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…

In this paper, we focus on some of the ways in which schools are both productive of and constituted by sets of "discursive practices, events and texts" that contribute to the process of policy enactment. As Colebatch (2002: 2) says, "policy involves the creation of order--that is, shared understandings about how the various participants will act…

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…