Changing Policy Context Research Articles

The Changing Geography of Subregional Planning in England

Regional planning bodies throughout England are now in the early stages of preparing Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs), which will succeed Regional Planning Guidance (RPG) as the frameworks guiding local development planning. This transition from RPG to RSSs is one outcome of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. Another outcome is the abolition of the Structure Planning function of English county councils, potentially resulting in a strategic vacuum in sub-regional planning. The Regional Assemblies (together with Regional Development Agencies and Government Offices) will need to address the subregional agenda, providing strategic leadership in what are often diverse and complex regional settings. The authors report on research undertaken on behalf of the South East England Regional Assembly and its partners. They examine both the changing policy context in this region, and the means by which a hitherto regional—and top-down—policy agenda is being ‘spatialised’ to address subregional diversity. In doing so, they also look at the move away from historic subregional boundaries, the redefining of ‘subregional’, and the shifting institutional ownership of the planning process at this particular tier.

Partnership in English Initial Teacher Education: Changing Times, Changing Definitions – Evidence from the Teacher Training Agency National Partnership Project

This paper draws on findings from a national evaluation of the Teacher Training Agency’s National Partnership Programme (NPP) (2001–2005) to analyse the current practice of partnership in initial teacher education in England. The paper begins by drawing on the MOTE studies (Furlong, et al., 2000) undertaken in the 1990s to describe the practice of partnership during that decade. It goes on to describe the changing policy context of teacher education in England since new Labour came to power in 1997, including the Government’s concern substantially to increase the numbers of new teachers entering the profession; it was this commitment, the authors argue, that was in part behind the development of the NPP which was intended to increase both the quality and capacity of schools to take part in initial teacher education. The authors go on to describe the NPP as it was put into practice in nine Government regions across England and their evaluation of it, which included 127 interviews with a range of stakeholders within each of the government regions. They suggest that, although the programme did probably contribute to increasing the numbers of partnership places in schools during its lifetime, the NPP did not alter the underlying model of partnership; indeed, they suggest that in many cases the practice of partnership in England had changed little since the mid 1990s. However, they conclude that the NPP did have an important impact on provision in that it further undermined the pedagogical and epistemological dimensions of partnership that many teacher educators in the 1990s saw as central to collaborative work between schools and higher education institutions (HEIs). The NPP, they suggest, further encouraged the development of a ‘technical rationalist’ approach to teacher education, an approach that fits well with new Labour’s broader vision for the management of the teaching profession in England.

The Role of Housing Stock Transfer Organisations in Neighbourhood Regeneration: Exploring the Relationship between Regeneration, ‘New Localism’ and Social Networks

This paper defines stock transfer organisations and argues that they have a pivotal role in accessing funding for the social and economic regeneration of their communities. It places housing and regeneration policy within the changing policy context of ‘new localism’, which, at least rhetorically, emphasises improvement in public services, multi-level governance structures and devolution of decision making. For stock transfer housing organisations this means an increasing need to engage in a wide range of partnerships and policy forums. Bourdieu's notion of habitus, i.e. social, economic and cultural capital, is used to explore the possible reasons for the differential approach of stock transfer organisations to regeneration and the variable success at engaging in a wide range of regeneration activity and attracting additional resources.

Professionalism and Skills Enhancement in the Built Environment: The Role of Higher Education in a Changing Policy Context in England

Since the election of the Labour Government in 1997 there have been a series of policy initiatives emphasising the importance of co-ordinated and integrated approaches to the delivery of urban regeneration and in particular Sustainable Communities. This changing policy context has given rise to a shortage of practitioners with both the technical skills to deliver specific programmes, and more especially the generic skills to work in multi-disciplinary teams in conjunction with partnership-based management boards. This paper discusses the origins of the debate about skills shortages and deficiencies and reviews the main government reports which have advocated a new approach to the provision of skills for community regeneration. It focuses particularly on the work of the Planning Network which was funded by the Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE) to examine the contribution of higher education to the wider skills debate. It concludes by arguing that higher education has an important part to play in the provision of a more appropriate skills set for professional practice within a broader and more inclusive strategy involving all key stakeholders. However, employers also have a major responsibility in ensuring that key skills are maintained and enhanced within their own organisations.

