Exploring the Use of Procedural Policy Instruments in the Development and Implementation of French Second Language Policy in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
From 2006-2008, both New Brunswick and Nova Scotia proposed changes to their French second language (FSL) policies and programs. In observing the cases, it becomes clear that government officials made use of policy instruments to both implement policy and navigated the policy process. This work builds off existing literature that seeks to understand the instrument selection process, as well as the impact of policy tools on the policy-making process and more specifically, on the actors involved directly and indirectly in it. Using a framework that incorporates components of Contextual Interaction Theory and elements of procedural policy instrument scholarship, the project endeavours to identify what instruments were used to develop and implement FSL policy in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, as well as to comprehend why the tools were selected. The dissertation relies on document analysis and semi-structured interviews conducted with government officials and stakeholders to determine that instrument selection is based on the actors’ cognitions, motivations, and available/accessible resources. Furthermore, legitimacy plays an integral role in the selection of instruments. Government policymakers are faced with varying degrees of legitimacy, as expressed by actors indirectly involved in the policy process. Inevitably, these actors react to policy content and the policy process, which leads to sometimes contentious interactions. The current research expands on the educational policy literature by using a lens that accounts for the role of instruments in the policy process and provides a nuanced understanding of how the actors’ interactions shape and influence policy-making. It makes an original contribution to the policy instruments literature by developing a framework that accounts for the selection criteria used by both policymakers and stakeholders when choosing policy tools and resources. This dissertation contributes to the discipline of public administration and the field of public policy primarily by expounding the explanatory value of policy instruments regarding what they can tell us about the policy process, policy-making and policy outcomes. It does this by looking at how it is actors both directly and indirectly involved in the policy process interpret policy instruments and shows how government’s policy-making capacity is constrained not only by the resources available to it but by the resources accessible to actors indirectly involved in the policy process. Looking at the reciprocal nature of tool selection and tool implementation helps to explain policy-making and outcomes, as well as accounts for the roles of actors both proximately and peripherally involved in the process.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".