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This article sharpens consideration of aspects of policy transfer to address climate change and gives greater attention to the context that might support efficient adaptive resilience. Using the example of Australian reforms to water policy, we evaluate how different elements of policy proved more (less) successful in facilitating efficient adaptation to climate variability and thus expose elements that might be more (less) attractive as candidates for policy transfer. Overall, we find that Australian policy reforms in the water sector provide useful guidance in some instances and not others. Establishing caps on extraction, flexible water markets and individual carry over rights generally facilitated flexible and efficient adaptation, and could be transferred. Related policy concepts, like formulating clear water planning rules and entitlements, are worth considering for implementation elsewhere, even if the groundwork on governance is a prerequisite. We also note the importance of shaping drought responses from government in such a way as not to distort the incentives for individual adaptation, and there is some evidence of this working in the Australian setting. Achieving transferability of these policies, however, may be a challenge. Australian policies around ‘hard infrastructure’ investments have generally proved less desirable and ideally should not be considered as a roadmap. These relate specifically to: (1) extravagant augmentation of urban supply; (2) using infrastructure to supposedly improve irrigation efficiency for environmental water provision; and (3) governments’ infrastructure responses after flooding. None of these approaches is consistent with the aim of fostering adaptation to a more variable climatic future. Key policy insights Australian water policies that have focussed on capping water extractions, development of flexible markets and specifying rights to allow greater flexibility have generally worked well against a changing climate, and could be transferred. The development of clear planning rules and entitlements also proved important, although the conditions to favour transfer are difficult to engender. Policies dealing with hard physical infrastructure have proven problematic and their adoption elsewhere is discouraged, even if transfer is more amenable. Encouraging more individual adaptation to flooding is a particularly significant challenge, even in a country renowned for drought. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In this paper we describe our early, qualitative work on “teacher talk moves” such as revoicing , situated within the urban classrooms of highly skilled teachers, including their role in the work of managing multiple constraints while maintaining productive inclusivity. We then describe our attempts to discern the impact of these talk tools on student achievement in multiple classrooms, using both post-hoc controls and in vivo studies. We move on to the challenges present in disseminating this work in professional development settings; our approach includes framing talk tools as rational responses to actual classroom challenges. Finally we describe current efforts to disseminate cyber-enabled PD in science education K-12, including a central focus on academically productive talk.

We explore vocal vs. silent student participation in whole-class mathematics discussion in relation to learning outcomes, relying on additional data analysis from a previously published in vivo controlled comparison in two sixth grades (n = 44) which contrasted an “academically productive talk” (APT) condition (emphasizing frequent discussion) with a “direct instruction” condition (without discussion), where content was tightly controlled across conditions. In the current study, controlling for a variety of factors, we find no relationship between the degree to which students contributed vocally during the lessons, and those students' scores on the outcome measure, in either condition. This finding adds to a growing literature on participation in classroom discussion, and may inform thinking about the multiple constraints faced by teachers as they attempt to orchestrate whole-class discussions. However, we suggest that this result can most confidently be applied to classrooms in which a culture of active participation has already been established.

The vision for science teaching in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards requires a radical departure from traditional science teaching. Science literacy is defined as three-dimensional (3D), in which students engage in science and engineering practices to develop and apply science disciplinary ideas and crosscutting concepts. This knowledge building presents many challenges for teachers. We describe a two-pronged program for scaling 3D science professional development (PD) across a state: (a) 24 teachers developed expertise in 3D learning and facilitating teacher study groups; (b) these peer facilitators led 22 study groups of teachers in 3D science activities, analyzing student learning, and investigating classroom interactions. We describe design approaches for supporting teacher and facilitator learning. We present analyses of teacher learning, including shifts in 3D science, beliefs, and pedagogical content knowledge that supports 3D science teaching, and ...

