Introduction: Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis

Abstract

This volume informs the growing number of educational policy scholars on the use of critical theoretical frameworks in their analyses. It offers insights on which theories are appropriate within the area of critical educational policy research and how theory and method interact and are applied in critical policy analyses. Highlighting how different critical theoretical frameworks are used in educational policy research to reshape and redefine the way scholars approach the field, the volume offers work by emerging and senior scholars in the field of educational policy who apply critical frameworks to their research. The chapters examine a wide range of current educational policy topics through different critical theoretical lenses, including critical race theory, critical discourse analysis, postmodernism, feminist poststructuralism, critical theories related to LGBTQ issues, and advocacy approaches. Introduction: critical approaches to education policy analysis -- Part I: emphasis on methods. Critically examining policy workers and policy work within state boards of education -- A critical policy analysis of the politics, design, and implementation of student assignment policies -- Public educational policy as performance: a queer analysis -- The politics of student voice: conceptualizing a model for critical analysis -- When parents behave badly: a critical policy analysis of parent involvement in schools -- A feminist critical policy analysis of patriarchy in leadership -- Part II: Emphasis on theory. Silent covenants in the neoliberal era: critical race counternarratives on African American advocacy leadership in schools -- Policy enactments and critical policy analysis: how institutional talk constructs administrative logics, marginalization, and agency -- Ontario's fourth `R': a critical democratic analysis of Ontario's fund-`R'aising policy -- Examining the theater of "listening" & "learning" -- Utilizing Michel De Certeau in critical policy analysis -- Policy studies debt: a feminist call to expand policy studies theory.