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This case illustrates how the work of leaders and analysts in the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) and the agency’s partnership with the Strategic Data Project (SDP), a program of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, created momentum for statewide policy change.  By exploring Delaware leaders’ use of data and analytics to challenge assumptions and inform the development of better policies and practices, the case illustrates the importance of leadership, analytic and technical competency, and strategic partnerships when leading education reform.  The case specifically highlights the power of human capital analytics to diagnose the current status of Delaware’s educator pipeline, from preparation through development and retention, and how effectively communicating with these analyses built coalitions of support and drove a culture of data use at both the state and district level. Download the case study [SDP website]

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UNESCO and the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education have designed this unique collection of case studies in order to support stakeholders (e.g. policy makers, teachers and educators, researchers, development partners, NGOs) to develop and implement inclusive and equitable education policies, programmes and practices. The case studies section presents detailed and highly structured material on key policy developments. The aim of the case study material is to provide detailed information on inclusive policy and practice from policy makers and practitioners, about the implementation and its results.

This section includes a collection of case studies relating to policy statements, descriptions and evaluations of policy developments, plans for and reflections on policy implementation from different regions. At present the case studies are all in English, but additional material may be in any language. This section will continue to be updated with new case studies.

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. institutional flux: the us university, the rise of international branch campuses, and the french system, 3. data and methods, 4. georgia tech engagement in lorraine, 5. discussion, 6. conclusions, 7. acknowledgements.

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Plans versus experiences in transitioning transnational education into research and economic development: a case study

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Jon Schmid, Sergey A Kolesnikov, Jan Youtie, Plans versus experiences in transitioning transnational education into research and economic development: a case study, Science and Public Policy , Volume 45, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 103–116, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scx051

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The process by which universities internationalize their education mission and adopt the ‘third mission’ of economic development in their local region is widely documented. However, little is known about how transnational educational campuses adopt research and economic development functions. This case study draws on interviews, historical documents, and bibliometric and patent analysis to describe the efforts of one of the longest standing US transnational campuses—Georgia Tech Lorraine—to integrate into the Lorraine region of France by adding research and economic development missions. In describing the campus’s evolution, this article highlights key markers indicating the transition to novel competencies. The results indicate that the adoption of new missions is characterized by plans, mixed success, and re-orientation rather than by a directed or designed process. Additionally, the study suggests that efforts to transplant successful programs from the home university to the Lorraine campus were less successful than those involving host region-led partnerships.

Much has been written about how the mission of universities has evolved from a conventional teaching mission to the undertaking of a second mission of research and, most recently, a third mission of service to society ( Gulbrandsen and Slipersaeter 2007 ; Cai and Hall 2015) . Economic development of the local region, transfer of technology based on research undertaken at the university, and greater connection with local social issues are among the targets of this this third mission. While some question the appropriateness of the third mission, its presence persists.

This article discusses the internationalization of these three missions. Universities in the USA and elsewhere have set up global campuses, initially focused on expanding the educational mission. Efforts to expand educational programs outside the home country continue, but these are sometimes coupled, other times not coupled, with institutionalized research programs and even facilities. In addition, some of these efforts involve extending into technology transfer and commercialization.

Little is known about how this evolution of transnational educational campuses into research and technology transfer/commercialization missions occurs. The majority of the existing literature on transnational education campuses focuses on their educational activities ( Wilkins et al. 2011 ; Wilkins 2013 ; Fang and Wang 2014 ; Ahmad 2015 ; Cai and Hall 2015). Other researchers have studied the establishment, closure, benefits, risks and management of such campuses ( Altbach and Knight 2007 ; Wilkins and Huisman 2012 ; Kinser and Lane 2015 ). However, less is known about how transnational educational campuses expand into other missions. While a handful of case studies have emphasized the importance of designed architectural types over the life cycle of these campuses ( Pfotenhauer et al. 2016 ), little is known about the role of proactive plans, architectures and designs compared to responses to host country needs and wants ( Shams and Huisman 2011 ) in the evolution of these campuses.

This article examines the evolution of a transnational education campus into research and economic development missions through the case study of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Lorraine (GTL) campus, which was established in 1990 in Metz, France. Lorraine is not a region without educational and research institutions, as are some locations of transnational campuses, rather it has a complement of public research institutes, universities, and corporate R&D. The case study will draw on interviews, historical documents, and bibliometric and patent analysis to depict Georgia Tech’s efforts to integrate into the region through the addition of research and economic development missions. Key transitional markers and changes in publication and patent output associated with the campus will be highlighted. This article will show that the evolution of the campus into research and economic development missions is marked by plans, mixed success, and re-orientation rather than a planned process. The case study suggests that efforts to transplant successful programs from the home university to the Lorraine campus were less successful than those that involved host region-led partnerships.

The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. To locate the case in its relevant historical and scholarly context, the following section briefly recounts three processes of institutional transformation that are directly relevant to the case at hand. Section 3 describes the methods used here. Section 4 reconstructs the empirical case of GTL’s evolution through interviews and analysis of historical documents and GTL’s research and innovation output. Section 5 generalizes the findings from Section 4 to construct one plausible model of university campus evolution involving expansion of university missions. Section 6 concludes.

Three historical processes of institutional change have direct bearing on the case of GTL. First, because GTL is a satellite campus of a US university and, according to our observations, is isomorphic to larger patterns of US university change, we consider the changing role of the university in the USA. This subsection also considers the prevailing scholarly models for explaining these changes more generally. Second, we situate GTL within a global trend of the expanding prevalence of international branch campuses. Finally, we consider the national higher educational context into which GTL entered.

2.1 US universities, the state, and industry

From their inception US universities, when compared with their European counterparts, have been places of practice. 1 Indeed, Rosenberg and Nelson (1994) describe the US universities of the ninetieth and early twentieth century as ‘intensely practical’. 2 For example, course offerings in mining, agriculture, accounting, and various types of engineering appeared within US institutions of higher learning earlier than in Europe ( Rosenberg and Nelson 1994 : 327). This focus on applied knowledge owes to the strength of university–industry ties during this early period of institutional formation. Furthermore, university linkages to industry were, from inception, local. Ties to geographically proximate industries linked universities to their surrounding regions. Thus, the educational and research foci (and thus the organizational structures) of the US university were shaped by the geographies and industries in which they were embedded.

The close university–industry relations during the mid-to-late nineteenth century shaped the departmental structure of US universities. Industry demand for engineers, such as from the railways, resulted in the establishment of engineering departments in many of the US’s leading institutions of higher education ( Grayson 1980 ). Similarly, industry demand for electrical engineers was met by an ‘essentially instantaneous’ response to establish courses in the subject within institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Cornell ( Rosenberg and Nelson 1994 : 327). Finally, chemical engineering departments emerged, first at MIT (1888) and then at University of Illinois (1895), in response to industry demand.

While the US university system has undergone significant changes (e.g. the surge in government spending on university research that began at the onset of World War II resulted in a lasting federal presence in the university research system), the modern US university remains strongly linked to industry. However, the nature of the university–industry–government relationship has changed. One prominent means of understanding the current state of this trilateral relationship is the Triple-Helix framework.

Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) contend that the USA, and indeed most countries, is moving toward what they deem a Triple-Helix III mode of university–industry–government relations. In this mode, nation-states seek university–industry–government relations characterized by shared roles in knowledge production and commercialization (e.g. firms and governments that conduct research and universities that spin-off firms) and implement policies directed at encouraging collaborative innovation production modes, creating boundary-spanning functions, and that erode traditional (e.g. universities produce knowledge, firms produce products) divisions of labor. Within a Triple-Helix III mode, universities, firms, and government agencies do not occupy static functional roles in technology production, rather their roles are dynamic and determined by interactions with each other and with technology itself. According to this model, the university is conceptualized as ‘entrepreneurial’ in that it actively seeks to commercially exploit newly produced knowledge. Indeed, Etzkowitz et al. (2000) contend that universities are approaching a ‘common entrepreneurial format’ characterized by the embrace of a third mission of economic development and explained by internal (the university’s desire for additional revenue) and external (the host region’s desire for knowledge-based development) demand factors. Etzkowitz concludes that the transition to an entrepreneurial university is a ‘global phenomenon’ ( Etzkowitz et al. 2000 : 161).

Youtie and Shapira (2008) propose a three-stage model of the evolution of university missions. This model is based on the historical transition of an archetypical Western university and identifies three university stages (storehouse, factory, and hub) defined by the manner in which a university interacts with knowledge. Universities operating in the initial (storehouse of knowledge) stage primarily serve a pedagogical function. The primary novel function associated with the transition to the ‘knowledge factory’ stage is the conduct of research (as well as the ‘production’ of graduates). Universities operating in this second stage place increased attention on the ‘pursuit of scientific research based on rational inquiry and experimentation’ ( Youtie and Shapira 2008 : 1189). Finally, the authors observe an emerging mode of university behavior; that of ‘knowledge hub’. Universities operating in this stage act as an embedded animateur within their regions, actively linking research to commercial ends.

These trends of institutional change, while not universally agreed upon, 3 have been studied extensively. Less well specified, however, is a more recent phenomenon whereby universities are beginning to internationalize not only their educational functions but also their research and commercialization and economic development functions. That is, universities are increasingly attempting to extend their ‘second’ and ‘third mission’ into the regions in which their international initiatives are located. It is this most recent feature of the emerging role of modern university–government–industry relations that we aim to investigate here. However, two additional processes are critical to understanding the transition undertaken by GTL: the expansion of international branch campuses and change within the French university system.

2.2 The rise of international branch campuses

The rise of international branch campuses (IBC) or transnational education campuses, one dimension of the larger process of the internationalization of higher education ( Knight 2004 ; Altbach and Knight 2007 ), is well documented. An IBC is typically defined as an educational facility that is named after and owned (wholly or jointly) by a foreign institution in which students receive in-person instruction toward the completion of a credential granted by the foreign institution ( Wilkins and Huisman 2012 : 628). As of December 2016, the Cross-Border Education Research Team (C-BERT) identified 247 IBCs located in seventy-six countries sourced from 33 ‘exporting’ countries.

As IBCs have proliferated, so has research into their benefit, risks, character, and management. Recent empirical scholarship has sought to specify the role of organizational cultures on IBC operations ( Tierney and Lanford 2015 ), the host institutions’ motivations for establishing IBCs ( Wilkins and Huisman 2012 ), the effect of competing (i.e. host and home) isomorphic pressures in shaping IBCs ( Shams and Huisman 2011 , 2016 ), student motivations for attendance ( Wilkins et al. 2011 ; Wilkins 2013 ; Fang and Wang 2014 ), levels of student satisfaction ( Ahmad 2015 ), the experiences and motivations of the expatriate faculty and staff working at IBCs (Cai and Hall 2015), the most common managerial problems facing IBCs ( Healey 2015 ), the cost and benefits of different ownership strategies ( Lane and Kinser 2013 ), and the role of perceived legitimacy in IBC success ( Farrugia and Lane 2012 ).

In parallel to this large empirical literature, theoretical scholarship has conducted that describes IBC behavior as analogous to various types of firm behavior. For example, researchers have applied Dunning’s eclectic paradigm ( Guimon 2016 ), merger and acquisitions theory ( Deschamps and Lee 2015 ), and the integration/responsiveness paradigm ( Shams and Huisman 2011 ) to various aspects of IBC behavior. However, while research into various aspects of international educational campuses abounds, there has been little research on the transition of IBCs into other missions, including research and economic development.