We examine the discursive influence of competing interest groups and how and when U.S. federal legislators use empirical evidence to consider Missouri River diversion projects originating in the relief, recovery, and reform thinking behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Twelve U.S. Congressional committee hearings that occurred between 1944 and 2006 are content analyzed to demonstrate the nature of instrumental arguments in legislative deliberations. Members of Congress in favor of diversion projects used more economic-based, instrumental arguments than interest group representatives sharing their views while members of Congress opposed to the diversion projects consistently used less science-based, instrumental arguments than did interest group representatives sharing their stance. As a percentage, more instrumental arguments were made in field hearings than in Washington, D.C. hearings. While more economic-based, instrumental arguments were made in Senate-related hearings than in House of Representatives related hearings, in the House more science-based, instrumental arguments were made than in the Senate.

Advances in probabilistic forecasting, notably based on ensemble prediction systems, are transforming flood risk management. Four trends shaping the assimilation of probabilistic flood forecasting into flood risk management are longer forecasting lead times, advances in decision-making aids, inclusion of probabilistic forecasting in hazard mitigation and collaboration between researchers and managers. Confronting how to use probabilistic flood forecasts to make binary management decisions for reducing flood losses requires developing institutional capacity while acknowledging flood risk estimation is one component of decision making under uncertainty in an evolving policy landscape.

A federal government system creates opportunities for proponents and opponents of environmental policy change to shift the institutional home where a policy decision is made and then invoke reasoning tailored for the new venue and to retry or reframe arguments. Content analysis of North Dakota state legislative and US Congressional committee hearings preceding authorization of an outlet connecting Devils Lake, North Dakota to the binational Hudson Bay drainage basin revealed: (1) State and federal legislators were equally likely to invoke constituents' localized concerns in framing arguments, and (2) Scientific evidence did not hold sway in either state or federal hearings.

The study of policy framing enables the investigation of how elites conceptualize policy issues. While the dominant investigative work on elite framing has been within the mass media, we demonstrate the utility of an elite framing approach in a political institution, the U.S. Congress. We argue for moving to a “life-cycle” approach to policy framing that recognizes the evolution of elite framing attempts as implementation of a law deviates from its legislative intent, basing our approach out of the issue-attention cycle theory put forth by Downs (Public Interest 28:38–50, 1972). Framing efforts by policy advocates do not end after legislation has been enacted or policy changed. Elites who have been unsuccessful in achieving their policy aims continue to advocate for their preferred outcomes by altering their framing strategies. We demonstrate this by applying evolutionary factor analysis to investigate 10 Congressional committee hearings held between 1957 and 2006 pertaining to federal funding for the Garrison Diversion Unit in North Dakota. From the perspective of proponents of diverting water from the Missouri River, how the Congressional debate over the Unit progressed constituted policy regression. This is reflected in the evolution of elite framing over the period studied. Our analysis uncovers the emergence of four evolutionary frames. Initial frames emphasized the benefits to be derived from water diversion, while subsequent frames reflected a more defensive posture emphasizing the limited harm that water diversion would cause. This research demonstrates the consequences of legislative implementation delay for elite framing attempts.

To make a difference in policy making about socio-ecological systems, ecologists must grasp when decision makers are amenable to acting on ecological expertise and when they are not. To enable them to do so we present a matrix for classifying a socio-ecological system by the extent of what we don’t know about its natural components and the sodal interactions that affects them. We use four examples, Midcontinent Mallards, Laysan Ducks, Pallid Sturgeon, and Rocky Mountain Grey Wolves to illustrate how the combination of natural and social source of indeterminism matters. Where social indeterminism is high, ecologists can expand the range of possible science-based options decision makers might consider even while recognizing societal-based concerns rather than science will dominate decision making. In contrast, where natural indeterminism is low, ecologists can offer reasonably accurate predictions that may well serve as inputs into decision making. Depending on the combination of natural and social indeterminism characterizing a particular circumstance, ecologists have different roles to play in informing socio-ecological system management.

