Pre-Service Teacher Preparation to Integrate Computational Thinking

United States education has experienced a big push for students to learn coding as part of computer science and more explicitly address computational thinking (CT). However, CT remains a challenging subject for many students, including pre-service teachers. CT, which overlaps mathematics and computer science, tends to be offered as an elective course, at best, in P-16 education. Pre-service teaching profession students usually do not have foundational knowledge to guide them in integrating computational thinking into the curriculum that they will eventually teach as instructors themselves. This chapter explains computational thinking in light of K-8 education, discusses issues and needs in integrating CT into K-8 curriculum, identifies relevant theories and models for teaching CT, describes current practice for integrating computational thinking into K-8 curriculum, and discusses pre-service teachers' preparation that can lead to their successful incorporation of CT into the curriculum.

Long-Term Effects of the Targeting the Ultra Poor Program

This paper studies the long-run effects of a “ big-push” program providing a large asset transfer to the poorest Indian households. In a randomized controlled trial that follows these households over ten years, we find positive effects on consumption (0.6 SD), food security (0.1 SD), income (0.3 SD), and health (0.2 SD). These effects grow for the first seven years following the transfer and persist until year ten. One main channel for persistence is that treated households take better advantage of opportunities to diversify into more lucrative wage employment, especially through migration. (JEL I32, I38, J22, J31, O12, O18)

Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and the Birth of Development Economics

This article, based on previously untapped archival sources, offers an assessment of the life and thought of Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, a pioneer of development economics and one of the first articulators of both the “Big Push” and “balanced growth” theories. In addition to documenting the early life of Rosenstein-Rodan, this article discusses two critical junctures in the history of development economics, namely, the birth of the discipline in the late 1940s, and its decline approximately a quarter century later. Rosenstein-Rodan was a fundamental player in both instances. Through the lens of his experience it is possible to understand the eclectic beginnings of development economics and locate some of its most important roots in the intellectual milieu of interwar Europe, from Vienna to London via Eastern and Southern Europe. What is more, Rosenstein-Rodan’s subsequent career epitomizes the arc of development economics, casting new light on the debates and practices that shaped the discipline during its rise, and on the unresolved issues that help explain its decline.

FOR THE ISSUE OF IMPROVING THE AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

The modern world is facing very serious challenges. Our society has once again strongly felt all the challenges of a pandemic. Mankind is going through this ordeal and the economic crisis provoked by it. We have a need for global, fundamental macroeconomic change. The world is changing before our eyes and in these conditions there is a chance for the country to correctly assess the current situation. Despite the rich resource potential of the country, the share of food exports in the country's total exports is 7-9%, and imports - 10-12%. At the same time, according to the results of 2019, food imports exceeded exports by 3 times. Many factors need to be considered when formulating a state support policy, however, the strategy for action should be based on several important principles: 1. Information-analytical support of the state agrarian policy and management of the forecasting system; 2. Access to government support; 3. The consistency of the policy of the Ministry and its sustainable nature, because the long-term goals and objectives facing the field can not be questioned; 4. Competitive products and conditions of its production; 5. Public involvement and participation of industry associations in defining strategic tasks. We get a picture where all five principles are completely violated in both business practice and thought theory. Programs are fragmentary and less result-oriented, the information-analytical part is weak and vague, there is no forecasting system, unequal conditions are maintained in the market and there are no conditions for its protection and regulation, government actions are mostly inconsistent and inflexible, sectorial associations are virtually mixed. They not only dominate the formation of policies implemented by the state, but it also acts on their orders and often seriously damages the process. We believe that the current strategy of agriculture and rural development in Georgia, with its content, goals and objectives, does not meet the challenges facing the country and the sector. The agenda highlights the need to create a new strategic document with more involvement of scientists, experts, practitioners and farmers, which will be the subject of public discussion before adoption. The need for a "big push policy" is suggested by the authors in the paper. The proposed vision, where the territorial and sectoral principles complement each other, moreover their synergy creates a precondition for development, requires more attention from the state. At the modern stage, reasonable, scientifically substantiated and at the same time adapted in practice target-program action models are gaining special importance. They are part of a complex macroeconomic government vision in which all agencies, entities and individuals have explicit rights and responsibilities. All the above problems can be overcome if there is political will and we will replace evolutionary inertia with a policy of revolutionary big push, where the state will comprehensively understand all the problems and advantages, thus creating a Georgian model of crisis management and development. We need to address the challenges, create a new strategic document for overcoming the crisis and promising development, where, along with monetary and fiscal issues, we will play an important role in the regional and agrarian development of Georgia. We are not really in the reality to be satisfied and follow the state in the policy of "evolutionary self-flow", we need a new strategic vision, targeted programs, a new understanding of the food security problem, flexible stimulus and regulatory policies, fast, effective and responsible action by the government.