2.3 The French system

Of particular relevance to the case of GTL are two changes: the increased participation by French universities in the production of research and the changing role of French public research institutes (PRIs) such as the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). 4 These trends stemmed from the dissolution of Napoleon’s University of France in 1896, when the regional faculties were christened ‘universities’ but remained under the control of the central government. The research productivity of these universities was low ( Malva et al. 2011 ), which led post-World War II France to diverge from other Western models of research funding to create PRIs with few ties to universities and staffed primarily by full-time researchers ( Mustar and Larédo 2002 ). PRIs were assigned research responsibilities while the universities and the grandes écoles 5 focused on teaching.

The reform of the university system in the 1980s and 1990s sought to address this legacy of low university research productivity and low university autonomy. Mustar and Larédo (2002) observe that as a result of the reform, during the final years of the 1990s research positions in universities grew at a rate that was ten times faster than that of the CNRS and by the end of the decade the research potential (measured in full-time equivalent research positions) of universities was more than two times that of the CNRS. Whereas in the 1970s, CNRS researchers outnumbered all of the researchers in French university system, university researchers now outnumber those in all of the French PRI ( Malva et al. 2011 ). Additionally, the grandes écoles are increasingly participating in research . Besides a reversal in the relative proportion of the research potential, universities and the CNRS increasingly colocate their research personnel. The majority of CNRS research units are currently unites mixtes (UM)—university-CNRS co-staffed labs ( Muller et al. 2009 ). Two types of UM exist: UM de Recherche (UMR) and UM Internationales (UMI). The former are joint CNRS labs with local universities or grandes écoles. The latter are joint CNRS labs with international partners and can be located in France or abroad.

The CNRS has in-house research units of varying size. UMR labs are joint labs with domestic universities or grandes écoles . In these labs, faculty members hold joint (academic/CNRS) appointments. Such labs seek to expand collaboration between universities, grandes écoles , and PRI. UMI labs are similar to UMR, yet are established with international partners. They may be located in France (GTL’s GT-CNRS UMI was the first such lab) or abroad. Critically, UMR and UMI are not permanent; they undergo regular evaluation by the CNRS and may be, based on these results, either renewed or discontinued.

University autonomy was strengthened through legislation. The Innovation Act of 1999 (Law on Innovation and Research) gave French universities greater control over their intellectual property. A 2007 law (Law Relative to the Liberties and Responsibilities of Universities) that explicitly sought to increase the autonomy of French universities in terms of the direction of research, curriculum design, and finances has been largely successful. Dosso (2014) observes that by 2012, the majority of French universities were autonomous.

Besides the transformation of the French university, the period of 1980–2000 witnessed the creation of ties between publicly funded research and industry. The old French model notoriously characterized the absence of linkages between research and industry ( Mustar and Larédo 2002 ; Muller et al. 2009 ). Two pieces of legislation are primarily responsible for strengthening ties between public research institutes and firms. First, a 1982 law (Law on Programming of Research and Technological Development) sought to strengthen connections between PRI and firms by adding commercialization of research to the missions of PRIs, allowing the creation of legal forms that would facilitate spinoffs and public-private cooperation on large research projects, and allowing public researchers to physically locate within firms ( Vavakova 2006 ). Second, the Innovation Act of 1999 sought to enhance the impact of research on the French economy by promoting technology transfer from PRI and increasing the number of start-ups generated at such organizations ( Vavakova 2006 ).

French universities and grandes écoles are highly internationalized. For example, C-BERT has identified thirty-four IBCs that have been established by French institutions. France also hosts many internationalization initiatives from foreign universities. These activities tend to focus on education and research in the arts and humanities. Prominent foreign university outposts located in France include the University of London Institute in Paris and the University of Chicago Center in Paris. To date, GTL remains the only non-French education and research institution in France that focuses on science and engineering.

To describe the evolution of GTL, this article draws on three research methods: interviews, the quantitative analysis of scientific publications and patents, and the analysis of historical documents. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers (two former directors of GTL), university administrators (an associate vice president for international initiatives, the principal director for industry collaboration), one faculty-member closely linked with the campus, and three local business experts. Eight interviews were conducted over the period of November 2015 to January 2017. Interview protocols were developed based on an initial examination of the documentary record and were iteratively updated as more was learned about the campus’ history. When possible, interviews were conducted in-person. However, in the case of the local business experts, a set of open-ended questions was emailed to the respondents. In four cases, follow-up questions or portions of this manuscript were sent to interviewees to validate the accounts provided.

The scientific publication data are from the Web of Science. Patent data are from the Derwent Innovation Index. The processing and cleaning of both the publication and patent data was conducted using Vantage Point ( https://www.thevantagepoint.com/ ).

Finally, we examine the documentary record. We consider three primary sources of historical documents. First, we examine minutes and agendas from meetings of Georgia Tech governing bodies and transcripts of speeches given by Georgia Tech and GTL administrators. 6 Second, we consult the archive of Georgia Tech’s student, faculty and alumni newspapers, scholarly publications, and news reports. Third, we trace the evolution of content from the GTL-related websites by consulting their archived webpages from 1996 to the present. Toward this end, we use the Wayback Machine ( https://archive.org/ ).

This mixed methods approach was used to triangulate the findings of the various sources of evidence (Creswell and Plano Clark 2007). For example, the historic documents enabled confirmation of interview subjects’ memories of early campus development activities. The bibliometric and patent analysis likewise enabled triangulation with the documentary record and present day observations obtained from the interviews.

4.1 Internationalization at Georgia Tech

According to Li et al. (2016) , based on having established many research centers abroad, Georgia Tech is one of the most internationalized research universities in the USA. Georgia Tech has a dedicated internationalization strategy and includes among its strategic goals to ‘Extend and leverage Georgia Tech’s impact around the globe’. 7 However, our analysis of the documentary record suggests that the success of GTL does not appear to owe to Georgia Tech’s early and planned prioritization of internationalization. Rather, GTLs success may have driven university-wide institutional support and plans for internationalization.

Envisioned in the late 1980s and launched in 1990, GTL was Georgia Tech’s first experiment of its kind. Many of the IBCs formed during this period failed ( Lane 2011 ). As described below, the combination of location (France was more economically stable than many early IBC hosts such as Japan), individual skill and effort, and continual support from the Georgia Tech administration and regional authorities, allowed GTL to persist. This early success appears to have driven institutional support for subsequent international initiatives. In 1998, Georgia Tech established its second foreign educational and research venture, the Logistics Institute Asia Pacific, jointly with the National University of Singapore. Other initiatives in China, Ireland, and various Latin America countries followed. Finally, in 2016 Georgia Tech announced the establishment of its second IBC, which is located in Shenzhen, China, and is jointly administered with Tianjin University.

4.2 Region of Lorraine

Lorraine is located in the northeast of France and shares a boarder with Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The region’s population in 2014 was 2.35 million (3.6% of France’s population). The region is divided into four departments: Moselle, Vosges, Meurthe-et-Moselle, and Meuse. The region’s two largest cities are Metz (the capital of Moselle) and Nancy (the capital of Meurthe-et-Moselle). In 2016, Lorraine, along with Alsace, Champagne, and Ardennes, became part of the Grand Est administrative region.

Lorraine’s economy, especially the northeast, has been characterized by industrial decline. A traditional center of mining (low-grade iron ore, coal, and salt) and steel production, the region has lost much of its market share in these sectors to competition from aboard. The region’s most active current sectors are metallurgy, automotive, rubber and plastic, chemical, wood, and paper. In 2013, Lorraine’s GDP was USD $64.32 Billion and GDP per capita was USD $27,388, only 64% of that of France.

Socioeconomic profile, Lorraine and France

Notes : All dollar figures in 2010 US Dollars, adjusted for PPP. Unless otherwise noted, data are 2013 OECD figures. Source : OECD (2015), ‘Regional economy’, OECD Regional Statistics (database) < http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/6b288ab8-en >

World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2013 figures.

Projection by French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED).

2012 figure.

2011 figure, European Commission, RTDI profile, < https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/regional-innovation-monitor/base-profile/lorraine >.

Lorraine has undertaken several efforts to enhance its S&T profile. In 1983 the City of Metz under the leadership of Jean-Marie Rausch established a large science and technology park called ‘ Technopôle Metz 2000 ’ (now simply known as ‘Metz Technopole’), the future site of GTL, to attract high-tech firms and higher education institutions specializing in telecommunications and software ( Blau 1999 ). In 2006, the region drafted an economic development plan that focused on developing the region’s higher education, research, and innovation capacity. The plan resulted in the establishment of five Clusters (or Poles ) of Scientific and Technological Research (PRST) to coordinate institutional collaboration in particular research areas, seven Research Federations for interdisciplinary research, and programs for infrastructural R&D support to regional businesses. 9

Timeline of GTL’s evolution

Sources : GTL < http://lorraine.gatech.edu ; http://www.georgiatech-metz.fr >, GT-CNRS UMI < http://www.umi2958.eu > and Lafayette Institute < http://lafayette.gatech.edu > websites, accessed on 14 October 2016, and on earlier dates back up to 1996 using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine: < https://archive.org/web >. Additional sources:

Authors’ analysis of GTL-affiliated publications in the Web of Science data base.

‘Georgia Tech is Sued for Non-French Web Site’, The New York Times , 31 December 1996. Accessed online at <  http://partners.nytimes.com/library/cyber/euro/1231euro.html > accessed 14 October 2016.

‘CNRS Links up with Georgia Tech’, Science , 29 May 1998: Vol. 280, Issue 5368, pp. 1353b.

Authors’ analysis of GTL-related patents in the Derwent Innovation Index data base.

‘ECE Board meets Georgia Tech Lorraine’. The Whistle , 24 May 1999. Accessed online at <  https://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/41670 > accessed 18 October 2016.

Authors’ interview, 8 December 2016.

4.3.1 GTL timeline

GTL’s advent owes largely to serendipity, individual relationships, and the efforts of individuals. According to our interviews, the effort of Jean-Marie Rausch, the Mayor of Metz in the 1980s, to decrease Lorraine’s reliance on a fledgling iron ore sector and increase the region’s focus on technology drove early efforts to locate a branch of an US technical university in Metz. An individual, working at a French trade mission in Atlanta recommended that Rausch visit Georgia Tech in Atlanta. 10 This trip resulted in the establishment of the contours of an agreement between Georgia Tech, Lorraine, the city of Metz, and Supélec (a local branch of the renowned grande école specializing in electrical engineering) that would bring GTL to Metz.

International branch campuses sometimes fail to last beyond a few years; once early administrative energy or funding erode and tensions between partners rise, they have trouble maintaining momentum ( Sidhu 2009 ; Mills 2009 ; Lane 2011 ; Sharma 2014 ). GTL’s survival beyond this initial period appears to owe largely to the efforts of GTL and city leaders. Specifically, our interviews suggest that the ‘relentless’ efforts of GTL’s first director and then later president Teddy Püttgen were instrumental in establishing GTL’s lasting presence. 11 Furthermore, Rausch, who served as Mayor of Metz and at various region-level positions during the 1990s, was said to be a critical local ally in assuaging local sentiment that a US institution was ‘eating up scarce French resources’. 12

During its early years the campus was focused mostly on graduate education, starting with PhD and double Master’s degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Supélec and only ‘a handful’ of graduate students and faculty. 13 Graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering (1997) and Computer Science (2005) were added later. A successful GTL undergraduate study abroad program for Georgia Tech students was launched in 1998, resulting in a continuously growing student population in GTL and improved financial sustainability.

In 2015, roughly 700 students attended GTL. 14 Of these, approximately 625 were undergraduates, 25 were full-time GTL PhD students and 50 were master’s students. The vast majority of undergraduate students attending GTL at a given time are from the Atlanta campus. The educational exchange is reciprocal; GTL students also spend time on the Georgia Tech Atlanta campus. Indeed, GTL master’s students are required to spend a semester at the Atlanta campus to complete their eventual (dual) degree. Two groups of faculty are charged with the primary research and educational missions of the campus. The first group of full-time tenure track faculty constitutes the core research faculty. During the fall semester of 2015, there were eighteen such faculty members. A second group of visiting faculty from the main Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta supplements this core group at any given time.

