Emerging Policy Research in Educational Research and Decisionmaking

TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the misalignment between public school assessment policies and teaching practices in accordance with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and the human capital, curricula, and soft-skills needs of the global economy.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore two issues involved in conducting qualitative research: 1) the essentials of data collection and 2) the unique role of the researcher in the data collection process.

TL;DR: Theoretical-Integrative model of core curriculum policy-making as mentioned in this paper has been proposed to answer the question of what all students should learn and guide the subsequent development of curriculum documents.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine available theoretical models which have been derived from statistically established patterns of association between contextual and organizational variables, and argue that available models in fact attempt to explain organization at one remove by ignoring the essentially political process, whereby power-holders within organizations decide upon courses of strategic action.

Abstract: political systems persist because they are open and adaptive to stresses. He defines a political system as 'the authoritative allocation of values for a society'. It exists in an environment of other systems whose influences on the political system are summarized by the variables, demands and support ('input'). The political system itself is composed of the political community ('persons bound together by a political division of labour'), the regime ('values, norms, and structure of authority'), and the authorities ('the occupants of authority roles'). Stresses on the system occur from excess of demands or decline of support. The political commuhity and the regime provide one form of regulation of stress but the major form of response is by the decisions of the authorities ('output') which can satisfy demands and generate support, and adjust to either on the basis of observed effects ('feedback'). This thesis is expounded at great length and with commendable clarity. It is an important work. Unfortunately its importance is due more to the nature of the attempt and its deficiencies than to the achievement. There are three main reasons for this. (i) For Easton, 'input' summarizes all the influences on the political system stemming from the environment, while 'output' refers only to the activities of the authorities. He justifies this asymmetry by arguing that he is only concerned with the persistence of the system and not with all its effects. But, implicit even in his own analysis, the persistence of the system cannot be attributed to the authorities. Thus the political systems' other two elements, the regime and the political community, are seen only as regulators manipulated by the authorities. Mass media, means of communication, ideology are all seen as instruments of the authorities. Where this becomes too unrealistic, as in the case of political strikes, even though the phenomenon in question has a direct effect on the level of political support it is excluded from consideration as an output of the political system. In consequence the possibility that the struggles of a much wider political population than simply the authorities might have an independent influence in maintaining the political system is excluded. This is even more surprising when we learn that authorities regularly do not know the effects of their decisions and that we must thus sharply distinguish output from outcome. In these circumstances if political systems were as dependent for their persistence on the authorities as Easton suggests, they would have about as much chance of survival as an aircraft with a blind pilot. The most serious consequence of Easton's method is virtually to exclude consideration of elites, parties, power, leadership, and conflict as elements in a systems analysis. The reason (albeit inadequate) of the authorities rather than struggles for power becomes the focal point of the political system. (2) Easton has an answer to this charge. He claims not to be interested in the allocation of power because this in any case presupposes the existence of a political system. But this throws his starting point, 'How do political systems endure?', into a new light. For this question may be construed in two ways, 'How does any particular political system

TL;DR: The sociological imagination is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues as mentioned in this paper.