Academic literature on the topic 'Policy making and implementation'

Thesis advisor: Rebecca Lowenhaupt<br>This single case study examines how stakeholders of a local education agency (LEA) understand and implement state turnaround policy for its chronically underperforming schools. While there is ample research on how to improve chronically underperforming schools, that research becomes limited when looking at turnaround implementation actions that are in response to policy mandates. This qualitative study uses the theory frame of policy sense-making to identify how implementers come to understand turnaround policy and to explore how that sense-making impacts their implementation decisions. The study findings were that teachers recognized three main stages of turnaround. In the first stage building principals used directive leadership to build a unified vision. Implementers reported that this unified vision was partly brought about by the removal of any teaching staff not in line with the principal's turnaround plan. The second stage of turnaround centered on building teacher capacity through internal and external professional development. Internal professional development meant creating multiple meeting configurations where teachers could stay in touch with the turnaround process, offer input, and continually learn from each other. External professional development involved developing teacher skills to more effectively and more rapidly raise student achievement. Findings from across four different implementer groups pointed to the importance of building teachers' ability to understand and use data to improve their instruction as well as student learning. Time for both types of professional development came largely from the introduction of extended learning time (ELT) that was paid for through state and federal grant monies. In the third stage teachers worried about the sustainability of turnaround once the resources from state and federal grants were gone. Hope for sustainability was found most present within the bonds formed by teachers who grew to rely on and trust one another during the arduous work of school turnaround<br>Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2014<br>Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education<br>Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education

The constitution of the European visa regime has deservingly received much scholarly attention. It has been analyzed as part of the policy toolkit that displaces migration control away from the edges of the territory of Europe. Nevertheless, the street-level implementation of this European policy in national consulates remains understudied. This dissertation sheds ethnographic light on Schengen visa policy implementation that is conceptualized as bordering policy. By delivering Schengen visas, state and nonstate organizations achieve the filtering work of borders; this dissertation therefore investigates the day-to-day bordering of Europe abroad and using a comparative approach and focusing on from the theoretical perspective of street-level policy implementation. The analysis builds on a comparative case study: it focuses on the visa sections of the consulates of two old immigration countries, Belgium and France, and one new immigration country, Italy, which implement visa policy in a same third country, i.e. Morocco. This study highlights cross-national differences of visa policy day-to-day implementation that are due to shifting historical backgrounds, national sense-making of visa policy, and distinct organizational conditions. However, the comparative research design and the inductive epistemological approach deployed have revealed processes of transfer at the implementation level, which result in transnational policy-making from below. Informal interactions between actors constitute a ‘community of practice’ based on the desire to share local and practical knowledge rather than expert knowledge in order to address problems linked to day-to-day implementation.<p><p><p>La construction d’un régime européen de visas représente un domaine de recherche important. Ceci a été analysé comme un des instruments politiques qui déplacent le contrôle migratoire au delà des limites du territoire européen. Cependant, la mise en œuvre dans les consulats nationaux reste très peu étudiée. Cette thèse analyse la mise en œuvre de la politique du visa Schengen conceptualisée comme politique des frontières. Par la délivrance du visa Schengen, organisations étatiques et non-étatiques réalisent le travail de filtrage des frontières. Cette thèse investigue la construction quotidienne de la frontière européenne à l’étranger en privilégiant la perspective théorique de la mise en œuvre des politiques publiques. L’analyse s’appuie sur un cas d’étude comparé. Elle se concentre sur les services visas des consulats de deux anciens pays d’immigration, la France et la Belgique, et un nouveau pays d’immigration, l’Italie, qui mettent en œuvre la politique du visa dans un même État tiers :le Maroc. Cette étude met en évidence des différences nationales importantes qui sont dues aux différents passés historiques, à l’attribution d’un sens national à la politique du visa, aux conditions organisationnelles distinctes. Toutefois, la méthodologie comparative et l’approche épistémologique inductive choisis ont permis de mettre en exergue des processus de transferts au niveau de la mise en œuvre qui constituent l’action publique transnationale par le bas. Les interactions informelles entre les acteurs constituent une ‘communauté de pratiques’ basé sur le désir de partager un savoir pratique et local qui sert à adresser des problèmes liés à la mise en œuvre au quotidien.<br>Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Word processed copy.<br>Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-66).<br>The study unravels the nature of Cabinet decision making in African Public Sector systems, and discusses its implications on development policy implementation. The demands on the State, and its key machinery, the Public Service, have evolved over time. Many states, including Zambia and Malawi, have since independence seen a decline in the welfare of their citizens, despite the plethora of development policy instruments that have been put in place to address this worrying situation. Weak policy implementation has been cited as the problem.