In search of answers,Commissions of Inquiry and Policy Changeanalyses ten landmark inquiries ranging across a variety of political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, and legal issues.
This paper presents findings from a study of policy implementation of green infrastructure and stormwater management in the City of Toronto - Canada's largest city. The analysis uses key informant ...interviews with public, private and non-profit sector actors to examine the challenges municipalities face in implementing green infrastructure policies. The article begins with a review of the literature related to green infrastructure policy implementation followed by the theoretical and methodological approach used in the paper. Findings are then presented outlining the significant barriers to green infrastructure and insights from participants who articulated that rather than a shift from grey to green, what is evident in terms of policy change is policy layering and very gradual conversion of well-established policies that support grey infrastructure. The paper concludes with a discussion of why the shift from grey to green will continue to be challenging unless significant policy and institutional changes are advanced.
Canadian water politics Sproule-Jones, Mark; Johns, Carolyn; Heinmiller, B. Timothy
Canadian water politics,
c2008, 20081120, 2014, 2008, 2008-11-20, 20080101
eBook
Canadian Water Politics explores the nature of water use conflicts and the need for institutional designs and reforms to meet the governance challenges now and in the future. The editors present an ...overview of the properties of water, the nature of water uses, and the institutions that underpin water politics. Contributors highlight specific water policy concerns and conflicts in various parts of Canada and cover issues ranging from the Walkerton drinking water tragedy, water export policy, Great Lakes pollution, St Lawrence River shipping, Alberta irrigation and oil production, and fisheries management on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
For the past few decades, jurisdictions have been using ecosystem and human health indicators to report on progress in achieving environmental policy goals. However, scholarship and practice indicate ...there is increasing need for governance indicators to identify gaps in policy, management and adaptive capacity. There has been significant growth in the use of governance indicators in hopes of improving outcomes in multi-level, multi-jurisdictional, multi-actor governance systems. This paper applies the OECD’s water governance indicators in two complex transboundary water governance systems in North America: the Great Lakes and Rio Grande-Bravo basins. The paper provides insights into how governance can be assessed and evaluated using water governance indicators, and highlights some of the challenges of applying governance indicators to transboundary water systems. Further, the paper reflects on how governance indicators connected to comparative and contextual analysis may serve as a foundation for a better integration of scholarship and practice.
Most institutions of higher learning offer undergraduate mathematics tutoring, yet little is known regarding the work tutors do or the knowledge needed to enact that work. We explore the mathematical ...knowledge needed for the work of undergraduate peer drop-in mathematics tutoring. The data consists of transcripts from eight stimulated recall interviews, two each from four tutors, during which each tutor reflected on six of their recorded tutor sessions per interview. We first summarize and synthesize different conceptualizations of mathematical knowledge for teaching, with particular attention to definitions of knowledge types and their use in teaching. We examine the applicability of conceptualizations of the mathematical knowledge of teaching to tutoring to answer the following research question: How do frameworks for mathematical knowledge for teaching appear in the undergraduate peer drop-in tutoring context? Our findings indicate aspects of mathematical knowledge for teaching frameworks apply to the tutoring context; however, it is not a perfect match. In particular, aspects of mathematical knowledge for teaching which are used in planning tasks are not relevant for the work of drop-in tutors. By understanding the knowledge required for tutoring, future research can explore how this knowledge develops. This understanding may ultimately lead to improved tutor training which focuses on both mathematical knowledge, different from content knowledge gained in the math classroom, and pedagogical knowledge specific to mathematics tutoring.
In the past decade there has been growth in the use of water governance indicators to assess and deepen our understanding of water policy. This article presents research that applies the Organisation ...for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) water governance indicators at the transboundary scale in the North American Great Lakes region. Findings reveal the OECD's water governance indicators provide some diagnostic value, however there are some important limitations when adapting and applying the indicators at the transboundary scale. The article concludes with insights and outlines challenges of using water governance indicators in research and practice while at the same time embracing complexity in water governance.