The benefits of utilizing intermediaries to broker understanding between environmental scientists and policy makers have become widely touted. Yet little is known about the tasks boundary spanners undertake to develop environmental policy solutions and how these tasks fit into frameworks intended to advance public policy decision making. Such frameworks may be constructed to aid decision makers in differentiating between the types of environmental policy issues that confront them or the policy settings in which they are operating. Consequently, this paper examines how six different knowledge brokering strategies; informing, consulting, matchmaking, engaging, collaborating and building capacity might be employed in responding to different types of environmental policy problems or policy settings identified in decision aiding frameworks. Using real world examples, four frameworks are reviewed. They are; Lindquist's [Lindquist, E.A., 1988. What do decision models tell us about information use? Knowledge in Society 1 (2), 86–111; Lindquist, E.A., 1990. The third community, policy inquiry, and social scientists. In: Stephen Brooks, S., Gagnon, A. (Eds.), Social Scientists, Policy and the State. Praeger, New York; Lindquist, E.A., 2001. Discerning policy influence: framework for a strategic evaluation of IDRC-Supported research] decision regimes, Turnhout et al.’s [Turnhout, E., Hisschemoller, M., Eijsackers, H., 2007. Ecological indicators: between the two fires of science and policy. Ecological Indicators 7 (2), 215–228] science policy typology, Holling's [Holling, C.S., 1995. What barriers? What bridges? In: Gunderson, L.H., Holling, C.S. (Eds.), Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 3–34] adaptive cycle and Kurtz and Snowden's [Kurtz, C.F., Snowden, D.J., 2003. The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal 42 (3), 462–483] Cynefin domains. For the different problem types or policy settings described in the decision aiding frameworks primary knowledge brokering strategies are identified. While the frameworks differ in their conceptual constructions, the applicability of specific knowledge brokering strategies serve as a commonality across particular problem types and policy settings.

Abstract Many protocols have been used in clinical and research settings for collecting systolic blood pressure (SBP) measurements to calculate the ankle–brachial index (ABI); however, it is not known how useful it is to replicate measurements and which measures best reflect cardiovascular risk. Standardized measurements of ankle and arm SBP from 5140 overweight or obese individuals with type 2 diabetes were used to estimate sources of variation. Measurement characteristics of leg-specific ABI, as calculated using a standard algorithm based on the highest SBP of the dorsalis pedis or posterior tibial arteries, were projected using simulations. Coefficients of variability ranged from 2% to 3% when single SBP measurements were used and ABI was overestimated by 2–3%. Taking two SBP measurements at each site reduced standard errors and bias each by 30–40%. The sensitivity of detecting low ABI ranges exceeded 90% for ABI within 0.05 of the 0.90 clinical cut-point. The average and the minimum of the two (i.e. right and left) leg-specific ABI values had similar U-shaped relationships with Framingham risk scores; however, the average leg ABI had slightly greater precision. Replicating SBP measurements reduces the error and bias of ABI. Averaging leg-specific values may increase power for characterizing cardiovascular disease risk.

This study examined the effects of a motivationally facilitative after-school program on 7th grade students' autonomous motivation, learning goals, school engagement, and performance in science class. Pairs of students were individually matched on sex, race/ethnicity, free lunch status, and science grades and each member was randomly assigned to either a 15 week, after-school program or a control group. Students (N = 90) completed questionnaires regarding their motivation, and engagement before and after the program. Science, math, social studies, and English teachers rated students' levels of classroom engagement. Students participating in the Investigators' Club increased in learning goals, engagement in school and in science class, and science grades, and decreased in performance goals relative to the controls. Effects of the program as well as drop-out and completer information, are discussed in terms of the goal of facilitating motivation in disadvantaged middle school students.

