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The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers’ reported experiences, practices, and attitudes on the use of national test results in a low-stakes accountability context. Whether the stakes are high or low, teachers and school leaders have different experiences, knowledge, and beliefs concerning how to use national test results to benefit individual student learning. This paper addresses how teachers experience school leadership and policy requirements for using national test results in local schools.

This paper is part of a larger study conducted in a Norwegian educational context investigating school leaders’ and teachers’ enactments of policy demands via the use of national test results data. The sub-study reported in this paper is based on survey data from all lower secondary teachers (n=176) in one Norwegian municipality. Micro-policy perspectives and the concept of crafting policy coherence served as analytical tools.

Diversity between the schools was found in how teachers perceive the principals’ role. Practices and attitudes appeared restrained, somewhat conformed by, but still indifferent to the policy intention. However, there was a close relationship between the principals’ facilitation of national tests and the teachers’ practices of utilizing the results.

This study clarified how micro-policy works in local schools in a low-stakes context. A prominent difference was found between the policy intentions and local schools’ practice of using national test results.

This study sought to provide an understanding of what a culturally contextualized model of instructional leadership looks like in Turkey, and how this differs from models disseminated in the USA.

This study employed qualitative meta-synthesis to systematically review the full set of 22 qualitative studies of instructional leadership in Turkey. A systematic synthesis strategy was applied to code the findings from each study to develop broad themes that describe key domains of principal instructional leadership practice.

The results showed that instructional leadership of school principals in Turkey is composed of four main dimensions and ten subdimensions. The main dimensions include: (1) emphasis on national goals and competition, (2) maintaining the learning environment, (3) motivating and enabling teachers, and (4) monitoring program alignment and test results.

While broad dimensions of instructional leadership described in the international literature are relevant in Turkey, some practices used to enact those dimensions appear poorly aligned with the institutional–cultural context of Turkish schools. Thus, findings from this study support the assertion that the specific practices used to measure, assess and practice instructional leadership must be adapted to the context of a specific society.

This paper contributes to international efforts to develop a globally validated knowledge base in educational leadership and management.

The present study is a novel attempt to measure the impact of population growth, natural resource depletion, non-renewable energy consumption, growth of national income, remittances inflow and industrial output on carbon dioxide emissions in India during the period of 1980–2018.

Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) is used to achieve the objective. The application of FMOLS (fully modified ordinary least squares), DOLS (dynamic ordinary least squares) and CCR (canonical cointegrating regression) techniques illustrate statistical robustness.

The long-run ARDL results confirm that increase in population, national income and energy consumption have a positive and significant impact on pollution levels in India. In contradiction to this, long run results further reveal that the increase in natural resource depletion, industrial output and remittances inflow have insignificant and negative impact on pollution levels in India. Further, the empirical findings did not find any evidence for the applicability of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in India during the study period.

The study is confined to only a few important determinants of CO₂ emissions in India. However, there is a large chunk of studies that have incorporated other determinants of CO₂ emissions. Specifying a few determinants of CO₂ emissions in India is itself a lacuna in the present study. Moreover, taking the time period from 1980 to 2018 is also one of the limitations of the study.

Plenty of research has been devoted to the causal relationship between the environment and its various determinants. However, not much attention has been paid to investigating the association between population growth, natural resource depletion, energy consumption, GDP per capita, remittances inflow, industry and carbon dioxide emissions in India. Since, CO₂ emissions are one of the widely accepted and applied emissions in EKC applications, which the present study intends to test. Moreover, the study employs advanced econometric techniques including ARDL framework, FMOLS, DOLS and CRR methodologies to achieve robust results. Such an investigation will potentially allow policymakers to frame efficient environmental and fiscal policies to achieve the desired results.

The continuous increase of CO₂ emissions in India has compelled policy makers to prioritize this issue as soon as possible and formulate national environmental policy for reducing the share of carbon dioxides emissions in climate change. The study could constitute the focus of future research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distribution of dwelling airtightness test results for a developer, between 2007 and 2011. The changes in airtightness test results over time are discussed, and links between the airtightness test results and the construction technique are investigated.

A data set of airtightness test results was statistically analysed by applying probabilistic model of the distribution and using Bayesian parameter estimation techniques.

The inferred background distributions, those estimated to describe dwelling performance before secondary sealing, suggest an improvement in airtightness between 2008 and 2011, the mode decreases from 5.46±0.09 m³/m²h to 4.12±0.07 m³/m²h with a corresponding shift in practice towards a more target-driven approach. The most airtight dwellings are constructed from reinforced concrete frame, followed by “traditional” (dry lined masonry), timber frame and lightweight steel frame.

This study is limited by the size of the available data set (901 dwellings), and by the fact that the data set contains a larger proportion of flats to houses; however, the metadata has enabled the exploration of the link between construction practices and airtightness.

Developers need better guidance surrounding how to meet more stringent airtightness requirements through improvements to the primary air barrier, with incentives and support to deliver changes in practice. Furthermore, if a large number of dwellings undergo secondary sealing, this may have implications for the long-term efficiency of the dwelling stock.

This analysis investigates two issues that have not previously been studied on a significant number of dwellings: the changes to the distribution of airtightness results over time and the link between construction methods and airtightness.

This thesis deeply studies the impact mechanism of digital service trade on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry from the aspects of technological innovation and industrial structure.

In this thesis, 40 countries from 2010 to 2020 were selected as samples, and the panel fixed-effect model and intermediary effect model were used to empirically analyze the impact path of digital service trade on the high-quality development of global manufacturing.

