Introduction to Educational Policy Analysis

Graduate

This course focuses on a critical and disciplined examination of education policy issues drawing on a variety of theoretical orientations such as positivist, pluralist, post-positivist, poststructuralist and others. These perspectives provide different lenses to view current and past education reform and restructuring policies in Ontario and other jurisdictions in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, U.S.A, and the U.K. It reviews current theoretical approaches to the nature, development, and implementation of educational policy at all levels. The course critiques policy-makers’ approaches to reform, and restructuring, and the potential short- and long-term impacts of these changes on the philosophy, content and practices in the public education arena. By thinking about what sort of people and voices inhabit the texts of policy, the course enables participants to think about how we engage with the social and collective identities of our research subjects in an attempt to capture the complex interplay of identities and interests, and coalitions, conflicts and uneasy ‘settlements’ within the processes and enactments of policy. 136 Winter 2027 Academic Calendar 137 Winter 2027 Academic Calendar