This first paper in the series concentrates on school context and outlines a framework which identifies and relates a variety of factors that influence differences in policy enactments between similar schools. In taking context seriously in our four case-study schools we argue that policies are intimately shaped and influenced by school-specific…

This paper explores two different ontological positions from which policy in schools and teachers can be viewed. On the one hand, it explores the ways in which policies make up and make possible particular sorts of teacher subjects--as producers and consumers of policy, as readers and writers of policy. On the other, it begins to conceptualise the…

This paper considers the "policy work" of teacher actors in schools. It focuses on the "problem of meaning" and offers a typology of roles and positions through which teachers engage with policy and with which policies get "enacted". It argues that "policy work" is made up of a set of complex and differentiated activities which involve both…

This paper offers a personal view of the need for and uses of theory in educational research. It draws on the work of two exemplary theorists to point up the epistemological role of theory in making research possible and making it reflexive. The second section of the paper deploys some recent ideas and research from class theory and class analysis…