The Evolution of the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise: Publications, Performance and Perceptions

This article examines how the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), along with the development of performance indicators, fits into the production of research within a changing policy context. The historical evolution of the RAE from 1985–2001 is considered, before looking specifically at how research output (in the form of journal publications) was, and is, assessed. Changes in process and output measurements necessitated a move from quantitative to quality evaluation, which affected both academic publishing and the role of journals within the RAE. The issue of quality – in terms of perceptions and performance – as applied to both is explored.

From ‘Children in Need’ to ‘Children at Risk’—The Changing Policy Context for Prevention and Participation

This article explores the changing context for preventative services, and the involvement of children and families in developing these services. Using emerging findings from national evaluations of preventative initiatives, the move to address the needs of children at risk of social exclusion is considered. The challenges faced in implementing previous needs-led approaches to children are set against the current intentions to achieve change for children.

Para-teachers in India: A Review

This paper provides an overview of ‘para’ teachers in India. It traces the origins of para-teacher schemes in the country and analysis the changing policy context where-in poorly paid and trained para-teachers on contract are increasingly being recruited in place of regular teachers in government schools. Drawing upon available research studies, the authors draw attention to the detrimental implications that para-teacher programmes have for professionalisation of teachers, the quality of schooling and equity concerns in education.

Revisiting Teaching Archetypes: Identifying Dominant Shaping Influences on Student Teacher's Identities

The primary aim of this article is to identify and interrogate the lay theories of contemporary student teachers and to indicate and illustrate the manner in which these ‘theories' manifest both continuity and change when contrasted with teaching archetypes and previously articulated lay theories of student teachers in the setting. It is in five parts. First, a theoretical lens of teaching archetypes and lay theories is provided. Second, a succinct account of the changing educational and policy context is provided. Third, data generation and analysis are described. Fourth, emergent cultural themes are critically analysed. Fifth, some tentative implications are drawn for initial teacher education and further research.

The Knowledge Worker, the Manager‐academic and the Contemporary UK University: New and Old Forms of Public Management?

This paper explores how far the expectations of and the practices and technologies used by academics in management roles in UK higher education at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty‐first centuries appear to differ from those used in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The system of higher education in the UK is explained and then concepts of new managerialism and academic knowledge work are discussed. Next the changing policy context of UK higher education since the 1960s is examined. The paper then uses illustrations of perceptions of contemporary changes to changing expectations about the roles of academics in management roles in UK universities from a recent UK Economic and Social Research Council funded project on ‘New Managerialism and the Management of UK Universities’. Finally, using research and insider accounts of university management and governance from the 1960s onwards, the paper examines the extent to which so‐called new forms of management of higher education may have predated the 1990s. It is suggested that whilst some elements of the management of universities remain intact (role titles, leadership of academics, oversight of teaching and research) from the 1960s and 1970s, radical policy changes from the 1980s onwards have meant that major shifts in what was expected of academics in management roles began in the early to mid‐1980s.

The EC Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment: A Much-Needed Boost for Environmental Integration

Summary: Environmental assessment has long been held to be a key tool in achieving one of the cornerstones of European Community environmental policy, that of environmental integration. However, it has taken the best part of 30 years to get to the point of implementation of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive, due in 2004. Securing legislation for environmental assessment at strategic decision levels as well as project level EIA has been a symbolic milestone for environmentalists. This paper explores the background to the SEA Directive and analyses in detail its key requirements and implications for implementation. The paper also examines the relationship between the SEA Directive and the changing policy context over the period of its long gestation. It concludes that the SEA Directive has arrived at an opportune time to reinvigorate the environmental integration agenda, currently beleaguered by the much stronger social and economic agenda dominant in current EU conceptions of sustainable development. While there has been positive formalisation and strengthening of EU environmental policy over the past 30 years, arguably there has been inadequate real change in terms of the effective integration of the environment into decision-making on the ground.

