Policy discourses in school texts

Abstract

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 in particular circumstances’. In schools, part of the ‘creation of order’ takes place around the production and circulation of signs, signifiers and policy symbols. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, this paper details and describes some of the discursive artefacts and activities that reflect, and ‘carry’ within them, some of the key policy discourses that are currently in circulation in English secondary schools. Most policy analysis omits the artefactual and in documenting and theorising policy enactment this paper begins to consider the role that artefacts play in this process.

Keywords:

• policy artefacts
• enactment
• discourse

Notes

1. In the visual data that we are deploying here, we have made every attempt to ensure that anonymity has been protected. We have a substantial collection of visual data and it has not been possible to use much of this set in the paper. Our purpose is to illustrate a dimension of policy enactments that is a significant feature in all schools – the production and circulation of policy discourses in visual form.