Emergent Political Norms in Local State–Private Enterprise Relations during China’s Big Push for Poverty Reduction

In 2014, the Chinese government adopted a version of the controversial Big Push approach to poverty reduction, and augmented this once-discredited developmental narrative by enlisting very large private enterprises to operate in the poorest regions. Not without controversies, this approach and the resources associated with it has created new state-large business relations in China. This article studies four large enterprises and examines why they participated in poverty reduction, the resulting state–business relations and the outcomes of poverty reduction. The field research was conducted in 2018 through in depth interviews with company management and site visits. The findings show that the local state became collaborators of big businesses that were endorsed by the central government. Whether these relationships become formalised will depend on the future direction of poverty reduction. This research contributes to the literature on how state–business relations may initiate economic growth.

The Big Push

This chapter highlights Peter S. Paine's responsibilities and works at Cleary Gottlieb, an international law firm with offices on an upper floor of a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan. It discusses the eight Adirondack bills sent to the legislature in 1971 and the four remaining bills reintroduced to the legislature in January 1972. Paine acted as a liaison between the Adirondack Park Agency (APA), his fellow Temporary Study Commission (TSC) alumni, and state legislators to move those four bills along. The chapter outlines the importance of the bills to the TSC's vision of the Adirondacks, and emphasizes the APA's main job to draft two land use plans: the State Land Master Plan, and the Land Use and Development. It further discusses the remaining TSC bills as they moved through the legislature: the Environmental Quality Bond Act; the Wild, Scenic, and Recreational Rivers Act; a bill that would require a constitutional amendment to diminish the park's boundaries; and a bill that expanded the size of the park by about 250,000 acres. Ultimately, the chapter assesses the APA board's struggles with town governments trying to sneak by the agency, crossed signals from Albany, and the board's biggest problem: it was split, with five APA members solidly in favor of regional zoning, one whose support was conditional, and three who were skeptical of the idea.

Megaprojects—mega failures? The politics of aspiration and the transformation of rural Kenya

Megaprojects are returning to play a key role in the transformation of rural Africa, despite controversies over their outcome. While some view them as promising tools for a ‘big push’ of modernization, others criticize their multiple adverse effects and risk of failure. Against this backdrop, the paper revisits earlier concepts that have explained megaproject failures by referring to problems of managerial complexity and the logics of state-led development. Taking recent examples from Kenya, the paper argues for a more differentiated approach, considering the symbolic role infrastructure megaprojects play in future-oriented development politics as objects of imagination, vision, and hope. We propose to explain the outcomes of megaprojects by focusing on the ‘politics of aspiration’, which unfold at the intersection between different actors and scales. The paper gives an overview of large infrastructure projects in Kenya and places them in the context of the country´s national development agenda ‘Vision 2030′. It identifies the relevant actors and investigates how controversial aspirations, interests and foreign influences play out on the ground. The paper concludes by describing megaproject development as future making, driven by the mobilizing power of the ‘politics of aspiration’. The analysis of megaprojects should consider not only material outcomes but also their symbolic dimension for desirable futures.