Where policy?
Which conception of policy primarily understands policy as official documents, laws, or guidelines that specify expected behaviours?
Policy as Text
Which approach to education policy analysis places particular emphasis on power, inequality, and social justice rather than treating policy research as a neutral technical exercise?
Critical policy analysis
A government highlights disappointing PISA results to generate public pressure and build support for a reform it wishes to introduce. What term describes this use of international assessment results?
Scandalisation
A school does not simply follow a national policy as written. Teachers and leaders interpret it, adapt it and turn it into practices. What concept describes this process?
Policy enactment
According to Cameron et al. (2018), what concept involves a normative judgement about whether the distribution of educational opportunities, resources or outcomes is fair and justified?
Equity
Which conception of policy emphasises the pursuit of political objectives and the expression of beliefs about what ought to happen in education, rather than focusing solely on written policy documents?
Policy as Value-Laden Actions
Beyond examining how policies are developed and implemented, what do critical policy analysts seek to uncover about the distribution of power, resources, and knowledge?
Who benefits and who is disadvantaged (the winners and losers)
A country's PISA performance falls below national expectations and becomes a major issue in public debate, creating an opportunity for education reform. What concept describes this opportunity?
Policy window (or window of opportunity)
A school produces reports demonstrating that a new policy has been implemented, although classroom practices remain largely unchanged. What concept discussed by Braun et al. (2011) describes this response?
Fabrication
According to Cameron et al. (2018), which equity concept involves distributing educational opportunities or resources according to individual achievement or ability?
Meritocracy
Which conception of policy views policy as a continuous cycle in which it is made, remade during implementation, and repeatedly revised?
Policy as process
According to the scholars interviewed, critical policy analysis should not be limited to academic critique but should also contribute to changing policies and practices. What broader purpose of research does this reflect?
Activism (or engaged and activist research)
Since which decade have international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) experienced significant growth in both the number of assessments and participating countries?
The 1990s (mid-1990s)
According to Braun et al. (2011), policy enactment is shaped by four interconnected dimensions of school context. Name all four.
Situated, professional, material and external contexts
A government establishes a target that every child should achieve basic literacy, regardless of background. Which equity concept does this illustrate?
Minimum standards
Which conception of education policy views language not simply as a means of communication, but as a social practice that both shapes and reflects social realities and power relations?
Policy as discourse
What concept refers to the ways in which educational policies may reproduce existing social inequalities and patterns of privilege?
Social stratification
According to Addey and Sellar (2017), PISA is promoted as an instrument for measuring a country's human capital and assessing how effectively its education system prepares students for future employment. Which of the seven rationales for participation does this reflect?
Economic competitiveness (economic rationale)
According to Ball et al. (2011), policy actors are not fixed categories: an individual may perform several forms of policy work. Name the three positions that the authors explicitly identify as potentially overlapping among senior leadership team members.
Narrators, transactors and entrepreneurs
A government allocates additional funding to schools serving disadvantaged communities to compensate for differences in students' needs. Which equity concept does this illustrate?
Redistribution
A government announces an ambitious education reform but provides little funding, unclear implementation strategies, and limited commitment to putting it into practice. What type of policy does this illustrate?
Symbolic policy
In examining whose perspectives are absent from policy decisions, critical policy scholars sometimes use a particular metaphor to describe what is missing or left unspoken. What is this metaphor?
White spaces
The OECD does more than publish PISA results. It actively works with journalists to shape how findings are presented internationally and attract policymakers' attention. What role does this suggest the OECD plays beyond administering international assessments?
The OECD as a global education policy actor
When schools incorporate policy rhetoric into official documentation purely for accountability inspections without altering classroom instruction, it is called this.
Fabrication or Creative Non-Implementation
A country reports relatively similar average learning outcomes across schools. However, further analysis reveals that students' test scores are strongly associated with their families' wealth. According to Cameron et al. (2018), which equity concept is concerned with this relationship?
Impartiality