Books on the topic 'Meta-policy'

The coal seam gas industry and its future in New South Wales (Australia) is an extremely contentious policy issue that encompasses multiple policy actors and a wide variety of concerns. This chapter examines the NSW Government’s attempt to meta-govern this policy domain through storytelling. It does so by creating a link between ‘discursive’ depoliticization, statecraft, and storytelling as a strategy of meta-governance. We focus on three stories in particular—energy security, economic growth, and ‘credible science’—and argue that they have had simultaneously politicizing and depoliticizing effects. We argue that this has provided different policy actors with the opportunity to engage in ‘discursive hopping’ whereby the same story has been used to both politicize and depoliticize the issue. We argue that there is a need to ‘call out’ political actors who attempt to ‘change the subject’ of political debate by ‘hopping’ between issues in a poorly justified way.

Role theory is an approach to the study of foreign policy that developed in the interdisciplinary field of social psychology and can be appropriately applied at the individual, state, and system level analyses. Role theory, which first attracted attention in the foreign policy literature after the publication of K. J. Holsti’s 1970 study of national role conception, does not refer to a single theory, but rather a family of theories, an approach, or perspective that begins with the concept of role as central to social life. The major independent variables in the study of roles include role expectations, role demands, role location, and audience effects (including cues). In addition, role theory contains its own model of social identity based on three crucial dimensions: status, value, and involvement. The 1987 publication of Stephen G. Walker’s edited volume, Role Theory and Foreign Policy Analysis, set the stage for further advances in the use of role theory in both the fields of foreign policy and international relations. According to Walker, role theory has a rich language of descriptive concepts, the organizational potential to bridge levels of analyses, and numerous explanatory advantages. This makes role theory an extremely valuable approach to foreign policy analysis. Role theory also offers a way of bringing greater integration between foreign policy analysis and international relations, especially through constructivist meta-theory.

This book offers a critical interpretation of how the meta-linguistic language planning and language policy (LPLP) discourse of major Arabic language academies from the turn of the twentieth century until the present day continuously ‘burden’ language with extra-linguistic, sociopolitical meanings, making it a proxy for the protracted courses of national identity negotiation, counter-peripheralisation in the modern world-system and modernisation. Integrating theories of language symbolism, language indexicality, LPLP, habitus, banal nationalism, world-system and perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis, the book develops our understanding of the phenomenon and mechanism of the entanglement between language, ideology and sociopolitical change in the Arabic-speaking world and beyond.

This chapter outlines the importance of understanding the dynamics of the service context along with the needs of the population being served in order to achieve effective implementation of music therapy programmes. The new music therapist, and the student, must take care to ensure they understand as much as possible about the population, the services, and the wider policy context in the place where they are providing services before translating research findings or the techniques described in case studies to their own developing practice. Music therapy has an emergent evidence base as provided through case reports, expert opinion, randomized controlled trials, and meta-analyses of existing studies. The evidence base points to the effectiveness of music therapy to address a range of needs, particularly in improving communication and social skills.

This paper undertakes a meta study on informal apprenticeship in developing countries. It compares the findings of country-level research conducted by the ILO and others in the past 15 years to shed more light on apprenticeship systems in the informal economy. It discusses the features and practices of informal apprenticeship systems, their responsiveness to rights at work, and the effectiveness of such systems along criteria such as dropouts, training quality, and transitions to employment. The analysis is complemented by a selected number of country case studies that describe and assess the policies and programmes that were introduced during past years to strengthen and upgrade apprenticeship systems in the informal economy. The findings aim to improve understanding of this complex, heterogenous, yet self-sustained training system in the informal economy for evidence-based discussions and policy dialogue between ILO constituents and beyond.

Deliberative democracy is increasingly criticized as inherently elitist and technocratic, and it is blamed not only for the rise of depoliticized institutions, but also for the rise of anti-political and even populist attitudes in citizens. The chapter analyses the discussion about the depoliticizing implications and effects of deliberation and argues that, contrary to these critics, deliberation must be viewed as a genuinely political mode of interaction. A systemic perspective on deliberation allows us to critically assess the deliberative and democratic qualities of political systems and to see when and where they fail to deliver on their promises. Applied with critical intentions, the deliberative system perspective can be used to identify depoliticized policy areas and undemocratic decision-making processes. Moreover, it can feed into processes of meta-deliberation that allow for a democratization of institutional design.