From the beginning, research was central to the announced mission of the newly established campus. 15 During an interview, the Associate Vice President for International Initiatives for Georgia Tech indicated that the decision to pursue second and third missions reflected GTL planners attempt to mirror its parent institution: ‘GTL is patterned after Georgia Tech in that education, research, and economic development are closely intertwined.’ 16 However, efforts to institutionalize these missions started in 1996 with the agreement on founding of the GTL-CNRS Telecom UMR lab (Telecom Lab) specialized in research in fiber optics and telecommunications. Despite initial success in establishing industrial collaborations, this lab did not result in a prolonged increase in research and innovative output. The lab was discontinued in 2005. Sustained growth in research output and in GTL’s collaborative ties with the region were not achieved until the campus reestablished its collaboration with the CNRS in the form of GT-CNRS UMI (UMI Lab) in 2006. UMI Lab focuses on research in nonlinear optics and dynamics; smart materials; and computer science.

From inception regional officials considered GTL a vehicle for economic development and innovation in Lorraine. However, attempts to stimulate commercialization of research in GTL—for example, by bringing Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Georgia Tech’s renowned business incubator, to Metz Technopole ( Blau, 1999 )— repeatedly failed. Only recently, coincident with changes in the model of intellectual property (IP) management ( Cross et al. 2014 ) and the launch of Lafayette Institute ( Institut Lafayette , IL), GTL’s proof-of-concept venue for innovation in optoelectronics, have signs of success in commercialization begun to emerge.

4.3.2 Research in GTL

To trace GTL’s transition into a research mission, we consider the research output of authors affiliated with GTL proper or either or GTL’s research units (i.e. Telecom Lab and UMI Lab). The first article produced by a researcher affiliated with Georgia Tech’s campus in Lorraine was published in 1992, two years after the campus opening. We found a total of 368 publications produced by GTL and its research units in the years that followed and up until the first six months of 2016. Figure 1 shows the growth of GTL’s publication productivity over time.

GTL publications indexed by web of science by year, 1992–2016. Source : authors’ analysis of GTL-affiliated publications in the Web of Science data base, accessed on 7 July 2016. Search query is ‘(Georgia SAME Lorraine) OR (Georgia SAME UMI SAME France) OR (Georgia SAME CNRS SAME France) OR (GT SAME UMI SAME France)’ in the ‘Address’ field. Total number of publications is 368

The publication data reveals two distinct phases of research production. The first phase begins in 1992 and lasts until 2005. During this period, GTL’s research output was modest (5.4 publications per year on average) and characterized by low average growth (0.3 articles per year). Indeed, Fig. 1 demonstrates that this period is characterized by no clear growth trend and marked by several periods of declining research output. GTL’s first attempt to boost research output through collaboration with CNRS—by creating the Telecom Lab in 1998—did not generate sustained research growth. While the advent of the Telecom Lab may have resulted in a short-term increase in research productivity, reaching a peak of 11 publications in 2001, GTL’s research output fell during the subsequent three years.

The second phase of research production begins in 2005 and appears to persist to the present. 17 Reversal of the negative trend in publications starts in 2005 and becomes more pronounced in 2006, when the GT-CNRS UMI 2958 laboratory (UMI Lab) was established. In the following years, GTL and its affiliated research units produced 27.4 publications per year on average, increased output at a rate of 2.2 publications per year, and reached a peak of 40 publications in 2015.

Even at its most productive, GTL’s contribution to overall research output in the region is modest. During its 27 years of operation, GTL produced only 3.3% of the WoS-indexed articles published by Metz-based authors, making it a fairly small player in the regional research system. Even at its highest point in 2015, GTL’s research output constituted only 5.7% of the city’s research output. Given that GTL is a small and specialized institution, its contribution is disproportionality high in certain fields. For example, in the field of Optics, a designated research priority both for the Telecom and UMI labs, GTL produced 15.6% of total Optics research output in Metz.

GTL top co-author institutions by publication year, 1992–2016

Source : Authors’ analysis of GTL-affiliated publications in the Web of Science data base, accessed on 7 July 2016. Total number of publications analyzed is 368. Numbers for French institutions include publications of their joint UMR research units with CNRS.

Numbers for CNRS include publications produced by in-house research units and joint UMR labs with other institutions, but exclude two joint research units with GTL: GTL-CNRS Telecom and GT-CNRS UMI.

Numbers for the University of Lorraine before 2012, the year of its establishment, include publications of its four constituent regional universities, dominated in this case by the University of Metz.

In 2015, Supélec merged with École Centrale Paris and became CentraleSupélec.

Arts & Mėtiers ParisTech is the brand name of École nationale supérieure d'arts et métiers (ENSAM), adopted in 2007.

CNRS is the second most active GTL collaborator with 38% of GTL publications co-authored with CNRS-affiliated researchers. This reflects the fact that collaborative relationships established by GTL with CNRS in the form of joint labs extend beyond the grounds of the GTL campus to include other CNRS research units. The intensity of CNRS collaborations significantly increased after UMI Lab was established in 2006.

The third most active GTL collaborator is the University of Lorraine (23% of all GTL publications). As noted above, the University of Lorraine was created in 2012 through the merger of four regional universities (one in Metz, three in Nancy), so this category includes publications by authors affiliated with the University of Lorraine proper, and its constituting members before the 2012 merger. In fact, almost all publications in the subset were produced in collaboration with the Metz campus of the University of Lorraine.

The rest of the list is dominated by French higher education institutions, most notably the Metz campus of Supélec (now called CentraleSupelec after the merger with École Centrale Paris in 2015), and several other universities and grandes écoles , who mostly collaborate with GTL through their joint labs with CNRS. With one notable exception, collaborations with these institutions also started only after 2005. Thus the post-2005 increase in collaborations suggests that GTL’s transition into a fully-fledged research mission coincides with an increase in GTL’s embeddedness vis-à-vis local knowledge networks.

The exception to this trend is the collaboration with the University of Franche-Comté (UFC), which began in 1998, the year of establishment of the Telecom Lab. A detailed look at the authorship of the corresponding publications and the content of archived webpages of the Telecom lab reveals the unique character of these collaborations, and also reveals a possible explanation for the failure of the laboratory to sustain its research productivity in the long run.

From the beginning, the Telecom Lab was organized as a close partnership between two sister CNRS labs, one in GTL and the other in UFC in Besançon (also in France), that from 1998 to 2001 shared the same director: UFC’s Jean-Pierre Goedgebuer. The majority of research personnel formally affiliated with the Telecom lab remained physically based at UFC in Besançon, with only one or two GTL faculty members contributing to joint research. As a result, GTL-affiliated publications were mostly produced by researchers affiliated with and physically located at UFC. Dr Goedgebuer, director of both partnering labs, co-authored almost three quarters of these papers from 1998 to 2004 and these publications were overwhelmingly written in collaboration with authors from UFC. According to Dr Goedgebuer’s Linkedin profile, he left UFC in 2001 and GTL in 2003. The latter year also marks the departure of several other key UFC-based researchers formally affiliated with GTL-CNRS Telecom. As a result, a steady decline in GTL’s research output ( Fig. 1 ) and in its collaboration with UFC ( Table 3 ) followed. The Telecom lab struggled to sustain previous levels of output and was discontinued in 2005. Thus, the model initially selected for operating the joint laboratory—the one that was heavily reliant on close collaboration with external organizations at the expense of the development of its own research faculty—proved to be unsuccessful in the long run. In contrast, the UMI Lab was, from inception, launched as part of a broader network of CNRS laboratories with shared research interests with various universities and grandes écoles . The second attempt also increased the number of GTL’s permanent research faculty while building the collaborative network. Based on the significant and sustained growth in GTL research output that followed, it is this model of increasing research capacity that resulted in sustained GTL’s transition to the research mission.

On a country level, GTL most actively collaborated with organizations from the USA (54% of total GTL publications), followed by France (41%), China (6.5%), Belgium (5%), and twenty-seven other countries. The prominence of US collaborations is explained by GTL’s close ties with Georgia Tech’s main campus. In France, 63% of collaborative publications were authored by researchers from distinguished partners of the UMI Lab, and 58% by collaborators located within Lorraine, marking once again the embeddedness of the UMI lab within regional knowledge networks. Sixteen percent were produced in collaboration with industrial partners, including French corporations such as Thales, France Telecom/Orange, and PSA Peugeot Citroen. Steady research collaboration with industry began in 2007. However, the total volume of research output of GTL’s industrial R&D collaborations remains low. Patenting behavior, presented in the section that follows, is a better measure of the innovative activities in GTL.

Starting in 2008, data from the Web of Science includes funding acknowledgments, which provides an opportunity to analyze funding sources for research conducted in GTL ( Grassano et al. 2016 ). Out of the total of 368 GTL-related articles, 156 have funding acknowledgments. Of these, 87 (56%) were funded by national-level French funding agencies, including Agence Nationale de la Recherche (French National Agency for Research) and CNRS. Sixty publications (38%) were funded by US sources, primarily by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, who supported US researchers involved in collaboration with GTL. Forty-six publications (29%) received research funding from local sources, primarily the Regional Council of Lorraine. These data offer another indication of links between the regional government and GTL.

4.3.3 Patenting in GTL

To analyze GTL’s patent output, we use the Derwent Innovation Index (DII) patent database. An initial assignee-based search indicated that only four unique patents had been assigned to GTL or jointly to Georgia Tech and CNRS. However, given the shift in French university-related IP policies discussed in Section 2.3, as well as the evidence from interviews and from Cross et al. (2014) of changes in GTL IP policy in the 2010s, the search strategy was modified to include individual inventors affiliated with GTL. To this end, we created a list of potential GTL-affiliated inventors by analyzing the authors of the 368 GTL-related publications discussed in the previous section. From this list, we identified thirty-six GTL affiliated individual authors with at least five publications. We then manually searched the DII database for patents for which these individuals were listed as inventors during the time they were affiliated with GTL. This process revealed nineteen GTL affiliated patents. For each of these records, the affiliation of all co-inventors was checked. Using the new co-inventors found to have a GTL affiliation, we searched for new GTL affiliated patents. While no new GTL patent records were found this way, this step brought the total number of GTL-affiliated inventors to 22.

Two distinct periods in GTL patenting are observed ( Fig. 2 ). The first is associated with the Telecom Lab and is characterized by steady patent output from 1998 to 2004. This flow stops around the time the unit closes. The second phase, which begins in 2005, can be associated with the activities of the UMI Lab and is characterized by less stable patent output.

Basic patent years for GTL-related patent families indexed by DII. Source : authors’ analysis of GTL-related patent records in the Derwent Innovation Index data base, accessed on 14 October 2016. Total number of records is 19

While GTL’s first CNRS research collaboration, the Telecom lab, produced modest and unstable research output, its patenting output was relatively high (eleven patents in seven years) and stable. In contrast, the second period saw rapid expansion in research output yet relatively low (eight patents in twelve years) and volatile patenting. Considering the patent assignees and classifications helps to explain this unusual pattern. During the first period, seven out of the eleven unique patents were granted in 1998–2002 and assigned to France Telecom, a French telecommunications corporation. Two of them were co-assigned to Highwave Optical Technologies, another French telecommunications company. These patents fall into technology areas such as fiber optics and light control, telephone and data transmission systems, and optics; areas consistent with the declared research direction of Telecom Lab and the corporate assignees.

