Author Description

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.--publisher's Website. Doing Enactments Research -- Taking Context Seriously -- Doing Enactment: People, Meanings And Policy Work -- Policy Subjects: Constrained Creativity And Assessment Technologies In Schools -- Policy Into Practice: Doing Behaviour Policy In Schools -- Policy Artefacts: Discourses, Representations And Translations -- Towards A Theory Of Enactment: 'the Value Of Hesitation And Closer Interrogation Of Utterances Of Conventional Wisdom' -- Appendix: Case Study Schools And Interviewees. Stephen J. Ball, Meg Maguire And Annette Braun With Kate Hoskins And Jane Perryman. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.