Re-Reading Education Policies

Abstract

The first part of the introduction chapter explored the emergence of the so-called critical education policy orientation, and explored three features of this orientation: acknowledgement of the educational, moral and social concerns in debates on education, the focus on power, politics and regulation in education (except for specific policies), and the adoption of a specific form of critical advocacy towards society. This part of the introduction explores the current state of affairs, and aims both at giving access to theoretical discussions and analytical frameworks and offering some overviews of specific and hopefully useful tools and approaches. The first section explores some of the challenges the critical education policy orientation is facing today in view of the challenges of contemporary society and regarding theory and methodology. We will clarify that in confrontation with these challenges the critical orientation is in need of “de-parochialisation” (Dale, 1994; Lingard, 2006) and a “recalibration of critical lenses” (Robertson & Dale, 2008). The second section sketches the (meta-)theoretical horizons of critical policy research in order to discuss the main approaches adopted by critical education policy scholars (and in the contributions of this book): cultural political economy, critical discourse analysis, policy field analysis, governmentality study, micropolitical analysis, feminist theory, post-colonial theory and hermeneutics. The third section lists and discusses some of the old and new classifications and analytical tools that have been and are being used to critically examine education policy. In the concluding section of the chapter, different styles of critical education policy research are distinguished in order to emphasise the idea that when policy makers become critical there is perhaps an urgent need for critical scholars to become concerned.