The remaining patents were jointly assigned to Photline Technologies, CNRS, or a group of individual faculty members co-affiliated with GTL and the University of Franche Comte (UFC). Photline Technologies was founded in 2003 by former UFC researchers that were listed on four of the GTL affiliated patents. 18 The company, later acquired by the iXblue group, became a leading producer of optical modulators for telecommunication, defense and aerospace, sensing, and research instruments. In 2012 it employed thirty people in Besancon. It seems that these GTL/UFC researchers developed a technology using resources from both universities and CNRS, and then quit academia in 2003 to commercialize it through a start-up firm. To date, Photline Technologies is the only known case of successful start-up related to GTL.

Patent analysis reveals a degree of industrial collaboration and applied research and development in Telecom Lab that is not evident in the publications analysis. For example, France Telecom is revealed to be an important funder of the core collective of researchers in the unit. The patents granted during this period were also part of large patent families (i.e. multiple patents granted on the same invention in different patent authorities), which suggests that they had fairly high expected commercial value.

However, despite early commercialization success, the Telecom Lab was not able to survive the exit of its director and some of its core members. Nor was this model of research organization conducive to regional economic development. While the start-up firm that emerged from the UFC/GTL/CNRS collaboration was successful in creating revenue and high-tech jobs, it did it in Besancon in the Franche-Comte region, rather than in Lorraine.

GTL’s patent output during the second period of patenting—2005 to the present—is sporadic. During this second period, there are no individuals listed as assignees and all patents had more than one organization listed as assignees. The top assignee during this period is CNRS. The second most common assignee is Georgia Tech, suggesting that some, but not all, of the IP created in GTL was produced according to Georgia Tech’s internal IP regulations. Armines, a French public–private partnership focused on industry-oriented contract R&D was another frequent assignee. Other nonuniversity assignees include car manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroën, global electronic systems producer Thales, and former telecommunication giant Alcatel—all French-born, multinational corporations with R&D units located in France that participated in research collaborations with GTL.

Patents produced during this period exhibited unusual diversity in terms of technology areas. Surprisingly, given the research specialization of GTL and the official designated foci of UMI lab and Lafayette Institute, there are no patents in Optics or Optoelectronics. Instead, the patents are for sensors for gas exhaust based on semiconductor materials, and for artificial human or animal ligaments. The latter, which is completely outside of GTL’s research focus, is the topic of all three patents with Armines. These patents appear to be the product of a chance, bottom-up collaboration between GTL mechanical engineering faculty members and industry rather than of a planned strategic activity. In contrast, the sensor patents were produced in organized collaboration with the recognized GTL industrial partner. In particular, two sensor patents granted in 2016 were co-produced in collaboration with PSA Peugeot Citroën in the framework of OpenLab—an open innovation network established in 2011 by the corporation. These patents probably represent the first outcome of GTL’s efforts to promote innovation activity by means of serving a boundary-spanning function within the region.

In summary, patent analysis indicates that GTL’s first innovation activity begins in 1998 through a productive R&D collaboration between Telecom Lab and France Telecom. However, this relationship did not endure and failed to produce a regional economic development impact. In 2006, the CNRS collaboration was reorganized as the UMI lab. The years following this change could be characterized as a laissez-faire approach to innovation and IP management, with only occasional patents resulting from a bottom-up external collaborations of GTL faculty members. Then, around 2011, with the founding of PSA Peugeot Citroën OpenLab and changes in GTL’s IP policy, GTL once again adopted a proactive and strategic approach to managing and producing innovation. This new approach sought to place GTL in various boundary-spanning roles within the region with the goal of producing local economic impact.

4.3.4 Economic development mission

From the perspective of French officials, the rationale for bringing a US university to the region was the one of economic development. 19 A new, technology focused research institution, sought to decrease Lorraine’s reliance on its declining iron ore sector. GTL was envisioned as providing academic and professional education programs to local high-tech firms and conducting industry-oriented research.

Toward this end, GTL was moderately successful: the campus established graduate education tailored to local demand, and briefly, established university–industry research in the form of the GTL-CNRS Telecom lab. However, by the end of the 1990s both sides of the Georgia Tech/Lorraine partnership sought to stimulate economic development through a different approach: the commercialization of GTL’s research. Beginning at least in 1998, several attempts to bring Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Georgia Tech’s renowned business incubator, to Metz Technopole were made ( Blau, 1999 ). However, these efforts failed. Our interviewees attribute this failure to two factors. The first is international differences in faculty attitudes toward risk and norms regarding the commercialization of research. The second is an incomplete innovation ecosystem in terms of the small number of venture capital support organizations, number of entrepreneurial mentors, and companies to serve as early customers in the region. ATDC provides services for founded companies rather than R&D projects at the pre-seed stage, while our interviews indicate that the French academics at GTL preferred to commercialize their research through the establishment of R&D partnerships with large corporations rather than risking their academic positions by starting a company.

Although the mission of promoting local economic development always remained among GTL’s stated strategic objectives, it was not until 2011 that this mission was supported by substantial action. First, in 2011 patents began to be assigned to directly Georgia Tech or GTL rather than to individual inventors. This was done to foster greater involvement of both organizations in the commercialization of patentable research.

Second, coordination of GTL’s economic development efforts was assigned to Georgia Tech’s economic development branch: Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2). EI2 oversees all of Georgia Tech’s major initiatives in stimulating commercialization of research. Assigning economic development responsibilities to a stand-alone organization experienced in commercializing the research from an engineering school added to GTL’s overall commercialization capacity.

Third, GTL established a new industrial partnership. In 2011 OpenLab, a collaborative R&D effort between PSA Peugeot Citroën, UMI lab, Art & Metier Paris Tech grand ecole , and Centre Henri Tudor (Luxembourg’s public research institution) was formed. As opposed to the partnership with France Telecom, OpenLab was based on the model of open innovation, implying a more equitable collaboration, in which partners share both risk and rewards. The new partnership also differs from its predecessor in that it involves more linkages to the region of Lorraine and the surrounding region. As opposed to traditional contract-based university–industry research collaboration, these linkages increase the possibility for regional economic impact.

Finally, in 2014 the GTL-Lorraine partnership established the Lafayette Institute (IL): GTL’s proof-of-concept venue for innovation in optoelectronics, photonics, robotics, and advanced materials. The Lafayette Institute emerged from two sources of demand: university and local government. 20 First, IL sought to advance GTL’s goal of improving and expanding its existing laboratory facilities. 21 Second, Lorraine’s authorities sought to stimulate commercialization of technologies developed by the regional research system.

IL was conceptualized in 2005 by two Georgia Tech faculty members with strong professional and personal connections to the region. 22 One of these faculty members, Abdallah Ougazzaden, was based in Metz and had strong local industry and university ties. The other, Bernard Kippelen, was based in Atlanta, but is a French national and also had professional ties to the region. In 2007, Ougazzaden and Kippelen presented the basic model for IL ‘to elected officials in France’ after which the Institute’s formation proceeded ‘very rapidly’. 23 Multiple interviews suggest that the 2010 France–Atlanta event was a watershed moment in IL’s establishment. 24 During the France–Atlanta event, the first of what would become an annual event in Atlanta organized by the French Consulate General that seeks to promote economic cooperation between the two locations, the General Council of France in Atlanta (Pascal Le Deunff) played an important coordinating function. According to one interview, ‘the General Council of France in Atlanta invited the right people because you needed to have all the people from all of these government agencies around the table to sign the agreement’. 25 In 2012, IL was approved for development with €30 million in funding provided by the governments of France, the Lorraine region, Metz Metropole, the department of Moselle, and the EU. 26 The EU funds were provided through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). 27 Operating expenses have been funded through a round of seed funding, the provision of services, and R&D grants. The contribution of Georgia Tech to IL has been to supply faculty members that hold leadership positions within the Institute and provide technical assistance associated with the operation of IL facilities.

IL was opened in 2014. It is located adjacent to the GTL campus and is furnished with nanofabrication equipment and a 5,000 square foot clean room. Its principal role is to provide proof-of-concept services and to investigate the commercial potential of the research conducted by its corporate and educational members. In addition, IL in collaboration with EI2 offers technology transfer services, business advice, and has an official objective of promoting knowledge-based regional economic development. For example, the EI2 has implemented the US National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) model of commercialization in IL. I-Corps brings together teams of faculty researchers and student entrepreneurs under the guidance of business mentors to test the market potential of ideas generated through basic research by conducting customer validation and providing market feedback. The I-Corps model, as opposed to the ATDC business incubation model, allows faculty to retain their academic positions while advancing the commercialization of their research in a highly structured manner. By the end of 2016, there were two cohorts of Lorraine-based teams that went through the I-Corps program at IL. It is too early to draw conclusions on their success or failure, although at the time of writing at least one team had begun to generate revenue. 28 Nevertheless, the various actions described above—the changes in GTL IP policy, appointing EI2 in charge of commercialization, and establishing OpenLab and Lafayette Institute—suggest that GTL is attempting to become a significant player in Lorraine’s regional innovation system despite its relatively modest contribution to the net research output of the region.

Over its 27 years of operation (1990–2016), GTL has undergone a transformation that broadly mirrors that made by the US university writ large. At its founding in 1990, GTL was primarily an education-focused institution involved in awarding joint graduate degrees with local grandes ecoles . Gradually it took on a research mission, which became fully institutionalized in 2006 with the establishment of UMI Lab. More recently, GTL has begun to assume commercialization and economic development functions.

However, GTL’s transition from education to research to economic development missions did not proceed linearly. Instead, these missions developed in a parallel rather than a serial manner and initial attempts to execute new missions often failed. Neither was the realization of these missions typically the result of strategic planning. Rather sustained expansion into new functional areas was often due to second attempts or opportunism.

A stylized depiction of GTL’s transition into new missions is provided in Fig. 3 . The striped arrows indicate the emergent state of a mission. This stage is characterized by unstable output resulting from early experimentation into a new mission area. Solid arrows indicate a fully adopted mission. These stages are characterized by sustained growth in corresponding outputs and a portfolio of associated activities. A brief summary of our observations for each GTL mission follows Fig. 3 .

Timeline of evolution of GTL’s education, research and economic development missions. Source : authors’ analysis of historical data related to GTL evolution over time

GTL’s initial focus was on the education mission. The campus initially offered a degree in electrical engineering and planned to expand into other engineering disciplines and management. 29 Initial growth, in terms of students and adding new disciplines, was slow and not necessarily the result of early planning. GTL did not expand into other engineering disciplines until 1998 and the planned program in management was never realized. In 1996, the campus future was put on hold when a lawsuit from two French-language lobbying groups accused GTL of using only the English language on its website. 30 The case, however, was dismissed in 1997. Thus we consider the educational mission of GTL to have become fully developed in 1998 with the addition of undergraduate study abroad program that contributed to the financial sustainability of the campus and the successful expansion into new engineering disciplines.

It is worth noting that the 1996 lawsuit illustrates one facet of what Shams and Huisman (2016) refer to as the challenge of institutional dual embeddedness. The authors contend that IBCs simultaneously face pressure to conform to the institutions of their host countries and maintain the identity of their parent university while operating abroad. In the case of GTL, both these pressures were evident. While the pressure to conform to the standard of the host is vividly illustrated by the 1996 lawsuit and the resultant press coverage, GTL also faced isomorphic pressure from its parent organization. For example, early in GTL’s operation there was ambiguity among the faculty and administration in regards to whether the campus’s faculty would be assessed according to French or American criteria. One interviewee explained that in this instance, the standard of the parent institution took president, stating, ‘gradually the American way of evaluating performance of faculty entered the French system’. 31

The research mission at GTL emerged near the start of the venture, with the first article with a GTL author affiliation published in 1992. Until 1998 research was slow to grow. In 1998 the advent of the Telecom Lab resulted in increased research output, but this lab eventually closed and the resultant research output was never stable. In 2006, with the forming of the UMI Lab, GTL’s research output and research collaborations entered a period of steady growth. Thus, GTL went through two distinct stages in developing its research mission: an initial stage which lasted until 2005 and was characterized by modest and unstable research output and organizational trial and error; and, since 2006, a second stage of sustained research growth and expansion of research collaborations.

