Analysing Education Policy: Theory and Method

Analysing Education Policy: Theory and Method provides a comprehensive overview of key approaches in critical education policy research. With chapters from internationally recognised and established scholars in the field, this book provides an authoritative account of how different questions may be approached and answered.

Part 1 features chapters focused on text-based approaches to analysis, including critical discourse analysis, thinking with Foucault, Indigenist Policy Analysis, media analysis, the analysis of promotional texts in education, and the analysis of online networks. Part 2 features chapters focused on network ethnography, actor-network theory, materiality in policy, Institutional Ethnography, decolonising approaches to curriculum policy, working with children and young people, and working with education policy elites. These chapters are supported by an introduction to each section, as well as an overall introduction and conclusion chapter from the editors, drawing together key themes and ongoing considerations for the field.

Critical education policy analysis takes many different forms, each of which works with distinctly different questions and fulfils different purposes. This book is the first to clearly map current common and influential approaches to answering these questions, providing important guidance for both new and established researchers.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Meghan Stacey is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Education and Education Policy at the UNSW School of Education, where she takes a particular interest in the critical policy sociology of teachers’ work. Her first book, The Business of Teaching, was published in 2020 with Palgrave.

Nicole Mockler is Professor of Education at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on education policy and politics, particularly as they frame teachers’ work, professional identities, and professional learning. Her most recent book is Constructing Teacher Identities (Bloomsbury, 2022).