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The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the history and current state of lesson study (LS) in Germany. In particular, this paper describes the development of LS over time and its stakeholders.

Conducting a systematic literature review, we searched three scientific databases and Google Scholar, examined 806 results and included 50 articles in our final sample, which we analyzed systematically.

The spread of LS in Germany can be divided into three phases, characterized by their own LS projects as well as their own ways of understanding LS. Although interest in LS has increased significantly in recent years, it is only present at a small number of schools and universities in Germany if compared internationally. Furthermore, this paper identifies the so-called learning activity curves as a tool frequently used for observation and reflection that appears to be unknown outside German-speaking countries.

This paper may act as an outline for countries without large-scale LS projects and with limited support from policymakers. The experience from Germany demonstrates the outcomes and challenges that can arise in such a situation and shows how unique LS features and proceedings have emerged.

Social marketing and government policy are intertwined. Despite this, policy analysis by social marketers is rare. This paper aims to address the dearth of policy analysis in social marketing and introduce and model a methodology grounded in Indigenous knowledge and from an Indigenous standpoint. In Australia, a minuscule number of First Nations people complete doctoral degrees. The most recent, major policy review, the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) Report, made a series of recommendations, with some drawn from countries that have successfully uplifted Indigenous doctoral candidates’ success. This paper “speaks back” to the ACOLA Report.

This paper subjects the ACOLA Report, implementation plans and evaluations to a detailed Indigenous Critical Discourse Analysis using Nakata’s Indigenous standpoint theory and Bacchi’s Foucauldian discourse analysis to trace why policy borrowing from other countries is challenging if other elements of the political, social and cultural landscape are fundamentally unsupportive of reforms.

This paper makes arguments about the effects produced by the way the “problem” of First Nations doctoral education has been represented in this suite of Australian policy documents and the ways in which changes could be made that would actually address the pressing need for First Nations doctoral success in Australia.

Conducting policy analysis benefits social marketers in many ways, helping to navigate policy complexities and advocate for meaningful policy reforms for a social cause. This paper aims to spark more social marketing policy analysis and introduces a methodology uncommon to social marketing.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate how external debt vulnerability has affected the economy of emerging countries over time, with particular reference to Sub-Saharan African countries. It also deals with the policy issues associated with the economic effects.

The techniques of dynamic ordinary least squares and fully modified ordinary least squares are used in this investigation, covering the period 1990–2022. A panel of 43 Sub-Saharan African countries is used in the study.

The estimation results reveal that external debt vulnerability impacted negatively on economic growth, thus validating the concerns raised about the debt problem in Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, the results revealed that domestic credit and openness of economy played a passive role and were therefore unable to cushion the adverse effect of debt vulnerability. Capital stock, however, stands out as the only variable that played a significant positive role in facilitating economic growth. The results are considered to be highly reliable for short-term forecast of economic growth and formulation of relevant policies.

Over the years, economic analysts and stakeholders have expressed concern about the inadequate ratio of foreign reserves to external debt in developing countries. The effect of this external debt vulnerability on the economy of these countries has yet to be given sufficient attention by researchers. In view of this perceived void, this current study is carried out to determine the economic and policy consequences of the problem.

The agricultural sector is a critical component of global economic development, and its significance has grown significantly in recent years. The risks associated with agriculture and the behaviors of farmers in handling these risks are becoming increasingly important, given the sector’s increasing dependence worldwide. Various activities related to agriculture are vulnerable to multiple risks, which can have severe consequences for farmers’ livelihoods. The purpose of this systematic review is to present a comprehensive analysis of the sources of risk faced by farmers and their choices in adopting risk management strategies worldwide.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol was utilized to select relevant literature, and a total of 102 studies were analyzed. Through the use of Venn diagrams and graphical methods, the authors provide a transparent overview of the risks faced by farmers and the adoption of risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

From the analysis, the authors found that, in terms of risk management strategies, diversification, reserve credit and accumulated assets are frequently used in developing countries, while developed countries tend to rely on future/forward contracts, crop insurance and hedging. Diversification is the most widely used risk management strategy across both developed and developing countries. Our study also highlights the different perceptions of weather-related risks among growers in developed and developing countries.

