How Schools Do Policy Ball, Stephen J; Maguire, Meg; Braun, Annette
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group,
2012, 20120726, 2011, 2011-12-14, 2012-07-26
eBook, Book
Over the last 20 years, international attempts to raise educational standards and improve opportunities for all children have accelerated and proliferated. This has generated a state of constant ...change and an unrelenting flood of initiatives, changes and reforms that need to be ‘implemented’ by schools. In response to this, a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating ‘how well’ policies are realised in practice – implemented! Less attention has been paid to understanding how schools actually deal with these multiple, and sometimes contradictory, policy demands; creatively working to interpret policy texts and translate these into practices, in real material conditions and varying resources – how they are enacted! Based on a long-term qualitative study of four ‘ordinary’ secondary schools, and working on the interface of theory with data, this book explores how schools enact, rather than implement, policy. It focuses on:
contexts of ‘policy work’ in schools;
teachers as policy subjects;
teachers as policy actors;
policy texts, artefacts and events;
standards, behaviour and learning policies.
This book offers an original and very grounded analysis of how schools and teachers do policy. It will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of education, education policy and social policy, as well as school leaders, in the UK and beyond.
Stephen J. Ball is the Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Educational Foundations and Policy Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK.
Meg Maguire is Professor of Sociology of Education in the Department of Education and Professional Studies at King’s College London, UK.
Annette Braun is a Lecturer in Sociology in the Sociology Department of City University, London, UK.
Foreword or Introduction 1. Beyond implementation –Towards a Theory of Policy Enactment 2. Taking Context Seriously 3. Doing Enactment: People, Culture and Policy Work 4. Policy into Practice 5. Whatever happened to... 6. Policy Enactments – In Theory and Practice
Drawing on a study of education policy enactments in four English secondary schools, this paper argues that different 'types' of policies call-up different forms of enactments, and that teachers and ...others who work in schools will have different orientations towards some of these possible ways of 'doing' school. Through exploring the ways in which two main policies are being enacted, 'Behaviour Management' and 'Standards and Attainment', we argue that policy type, power and positionality, space and time constraints, as well as different subjectivities, render policy enactment a more fragile and unstable process than is sometimes documented in policy analysis and implementation studies. Thus, in policy enactment terms, 'where you stand depends on where you sit'.
This article provides an introduction to four articles which outline a set of concepts and ideas intended to generate some theoretical leverage for making sense of education policies. They draw upon ...and contrast certain sets of policies in particular, standards policies, focused upon raising of test and exam performances, and learning policies, focused upon the development of reflexive skills of 'learning to learn'. The papers draw upon a study of policy enactments in secondary schools which aims to provide a grounded account of the complexities of the relations between policy and practice in schools in a period of incessant change and policy 'hyperactivity'.
This paper explores two different ontological positions from which policy in schools and teachers can be viewed. On the one hand, it explores the ways in which policies make up and make possible ...particular sorts of teacher subjects - as producers and consumers of policy, as readers and writers of policy. On the other, it begins to conceptualise the hermeneutics of policy, that is the ways in which policies in schools are subject to complex processes of interpretation and translation. We suggest that both views are necessary to understand the work of policy and 'policy work' in schools but that neither view is sufficient on its own.
This first paper in the series concentrates on school context and outlines a framework which identifies and relates a variety of factors that influence differences in policy enactments between ...similar schools. In taking context seriously in our four case-study schools we argue that policies are intimately shaped and influenced by school-specific factors, even though in much central policy making, these sorts of constraints, pressures and enablers of policy enactments tend to be neglected. This paper considers aspects such as school intake, history, staffing, school ethos and culture, 'material' elements like buildings, resources and budgets, as well as external environments. These factors are conceptualised as situated, material, professional and external dimensions and we aim to present a grounded exploration of the localised nature of policy actions that is more 'real' and realistic than that often assumed by policy making.
This paper is based on case-study research in four English secondary schools. It explores the pressure placed on English and mathematics departments because of their results being reported in annual ...performance tables. It examines how English and maths departments enact policies of achievement, the additional power and extra resources the pressure to achieve brings and the possibility of resistance.
This paper considers the 'policy work' of teacher actors in schools. It focuses on the 'problem of meaning' and offers a typology of roles and positions through which teachers engage with policy and ...with which policies get 'enacted'. It argues that 'policy work' is made up of a set of complex and differentiated activities which involve both creative and disciplinary relations between teachers and are infused with power. This is the paradox of enactment. The teachers and other adults here are not naïve actors, they are creative and sophisticated and they manage, but they are also tired and overloaded much of the time. They are engaged, coping with the meaningful and the meaningless, often self-mobilised around patterns of focus and neglect and torn between discomfort and pragmatism, but most are also very firmly embedded in the prevailing policies discourses.
This paper explores how six English primary school teachers enact assessment and attainment-focused policy and asks what this performative policy work does and whether it shapes or requires a new ...kind of primary teacher subjectivity. The paper draws on a small study of policy enactments in two primary schools in Greater London in order to discuss two dimensions of policy enactment that emerged from our data: first, shifting assessment regimes in primary schools which create an enactment environment of second-guessing policy; second, a shift in focus from the individual child to targeted groups that raises questions about more traditional primary school values. The paper concludes with a reflection on the effects of contradictory values and practices and how this policy context creates a form of 'doing without believing' in the English primary school.
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