the organization with the objective of establishing a quality conscious workforce. A recommended practice is to use the concept of internal marketing as a mechanism to persuade departments to work together in the creation of internal customer chains. To determine the current status of internal customer management practices in British Universities, a survey of academics was undertaken using a modified version of the Parasuraman SERVQUAL model. The majority of respondents indicated the existence of Type 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 Gaps in the internal customer management process within their institution. Major influencers of these service gaps include minimal effort to gain further understanding of internal customer requirements and a lack of formal quality standards for managing internal customer relations. Respondents consider their faculties are unable to enhance internal quality if the issue was given higher priority by senior management. Identified obstacles to greater emphasis on an internal customer philosophy include insufficient trust between departments and low confidence levels of ability to manage the process. Under these circumstances, it does not appear that for the foreseeable future, British universities are in a position to adopt TQM philosophy. Hence it seems more advisable that these institutions should restrict their quality management activities to the simpler assessment-based approach recommended by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (CVCP) Academic Audit Unit.     

Apprenticeship in England – the continued role of the academic–vocational divide in shaping learner identities

Successive governments have pledged to enhance the quality of apprenticeship in Britain so as to achieve ‘parity of esteem’ with academic study. Yet, at the same time, the discourse of the academic-vocational divide has dominated the academic, policy-maker and practitioner debates. This paper draws on two recent studies designed to explore the learner identities of apprentices on different apprenticeship programmes: motor vehicle maintenance (level 2) and engineering (level 3). Through this work, we are able to explore the role of the academic–vocational divide in identity construction and to challenge assumptions about vocational learners. It will be argued, that, far from being ‘naturally practical’, the young people draw on normative discursive categories in their construction of continuous identities. The findings raise important questions about the UK apprenticeship system as currently conceived, while at the same time drawing attention to the possibility for change.     

Teachers’ work in complex times: the ‘fast policy’ of Swedish school reform

This paper analyses recent educational reforms on teachers’ work in Sweden following the 2010 Education Act, and up to the School Commission Report released in April 2017. We draw upon key policy texts and associated documents from the Ministry of Education, and the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket). We consider the background to the reforms, their relations with one another and how they have played out in the Swedish educational policy context. We argue that these reforms exhibit features of ‘fast policy’ in terms of how they have taken on an increasingly centralised and neoliberal character, and the rapid-fire way they have been directed at teachers as individuals, rather than broader schooling structures. We show how the fast policy reforms have recentralised schooling and teachers’ work—effectively de-professionalising educators.     

The Maintenance of Order and Use of Space in Primary School Buildings

An empirically grounded discussion of relationships which can exist between the maintenance of order in teaching situations and the use of space in primary school buildings is offered in this paper. Attention is specifically focused on verbal directives issued by teachers to their charges about what they deem acceptable behaviour in teaching areas during lesson periods. Examples of these directives are presented in order to illustrate both how teachers may manipulate children's use of space to impose on them particular definitions of educational order and also how they may use space as a means of disciplining those who transgress against that order.