ABSTRACT
The Introduction theorized policy as political practice, as representing the outcomes of political states of play in a particular arena, thus as struggle. This model derives from a wider view of social life, including what we call 'policy', as consisting of practical projects: all practices are struggles to achieve objectives; they are based in a social theory (however inaccurate) and they are simultaneously political and moral. They sustain or undermine existing relations and their institutional bases. Policy, it was argued, is made at all levels of the educational apparatus. This means that all practices in educational arenas, including teacher-parent encounters and teaching practices, are equally political practices, as is the lengthy production by committees of government level policy and the drafting of legislation. The model integrates educational practices of whatever kind, and dissolves the distinctions usually drawn between theory and practice, policy and practice or implementation. Implementation is an apolitical, administrative term for political practice at levels other than government decisions. Theorizing is a practical project: as an activity in academia, people engage in doing it, but this activity characterizes all social practices; moreover accurate theory is about actual practices: As Kurt Lewin puts it, 'There is nothing so practical as good theory' (cited by Fullan, 1987:1). The divisions in bureaucratic academia between educational 'policy', 'research' and 'theory', and in educational bureaucracies or state apparatuses between policy and implementation reflect the fragmentation which charaterizes the bureaucratic and politicized nature of struggles in late twentieth-century life. The divisions are themselves political constructs.