Undergraduate peer drop-in mathematics tutoring is a common form of support at the university level, yet research regarding how to train this specific group of tutors is underspecified. This paper ...aims to describe a training program for this population that is grounded in mathematics education research. It serves as a first step in conducting a design experiment on how training impacts tutor behaviours. This paper addresses the research question: How can mathematics education research inform tutor training design? First, the specific context for the training program is characterized, followed by challenges to training programs. Then, ways in which research on mathematics classroom teaching and learning can apply to tutoring are discussed. Finally, the training program is described in detail, including the research which informed the design, as well as the learning outcomes, activities, and feedback mechanisms. Broadly, the goals of the training program are to promote productive beliefs regarding tutoring and learning mathematics, to increase the use of NCTM's (2014). Principles to action. teacher/student actions in tutoring practices, and to develop reflective practitioners. To guide the development of these skills and dispositions in tutors, tutors engage with tutoring scenarios, excerpts, and case studies. Tutors are also provided with opportunities to reflect on their own tutoring practices.
Canadian governments have spawned hundreds of federal and provincial commissions of inquiry (COIs). Many scholars have completed in‐depth analysis of particular COIs but less attention has been paid ...to policy impact and comparisons across COIs. This study addresses the following questions. What role do COIs play in policy change? Would policy change likely have occurred without the COI? Why do some COIs result in policy change and others do not? This analysis reports on findings from in‐depth case studies of ten COIs. It uses a theoretical framework focusing on ideas, institutions, actors and relations to examine whether and how COIs lead to policy and administrative change.
Sommaire
Le paysage de l'administration et de la politique publique canadienne a été un terrain fertile pour des centaines de commissions d'enquête fédérales et provinciales (CI). De nombreux chercheurs ont effectué des analyses en profondeur de commissions d'enquête (CI) particulières, mais moins d'attention a été accordée aux répercussions qu'elles ont sur les politiques et aux comparaisons entre les CI. Cette étude se penche sur les questions suivantes : Quel rôle jouent les CI dans les changements de politiques? Des changements d'orientation seraient‐ils survenus sans les CI? Pourquoi certaines CI entraînent‐elles des résultats en matière de changements de politiques et d'autres non? Cette analyse offre des résultats d’études de cas approfondies de dix CI. Elle se sert d'un cadre théorique axé sur les idées, les institutions, les acteurs et les relations afin d'examiner si et comment les commissions d'enquête entraînent des changements administratifs et des changements de politiques.
•This paper provides a fresh perspective on the “desired end state” (DES) for adaptive water governance, proposing that the concept include three aspects: the nature and significance of contextual ...constraints, the current status of policy outputs, and the outcomes achieved by the system to date.•The paper provides means to clarify methodological challenges associated with studying the DES, including its relationship to adaptive governance institutions and how normative conceptualizations of DES might be avoided.•The possibilities for comparative analysis are demonstrated through illustrative investigation of DES in the Great Lakes and Rio Grande-Bravo basins.
Scholars from diverse fields of inquiry agree on the need to redesign institutions for governance of complex transboundary water systems to become more ‘adaptive’, and they assume that this will lead to a ‘desired end state.’ However, the exact features of the desired end state are often not clearly delineated, and the relationship between attributes of adaptive governance and the desired end state is difficult to empirically assess. We advocate for shifting the research focus instead to investigating the ‘proximity’ of a complex water system to desired ends, by assessing three aspects: the nature and significance of contextual constraints operating on a policy regime, the current status of policy outputs, and the outcomes achieved by the system to date. Taken together, these can provide us with a broader and deeper picture of what we want to achieve with adaptive governance and how close we are to achieving it. Methodologically, it then becomes easier to assess the impact of changes to governance institutions in subsequent research. We demonstrate these arguments through an illustrative comparison of two complex water governance systems in North America: Great Lakes Basin and Rio Grande-Bravo River Basin.
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