Education Policy Analysis for a Complex World ─ Poststructural Possibilities

In the past decade, post-structural policy analysis in education has evolved, primarily focusing on disrupting dominant narratives about education policy research, development and implementation, and the aims and outcomes of the policy-research nexus. This book originates from an ‘Education Policy Analysis for a Complex World’ workshop held in conjunction with the University of British Columbia and sponsored by a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant. The workshop focused on one over-arching question: To what extent can post-structural theories offer innovative policy analyses, and contribute to new forms of policy development and implementation? The chapters in this collection provide responses from the participants of the workshop, and serve as illustrations of the broad range of scholarship that may be identified as post-structural policy analysis. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Education.

Kalervo N. Gulson is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His research contributes to, and draws upon, education policy studies, sociology of education, race/ ethnicity, and social and cultural geography. His current research focuses on the relationship between education policy and calculative spaces, and what kind of life is possible within and through these calculative spaces. His recent publications include Education policy, space and the city: markets and the (in)visibility of race (2011), and Policy, geophilosophy, education (with T. Webb, 2015).

Amy Scott Metcalfe is Associate Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her research focuses on research policy in higher education institutions, systems, and individual researchers. Her work explores the internationalization of higher education from a (post)critical, comparative perspective. She is currently developing a methodology for visual research in higher education, building upon visual ethnography, poststructuralism, and the visual arts. She has recently published in Higher Education, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and the Review of Higher Education.