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The purpose of this paper is to report on elementary students’ observational drawings, which were produced from two science lesson study cycles.

The authors collaboratively studied student work from two science research lessons. The authors evaluated 50 students’ science notebook entries, paying specific attention to their observational sketches. The authors wanted to understand how fourth grade students approach observational drawing in science class to better inform science and art pedagogy.

Students represented their observations in a variety of ways. The structure of the lessons might have influenced students’ drawings, as did students’ orientation when constructing their representations.

This research is limited in that it only analyzes observational drawing from two research lessons.

Through cross-disciplinary collaboration between a science educator and an art teacher, the authors developed shared ideas that were applicable in both spaces. In the near term, the authors have each changed the instructional practices to include more observational drawing.

This paper could impact public attitudes about the inclusion of science and art in the elementary curriculum. The authors would expect that through articulating the purpose of observational drawing for the artist and the scientist, the public would be more supportive of teaching these skills in school.

This paper documents teacher learning across two content areas which students have limited access to in the USA during elementary school. It explains how science and art share objectives and can thus advocate for each other’s inclusion in the school day.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had major ramifications for the small developing countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) as 3 of the then 13 countries experimented with strands of socialism, festering political fragmentation/ideological pluralism regionally. As the rivets of the Iron Curtain came unfastened, the emerging markets of CARICOM were forced to rethink their geopolitical positions while reforming their national educational systems. This chapter examines how the dissolution of socialism in the former socialist countries of Southeast/Central Europe and the former Soviet Union created a reform atmosphere across CARICOM countries. CARICOM's response to the impact of 1989 lies in how it spent the 1980s dealing with the 1973–1974 oil crises, ideological pluralism, and the subsequent imposition of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) under the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The successive degeneration of ideological pluralism within CARICOM countries caused by the simultaneous collapse of cooperative socialism in Guyana, revolutionary socialism in Grenada, and democratic socialism in Jamaica paved the way for post-socialist transformations regionally. This chapter considers how the policy process of functional cooperation – the non-economic policy mechanism upon which CARICOM seeks to integrate its members – facilitates the policy tool of lesson-drawing to take place between member states while laying the foundation for post-socialist change across CARICOM. Using data from the educational policies of 10 countries, this chapter illustrates how CARICOM members used the global policy alterations of 1989 as a reference point to reform their educational systems. Educational reforms occurred as member states drew lessons from each other – in the form of cross-national consultations – guided by the policy process of functional cooperation.

This article brings together the literatures on policy learning and lesson drawing with the intra-crisis learning literature in order to assess “learning lessons” in the COVID-19 pandemic.

It carries out a structured review of articles that seek to provide lessons for the pandemic. It examines these articles using interpretative content analysis to apply the criteria of prospective policy transfer to the material.

Application of the criteria of prospective policy transfer suggests that lesson drawing was fairly limited. It is often not fully clear why nations were selected. Many articles were brief and provided limited detail, meaning that there was little depth on issues such as problems and goals and on policy performance or policy success or failure. There was limited discussion of transferability of lessons, and few clear lessons could be drawn. Finally, the extent to which it was possible to learn lessons in a “non-routine” or “less routine” crisis, under conditions of threat, uncertainty and urgency was generally not discussed.

The criteria within the framework of prospective policy transfer provide a template for policy makers to assess lessons.

This article indicates the problems of attempting to draw lessons from the past or from other nations to an unprecedented crisis, where decision-making is characterized by elements of threat, urgency and uncertainty.

Shedding light on urban transportation and, more specifically, the contemporary development of “smart” bikesharing systems (i.e. short-term bicycle rental services), the purpose of this paper is to focus on Montreal's bikesharing experiment. Known as BIXI (a contraction of the words BIcycle and taXI) since its inception in 2009, this system has been exported to other cities around the world, making it especially relevant for the analysis of this innovative and sustainable form of urban mobility.

By tracing the policy history of BIXI and the current political debate about its future while using a framework focusing on the role of ideas in public policy, the paper directly contributes to the literature on the growing role of bicycles in sustainable urban transportation. The qualitative analysis is based on a systematic review of government documents and BIXI-related articles published in the Montreal French- and English-language press. To complement this analysis and provide information about behind-the-lesson drawing processes leading to the creation of BIXI, six semi-structured interviews were conducted with officials in charge of bikesharing policy in Montreal, as well as in Boston and London, England, two cities that have adopted (and adapted) the BIXI model.

