scholarly journals Numbers don’t speak for themselves: strategies of using numbers in public policy discourse

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Jablonka ◽  
Christer Bergsten
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Mathematics Education ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Quantitative Literacy ◽  
Mathematical Literacy ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Epidemic Wave

AbstractIn mathematics education, there is general agreement regarding the significance of mathematical literacy (also quantitative literacy or numeracy) for informed citizenship, which often requires evaluating the use of numbers in public policy discourse. We hold that such an evaluation must accommodate the necessarily fragile relation between the information that numbers are taken to carry and the policy decisions they are meant to support. In doing so, attention needs to be paid to differences in how that relation is formed. With this in mind, we investigated a public discourse that heavily relied on numbers in the context of introducing, maintaining, and easing the rules and regulations directed to contain the spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2 during the first epidemic wave of COVID-19 in Germany with its peak in early April 2020. We used a public-service broadcasting outlet as data. Our theoretical stance is affiliated with post-structuralist discourse theory. As an outcome, we identified four major related strategies of using numbers, which we named rationalisation, contrast, association and recharging. In our view explicit attention to these strategies as well as identifying new ones can aid the task of furthering critical mathematical literacy.

scholarly journals Mathematical Literacy: A new literacy or a new mathematics?

Pythagoras ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 0 (64) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renuka Vithal ◽  
Alan J. Bishop
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Education ◽  
Mathematics Teaching ◽  
Quantitative Literacy ◽  
Mathematical Literacy ◽  
New Literacy ◽  
Educational Ideal

Mathematical Literacy is a ‘hot’ topic at present in most countries, whether it is referred to by that name, or in some cases as Numeracy, or Quantitative Literacy, or Matheracy, or as some part of Ethnomathematics, or related to Mathematics in Society. Questions continue to be asked about what is meant by mathematics in any concept of Mathematical Literacy and the use of the very word ‘Literacy’ in its association with Mathematics has been challenged. Its importance, however, lies in changing our perspective on mathematics teaching, away from the elitism so often associated with much mathematics education, and towards a more equitable, accessible and genuinely educational ideal.

Public policy

2018 ◽  
pp. 179-200
Author(s):  
Mark Bevir ◽  
Jason Blakely
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
Important Shift ◽  
Interpretive Turn

Readers are introduced to how an anti-naturalist framework can ground a distinctively deliberative and interpretive turn in public policy. Over the last three decades there has been an important shift among a minority of public policy scholars toward interpretive and deliberative modes that are critical of naturalism’s justification of rule by supposedly scientific experts of human behavior. Like the interpretive turn more generally, this deliberative remaking of public policy has drawn on a great diversity of philosophical sources, including phenomenology, discourse theory, Dewey’s pragmatism, and post-structuralism. While we embrace the fact that this transformation of policy discourse and practice can be reached by a variety of philosophical routes, we also argue that an anti-naturalist framework can clarify certain confusions that cloud these debates.

‘Terrible things happen’: Peter Bowker's Occupation and the Representation of the Iraq War in British Television Drama

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 206-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Harper
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Television Drama ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
British Military ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
Historically Situated ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Peter Bowker and Laurie Borg's three-part television drama Occupation (2009) chronicles the experiences of three British soldiers involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. By means of an historically situated textual analysis, this article assesses how far the drama succeeds in presenting a progressive critique of the British military involvement in Iraq. It is argued that although Occupation devotes some narrative space to subaltern perspectives on Britain's military involvement in Iraq, the production – in contrast to some other British television dramas about the Iraq war – tends to privilege pro-war perspectives, elide Iraqi experiences of suffering, and, through the discursive strategy of ‘de-agentification’, obfuscate the extent of Western responsibility for the damage the war inflicted on Iraq and its population. Appearing six years after the beginning of a war whose prosecution provoked widespread public dissent, Occupation's political silences perhaps illustrate the BBC's difficulty in creating contestatory drama in what some have argued to be the conservative moment of post-Hutton public service broadcasting.

scholarly journals Social Responsibility, Sustainability, and Public Policy: The Lessons of Debris Management after the Manabí Earthquake in Ecuador

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 3494
Author(s):  
Paulina Guerrero-Miranda ◽  
Arturo Luque González
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Shared Decision ◽  
Institutional Strategies ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Depth Interviews

Natural disasters can generate millions of tons of debris and waste, which has an impact on the environment and poses direct risks to the health of the population, hence the need to analyze public policy and its consequences following the 2016 earthquake in Ecuador. Several in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals active in public service during the post-earthquake management period, together with fieldwork analysis of debris management and the institutional strategies for its recycling and reuse in three of the most affected cities: Pedernales, Portoviejo, and Manta. The environmental impact was examined, including its taxonomy of inconsistencies within public administration, alongside the processes of decentralization and shared decision-making. Similarly, the links between corporate social responsibility (CSR), public policy, and sustainability were analyzed at both the national and local level for their wider implications and ramifications. The study highlighted the gaps in the management of such a crisis, exposing a lack of ethics and the shortcomings of social (ir-)responsibility in the distorted processes of public welfare in the country, aspects that should rather work in concert to achieve full sustainable development.

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