Little-p policy production: exploring policy making in schools through the analytic of policy enactment

Abstract

The research literature on how policies are performed in schools is characterised by either implementation or enactment studies, depending on the onto-epistemic grounding of researchers and the thinking tools they use. Policy making as the preserve of politicians and civil servants in ministries is privileged while policy making initiated in schools receives insufficient attention. Locally driven internal institutional policies made in schools by members of school communities can be understood as ‘little-p policies’ and in this paper, I empirically illustrate examples of little-p policy practices in policy making. In doing so I hope to advance policy enactment research by not only promoting its utility as an analytic to policy researchers but by encouraging enactment studies to now tend to little-p policies, the trajectories of policies, and a wider range of policy actors.