This analysis stresses the role of lesson drawing and framing processes in the development of Montreal's bikesharing system. While it is clear that the technological and policy developments of BIXI illustrate systematic and positive lesson drawing, on the framing and public relations side, the Montreal experiment suggests it is politically risky to boost public expectations about the potential costs of bikesharing systems for taxpayers. In addition to their innovative and sustainable contributions to urban transportation and pro-bike strategies, bikesharing systems are public investments that are not necessary free of costs for taxpayers. Framing these systems as public investments rather than a “free ride” for taxpayers would be a more accurate, and potentially effective, way to promote their development in the context of the current push for sustainable transportation policy in cities around the world.

What this paper offers is a sociological perspective on an emerging and important policy issue, through an original combination of lesson drawing and framing perspectives on policy development. Montreal's BIXI is one of the most discussed (and exported) bikesharing systems around the world, and this is the first detailed policy analysis devoted to its genesis and politics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive cross-national comparative framework to compare open data policies from different countries and to derive lessons for developing open data policies. Open data policies guide the opening and stimulate the usage of public data. However, some countries have no or less developed open data policies, in this way missing the opportunity to reap the benefits of open data.

Literature review and case studies were conducted to extend an existing comparison framework, and the framework was used to compare open data policies of the UK, the USA, The Netherlands, Kenya and Indonesia.

The comparison of open data policies highlighted several lessons that can be learned, including actions regarding a robust legal framework, generic operational policies, data providers and data users, data quality, designated agencies or taskforces and initiatives and incentives for stimulating demand for data. National policies should also be focused on removing barriers on the operational level and policies for stimulating the release and use of data.

There is hardly any research systematically comparing open data policies. The comparative framework provided in this paper is a first analytical basis for cross-national comparison of open data policies and offers possibilities for systematic cross-national lesson-drawing.

The authors found two waves of policy-making. The first wave of policy is focused on stimulating the release of data, whereas the second wave of policy is aimed at stimulating use. The comparison can be used to learn from other policies and help to improve open data policies. A third wave of open data policy is expected to materialize focusing on realizing added value from utilizing open data.

Improving a country’s open data policy can help the country to reap the benefits of open data, such as government transparency, efficiency and economic growth.

Open data are a recent phenomenon and countries are looking for ways to obtain the benefits. This research can be used for developing and evaluating open data policies.

International benchmarking is increasingly used to inform information and communications policy. The paper aims to discuss the conditions under which learning from the experience in other jurisdictions (communities, nations, and super‐national regions) is possible.

Research from different disciplines is reviewed and synthesized to provide an integrated conceptual framework that can be used to design more robust international benchmarking approaches.

Drawing lessons from the policy experience in other jurisdictions is more difficult than is commonly perceived. Nonetheless, as long as the conditions for policy learning are met and it is properly done, international comparisons yield valuable data that can be used to improve the design of information and communications policy.

In conducting internationally comparative inquiries, researchers need to ascertain that the prerequisites of the methods employed are aligned with the structure of the problems that are investigated. Each method (e.g. qualitative, qualitative comparative analysis, panel data) has strengths and weaknesses and may not be an appropriate tool. Given these concerns, methodological pluralism and regular attempts to triangulate findings with other methods would be desirable.

Policymakers should resist the temptation to search for “best practice” approaches elsewhere and to imitate them. Successful policy approaches, while learning from abroad, need to be adapted to, and attuned with, local conditions.

The paper provides a timely discussion of the intricacies of benchmarking to improve policy decisions. It cautions against blind‐faith reliance on best practice models and encourages policy diversity as a way to facilitate continuous learning.

This study examines spatial layouts and sustainable features of vernacular houses in southern Vietnam to apply the lessons learned to the development of a contemporary housing design. This study proposes hypothetical low-rise street-house models popular in contemporary urban Vietnam by applying the spatial and ecological lessons learned from the analysis.

In total, 23 well-preserved vernacular houses in Dong Hoa Hiep – an 18th century village in the Tien Giang Province – were chosen for a 2-month, on-site investigation. During the field survey, the houses were measured to fabricate scale drawings for detailed analysis, and photographs were taken.

An in-depth evaluation highlighted unique characteristics of spatial compositions, sustainable features, and architectural components that contribute to climate adaptive strategies.