Knowledge uptake, having decision makers assimilate the ideas of experts, is recognized as an important stimulus to bringing about policy change. This is particularly true in the realm of environmental policymaking, which is characterized by knowledge intensity, complexity, and multifaceted concerns. Using examples from an innovative watershed management organization, this article presents a heuristic for understanding how knowledge uptake occurs within a cycle of organizational reasoning. This cycle is driven by activities that transform data, information, and knowledge and that link specialists with decision makers. The heuristic can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify breaks in the transformation process that impede mandate fulfillment and impair capacity building. Lack of appreciation of the dynamic relationship between data, information and knowledge leads to mistimed and ineffective policy interventions that do not result in the hoped for progress in science intended to underpin policy advances.

Much of the hazards literature on information transfer focuses on how individuals passively acquire hazards information by monitoring what comes across their desks and computer screens. This paper highlights a complementary information search strategy in which individuals pull or actively seek out the information they need. This research examines the affiliations of those who have been proactive in contacting the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center over a 20-year span. Until 2000/2001 requests from university-affiliated individuals exceeded those from people with other affiliations. There has been an increase in the number of information requests from unaffiliated individuals and from people outside the United States. A survey of a subset of those who have requested information from the Hazards Center highlights the importance of knowledgeable personal contacts and the World Wide Web for identifying the center as a source for information. It is vital for organizations committed to the distribution of timely, appropriate hazards-related information to effectively service the needs of a proactive, amorphous assemblage of hazards information seekers.

Little is known about environmental exposure to pesticides and the extent to which exposure is affected by drift from agricultural applications and take home exposure from agricultural workers. The study focused on 24 agricultural families in the northwestern United States and measured levels of organophosphate pesticides (OP) in house dust. Pesticide residues were significantly associated with the number of individuals in the home whose work included high exposure pesticide activities. Mean levels of pesticides were higher in the homes of workers who reported waiting more than 2 hours before changing out of their work clothes compared with homes where workers change within 2 hours after returning from work (p < .01). The results of this study provide evidence that workers can inadvertently carry agricultural chemicals from their work into their homes, thereby increasing the risk of pesticide exposure to other family members inside the home.

In seeking to trace linkages among groups involved with environmental management in New York State's Adirondack Park, we developed a participatory exercise and employed it at a recent Adirondack research conference. Fourteen organizations took part, collectively representing 72 linkages associated with policies and programs, expertise, information dissemination, and physical facilities. The exercise revealed a dense "hub-and-spoke" pattern of interactions, with state agencies acting as the hubs. The exercise is easy to administer and can be used to provide a one-time snapshot of organizational interactions as well as serving as a basis for longitudinal research.

Initiatives in the Neponset, Ipswich, and Sudbury-Assabet-Concord watersheds highlight how watershed-scale innovation in engaging nongovernment participants is influenced, but not dominated, by the statewide program, the Massachusetts Watershed Initiative. The presence or absence of three elements--external support, process, and issue--and the order in which they occur, shape the viability of collaborative watershed-scale management initiatives. External support includes providing personnel or funding from outside an initiative. Process is the interaction among individuals undertaking watershed-wide policy development and/or implementation. An issue is an attention-requiring concern, vital to a watershed, that can most effectively be addressed by a coordinated strategy among different parties. A process generated by an issue is sustainable and amenable to enhancement through external support. The contribution of external support is most apparent when outside assistance is provided after an issue has crystallized into clear problem needs that can be addressed through specific research projects or implementation activities. Process is central in shaping issues, utilizing external support, and generating management results. The outcomes of voluntary processes in the three watershed initiatives highlight how the evolution of the Massachusetts Watershed Initiative leads to, and depends upon, the development of watershed-scale initiatives.

The goal of the Massachusetts Watershed Initiative (MWI) is to use a watershed approach to restore and maintain the integrity of state waters. The MWI is presented as an effort to bring about the convergence of the agendas of government, the informed public, and the general public. In the planning phase of the MWI's pilot project in the Neponset River Watershed, government and the informed public successfully struggled to create a joint basin-wide action plan. Stronger outreach is needed to involve the broader public and to engage local municipalities and businesses more fully.