Overall, digital service trade has a positive impact on the high-quality development of the global manufacturing industry. Through the analysis of the intermediary effect mechanism, it is found that digital service trade can further positively affect the high-quality development of the global manufacturing industry by promoting technological innovation and industrial structure upgrading.

Based on the empirical results, targeted countermeasures and suggestions are given in this paper.

Through the test of national heterogeneity, it is found that in developing countries, digital service trade mainly acts on the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry by promoting industrial structure upgrading.

In developed countries, digital service trade mainly promotes the high-quality development of manufacturing through technological innovation; from the perspective of industry heterogeneity, the three service industries of information and communication technology (ICT), other business services and property have the intermediary effect of technological innovation and industrial structure.

This manuscript suggests that trade in digital services should be promoted as a national trade priority.

Improving Turkey's low level of education quality and achieving equity in quality education across its seven regions continue to be a monumental challenge. The purpose of this study was to document the extent of Turkey's regional differences in science achievement at the eighth grade and to investigate factors associated with these differences. Identifying the factors influencing Turkey's regional inequalities in student learning is crucial for establishing policies that will help raise the educational performance at the national level as well as close regional gaps. A series of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses were performed at two levels (the school/class level and student level) using Turkey's nationally representative data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007. Findings suggested that attempts to increase Turkish students' achievement and close the achievement gaps between regions should target the students in the undeveloped regions, particularly in Southeastern and Eastern Anatolia. Designing interventions to improve competency in Turkish and to compensate for the shortcomings of insufficient parental education, limited home educational resources, poor school climate for academic achievement, and inadequate instructional equipment and facilities might be expected to close the regional achievement gaps as well as raise the overall achievement level in Turkey. Using TIMSS data, this study provided an example of a methodology that may be employed to describe how student achievement is distributed among various subpopulations of national interest and to investigate the factors that contribute to differences in the achievement distribution.

The introduction of performance-related pay with performance management in the state school sector of England and Wales represents a considerable change in the school management system. After 2000, all teachers were subject to annual goal setting performance reviews. Experienced teachers were offered an extended pay scale based on performance instead of seniority, and to gain access to the new upper pay scale, teachers had to go through a ‘threshold assessment’ based on their professional skills and performance. This paper reports the results of a panel survey of classroom and head teachers which started in 2000 just before implementation of the new system, and then after one and after four years of operation. We find that both classroom and head teacher views have changed considerably over time, from initial general scepticism and opposition towards a more positive view, especially among head teachers by 2004. We argue that the adoption of an integrative bargaining approach to performance reviews explains why a growing minority of schools have achieved improved goal setting and improved pupil attainments as they have implemented performance management. Pay for performance has been one of the measures of organisational support that head teachers could bring to induce changes in teachers’ classroom priorities. We argue that the teachers’ case shows that a wider range of performance incentives than previously thought can be offered to employees in such occupations, provided that goal setting and performance measurement are approached as a form of negotiation instead of top-down.

China's economy has transformed from a high-speed growth phase to a high-quality development phase. The agriculture sector has grown substantially since the economic reform in 1978. Considering the five-year plan (FYP) as a collection of policies, this study explores the relationship between the FYP and agricultural total factor productivity (TFP).

This study uses 31 provincial-level panel data of the five FYPs from 1996 to 2020. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to compute Malmquist productivity indexes. The authors analyze the temporal and spatial changes and convergences of China's agricultural TFP, and investigate the impact of economic planning on China's agricultural TFP and its regional difference.

There is a slow but upward growth trend in China's agricultural TFP. The technical change has played a leading role in the growth of China's agricultural TFP. The agricultural TFP of all provinces has shown a “catch-up” effect and is developing toward their respective steady-state levels. The regional difference in productivity growth among the eastern, central and western regions exists. Test results show that the FYP has a positive effect on the agricultural TFP, and the effect has obvious regional heterogeneity. The FYP also plays a positive role in the gross value of agricultural output, and the impact effect is greater than that on the improvement of agricultural productivity.

There are many forms of industrial policy in China, among which the FYP is the guiding document of industrial policy, which makes a systematic plan for industrial development in the subsequent five years. The development objectives, guidelines and overall deployment for agriculture in the FYP not only describe the general context of China's agricultural development but also show the key ideas of agricultural development. Therefore, this study explores its impact on agricultural quality development from the perspective of FYP. The results provide evidence for examining the governance performance of the government and the objective evaluation and restraint of the FYP. As agriculture moves toward the stage of high-quality development, the Chinese government should strengthen the critical guiding role of the FYP and pay attention to quality indicators such as technical progress, efficiency improvement and regional coordination in the formulation of the FYP.

The Italian system of education is characterised by weak school autonomy, strong teacher autonomy, and lack of collegial cultures. From the point of the cohesion/regulation matrix, the Italian case is rather of an individualist type with some fatalist notes, given a widespread culture of pedagogical egalitarianism and the existence of formal collegial bodies. There are many barriers to the introduction of evidence-based practice in Italian teaching. At the same time, some major enablers at the school level are as a self-evaluation school rapport and a school improvement plan. At the school system level, the Institute for school evaluation is as a key player contributing to the advancement of a culture of EIP. We argue that an enduring centralization model with weak coordination mechanisms at the school level is not suitable to mobilize academic research knowledge across the Italian system. A new governance mechanism based on widely disseminated policies would be of critical importance in the Italian case, in order to improve the use of EIP in schools and to enhance the skills of teachers and school leaders through professional development.