Assemblage, Enactment, and Agency ─ Educational Policy Perspectives

Assemblage, Enactment, and Agency offers an exploration of the emerging shift in policy research towards the notion of policy enactment, namely, the creative recontextualization and translation of policy ideas into social realities by policy actors in education. Bringing together recent work on the intersections between assemblages, enactments, and agencies in educational policy analysis, the authors call attention to issues of subjectivity, practice, power, and relationality as they offer critical perspectives that challenge linear/instrumentalist views of policy processes. In doing so, they not only interrogate conventional understandings of policy design, implementation, and evaluation, they also recognize the role of agency, interpretation, sense-making, translation, embodiment, and meaning throughout policy processes. They also explore the contested nature of policy, situating educational policies as sites of conflict and negotiation between actors, highlighting the uncertainty, fragility and instability of policy work. By offering a non-linear and heterogeneous account of education policy, the collection furthers contemporary conversations on the nature and goals of education reform. This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Melody Viczko is Assistant Professor of Critical Policy, Equity and Leadership Studies at Western University, Canada. Her research takes a relational approach to educational policy analysis, looking at how actors assemble around policies and how these assemblages influence democratic governance practices in education. Her current research focuses on the engagement of higher education institutions with other government and non-state actors through internationalization policies. She is the editor of Assembling and Governing the Higher Education Institution: Democracy, Social Justice and Leadership in Higher Education (2016, with Lynette Shultz).

Augusto Riveros is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Western University, Canada. His research explores the intersections of philosophy, educational administration, and education policy analysis, and his recent work looks at the enactment of standards and competencies for leadership practice in the context of globalization. His work has been published in numerous journals, including Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Education Policy Analysis Archives, the International Journal of Leadership in Education, the Journal of Educational Administration, and Studies in Philosophy and Education.