ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the policy change process through the interaction and engagement of stakeholders involved. It explores primary documents from various improvement efforts and included data gathered from interviews with twenty key actors that were identified in the documents as instrumental to the effort. The chapter provides a case study of the Illinois policy change process, through the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) theoretical lens, focusing on the struggle between various advocacy coalitions involved. Illinois’ new principal preparation program policy is an ideal case to examine through this framework, as the ACF requires researchers to explore change over a period of a decade or more, in order to provide a long-term perspective of the process influencing a policy subsystem. The ACF breaks down actors’ belief systems into three levels: deep core beliefs, policy core beliefs, and secondary beliefs that align to specific details involving change.