In terms of the ‘third’ mission, government officials hoped from the inception of GTL that the initiative would spur economic development and decrease the region’s reliance on legacy industries. However, it was not until the founding of the Telecom Lab in 1998–1999 that economic development language was explicitly used in discussions of the campus’ missions. 32 During the Telecom Lab’s years of operation (1998–2005), it produced economic impact through industrial collaboration with France Telecom and through successfully spinning out of Photline Technologies. However, none of these activities were directly relevant to Lorraine. Other economic development efforts during this period such as the transfer of ATDC to Lorraine failed outright. It was not until 2010–2011 when a new set of initiatives was launched that GTL began to assume a viable local economic development mission. Among these activities were changes in patenting and IP management strategies, establishment of OpenLab, creation of Lafayette Institute, and the application of the I-Corps program into Lafayette Institute. It remains to be seen how successful these programs will be. However, the degree of involvement of GTL in regional economic development activities including the performance of boundary-spanning functions between the regional government, universities, and industry allows us to conclude that as of 2016, GTL had adopted its economic development mission.

Markers of GTL transition across three university missions

Source : Authors’ analysis of historical data related to GTL evolution over time, and patents and publications related to GTL.

This article makes a contribution to the literature on international campuses, much of which focuses on transnational education, by offering an in-depth case study of the process by which an international campus added research and economic development missions to its original educational mission. We view GTL as a good exemplar for testing this evolution because of its long history and efforts to integrate into a region pre-populated with educational, research, and economic development organizations and which itself is undergoing economic and educational transformation. If a campus is to evolve anywhere, it is likely to be in a host region that is experiencing changes in its educational, research, and economic ecosystems.

Our findings suggest that the extent to which a transnational education institution is able to adopt research and economic development missions may depend its creation of strong ties to local industry, universities, and government agencies. Our analysis indicates that sustained research output growth coincided with increased intra-regional research collaboration. Similarly, GTL’s attempts to advance the economic development mission unilaterally––through the transfer of the home university’s ATDC commercialization program––never materialized. Instead a partnership between Georgia Tech and multiple representatives of the local government has resulted in the creation of Lafayette Institute, which pairs applied research and commercialization capabilities.

These findings are well situated between the planned architecture and life cycle approaches of Pfotenhauer and colleagues (2016) and the home-host institution tensions (i.e. dual embeddedness) of Shams and Huisman (2011 , 2016 ). The case study indicates the role of the planned approaches in the former as well as the need for attention to host capabilities in the latter. Although this article represents a case study of a single transnational campus, its 27-year history suggests a life cycle pathway that can be tested in other case studies. The full adoption of the research mission occurred after more than a decade, while the adoption of the economic development mission transpired after more than two decades.

A useful extension would be to replicate the methods used in this case study—historic documents, interviews with home and host managers, and bibliometrics and patent analysis—to examine other transnational educational campuses which have been in operation for more than a decade. The transition markers provided above offer one potential means of facilitating cross-case comparison. Case studies of long-standing transnational campuses situated in regions with fewer or more resources would be useful to understand the extent to which the findings in this case study hold true in regions with different education, research, and economic development capabilities. Exemplary of such an approach is a recent multi-method impact evaluation of the MIT Portugal Program ( Hird and Pfotenhauer, 2017 ). This study uses a difference-in-difference approach, along with other impact evaluation techniques, to compare the research characteristics of program participants to a control group of non-participant researchers and finds the MIT Portugal Program to be effective in promoting cluster formation and research re-orientation. Additional research of this kind may prove valuable in understanding how transnational campuses evolve their missions under diverse conditions.

This work was supported by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Research Office through the Department of Defense Minerva Research Initiative [grant number W911-NF-15-1-0322], PI: Mark Zachary Taylor.

This is not to say that universities from other countries do not have strong and productive ties with industry. See for example, Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff ( 2000 ); Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz (1998); Casper and Karamanos ( 2003 ). However, our concern here is with the how one US university established ties with a region abroad and thus the appropriate historical context is that of the USA.

Significant heterogeneity among universities exists in regards to the extent to which they conform to the characterization presented here. The description offered here is based on overall patterns of change observed by the authors and documented by the other scholars referenced here.

For example, Etzkowitz’s contention of the universality of the entrepreneurial format is questioned by Philpott et al. (2011) who, in a study of four departments within a prominent European university, found a significant cleavage among faculty members in attitudes toward the adoption of an entrepreneurial model.

While the CNRS is (by a considerable margin) the largest PRIs in France, other mission-oriented government research entities also contribute to France’s research output (Muller et al. 2009 ).

In France, the grandes écoles refer to group of roughly 200 elite, often small, technical, professional, and management focused institutions that operate independently from the public university system.

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Impact of Policy Implementation on Education Quality: A Case Study on Philippines’ Low Ranking in International and Local Assessment Programs

• Updated as of 7:14 am April 3, 2023

Louie Benedict R. Ignacio The Department of Political Science Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas

Andrea Gaile A. Cristobal The Department of Political Science Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas

Paul Christian David The Department of Political Science Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas

Corresponding Author: Paul Christian David, The Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas, Espana, Manila Email :  [email protected]

Recommended Citation: Ignacio, L. B., Cristobal, A., David, P., (2022). Impact of Policy Implementation on Education Quality: A Case Study on Philippines’ Low Ranking in International and Local Assessment Programs. Asian Journal on Perspectives in Education, 3(1), 41-54

In the recent report released by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Philippines was ranked as one of the lowest in Mathematics, Science, and Reading Comprehension among 79 participating countries. The country also ranked low in other assessment programs, including TIMSS, SEA-PLM, and NAT. Despite the educational reforms established to improve the Philippine Education System, the Philippines remains low and significantly below its neighboring countries regarding quality education. Therefore, this study (1) describes how the Department of Education has undertaken the objectives of R.A. 10533, (2) determines the effect of policy implementation on the ranking of Philippine education quality in local and international assessment programs through the perspective of education experts, and (3) identifies the importance of local and international assessment programs in analyzing the current condition of education quality in the Philippines. This research has employed a qualitative approach using thematic analysis on narratives coming from (1) DepEd-OUCI, (2) DepEd-BEA, and (3) Education Policy experts, as well as documents used by the Department of Education and the Curriculum Consultative Committee. This study concludes that there are still challenges plaguing the implementation process. Hence, the need for further improvement in certain aspects is enumerated in this research. Moreover, considerable discrepancies in the disorganized and incoherent implementation system amongst and within the Department of Education, administrators, and other stakeholders, as well as confounded policy interpretation due to system instability, were all deduced.

Curriculum, policy implementation, PISA, assessment, Enhanced Basic Education

Introduction

Due to the drastic changes in the educational system, online distance learning is one of the alternative modalities to sustain continuous educational programs during pandemics, which develops the new literacies in Information Communication Technology (ICT) necessary to improve 21st-century learning. The students practice 21st-century skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity in instructional technological tools (Bedir, 2019; Budiarti et al., 2021; Hendy, 2020; Pardede, 2020). In online learning, the learners collaborate with their classmates through virtual meetings, email, messenger, and google and Microsoft collaboration links in online applications. Internet access is used for communication between the teacher and students and students to their fellow students by using varied technological applications that exchange information between the messenger and the receiver. At the same time, the learners practice critical analysis on how to manipulate technical tools with the procedural steps on how to use the learning materials. Also, the students become independent learners who discover and search the lessons with creativity and productivity. Thus, the learners become creative in operating computer-based learning in the classes where the learner construct their learning designs. Therefore, reviewing the learners’ online education skills is crucial in new normal times.

The United Nations released its Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, which are set to be provided with a plan of action coordinated by all participating countries towards achieving it by 2030. One of its goals is to guarantee an inclusive and good quality of education that will instill lifelong learning applicable to one’s daily life (UN, 2015). In addition, the United Nations intends to solve the issue of the growing problem of maleducation due to the unclear reception of formal learning as a fundamental human right and the discrepancy between the standard of basic education from a local and global standpoint (Thaung, 2018). To combat this problem, states, through accountability, coordination, and regular monitoring, reviewing, and financing, must be able to resolve the low quality of primary education, inequitable access to higher and technical vocational education, and ingraining of skills that can be used for work, inequality in gender, and education on global citizenship.

The Philippines is no exemption among countries experiencing the effects of the growing global recession. According to the World Bank (2019), a growing learning crisis exists in relatively emerging economies like the Philippines, Kenya, Tanzania, South American countries, etc. Because of this, the World Bank posited that the lack of substantial and extensive monitoring in policy and curriculum implementation is the root cause of a persistent global learning crisis.

National agencies such as the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) continuously campaign towards awareness and resolving the issue (Roldan, 2018). The highlight of the government’s actions was the enactment of the Enhanced Basic Education Act, or Republic Act 10533 last 2013, which sought to reform and improve the existing curriculum by adjusting the standards and principles that educational institutions must uphold to improve the quality of education in the Philippines and compete in a global scale. The Department of Education, the central agency for implementing the enumerated standards, was mandated by the law to partner with agencies like Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and Technical Education for Skills Development Authority (TESDA). Different local and international assessment programs were adopted to gauge the necessary actions, such as Programme for International Student Assessment, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics, and National Achievement Test (Elliott, Stankov, Lee, & Beckmann, 2019).

However, despite the actions by the government and seven years of implementation of the law, there is minimal to no progress in terms of the quality of education manifested by the Philippines’ low ranking (Roman, 2019). It is for this reason that this study aims to know the impact of administrative negligence in terms of implementing Republic Act 10533 in the Philippines’ low ranking and why the Philippines is heading on a downward trajectory.

With the condition of the Philippine education system, it is evident that an aspect of the system needs to be checked to get into the cause of this issue. Hence, this study aims to determine the impact of implementing state education policy in the Philippines on international and local assessment programs. Specifically, this study intends to evaluate whether the objectives of R.A. 10533 are being emphasized by the Department of Education, determine the effect of policy implementation on the ranking of Philippine education quality in local and international assessment programs, and identify the importance of local and international assessment programs in analyzing the condition of education quality in the Philippines.

The study intends to provide an understanding of the importance of global consciousness in the decline of quality education in the country. Existing literature provided various approaches to factors that affect the student’s academic performance and determinants of quality education. However, these studies focus only on the environmental factors that affect the student’s academic performance and their linkage to the teachers’ quality of teaching. The lacking discussion led this study to focus on the Philippines joining PISA and SEA-PLM. Hence, the Top-Down Approach of the Implementation Process of Public Policy theory manifests an avenue for disseminating curricular data from the macro-institutions to its micro-counterparts (Marsh & Huberman, 1984). Also, the premise of this theory will aid in understanding that the interventions of the institutions and administrators play a considerable role in fulfilling the objectives of RA 10533 through standard monitoring and implementing procedures for education quality improvement. Furthermore, this research may be presented to the Department of Education to develop better policies for educational reforms since the study evaluates the government agencies’ compliance with curriculum implementation and its development based on the standards presented in Republic Act No. 10533.

This research has utilized the Top-Down Approach of Implementation, co-authored by Paul Sabatier and Daniel Mazmanian in 1979 in their journal article entitled, “The Conditions of Effective Implementations: A Guide to Accomplishing Policy Objective.” This theory considers policy framers as the principal element of the implementing process of a policy and takes policy implementation as an administrative and managerial process more than a politically motivated procedure (Sabatier & Mazmanian, 1979). This theory was created to respond to the growing dispersion of comprehension of the limited extent of applicable programs and types of policymaking and implementing institutions.

