Networks and Contexts of Reform.

Abstract

Reforms and their contexts have unsettled boundaries. Actors construct themselves as contexts for reforms in part by advancing definitions of those reforms: Reforms themselves both presuppose and create contextual frames. Drawing on actor network theory and related approaches, this paper examines the play of context and reform in terms of efforts to construct and stabilize educational networks of different configurations and scale. The fall and rise of two attempts at statewide curriculum reform in Virginia (USA) provide illustrations of how the nature of reform artifacts and the networks through which they circulate shape the politics of reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]