Promoting Flexibility in the Intermediate Care Workforce

This paper discusses the pressures on intermediate care services to provide a flexible approach to staffing, including a constantly changing policy context, winter pressures and different service remits. It suggests three ways that managers can address the issue of flexibility: the adoption of flexible team structures, flexible worker roles and flexible employment structures.

General practitioners' uptake of clinical practice guidelines: a qualitative study.

To explain recent rapid audited change in the uptake of locally implemented, evidence-based clinical guidelines for asthma and angina in primary care. A case study of primary care in two matched, adjacent districts in Northern England, focusing on a stratified random sample of 49 general practitioners (GPs) from eight primary care groups. Data were collected from three cycles of mainly qualitative interviews carried out at six-monthly intervals, before and after the dissemination of local guidelines and after audit data were gathered. Interviews examined attitudes, awareness and impact of locally disseminated asthma and angina guidelines and the subsequent audit. Audit data on guideline uptake were also available from a parallel study. The rapid increase in guideline uptake observed in both intervention and control groups was not explained by individual practitioners or practice factors. The findings are attributed to GPs' awareness of policies for evidence-based medicine, of new health service institutions and of the clinical governance activities of primary care groups. Behaviour change reflects GPs' decisions about what to record in case notes as well as their clinical decisions, so that findings may reflect changing perceptions about accountability rather than about preferred treatment regimes. Guideline production and dissemination is best seen in the broader context of policy change. Studies of guideline implementation should report before and after data and incorporate significant qualitative components in order to identify important contextual factors.

Cultural diversity and entrepreneurship: policy responses to immigrant entrepreneurs in Australia

Australia, one of the most cosmopolitan of contemporary western societies, has a long history of immigrant entrepreneurship, with many ethnic groups significantly over-represented in entrepreneurial activities, particularly in the small business sector of the Australian economy. This paper addresses the changing policy context that shapes the rate of formation of - and the growth and expansion of - ethnic enterprises in Australia. At a macro level, changes to Australian immigration and settlement policy and taxation policy indirectly impact on rates of immigrant minority entrepreneurship formation and survival. At the micro level, policy development that impacts directly on minority immigrant enterprises in Australia is very recent and largely undeveloped. This paper looks at immigrant entrepreneurship in Australia, including spatial dimensions, and at the impact of changing macro policy. It then reviews three key areas of micro policy responses to immigrant entrepreneurship: the education and training needs of ethnic entrepreneurs; policies designed to encourage unemployed immigrants to become entrepreneurs; and policy related to government strategies to improve communication with ethnic entrepreneurs. This paper concludes that there are few direct policy initiatives to promote immigrant entrepreneurship in Australia.

‘What Counts is What Works’? Constructing Evaluations Of Market Mechanisms

This paper draws on a study of the introduction of market testing in the UK civil service to explore ways in which managers involved in the implementation of the new policy constructed evaluations of its impact. It is structured around three arguments. The first concerns the problems of evaluating ‘what works’ in the multi‐stakeholder, multi‐goal context of public management. The research highlights a range of overlapping and sometimes conflicting evaluation criteria across different organizational and occupational groupings. The second argument explores the difficulties of evaluation in the context of shifting policy objectives and the dynamic nature of institutional change. The research shows how the practitioners involved shaped and reshaped their construction of events over time as unanticipated benefits and disbenefits became evident. It also suggests ways in which they responded to the changing policy context, constructing new rules and norms of action over time. The third argument concerns the different levels of analysis underpinning managers’ constructions of ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’, and how these constructions were deployed as strategies of legitimation in shaping the process of institutional change.

Teachers, Writers, Professionals. Is there anybody out there?

This paper draws on questionnaire responses from senior commissioning editors located within nine of the major UK education publishing outlets. It explores changing priorities in educational publishing with reference to authorship, readership and the changing policy context within which publishing 'lists' are conceived, developed and marketed. The shift of orientation within educational publishing from a 'general' to a 'professionalised' public is central to the argument of the paper. That argument is pursued through an analysis of how the changing priorities of educational publishing are impacting upon academics and practitioners. Central to that analysis, however, is a recognition that publishing houses, schools and institutions of further and higher education are subject to social and economic pressures that not only shape the educational agenda, but help determine what groups, individuals, institutional interests, etc. constitute the 'public' debate around that agenda. Through a specialist focus on educational publishing, the paper is able to identify some of the key issues that need to be addressed in order to revivify the public sphere and reintegrate it into what is becoming an increasingly 'professionalised' debate on education.