The Top-Down approach posits that decisions by government officials are the starting point of the policy implementation process (Sabatier, 1986). The framing of policies is succeeded by raising specific questions revolving around the process of implementation itself, such as the extent of the implementing action in achieving the goal, the extent of the impact of policy, aspects affecting the implementation, and the reformation of the policy based on responses that are given after undergoing a process of evaluation. This theory also argues that there are six (6) necessary conditions for a successful and efficacious implementation: (a) Obvious and stable provision of objectives; (b) Sufficient justification of causation; (c) Legalization of the implementing process to enhance the urgency for compliance of the officials and target groups; (d) Officials’ commitment to an effective and productive implementation; (e) Maintained political support from interest groups and constituencies; and (f) Socio-economic factors that may have an impact on the support of people to the policy. The discourse on its merit continues today since its publication (Bardach, 1978; Berman and McLaughlin, 1976; Elmore, 1978; Jones, 1975; Lance, Lautenschlager, Sloan, & Varca, 1989; Murphy, 1973; Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973). The applicative properties of the theory were already being tested in different fields to know the limits and boundaries of its capabilities, such as its application in disseminating curricular data from the macro-institutions to their micro-counterparts (Marsh & Huberman, 1984).

The premises of the Top-Down theory aided this study in arguing that the burden of advancing the policy and evaluation is on the educational institutions, i.e., the Department of Education and the whole Curriculum Consultative Committee, affirming that the knowledge in the national-scale curriculum implementation is the lead determinant of practical curriculum reformation. Using the approach, this study argues that enhancing the focus and attention of the national agencies in implementing the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 can increase the ranking and rating of the Philippines in both local and international assessment programs.

Literature Review

Curriculum and Policy Implementation

The curriculum is a prime factor in enhancing students’ academic participation and performance (Yu & Mocan, 2019). It is a chosen, arranged, unified, and evaluative provision of experiences among students that will help them attain different learning objectives, resulting from development and maturation for its application in real-life situations (Mulenga, 2018). Thus, the educational system of the Philippines is no different from its neighboring countries because it also passed through phases of improvement due to the dramatic changes brought by educational evolution (Guzman, 2003). However, despite numerous educational reformations, it is still clear that any systematic change in the education system should be accompanied by a high level of pro-activity, which defines the system’s quality. It is a process that involves focusing on exceeding expectations, continuous development, and sharing responsibilities (Schargel, as cited in Guzman, 2003). Therefore, if the education system will firmly contribute to the improvement of a proper social order to fight social ills, then there should be a sustained re-examination of its retooling since it has become clear that reforms introduced at both national and local levels are geared toward the achievement of effectiveness, quality, responsiveness, and excellence (Guzman, 2003). Also, students who experience an improved curriculum have seen a significant improvement in interest and engagement in learning. It also manifested positive student development, resulting in better performance (Yu & Mocan, 2019). Therefore, in order for the Philippines to be as progressive as it can be and be globally competitive, the education curriculum shall adhere on a specific set of standards that the Department of Education, with its cooperation with Commission on Higher Education and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, which includes the following: (a) Student-centered, inclusive and development-focused curriculum; (b) Curriculum shall always remain relevant, responsive to national issues and Research-based; (c) Curriculum shall be careful and sensitive to other culture; (d) Curriculum shall be based on the Philippine context but can compete with the global arena; (e) Curriculum shall apply constructivist, inquiry-based, reflective, collaborative and integrative form of pedagogies; (f) Curriculum shall impose a Mother-Tongue Based System of learning – starting from the language being used in their houses to a foreign language; (g) A spiral progression approach on the students mastery and skills of different lessons shall be applied in the curriculum; and (h) Different local areas shall be able to modify and bend the curriculum in accordance to their educational, social and cultural contexts (Enhance Basic Education Act of 2013). 

Policy implementation is a process of upholding the basic standards and principles of the curriculum and putting into practice a set of plans and programs that aims for a change to whom and where it will be applied (Fullan, 1982). Implementing the K to 12 program aims to improve the education system in the Philippines to advance and further the recognition of a globally competitive Filipino. In this goal, the students shall master the necessary skills to attain the demand of the global education system (Dizon et al., 2019). Under Rule II, Section 10 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, the Department of Education, in its purpose of developing the curriculum, shall be governed by the following:

10.1 The devising of the curriculum itself in fulfillment of Section 5 of the Act, the DepEd is responsible for the liaison with both the CHED and TESDA to make a coordinated educational curriculum concurrent with the basic, tertiary, and technical-vocational education in generating globally competitive Filipino students.

10.2 In developing the enhancement of the curriculum, the Department of Education shall be guided by the prescribed standards and principles listed under Section 5 of the law.

10.3 The production and development of materials, such as locally produced teaching and learning sources, shall be highly promoted to strengthen the learning resource development and distribution systems at the regional and divisional educational units.

10.5 The essentiality of stakeholder’s engagement and association, not directly on the implementation of the Enhanced Basic Education Act, but for the assessment of what is there to be addressed.

Furthermore, Rule II, Section 30 mandates the key role of the DepEd, CHED, and TESDA in creating a mechanism and tactical plans for the transition towards achieving an Enhanced Basic Education within a 10-year cycle that will end in 2021-2022; on the other hand, Rule VIII, Section 33 orders the establishment of a “Joint Congressional Oversight Committee for Enhanced Basic Education which serves as the evaluation and assessment committee of the reports, including budgetary, facilities and curricular summaries. It was also delegated the responsibility of evaluating the progress and deficiencies in aspects that greatly affects the performance of the students, teachers, and other stakeholders. The said law also imposes the necessity for establishing a “Curriculum Consultative Committee” that is delegated the power to oversee the implementation and evaluate whether the newly developed curriculum adheres to the provisions of the law.

In addition, curriculum development in enhancing basic education focuses on professional development since it is deemed necessary to improve the students. However, policies that aim to improve the teaching profession lack continuous follow-ups on reforms, making the changes look fragmented and insufficient (Miço, 2019).  Thus, in addressing such challenges, CHED coordinated with DepEd to establish a curriculum that is both research-based and globally competitive. TESDA also participates in the curriculum’s implementation by ensuring that students can apply the knowledge handed by the curriculum through work (Martin, Patacsil & Nieva, 2019). With the help of these macro-agencies, the evaluation of the effectiveness of policy implementation will be acquired. According to Swarnakar, Singh, & Tiwari (2019), assessing the effectiveness of the policy implementation is vital to the pursuit of improvement and contextualization by identifying the lacking and excess factors that impede the supposed positive contribution of the policy itself to take place. Furthermore, by assessing the implementation procedure, the government will also be able to put light on the current conditions of the subject and target groups which necessitates deeper and more contextual attention and response to better the relationship between the macro and micro agencies.

Assessment Programs

Assessment programs compare the educational attainment of students of different countries to provide a direct response to education reforms. It is one of the best ways to determine whether the Philippine education system, through engaging both locally and internationally, is improving (Balagtas et al., 2019; Martens, Niemann, & Teltemann, 2016). International assessments for education became a globally accepted standard because of their extensive and far-reaching inference and indication for reorganizing and restructuring national education systems. It establishes an international benchmark for the theoretical and applicable understanding which influenced and dominated the ideas of educational policymakers and even researchers since it provides two purposes: (1) the data gathered can be used to impact and influence policymakers; and (2) it focuses on a high-performing country to set as an example for other countries to understand and imitate its success (Schmidt & Burroughs, 2016).

According to Balagtas et al. (2019), one of the best ways to determine whether the Philippine education system is improving in the present is through its performance in Trends in Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS). Therefore, countries that performed well on the mathematics and science examinations given by TIMSS are most likely also performing well on the PISA assessment (i.e., Hong Kong-China, Singapore, and Japan).

The ​​Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics is another large-scale assessment program designed to fit the contextual problems in education within the region; that will provide an opportunity for each participating country to determine the growing issues and resolve these in a manner that will improve the country’s education system.

The results of large-scale international assessments are putting pressure on participating countries to reshape their curriculum to adhere to the standards imposed by the Program (Fischman, Topper, Goebel, & Holloway, 2019). However, the pressure being felt did not reflect nor manifest the reformation of education in all these countries; instead, it paved the way for large-scale comparisons from regional to global standards. The problem is that many countries are not deliberately qualifying education as a priority, which engenders their education security despite having adequate financial resources (Tatarinov, V. V., & Tatarinov, V. S., 2020).

Methodology

This qualitative and exploratory paper is a case study focused on the government agencies’ engagement and participation in policy implementation and their adherence to the standards provided by Republic Act 10533. It analyzed documents about the transition from the Basic Education Curriculum to the Enhanced Basic Education Curriculum, progress reports from agencies subjected to the same law to oversee the policy implementation, and narratives from the Department of Education and different Education Policy experts. These data cannot be quantified and calculated by mere numbers hence, requiring an in-depth understanding for the establishment of more conclusive interpretation, especially the statements gathered from interviews which necessitates a more composite, rich, and multi-faceted approach.

This research gathered data from the statements from educational policy experts in the Philippines and the Department of Education Bureau of Education Assessment and Office of the Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instructions. Furthermore, a semi-structured interview was applied to the department representatives and the experts. In addition, reports and documents from the Curriculum Consultative Committee, the transition report from the Basic Education Curriculum to the Enhanced Basic Education Program, the midterm report from the Joint Congressional Committee, and the government agencies comprising the Curriculum Consultative Committee were utilized. Furthermore, the study was conducted using documents from 2016 to 2020 only since these are the succeeding years after the mandatory midterm report of the Department of Education as presented in the Congress of the Philippines. The researchers have also gathered data from the latest results coming from international and local assessment programs, including the PISA, TIMSS, SEA-PLM, and NAT.

Experts on education policy and policy implementation have provided insights regarding the Philippines’ current education status and the Department of Education as the mandated spearhead for education policy implementation. The criteria for choosing the Department of Education as a respondent were embedded in Section 5 of RA 10533. As for the educational policy experts, they should at least attain a master’s degree in Educational Administration or Education Management and Leadership with 10-year experience in the field. In addition, the experts should also reach Level 7 or Level 8 of education following the Philippines Qualifications Framework, which is responsible for establishing the national standards for education and training outcomes (Resolution No. 2014-03, 2014).

Content analysis was used to simplify the data collected from statements and documents from government agencies and congressional committees. The researchers read through the documents collected from the various data sources to create a margin note in formulating initial codes using Microsoft Excel and a code book. This was applied for qualitative data analysis to help the researchers look for a thematic analysis of the study to have effective data management.

The data from the semi-structured interviews and document analysis were categorized according to variables. Hence, the data analysis concentrated on answering each research objective by focusing on the data collected from all methods of data collection.

The data gathered from the three education experts and the representatives of the Department of Education’s Bureau of Education Assessment and Office of the Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instructions have conveyed responses to the research objectives, classified as the following: (a) incoherent and disorganized system of implementations; (b) confound policy interpretation due to system instability; (c) assessment programs as performance indicators for policy improvement.

Incoherent and Disorganized System of Implementation

The experts have agreed upon the necessity of a holistic overview of implementing the education system, with Expert 1 mentioning that “It should be a chain. So, CHED’s teacher training should also be safeguarded there. The research skills, the critical analysis, should be focused and not memorization, the identification of frameworks, or memorization of valence or atomic number.” Expert 2 added, “My first issue is the language used for assessment. I think language plays a very vital role,” which emphasizes the factor of using the mother-tongue language in assessing the quality of education (Masaazi, Ssentanda, & Ngaka, 2018). While Expert 3 focused on the external factors that may have affected the student’s performance.

