6. ANÁLISIS DE INFORMACIÓN
6.3 SIGNIFICADO DE AUTOEVALUACIÓN EN DOCENTES DE GRADO 10
Lasswell's original vision for the ‘policy sciences’ was to combine knowledge about the policy-making process itself with:
the assembling and evaluation of knowledge — from whatever source — which appears to have an important bearing upon the major policy problems of the time.40
This thesis seeks to be true to that vision of combining subject-matter knowledge with the insights of policy science into policy-making. In this respect the thesis is trans-disciplinary, but only in the sense of what Max-Neef has described as ‘weak transdisciplinarity’: it draws upon and seeks to synthesise knowledge from all disciplines relevant to the topic, but without seeking to go beyond traditional methods of research or reasoning as would occur in ‘strong transdisciplinarity’.41 In other words, the thesis does not seek to challenge
disciplinary tenets, but, unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries, it does draw conclusions about the extent to which certain disciplinary tenets or approaches are more or less useful in solving the problem.
Policies as Responses to Problems
As the thesis is directed to the substance of ESD, and only incidentally to policy processes, it takes the insights of the public policy discipline concerning the policy process as given. In particular, it takes as a starting point for analysis Dovers’ and Hussey’s framework for environment and sustainability policy, the most comprehensive framework specific to
39 Steve Hatfield-Dodds, ‘Assessing Global Resource Use and Greenhouse Emissions to 2050, with Ambitious Resource Efficiency and Climate Mitigation Policies’ (2017) 144 Journal of Cleaner Production 403. 40 Harold D Lasswell, ‘The Policy Orientation’ in Harold D Lasswell and Daniel Lerner (eds), The Policy
Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method (Stanford University Press, 1951), 14.
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environment and sustainability.42 Under that framework, the policy process is divided into four stages: problem-framing, where issues are debated and the problem constructed; policy-framing, where guiding principles are identified and policy goals defined; policy implementation, where policy instruments are selected and other implementation tasks, eg resource allocation, undertaken; and policy monitoring and evaluation, to enable learning and enhance performance.43 Under this framework, ESD is a social goal adopted in response to the problem of GEDD, while policy-framing requires that policy principles (ESD principles) be identified to guide policy development. (Policy implementation is beyond scope: see below.)
Dovers’ and Hussey’s framework is a sustainability-specific variant of the five-stage general policy cycle found in many public policy texts. This general cycle is referred to at various points in the thesis and is thus reproduced in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 Standard Policy Cycle44
General Analytical Approach
Consistent with Lasswell’s original vision that policy science would combine its insights into the policy process with the findings of relevant disciplines, policy science itself has no overarching normative theory of policy design. While there is a literature concerning the
42 Stephen Dovers and Karen Hussey, Environment and Sustainability: A Policy Handbook (2nd ed, The Federation Press, 2013).
43 Ibid, chapter four.
44 For a discussion of the policy cycle, see Michael Howlett, M Ramesh and Anthony J Perl, Studying Public
Policy: Policy Cycles and Policy Subsystems (Oxford University Press, 3rd ed, 2009) 10–11. Variants of this cycle are found in a number of public policy texts.
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design of policy implementation,45 this relates primarily to instrument choices and policy mixes, (ie ‘tool selection’) whereas the thesis addresses anterior stages concerned with goals and principles. Guidance on policy substance must come therefore from first principles and disciplines beyond policy science.
On first principles, Howlett, Ramesh and Perl point out that policy-making can be
characterised as ‘applied problem solving’ which involves ‘articulating policy goals through policy deliberations and discourses and using policy tools in an attempt to attain those goals’.46 In other words, policy is based on an ‘ends-means’ paradigm. While goal selection in some cases will be a simple task of matching a solution to a problem (eg random breath- testing to reduce drink-driving), goal selection in relation to a wicked problem such as GEDD, turns out, as discussed, to be ‘an extraordinarily obstinate task.’47
Although commitment to the goal of ESD is assumed (see 1.5.1), for a goal as complex as ESD, which seeks to integrate the often-competing goals of conservation and economic welfare with a normative principle of intergenerational equity, there is also a second question of whether the goal is coherent. Finally, there must be a viable means of
achieving the goal — viable not only in the sense that one or more means of achieving the goal are technically feasible and not disproportionate, but also in the sense of being likely to find political and social support in a contemporary liberal-democratic society. (This, for example, would rule out approaches involving socialisation of the means of production or confiscation of property without fair compensation.) Thus, answering the research
question will require an analysis of whether ESD is a clear and coherent policy goal, viable of achievement. Because these are theoretical criteria, specific failings of actual policies, such as the adoption of a sub-optimal policy instrument, under-resourcing (unless gross), or poor administration are beyond scope.48 A policy that meets these criteria of clarity, coherence and viability is described here as ‘well-adapted’.
45 Ibid 168–175. There are also complete works on policy instruments, such as Christopher C Hood and Helen Z Margetts, The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
46 Ibid 4 (original emphasis).
47 Rittel and Webber, above n 26, 157.
48 The qualification to this is that a finding that resourcing was grossly inadequate would be grounds for concluding that the policy was not a genuine effort to advance ESD.
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