Youth Work: The Possibilities for Critical Practice

ABSTRACT Critical youth-work practice is crucial at a time when the changing policy context presents significant opportunities for looking at and engaging with old problems in new ways. Critical practice accords with emergent directions in social policy which seek to breathe new life into the democratic process. The potential for critical practice is inherent in many aspects of youth work but workers need to be clearer about concepts such as power, purpose and learning, and forms of social action which connect the personal to the political. Because there can be no critical practice without critical practitioners, workers need a strong theoretical framework to underpin their work. In the end it is a question of ‘know-how’ where critical purpose is both clear and embodied in the processes of youth work itself.

Putting the social into urban regeneration policy

Urban regeneration is a policy area which has been dominated by property development and economic forces, and is therefore relatively ignored as an element of social policy. Social regeneration, meaning the improved and appropriate delivery of welfare services in poor neighbourhoods and the empowerment of local communities in regeneration processes, has never been a prominent feature. Social regeneration came briefly onto the policy agenda in the late 1960s and early 1970s but largely withered away in the welfare crisis and the Thatcherite decade. In recent years a revived movement for social regeneration has emerged, which is having some impact on policy. This article reviews the emergence of this movement and the changing policy contexts, arguing that practical and conceptual tools may now have been developed to support successful social regeneration.

The Dar es Salaam Milk System: dynamics of Change and Sustainability

Three major themes in the current discussion of African cities are poverty, the effects of economic structural adjustment programmes and the need for greater sustainability of urban systems. In relation to each of these the potential benefits of increased food production in urban and peri-urban areas have been highlighted. This paper uses the case of milk production and marketing in and around Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to explore the impacts of changing economic and policy contexts on one element of the urban food system. It is concluded that neither the limited number of commercial milk produces in the peri-urban zone nor the recently expanded number of small-scale urban producers are likely to form the basis of a sustainable, locally based milk system for the city. The enthusiasm for sustainable cities, and food production in urban and peri-urban zones to support them, should not be allowed to divert policy and limited investment funds toward agricultural activities and systems which have little long-term comparative advantage.

The Changing Policy Context of Occupational Therapy

The work of health care professionals in the United Kingdom is continually influenced by the directions, goals and principles of government and dominant groups in the policy-making process (Ackers and Abbott 1996). For too long many occupational therapists have failed to acknowledge that their work exists within a wider social context. This context controls and rations the resources that support the health and social care system and ultimately affects what occupational therapy is and the way in which occupational therapy is delivered (Øvretveit 1992). For instance, Pringle (1996) suggested that in the 1970s and 1980s occupational therapy had experienced increased autonomy and freedom to define the role and scope of its practice. As a consequence of the recent health service reforms, it is argued that this autonomy and freedom seems to have been progressively undermined. This article aims to stimulate an awareness amongst occupational therapists of the fundamental importance and relevance of an understanding of social policy to their everyday practice.

Quality of care in nursing homes for older people: Providers' perspectives and priorities

The long-term care of older people is increasingly characterised by a mixed economy model and independent nursing homes have become an important contributor to this form of provision. Concerns about the quality of care in this sector have, however, focused attention on a number of policy issues. There are proposals to revise existing legislation, modify inspection processes, introduce national standards and consider alternative models of funding. Within this changing policy context, little is known about the challenges facing homes in providing quality care. This paper draws on the findings of a Delphi survey of 196 clinical nurse managers in the Anglia and Oxford region of the NHS Executive. The aim of the study was to identify and prioritise the challenges facing nurse managers in the delivery of quality care. A wide range of clinical nursing issues and 'indirect' nursing issues was identified. The findings highlight the demands of increasingly dependent residents of advanced age, including their needs for physical and psychosocial care. Funding constraints, recruitment and retention of staff, and education and training were priority issues believed by nurse managers to influence the quality of care they could deliver. The implications of these findings for policy and practice are considered.