In response to the lack of a holistic education system, the Department of Education asserted its commitment to improving the implementation and the education system itself. The Office of the Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction (OUCI) stated that “…we are always mindful of the need to improve, so we have a very strong monitoring mechanism that allows us to continue to refine the existing programs and projects”, which is manifested on the “Sulong Edukalidad initiative which is our banner initiative to push for a higher attention to the need for quality education that is in the K to 12 program that was launched even before the release of the PISA results.”

The amount of emphasis that the Department of Education puts on the objectives of RA 10533 heavily affects the quality of education being imparted among students, resulting in difficulty maximizing capacity at the grassroots level (Barrot, 2018). Unfortunately, the Philippines is currently challenged by the disorganization and incoherence of the system of implementation of the Department of Education, manifested in many ways.

A gap between the intended curriculum and implementation of the national agencies based on their interpretation was raised by Expert 2, saying:

The curriculum is very beautiful. However, when it comes to the implementation, in the middle of the 3rd and 4th year, the expectation versus reality was far, that is one. I am saying that in that sense, there are quite some problems in terms of interpretation, even among regions and divisions; there are confusions in terms of interpretation, most especially in the classroom.

This has been seconded by Expert 3, who bureaucratized this interpretation system, pointing out the discretionary freedom of teachers within the classroom in interpreting the curriculum based on what they inferred as the best viable manner of teaching. 

The absence of an authentic assessment, as defined by Expert 2 as “the assessments that bring you into concretizing the knowledge into practical knowledge.” is also observable. This emphasizes the importance of veering away from the strictly theoretical focus of understanding into more applicative learning should be further enhanced by encouraging the students’ demonstration of higher-order thinking skills and better problem-solving skills (Koh, 2017).

However, amidst the vast agreement between the Department of Education and the Education experts, they have exhibited a certain level of a dispute regarding the cause and effect of frequent reformations in the education system. In defense of the DepEd, the OUCI has exclaimed the necessity of frequent reformations to cope with the dynamic system of education and cater to the rising needs of the department towards different aspects of education as time passes. They, therefore, see this as a necessity rather than an obstruction, with which Expert 1 disagreed. Expert 1 stated, “Because of so many reforms, is something happening? Yes, something is happening. However, I felt like it was just going to happen again and again that there will be a change once every six years.” This only means that the previous challenges were not used as a deterrent, causing the country to miss many opportunities. Expert 2 recommends having a road map to secure a more consistent and continuous implementation of the curriculum regardless of who is seated as the Department Secretary or the President. At large, the agreements still managed to outweigh the disagreements that occurred.

To further solidify the statements given, government documents have shown several points leading to the claims of the experts and the DepEd representatives regarding the aspects that need to be addressed. For example, the Transition Report on Enhanced Basic Education raised the need to strengthen the curriculum further regarding contextualization, learning opportunities, and inclusive participation. Moreover, the DepEd also ensures the actualization of the intended curriculum, as evident in the Curriculum Guides through a strong Curriculum Support System. Also, the Basic Education Monitoring and Evaluation Framework presented key education objectives with the learner’s characteristics as the leading indicators of success.

Confound Policy Interpretation Due to System Instability

The quality of education, as manifested in different assessment programs, has been compromised due to the impact caused by problems plaguing the implementation process of DepEd and other agencies regarding policy interpretation. As stated, it is likely to face challenges regarding ensuring consistency in its delivery at the subnational level (Norris et al., 2014).

The data gathered shows that there are significant disagreements in some critical respects between the Department of Education and the experts since, according to the Department of Education, liaising between agencies is not a problem but more of a challenge “in terms of unifying the focus of everyone on the more essential aspects that will help to develop high performing teachers, highly committed and highly competent teachers.” Also, for the DepEd, it is necessary to intensify capacity-building, and “there is still room for improvement in terms of current efforts at coordinating and harmonizing the priorities of CHED, TESDA, and even the PRC.” As for the experts, the coordination between DepEd and CHED was seen as both a challenge and a problem because, as Expert 3 stated, even if “the DepEd restructures the system, and they fix the governance system to make sure there is cooperation among agencies. The communication between DepEd and CHED should still be strengthened”. After all, the expected knowledge, skills, and competencies that should develop in the students’ basic education deemed necessary for higher education are not adequately achieved.

Furthermore, to be as impactful as possible, educational policies should move beyond mere “paper compliance,” which only aims to meet the minimal requirements. The Department of Education acknowledged a problem regarding policy implementation, stating that implementation is their weakest point that needs to be addressed immediately.

Although the DepEd acknowledges the effort to change its ways, Expert 2 reiterated the focus of DepEd on paper compliance, stating that:

The government agencies are paper champions. They produce reports, but it is not validated on the ground. The problem is, there is a report, they were able to submit the reports, we can read the reports, some are quite acceptable, some are not so good, but the gap is what is happening? In the context of the ground.

With, Expert 1 further explained that it is not enough that we only look at the structures alone or the policies. We should also look at the policy actors since, as agents of policies, there should be an enhancement of leadership development to move away from the culture of mere compliance towards a culture of excellence and accountability. Also, according to Expert 2, “the only flaw is in terms of implementation, and there are qualified and good educators in the Philippines, the problem is in the learning transfer,” which can be seen in the lack of training in terms of usage which is a part of leadership management. Therefore, to have an effective educational reform, a strategic policy that is holistic and long-term is needed (Miço, 2019).

One factor that the experts also mentioned hinders the progress of the Philippines in terms of monitoring is the lack of necessary mechanisms that will monitor and categorize the data on a much larger scale. Fortunately, both the Experts and DepEd agreed that the country has not yet reached its limit in terms of implementation, therefore manifesting opportunities that will improve the implementing system.

Lastly, although the Midterm Report of the Department of Education and the Evaluation Report of the Curriculum Consultative Committee lean more toward supporting DepEd’s agenda towards compliance with RA 10533, House Resolution No. 473 generally backs up the experts toward a confounded policy implementation.

Performance Indicators for Policy Improvement

The Philippines’ participation in different international assessment programs, and the facilitation of the local ones, play an essential part in gauging the performance to determine the current and immediate condition of Philippine education quality.

Identifying the importance of local and international assessment programs with the current condition of education quality shows that as performance indicators for policy improvement, assessment programs are vital since they provide evidence that should be a part of the decision-making process in the government. However, the problem lies in the resistance of those in position to the results. According to Expert 2, “if you were given feedback, it means you have something to do,” and “they should not be threatened by a low score or a low ranking because it does not entirely reflect that you have failed, but simply that there is something that you need to address right now.” Therefore, for Expert 3, “you cannot start the learning process if you do not own up to the mistake or failure.” Moreover, even the Department of Education agreed that:

We have to continue providing benchmarks to determine whether what we are doing is slowly delivering the impact or the results that we want to accomplish. Otherwise, we would not have the basis to say that improvements are being recorded, although we would still have the national assessments as a mechanism to measure on my part, although the secretary’s open to the idea of resting for a while in terms of taking part in the PISA but my take is we must continue because the benchmark has to be there.

Moreover, assessment programs as a problem indicator are essential for policymakers because the results of assessments are “a good measurement in determining the immediate condition of our system, and it is also a predictor” as Expert 2. In addition, indicators have a significant role in policy monitoring by producing unbiased and objective observations on the progress toward policy objectives. Assessment programs as problem indicators are a quantitative presentation of the conditions in a policy field that can be used as an instrument to inspect further and delve into the effects of policies and provide information for policymakers to determine the effectiveness of policies and to make any adjustments where it is required (Schumann, 2016). Hence, for Expert 3, “for a reasonable and logical policy maker, all evidence should be part of the decision-making process, what to do, what not to do” since it shows the problem in the educational system and assessment programs also provide straightforward suggestions. Also, the Department of Education (DepEd) stated that “if those flaws are eliminated, potentially, the quality of education that we have might also improve.”

Also, assessment programs are necessary for evidence-based policymaking because they generate policy recommendations. For Expert 3, “we need to emphasize that when we talk about curriculum implementation, assessment, especially third-party assessments, these are part of the evidence-based policymaking and being a responsible policy maker. You should not omit evidence simply because it does not sit well on you on a personal level”. Therefore, assessment programs empowered the education system by providing evidence-based analysis of students’ academic performance to improve the country’s educational policies, as evidence-based policymaking has seen significant advancements even at the local levels. Even the DepEd recognizes the importance of both international and local assessment programs because:

These assessments, their objective, are external to the learning delivery, and they are external to the department. Besides they follow high-quality protocols, like, following the line of testing and measurement, have protocols that we follow, and they are fair because of their objective. They want to improve SDG 4, or sustainable development goal 4, which is quality education.

This study concludes that there are still numerous challenges afflicting the implementation process, hence a hindrance to achieving the objectives of the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013. Despite the pieces of evidence provided by the documents, implying the commitment of the different agencies to achieving a good quality of education, the data coming from the experts have directed the root of the problems towards the misalignment and misinterpretation of the process of implementing and monitoring of the policies and not on the policy per se. The researchers have therefore navigated towards the role of the involved government agencies in the achievement of an enhanced basic education curriculum and a significant improvement of the Philippines in both international and local assessment programs since, per the premises of Top-Down theory, the weight of developing the policy and evaluation is on the educational institutions. Therefore, by enhancing the attention of national agencies in charge of the implementation process, the country’s ranking in assessment programs can significantly increase. This sheds light on a possible suggestion for the recalibration of the implementation and monitoring system to ensure that there is an existing universal understanding of the objectives and principles of both the Republic Act 10533 itself and other released orders from the Department of Education as an extension of their duty under the law. 

This study recommends that for subsequent research on educational policy, the gaps that the researchers identified in the literature should be addressed, which includes further research on the following: (1) the role of teachers in curriculum development and enhanced outcomes in assessment programs; (2) the gap between understanding the intended curriculum and implemented curriculum; (3) the detrimental effect of mere paper compliance about educational policies; and (4) future studies on other policies that focus on aspects that might affect the quality of education in the country. Also, as a recommendation to the Department of Education for the Improvement of the Policy Implementation Mechanisms, the following are being emphasized by the researchers: (a) creation of a roadmap for the implementation process of the Enhanced Basic Education Curriculum to ensure its continuity despite the inevitable change of administrators; (b) formation of leadership development training on structural leadership; (c) strengthening of the communication and cooperation of DepEd and CHED to achieve the goals of RA 10533; and (d) continuation of the Philippines’ participation in international assessment programs. Furthermore, to highlight the development of a more inclusive learning system, the following are also recommended: (a) establishment of different learning action cells; (b) adjustments in terms of the manner of training these teachers; and (c) refocusing and rechecking of Assessments Tasks to go beyond the traditional and theoretical forms of assessments, including Pen and Paper Tests, and adopt Authentic Assessments as a significant part of the curriculum.

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Author’s Bionote

Louie Benedict R. Ignacio, PhD is the Chair and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Santo Tomas. He also teaches in the Department of Political Science of the same University and is a former President of the Philippine Sociological Society.

Andrea Gaile A. Cristobal is currently taking the Juris Doctor program at the University of Santo Tomas with developing interests in the field of public law and educational policy. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from the same University with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and was awarded the Best Thesis.

Paul Christian David is currently taking the Juris Doctor program at the University of Santo Tomas with developing interests in the field of public law, and environmental and educational policy. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the same University with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and was awarded the Best Thesis.

