ABSTRACT
The idea that social justice concerns inform both US and English educational policy on disability or handicap (Stobart and Trickey, 1985), is both a one-sided reading of these policies and a limited view of where policy is made. Since policy is struggle (Introduction), there is always more than one concern or objective contending with others in its production (Figure 1). Chapters 4, 5 and 6 discuss these contending objectives in US and English national policy and in Victorian government policy. Secondly, since policy is political practice and politics characterizes all practices, policy is made at all levels in educational apparatuses. National policy may have wider effects on schools than, say, a local education authority's decisions, but this does not mean we should resort to a top-down model of policy filtering from government level through a state apparatus.
