Background: COVID-19 accentuated an evergreen dilemma in evidence-informed policy making--the imperative to synthesise the best available evidence with limited time to produce high quality synthesis. The pandemic prompted the adaptation of evidence synthesis practices to match the urgency of the crisis, and heightened demand by policy makers,…

Return on investment (ROI) has become part of the policymaking toolkit, particularly pertinent for activities like school-based career guidance deemed optional by some policymakers. There are institutions supporting ideal ROI methods alongside an academic critique, but little research on how ROI has been applied in practice in a guidance setting.…

Governments the world over require scientific knowledge to inform policy makers' decision-making processes. The recontextualization of this information for nonscientific audiences has received much attention, though it has primarily focused on publicly available texts. Little is known about the discursive nature of how science is transformed and…

Through a qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological study, I examined the intersection of document analysis, sensemaking and policy implementation, that revealed rich descriptions of situated policy contexts and nested working practices where policy actors from Ontario, Canada, and England, UK, translated and used career guidance policy documents.…

Scholars have become increasingly vigilant about leaders, the role of government and wider governance bodies, and their influence on education policy. Councils in Europe and North America, generally, and education councils, specifically, are good examples of influential bodies whose decision-making processes have rightfully come under scrutiny;…

Using two conceptual frameworks from political science--Kingdon's (2003) multiple streams model and the advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993)--this case study examines the detailed history of a major tuition policy change in Ontario in 2004: a tuition freeze. The paper explores the social, political, and economic…

Prepared for a Strategic Education Governance learning seminar, this working paper analyses the ways in which the Dutch government tried to reach overarching goals in education, in a system characterised by a high degree of distributed autonomy of education institutions and the participation of multiple actors, and consequently a government highly…

The purpose of this doctoral research study is to add to our knowledge about principal decision relational networks across a recently consolidated group of school districts in Newfoundland, Canada. By studying principals making district-wide technology policy, we outline the key decision making factors found among rural and urban leaders. We use a…

Conclusions and recommendations from a review by the Economic Council of Canada on decision making in human resources policies. (AN)

The way in which intraorganizational context can influence strategy making is shown by comparing six Canadian universities formulating retrenchment strategies. "Strategy" involves the components of the strategy, the process by which strategy is made, and the context in which strategy is formed. A variety of university contexts are…

Of 833 Canadian government officials surveyed, 12% always/often and 16% never receive relevant university research; 53% of research results have rarely or never influenced decisions. Multivariate regression analyses identified these predictors of research use: users' efforts to find and adapt research, organizational context, and researcher-user…

Planning means knowing what you wish to do, developing a program to do it, and anticipating the context in which you will have to act. The role of the planning official is to point out options and consequences, not to take responsibility for any policy or pattern of decision. (Author/WM)

Summarizes recent trends and prevailing conditions of educational leadership in Canada. Proposes that the role of official leadership in the policy process be redefined. (Editor/RK)

Articles in this special issue discuss the utilization of social research by governmental commissions. How social science knowledge influences their decision making is examined. (RM)

The Management and Planning System (MAPS), designed to provide a computer-based information storage and retrieval system to aid school board decision makers, is described. (DB)