This systematic review provides valuable insights into the risks associated with agriculture and farmers' strategies in managing these risks, which could inform policy decisions and promote sustainable agricultural practices. For instance, understanding the individualistic nature of farmers' risk perception and the varying risk sources and management strategies depending on the locality and provide assistance to the farmers accordingly.

The paper explains how farmers behave during uncertainty in terms of risk perception and their decision to adopt risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

This study asks whether external auditors enable the transfer of policies to the United Nations organizations that they audit and, if so, what types of policies are transferred.

The empirical research is based on a content analysis of 512 external auditor recommendations from 28 pre- and post-accrual reports of 14 UN bodies.

We find that external auditors do enable policy transfer and that such involvements may, at times, veer into non-neutral policy spaces.

We did not analyze all UN organizations with accruals-based accounting. We also did not engage in a longer longitudinal study.

Our findings raise new questions about international organization accountability, the technocratic and policy-specific influences of external auditors, and open a debate about whether attempted policy transfers can be neutral.

The world’s largest group of international organizations is affiliated with the UN. External auditors help ensure that member-state monies are appropriately utilized. Our study is the first to compare pre- and post-accrual external auditor recommendations for 14 UN bodies. It is also the first to notate and study the attempted policy transfers from external auditors to the audited UN bodies.

The purpose of this paper is to share the process, findings and conclusions from one library’s iterative usability study of its website design to inform other libraries as they perform their own assessments.

A task-completion usability study was conducted with eight undergraduate students across two iterations: the first gauged the usability of a redesigned library website and the second gauged the effectiveness of the first iteration’s findings.

We found that users performed better when the site provided multiple access points to the same information, displayed a prominent chat feature, limited the amount of text on a given page and avoided library jargon. Not only was the second round of testing important for confirming that first-round recommendations were effective but also it proved useful in catching a problem with the site that was unintentionally created during the time between tests.

No demographic data were collected during the study, thus hindering our ability to analyze our users through these data points.

This study demonstrates the value of iterative usability testing, especially when untested changes made between site versions may produce usability issues.

The study investigates the effectiveness of government policies to mitigate the impact of a pandemic. The study adopts the small open economy of Nigeria for the following reasons. First, Nigeria is the largest economy in SSA. Second, Nigeria was also significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study employed the time-varying structural autoregressive (TVSVAR) model to control for the potential asymmetry in fiscal variables and to control for the shift in the structural shift, following a macroeconomic shock. As a form of robustness, the study also implements the time-varying Granger causality to formally assess the temporal instability of the variable of interest.

The results show that an oil price shock is an important source of macroeconomic instability in Nigeria. Importantly, the results indicate that the effects of fiscal policy are strongly time varying. Specifically, the results show that fiscal policy helps to stabilize the economy, (i.e. they help to reduce inflation and spur output growth) following macroeconomic shock. Further, the Granger test shows that fiscal policy helped to spur growth in Nigeria. The research and policy implications are discussed.

The study accounts for the time-varying effects of fiscal policy.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the unprecedented rise in the economic policy uncertainty influence Indian banking sector stability. The unprecedented rise in the economic policy uncertainty during the recent pandemic has garnered the attention of policymakers to investigate its consequences on different sectors of the economy.

In this quest, the present study uses system generalized method of moments and other econometric tools to examine the influence of economic policy uncertainty on the Indian banking sector, covering the time frame from 2000 to 2022. In addition, the current study also investigates the mediating role of regulation and supervision in the nexus of economic policy uncertainty and the Indian banking sector stability.

The empirical outcome reveals that economic policy uncertainty negatively influences banking stability. However, when economic policy uncertainty interacts with stringent banking regulations, private monitoring and supervisions, it assists in diversifying the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on the Indian banking sector stability.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the study is an original work and provides robust estimates that will assist policymakers in understanding the influence of policy uncertainty on the banking stability. Moreover, the study also helps in understanding the role of supervision and regulation in mitigating the negative consequences of policy uncertainty on the banking stability.