ASIAN JOURNAL ON PERSPECTIVES IN EDUCATION

Far Eastern University Institute of Education FEU Campus, Nicanor Reyes Street, Sampaloc Manila, Philippines, 1015 Email:  [email protected]

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2024 Theses Doctoral

Charter-School Music Teacher Practitioners and Instructional Leaders’ Perception of Professional Development: A Multiple-Bounded Case Study

Moss, Jameon DeSean

This multiple-bounded case study explored charter-school music teacher practitioners’(MTPs’) and instructional leaders’ (ILs’) perceptions of professional development (PD) in four charter management organizations (CMOs). The purpose was to provide a rich description of these practitioners’ professional development, with the goal of spurring policy conversations and further research on music teachers and their experiences in the charter domain. Over two months in the fall of 2023, the researcher conducted one-on-one interviews with eight participants, which focused on ways of making change, methods of delivery, beneficial components of the methods of supporting music literacy, and forms of PD assessment from the perspectives of MTPs and ILs. In addition to holding two focus groups (one with each case), the researcher conducted four classroom and debrief observations. The interviews and observations were analyzed using the participants’ words as first-cycle analysis themes; these were then filtered through the study’s conceptual framework of Desimone’s (2009) core elements of effective professional development: content focus, active learning, coherence, sustained duration, and collective participation. The findings illustrate the participants’ experience with the professional development phenomenon through a series of main themes: instruction is classroom management, except PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN CHARTER SCHOOLS when it is not, (b) the many moods of instructional coaching and workshops, (c) content expertise via cycles of inquiry, and (d) reflection is essential. Implications include framing future empirical research in this usually guarded sector as a partnership to identify best and emergent practices for practitioners that directly affect students and families. Framing research in this manner may resonate with charter management organizations that adhere to more formative professional development practices. Additionally, cycles of inquiry in which self-reflection can occur may be a way forward for myriad non-content-expert instructional leaders who support the professional development of music teacher practitioners in charter schools or traditional public schools. Further suggestions for future practice include hosting charter-specific sessions at music education conferences, which could be framed as dialogic sessions to foster collegial inquiry concerning practices at both charter and public schools. Because CMOs’ system structures are different, practitioners there experience some aspects of teaching and professional development differently than their traditional public counterparts. Offering sessions specifically tailored to charter practitioners’ needs could help ensure that their needs, as well as those of the ILs that support them, are met. Keywords: Professional Development, Charter Schools, In-Service Music Teacher Practitioners, Instructional Leaders, Instructional Coaching, Mentors, Workshops.

• Music--Instruction and study
• Music teachers--Training of
• Music teachers--Attitudes
• Charter schools
• Mentoring in education
• Professional development for teachers

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• slovenščina
• Azerbaijani

New ways to teach in STEM and Life Sciences: Successful experiences

Explore innovative teaching methods tailored for primary and secondary educators in STEM and life sciences.

Description

Learning objectives.

• Discover cutting-edge teaching approaches and resources in STEM and life sciences education.
• Learn practical strategies to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes.
• Explore successful experiences and best practices from educators in the field.
• Foster creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills among students.
• Develop adaptable lesson plans and activities for diverse learning environments.
• Cultivate a collaborative learning community among educators to share insights and support professional growth.

Methodology & assessment

Certification details, pricing, packages and other information.

• Price: 400 Euro
• Package contents: Course

Additional information

• Language: English
• Target audience ISCED: Primary education (ISCED 1) Lower secondary education (ISCED 2) Upper secondary education (ISCED 3)
• Target audience type: Teacher Pedagogical Adviser Higher education institution staff
• Learning time: 25 hours or more

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Key competences, more courses by this organiser.

Creation and destruction of ephemeral art as a didactic resource

Next upcoming session  20.06.2024 - 25.06.2024

Inclusion and violence prevention: international workshop and shared experiences

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New approaches to digital education (for secondary education and VET)

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https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/05/16/new-rshe-guidance-what-it-means-for-sex-education-lessons-in-schools/

New RSHE guidance: What it means for sex education lessons in schools

R elationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) is a subject taught at both primary and secondary school.  

In 2020, Relationships and Sex Education was made compulsory for all secondary school pupils in England and Health Education compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools.  

Last year, the Prime Minister and Education Secretary brought forward the first review of the curriculum following reports of pupils being taught inappropriate content in RSHE in some schools.  

The review was informed by the advice of an independent panel of experts. The results of the review and updated guidance for consultation has now been published.   

We are now asking for views from parents, schools and others before the guidance is finalised. You can find the consultation here .   

What is new in the updated curriculum?  

Following the panel’s advice, w e’re introducing age limits, to ensure children aren’t being taught about sensitive and complex subjects before they are ready to fully understand them.    

We are also making clear that the concept of gender identity – the sense a person may have of their own gender, whether male, female or a number of other categories   – is highly contested and should not be taught. This is in line with the cautious approach taken in our gu idance on gender questioning children.  

Along with other factors, teaching this theory in the classroom could prompt some children to start to question their gender when they may not have done so otherwise, and is a complex theory for children to understand.   

The facts about biological sex and gender reassignment will still be taught.  

The guidance for schools also contains a new section on transparency with parents, making it absolutely clear that parents have a legal right to know what their children are being taught in RSHE and can request to see teaching materials.   

In addition, we’re seeking views on adding several new subjects to the curriculum, and more detail on others. These include:   

• Suicide prevention  
• Sexual harassment and sexual violence  
• L oneliness  
• The prevalence of 'deepfakes’  
• Healthy behaviours during pregnancy, as well as miscarriage  
• Illegal online behaviours including drug and knife supply  
• The dangers of vaping   
• Menstrual and gynaecological health including endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and heavy menstrual bleeding.  

What are the age limits?   

In primary school, we’ve set out that subjects such as the risks about online gaming, social media and scams should not be taught before year 3.   

Puberty shouldn’t be taught before year 4, whilst sex education shouldn’t be taught before year 5, in line with what pupils learn about conception and birth as part of the national curriculum for science.  

In secondary school, issues regarding sexual harassment shouldn’t be taught before year 7, direct references to suicide before year 8 and any explicit discussion of sexual activity before year 9.  

Do schools have to follow the guidance?  

Following the consultation, the guidance will be statutory, which means schools must follow it unless there are exceptional circumstances.   

There is some flexibility w ithin the age ratings, as schools will sometimes need to respond to questions from pupils about age-restricted content, if they come up earlier within their school community.   

In these circumstances, schools are instructed to make sure that teaching is limited to the essential facts without going into unnecessary details, and parents should be informed.  

When will schools start teaching this?  

School s will be able to use the guidance as soon as we publish the final version later this year.   

However, schools will need time to make changes to their curriculum, so we will allow an implementation period before the guidance comes into force.     

What can parents do with these resources once they have been shared?

This guidance has openness with parents at its heart. Parents are not able to veto curriculum content, but they should be able to see what their children are being taught, which gives them the opportunity to raise issues or concerns through the school’s own processes, if they want to.

Parents can also share copyrighted materials they have received from their school more widely under certain circumstances.

If they are not able to understand materials without assistance, parents can share the materials with translators to help them understand the content, on the basis that the material is not shared further.

Copyrighted material can also be shared under the law for so-called ‘fair dealing’ - for the purposes of quotation, criticism or review, which could include sharing for the purpose of making a complaint about the material.

This could consist of sharing with friends, families, faith leaders, lawyers, school organisations, governing bodies and trustees, local authorities, Ofsted and the media.  In each case, the sharing of the material must be proportionate and accompanied by an acknowledgment of the author and its ownership.

Under the same principle, parents can also share relevant extracts of materials with the general public, but except in cases where the material is very small, it is unlikely that it would be lawful to share the entirety of the material.

These principles would apply to any material which is being made available for teaching in schools, even if that material was provided subject to confidentiality restrictions.

Do all children have to learn RSHE?  

Parents still have the right to withdraw their child from sex education, but not from the essential content covered in relationships educatio n.  

You may also be interested in:

• Education Secretary's letter to parents: You have the right to see RSHE lesson material
• Sex education: What is RSHE and can parents access curriculum materials?
• What do children and young people learn in relationship, sex and health education

Tags: age ratings , Gender , Relationships and Sex Education , RSHE , sex ed , Sex education

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Financial transfer payment and green development transition in backward area: a case study in Jiangxi Province, China

• Published: 25 May 2024

Cite this article

• Shengtian Jin 1 ,
• Zhilong Wu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0571-8287 2 ,
• Bingfei Bao 3 ,
• Xinmin Zhang 2 &
• Xing Wang 4  

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Green development, as the second generation of sustainable development, is inclusive of ecological civilisation and common prosperity. China has recently initiated large-scale financial transfer payments to promote the green development transition of backward areas. However, the  policy effects are unclear. This study takes Jiangxi Province, the central backward and ecological function area, as an example to explore the dynamic transitions to green development in 80 counties (cities, districts) from 2001 to 2018 and evaluate the policy effects of transfer payment on green development transition based on a multi-period differential model and a panel regression model. Results show that (1) From 2001 to 2018, the green development index composed of economic development index, social security index, and environmental protection index showed an outstanding rising trend in Jiangxi Province, and the economic development index increased the most. (2) The transfer payment from central government to local government can significantly promote the green development transition. The longer the policy implementation time and the larger the transfer payment scale is, the higher the level of green development will be. (3) The per capita general budgetary fiscal revenue, urbanisation rate, proportion of added value of the service industry, and investment rate have positive effects on the green development index. This paper proposes that the Chinese central government may prolong the duration of transfer payment policy and expand the strength and scope of subsidies for key ecological function areas, while the local governments can develop eco-tourism based on ecological advantages and resource endowments. The horizontal ecological compensation mechanism should be improved and highlight the supervision and assessment for transfer payment funds.

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The specific list of the 60 counties (cities, districts) enjoying the transfer payment in key ecological function zones is as follows: Nanchang County, Xinjian District, Jinxian County, Anyi County, Leping City, Fuliang County, Lianhua County, Luxi County, Xiushui County, Wuning County, Yongxiu County, De’an County, Duchang County, Hukou County, Peng County Ze County, Lushan City, Guixi City, Gan County District, Nankang District, Xinfeng County, Dayu County, Shangyou County, Chongyi County, Anyuan County, Longnan City, Dingnan County, Quannan County, Ningdu County, Yudu County, Xingguo County, Ruijin City, Huichang County, Xunwu County, Shicheng County, Zhangshu City, Yifeng County, Jing’an County, Tonggu County, Guangfeng District, Yanshan County, Hengfeng County, Yiyang County, Yugan County, Poyang County, Wannian County, Wuyuan County, Yongfeng County, Taihe County, Suichuan County, Wan’an County, Anfu County, Yongxin County, Jinggangshan City, Nanfeng County, Lichuan County, Yihuang County, Zixi County, Guangchang County, Dongxiang District and Guangxin District. The specific list of counties (cities, districts) not enjoying payment in key ecological function zones is as follows: Shangli County, Fenyi County, Chaisang District, Ruichang City, Yujiang District, Ji’an County, Jishui County, Xiajiang County, Xingan County, Fengxin County, Wanzai County, Shanggao County, Fengcheng City, Gao’an City, Nancheng County, Chongren County, Le’an County, Jinxi County, Yushan County and Dexing City.

Abbreviations

The annual dummy variable

Population density

Per capita general budgetary fiscal revenue

Urbanisation rate

The proportion of added value of the service industry

Investment rate

The transfer payment scale

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (22CJY048); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41861036); the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province, China (20224BAB203047); and the Science and Technology Project of Education Department of Jiangxi Province, China (GJJ200504).

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School of Finance, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, 233000, China

Shengtian Jin

College of Applied Economics, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, No. 169, East Shuanggang Road, Jingkai District, Nanchang, 330013, China

Zhilong Wu & Xinmin Zhang

Institute of Statistics and Applied Mathematics, Anhui University of Finance and Economics, Bengbu, 233000, China

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Government-Invested Project Evaluation Center of Jiangxi Province, Nanchang, 330008, China

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Jin, S., Wu, Z., Bao, B. et al. Financial transfer payment and green development transition in backward area: a case study in Jiangxi Province, China. Environ Dev Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04496-7

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Received : 18 March 2023

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Published : 25 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04496-7

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