These Guidelines are one of the results of the four-year research project “Open Online Learning for Digital and Networked Society” (2017-2021). The project objective was to enable university teachers to design open and online learning through open and online learning curriculum and environment applying learning analytics as a metacognitive tool and creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the needs of digital and networked society. The research of the project resulted in 10 scientific publications and 2 studies prepared by Vytautas Magnus university Institute of Innovative Studies research team in collaboration with their international research partners from Germany, Spain and Portugal. The final stage of the research attempted creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the learner needs in contemporary digital and networked society. The need for open learning recognition has been increasing during the recent decade while the developments of open learning related to the Covid 19 pandemics have dramatically increased the need for systematic and high-quality assessment and recognition of learning acquired online. The given time also relates to the increased need to offer micro-credentials to learners, as well as a rising need for universities to prepare for micro-credentialization and issue new digital credentials to learners who are regular students, as well as adult learners joining for single courses. The increased need of all labour - market participants for frequent and fast renewal of competences requires a well working and easy to use system of open learning assessment and recognition. For learners, it is critical that the micro-credentials are well linked to national and European qualification frameworks, as well as European digital credential infrastructures (e.g., Europass and similar). For employers, it is important to receive requested quality information that is encrypted in the metadata of the credential. While for universities, there is the need to properly prepare institutional digital infrastructure, organizational procedures, descriptions of open learning opportunities and virtual learning environments to share, import and export the meta-data easily and seamlessly through European Digital Hub service infrastructures, as well as ensure that academic and administrative staff has digital competencies to design, issue and recognise open learning through digital and micro-credentials. The first chapter of the Guidelines provides a background view of the European Qualification Framework and National Qualification frameworks for the further system of gaining, stacking and modelling further qualifications through open online learning. The second chapter suggests the review of current European policy papers and consultations on the establishment of micro-credentials in European higher education. The findings of the report of micro-credentials higher education consultation group “European Approach to Micro-credentials” is shortly introduced, as well as important policy discussions taking place. Responding to the Rome Bologna Comunique 2020, where the ministers responsible for higher education agreed to support lifelong learning through issuing micro-credentials, a joint endeavour of DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and DG Research and Innovation resulted in one of the most important political documents highlighting the potential of micro-credentials towards economic, social and education innovations. The consultation group of experts from the Member States defined the approach to micro-credentials to facilitate their validation, recognition and portability, as well as to foster a larger uptake to support individual learning in any subject area and at any stage of life or career. The Consultation Group also suggested further urgent topics to be discussed, including the storage, data exchange, portability, and data standards of micro-credentials and proposed EU Standard of constitutive elements of micro-credentials. The third chapter is devoted to the institutional readiness to issue and to recognize digital and micro-credentials. Universities need strategic decisions and procedures ready to be enacted for assessment of open learning and issuing micro-credentials. The administrative and academic staff needs to be aware and confident to follow these procedures while keeping the quality assurance procedures in place, as well. The process needs to include increasing teacher awareness in the processes of open learning assessment and the role of micro-credentials for the competitiveness of lifelong learners in general. When the strategic documents and procedures to assess open learning are in place and the staff is ready and well aware of the processes, the description of the courses and the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to provide the necessary metadata for the assessment of open learning and issuing of micro-credentials. Different innovation-driven projects offer solutions: OEPass developed a pilot Learning Passport, based on European Diploma Supplement, MicroHE developed a portal Credentify for displaying, verifying and sharing micro-credential data. Credentify platform is using Blockchain technology and is developed to comply with European Qualifications Framework. Institutions, willing to join Credentify platform, should make strategic discussions to apply micro-credential metadata standards. The ECCOE project building on outcomes of OEPass and MicroHE offers an all-encompassing set of quality descriptors for credentials and the descriptions of learning opportunities in higher education. The third chapter also describes the requirements for university structures to interact with the Europass digital credentials infrastructure. In 2020, European Commission launched a new Europass platform with Digital Credential Infrastructure in place. Higher education institutions issuing micro-credentials linked to Europass digital credentials infrastructure may offer added value for the learners and can increase reliability and fraud-resistant information for the employers. However, before using Europass Digital Credentials, universities should fulfil the necessary preconditions that include obtaining a qualified electronic seal, installing additional software and preparing the necessary data templates. Moreover, the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to export learning outcomes to a digital credential, maintaining and securing learner authentication. Open learning opportunity descriptions also need to be adjusted to transfer and match information for the credential meta-data. The Fourth chapter illustrates how digital badges as a type of micro-credentials in open online learning assessment may be used in higher education to create added value for the learners and employers. An adequately provided metadata allows using digital badges as a valuable tool for recognition in all learning settings, including formal, non-formal and informal.