Although numerous potential arrangements of the models are possible, a few examples are illustrated to validate that the assembly could help achieve a dynamic streetscape for street houses.

From this perspective, vernacular houses in Vietnam are a rich architectural resource and a significant cultural heritage, because these houses have adopted sustainable design strategies suitable for the local climate and culture to ensure comfort and well-being for a long time. Perhaps, sustainable lessons drawn from Vietnam's indigenous houses are a prerequisite to developing contemporary housing in the country.

Employing the lessons learned from vernacular houses, this study developed three sustainable prototypical designs for the development of contemporary street houses in densely populated cities in Vietnam.

The authors investigate the use and potential of a theoretical combination of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) and the Theory of Didactic Situation (TDS) to support Lesson Study (LS) in upper secondary mathematics.

Case study performed by university researchers, based on theoretical analysis and case studies based on documents and observation from lesson studies.

Even within a project lasting just about three years, teachers (with no preliminary experience of lesson study) engaged in lesson design based on the combination of theoretical perspectives from TDS and RME in ways that confirm the potential of that combination to enrich and focus teachers' professional development within the framework of LS . It is not clear to what extent the intensive and continued engagement of university researchers has been or would be essential for similar and longitudinal realizations of these potentials.

As current European frameworks seek to engage researchers and teachers in collaboration and exchange across countries, networking of major paradigms of research (like TDS and RME) and uses of them as supports for teachers' inquiry (like demonstrated in this paper) is of considerable institutional interest and potential impact on schools.

Teachers' Inquiry in Mathematics Education (TIME) is a prerequisite for the development of Inquiry Based Mathematics Education, which in turn is required in many countries across the world, with the aim of fostering critical and competent citizens.

This combination of (major) mathematics education theories to support and enrich LS has not previously been investigated. While several aspects of adapting to LS Western contexts have been investigated in the past, including the inclusion of perspectives and tools from academic research, the role of university researchers is also quite open. While authors do not offer a systematic study of this role, authors examine how this role may involve development of new practical combinations of different, complementary theoretical tools, which indeed hold potential to support lesson study in a European context.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the methodology used by the authors to describe the enacted object of learning, a methodology where data production and analysis is rooted in a theorisation of pedagogy. The authors share how the authors used this methodological approach to provide a comprehensive description of the enacted object of learning and in so doing the authors hope to make a methodological contribution to the field of learning study. The lesson analysis foregrounds the importance of “evaluation” in pedagogic practice, and thus a key element of pedagogy. Tools from variation theory are incorporated into this broader approach that the authors suggest illuminates the enacted object of learning. The authors offer this approach as a methodological contribution to the development of research in and on learning study.

A case study approach was adopted as the key research methodology in this study. The four teachers who participated in this study were purposively identified since in the first instance the design of the study warranted that the teachers who participated were teaching mathematics at grade 10. Second, the need to be purposive in the sampling strategy employed was based on issues around cost, logistics and convenience.

While learning study foregrounds the importance of examining the constitution of the enacted object of learning, the contention is that it is through a focus on evaluation that the authors are able to fully describe what is constituted as mathematics with respect to the enacted object of learning. Analysis of evaluation thus adds to the description of the enacted object in critical ways.

Within the domain of learning study, this paper provides a novel way of engaging with a lesson transcript in an attempt to fully describe what comes to be constituted as the enacted object of learning. This is achieved by combining the notion of evaluative events and authorisation on one hand and variation theory on the other.

In this final chapter, we summarize the core challenges to leadership in complex organizational systems as well as the lessons that we believe leaders can learn from the contributions presented in this book. Building on Complexity Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009), we argue that high levels of complexity characterize the contexts described, and that they are unusual because they deviate from the setting of standard business organizations. Since these contexts are not often discussed in the general leadership literature, there seems to be a largely unused potential in terms of leadership learning. Specifically, in order to better contextualize leadership, scholars and practitioners need to take organizational complexity into account. With reference to the underlying structure of the book, core challenges to leadership are proposed, clustering around four main foci: sports and competition, high risk, creativity and innovation, care and community. Subsequently, we derive six lessons for leadership: adaptability, perseverance, handling paradox, leading with values, inventing the future, and sharing responsibility. We thereby hope to stimulate fruitful discussions that put leadership into context and capitalize on complexity theory as an innovative approach to leadership research and practice.