Analysing policy in the contexts of practice. A theoretical puzzle

This essay contributes to the construction of a critically informed toolbox of diverse concepts for education policy analysis. Focusing on the context(s) of practice of the policy cycle, the article outlines an interpretative framework to grasp policy enactment across different localities, the influences bearing upon those enactments as well as their intended and unintended consequences. It has the underlying theoretical concern of building bridges between modern and post-modern approaches in policy analysis. The argument develops through three steps. First, it conceptualizes policy as discourse taking seriously the postmodern concerns with the discursive and power/knowledge regimes. The adoption of some concepts offered by Foucault’s archaeology allows the mapping of the generative interrelations linking policies to wider discursive contexts. Second, the postmodern sensibility is balanced with the introduction of heuristic devices drawn from the strategic relational approach and structuration theory to take into account the structural arrangements setting the possibilities and the conditions of policy enactment. Third, the bridging between modern and postmodern approaches is completed through the acceptance of a dialectic between subject decentring and recentring. A composite conceptualization of the agent’s internal structures is proposed to analyse how people can make a difference exerting their agentic powers.