Education Policy, Practice, and Power

Abstract

This article, drawing especially but not exclusively on Bourdieu's work on practice and its relationships with habitus, capital, and field, argues for a perspective on policy, as informed by and as practice, and applies it across all elements of the policy cycle. It is argued that a practice perspective captures well the economies of power in policy in its various contexts. A conception of policy as practice also provides analytical resources to account for the dynamic nature of the production and movement of policy ideas and their resemiotization, as they are pulled into and used in, and for, education policy.