The Resource Management Act, the cornerstone of New Zealand's legislated environmental policy, reflects the mediation of internationally debated constructs of sustainable development and profoundly local meanings of living within nature. The outcome is a made-in-New Zealand approach to conceptualizing sustainable management in national environmental policy. This paper demonstrates how and why the contribution of non-New Zealanders and the first peoples of New Zealand, the Maori, to this conceptualization differ so profoundly from each other. External influences, such as the thinking of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) on defining sustainable development, have the greatest impact in the initial conceptualization of policy formulation. It is through Kingdon's (1984) policy stream, rather than through his other two streams of politics and problems, that outside views weigh in most convincingly. First peoples are positioned to be influential in policy formulation through all three of Kingdon's streams because of their appreciation of locality and long-term commitment to place. These factors are reflective of a philosophy and ideology which is not the bedrock of state legislation about sustainable management. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Ecostewardship partnerships are initiatives to manage natural resources where no single entity has the jurisdiction and the capacity to do so on its own. The ways in which place-based considerations and different motivations for participation shape the prospects for forming productive partnerships is demonstrated using examples from New York State’s Adirondack Park. Two basic motivations, each with different implications for the formulation and implementation of ecostewardship partnerships, are identified. Capacity-driven participants use partnerships to compensate for deficient internal resources. Commitment-driven participants use partnerships for activities feasible only through collaboration.

On enactment, both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 1970 of the US and the Resource Management Act (RMA), 1991 of New Zealand received accolades for innovativeness. However, is such praise justified when these acts are explored through the literature on policy innovation? This paper suggests that it is. More importantly, recognizing how different attributes of innovation contribute to having a policy adopted suggests what the crafters of future environmental policies might do well to consider. It is critical to attend to the political climate in which a policy is being drafted.

Policy windows are transitory opportunities during which the likelihood of adopting new policy or legislative proposals is greater than usual. Accepted wisdom has held that natural disasters serve as focusing events that generate policy windows in their wake. This paper highlights the need for a more circumscribed understanding of when and where policy windows occur based on the experiences of three US regional planning organizations: a hand-picked commission of community leaders, a council of governments, and a special-purpose substate organization. The first operated in the San Francisco Bay Area of California following the Loma Prieta earthquake (October 1989), and the other two in South Carolina's Atlantic coastal plain after Hurricane Hugo (September 1989). The analysis concludes that natural disasters did not transform the agenda or mission of these entities. Policy windows were neither automatic outcomes of focusing events nor did they ensure the adoption of pertinent policy within the organizations investigated. Several conditions are minimally necessary for using policy windows to bring about hazard mitigation: comprehensive institutional conceptualization of hazards management, institutional strength and flexibility, and well-placed, effective policy entrepreneurs.

“Revoicing” by teachers in classroom group conversations creates participant frameworks that facilitate students' “alignment” with academic tasks and their socialization to roles and identities in intellectual discourse. Three examples demonstrate the potential of “revoicing” to: (1) position students in differing alignments with propositions and allow them to claim or disclaim ownership of their position; (2) share reformulations in ways that credit students with teachers' warranted inferences; (3) scaffold and recast problem-solution strategies of non-native-language students.

As a step towards understanding how local environemntal hazards policy is made, this article explores how Canadian local elected officials gained and assimilated scientific and technical information about the environmental hazards facing their communities. Consistent with previous work in the hazards field, three of Weiss’s (1979) meanings of research utilization were found to be directly applicable. The elected officials expressed the view that reconciling conflicting expert opinion and competing concerns was more difficult and more rightly their responsibility than gathering information. This research demonstrates the utility of focus groups for interviewing elite populations making community scale decisions.

