Examining arts education policy development through policy frameworks

ABSTRACT

While policy formation frameworks are commonly used to understand public policy developments, scholars rarely have used them to reflect on arts education policies. Such analysis is important because it can assist both in identifying the genesis of past policies, including who the important actors are, how issues are framed and problematized, and how specific solutions are designed, as well as how to interpret unfolding policies. In this article, I review three prominent policy frameworks: Kingdon's “multiple streams framework,” Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith's “advocacy coalition framework,” and Baumgartner and Jones' “punctuated equilibrium framework.” After reviewing the frameworks, I address the following questions: (a) How would these conceptual frameworks predict arts education policy development to proceed? (b) How would these conceptual frameworks explain constituents and coalitions that affect the arts education policy sphere? (c) How would these conceptual frameworks illuminate precipitating events that drive the policy development process? I apply the frameworks to several instances of arts education policy development, including the formal designation of the arts as a core subjects under the Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-227), the development of the 2014 National Core Arts Standards, and music's enumeration in the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. Because these three policy issues differ in important ways, they can help to illuminate the breadth of arts education policy.     

A versatile policy toolkit supporting run-time policy reconfiguration

This paper describes an autonomics development tool which serves as both a powerful and flexible policy-expression language and a policy-based framework that supports the integration and dynamic composition of several autonomic computing techniques including signal processing, automated trend analysis and utility functions. Each of these technologies has specific advantages and applicability to different types of dynamic adaptation. The AGILE platform enables seamless interoperability of the different technologies to each perform various aspects of self-management within a single application. Self-management behaviour is specified using the policy language semantics to bind the various technologies together as required. Since the policy semantics support run-time re-configuration, the self-management architecture is dynamically composable. The policy language and implementation library have integrated support for self-stabilising behaviour, enabling oscillation and other forms of instability to be handled at the policy level with very little effort on the part of the application developer. Example applications are presented to illustrate the integration of different autonomics techniques, and the achievement of dynamic composition.

European policy review: Biodiversity research to support European policy

Biodiversity research is essential to underpin the development, implementation and evaluation of policy that impacts on or protects biodiversity. An example is presented on how European terrestrial biodiversity research is being integrated to strengthen policy input. ALTER-Net is a Long-Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network funded by the 6th European Union Framework Programme for Research and Development.     

European policy review

This section provides a short analysis of and opinion on international biodiversity policymaking throughout Europe. It focuses on highlights and major developments of the last months. The views expressed are those of the authors.     

The ethics of public policy RCTs: The principle of policy equipoise

In this article, I ask whether a principle analogous to the principle of clinical equipoise should govern the design and conduct of RCTs evaluating the effectiveness of policy interventions. I answer this question affirmatively, and introduce and defend the principle of policy equipoise. According to this principle, all arms of a policy RCT must be, at minimum, in a state of equipoise with the best proven policy that is also morally and practically attainable and sustainable. For all arms of a policy RCT, policy experts must either (1) reasonably disagree about whether the trial arms are more effective than this policy, or (2) know that they are.