ABSTRACT
Contemporary nation-state education is increasingly influenced by various forms of globalisation. As a response to the challenges this development poses, several fields of research have acknowledged that understanding institutional education requires a multi-level approach capable of bridging the different levels and parties involved. This chapter elaborates further on the concept of refraction by Goodson and Rudd, adopting this multi-level approach in a higher education context. Refraction contributes to the field by emphasising the non-deterministic and dynamic character of policy implementation. It especially emphasises the agency of individual actors at the different levels of policy implementation, ranging from the supranational level down to the classroom. Nevertheless, one of the challenges with the concept of refraction is that it appears to be context neutral, lacking a clear underlying theory of education and thus applicable in any other policy and praxis field as well. The chapter thus suggests how the concept of refraction can be further developed by non-affirmative theory of education (NAT). NAT offers a theoretical framework and language specific to the field of education, the object of refraction, as well as the process of refraction, which is often carried out through educational activities at different levels.
