Background: In an era of increased polarisation, identity politics and growing reliance on using evidence to make disability policy decisions - evidence-based policymaking - how much do we know about the process by which disability policy decisions are made and the use of evidence therein? Aims and objectives: The objective of this Practice Paper…

Background: Elected members of the US Congress rely on staff, including fellows with scientific and engineering expertise, to find and interpret information for use in policymaking. Factors that impede, or facilitate, the communication of scientific information within the institution thus can play a critical role in legislative capacity, but there…

Background: Knowledge brokering plays an important role in the evidence-to-policy system, but little is known about whether and how it occurs within government departments. Aims and objectives: Using empirical evidence from one UK government department, this article analyses how knowledge brokering takes place inside the policy making process and…

Building stronger relationships between families and schools is increasingly identified as a way to address many vexing issues--teacher shortages, chronic absenteeism, lingering academic and social-emotional effects of COVID-19, and perceived divisions between parents and educators. Because policies and practices around family engagement vary…

Background: Seeing how governments formulate decisions on our behalf is a crucial component of their ability to claim democratic legitimacy. This includes being seen to draw on the knowledge and evidence produced by their civil service policy advisers. Yet much of the advice provided to governments is being increasingly withdrawn from public…

Currently, there is a national level debate on security-based school safety policies and practices, particularly in relation to the presence of police in schools. Decisions about school safety are discussed at the district level by administrators and board of education members who may not be aware of the importance of utilizing local data to…

To establish good maritime governance, the Indonesian government must pay attention to maritime security aspects in every maritime policy and integrate maritime security education into the national education curriculum. However, implementing the World Maritime Axis concept, the Indonesian government still needs to consider the maritime security…

Despite increasing awareness of the importance of promoting the social responsibility of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals, few intervention programs have been developed to enhance the social responsibility of college students or adults in the STEM fields. In this paper, we introduced a new instructional…

The use of robust research findings in public health policy has been strongly encouraged for bridging the evidence-policy gap. To assess and further promote evidence uptake, understanding how research evidence is being used by decision makers is very important. This systematic review examined primary studies exploring the use of research evidence…

This paper examines the role of language policy and needs assessments in the provision of public services to regional minority and immigrant language speakers in the UK and Finland. Semi-structured interviews with service providers in Helsinki, Rovaniemi, Manchester, and Cardiff revealed how language policy and language needs are conceptualised…

Background: Co-creation in policymaking is of increasing interest to national governments, and designers play a significant role in its introduction. Aims and objectives: We discuss instances from our fieldwork that demonstrated how UK Policy Lab used design methods to gain insight into the design-oriented methods introduced to policymakers'…

This study examines and characterises the governmental discourse regarding entrepreneurship policy in the Israeli education system as a case study to expand existing knowledge regarding national entrepreneurship policy in education. The study is based on in-depth interviews with key governmental policymakers (holding the top of the pyramid…

There is continuing interest in using the best available research evidence to inform public health policy. However, all too often efforts to do so rely on mechanistic and unrealistic views of the process by which public policy is made. As a result, traditional dyadic knowledge translation (KT) approaches may not be particularly effective when…

The purpose of this study was to examine and analyze the decision-making and policy development of local governing boards acting in response to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Quantitative and qualitative data was gathered through open-ended items in a mixed-methods survey and through a focus group interview. This research sought to…

This special issue examines how relationships between research and policy in environmental and sustainability education (ESE) can be strengthened. Our contribution draws on three cases from outside the ESE space to analyse policymakers' perspectives on using evidence to inform decision-making, and to show that government-based policymakers develop…