/hN^Y no. n-J DISCOVERING AND ANALYZING EARTHQUAKE ISSUE NETWORKS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND WASHINGTON STATE by Sarah Michaels Postdoctoral Fellow Institute of Governmental Studies University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California Working Paper 92-7 INSTITUTE OF GOVERNMENTAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY

Using an investigation of a technical policy issue, this paper demonstrates the utility of employing an issue networks approach to understanding the dynamics among those concerned about the threat of earthquakes to the province of British Columbia, Canada and the state of Washington, United States. Such an approach focuses on issue emergence in the early stages of agenda building. This research demonstrates how scientific and technical expertise, in the absence of political leadership, is an unrivaled source of presumptive rights leading to key actor status within a specialized policy community. A complementary finding is that career-related rationales provide the overwhelming motivation for issue network participation.

(1990). The computer as a dependent variable. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 29, Microcomputers in Context, pp. 246-255.

This paper argues for and illustrates an approach to the study of writing that integrates ethnographic analysis of classroom interaction with linguistic analysis of written texts and teacher/student conversational exchanges. Such an approach sheds light both on the writing that gets done in a classroom and on the broader institutional constraints that influence teachers’ and students’ expectations and behavior. The approach is illustrated through a case study of writing in a single sixth grade classroom during a single writing assignment. The analysis characterizes the teacher's expectations (or “schema”) for how the assigned composition should be structured and then analyzes students’ first drafts as either “matches” or “mismatches” with that schema. Teacher/student conferences are seen as a “strategic research site” for studying the teaching and learning of writing in that they bring together teacher, students, and written texts. Conferences can be studied in light of the kind and number of “corrections...

(1984). Listening and responding: Hearing the logic in children's classroom narratives. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 23, Access to Meaning: Spoken and Written Language, pp. 218-224.

A discourse-oriented classroom activity in an ethnically mixed, first grade classroom is studied from an interpretive perspective, integrating ethnographic observation and fine-grained conversational analysis. “Sharing time” is a recurring activity where children are called upon to describe an object or give a narrative account about some past event to the entire class. The teacher, through her questions and comments, tries to help the children structure and focus their discourse. This kind of activity serves to bridge the gap between the child's home-based oral discourse competence and the acquisition of literate discourse features required in written communication.Through a detailed characterization of the children's sharing styles, evidence is provided suggesting that children from different backgrounds come to school with different narrative strategies and prosodic conventions for giving narrative accounts. When the child's discourse style matches the teacher's own literate style and expectations, collaboration is rhythmically synchronized and allows for informal practice and instruction in the development of a literate discourse style. For these children, sharing time can be seen as a kind of oral preparation for literacy. In contrast, when the child's narrative style is at variance with the teacher's expectations, collaboration is often unsuccessful and, over time, may adversely affect school performance and evaluation. Sharing time, then, can either provide or deny access to key literacy-related experiences, depending, ironically, on the degree to which teacher and child start out “sharing” a set of discourse conventions and interpretive strategies. (Urban communication, ethnic/subcultural differences in discourse style, the transition to literacy, American English.)

This paper is a case study of two occasions of teacher response, shaping, and evaluation of students' texts. In one case, the text is oral — a “sharing time” contribution by a first grader. In the second case the text is written — a sixth grader's composition about a favorite circus act. The two examples are taken from different classrooms at different grade levels. Nonetheless, they evidence striking parallels in regard to teacher-assigned task, text structure, and teacher–student interaction. Both students attempt to introduce personal knowledge or experience into a simple descriptive account. In doing so, they use complex associative strategies which entail shifts in topic, time, and focal characters. In both cases, the teachers have difficulty interpreting the students' texts, which lack lexical or graphic markers of the associative shifts, and which are not organized in the way the teachers were expecting. In the end both teachers fail to expand on and clarify the students' complex communicative goals. Moreover, in their push for simpler texts which “stick to one topic” the teachers fail to appreciate the logic and complexity of the students' initial attempts. Following a detailed description of the tasks, texts, and outcomes of these classroom encounters, explanations are proposed which may account for the similarities found in the two examples. The proposed explanations focus both on schools as institutions (with institutionalized practices and values for teaching literacy skills) and on the complex interpretive processes at work in urban, multiethnic classrooms, processes which add significantly to the sociolinguistic demands on teachers.