ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter serves to orient readers to the content and structure of this book. This chapter begins with a provocation, using an example of an education policy and considering the different questions that researchers might seek to ask of it, and how these different questions may lead researchers to different methodological and theoretical approaches. From here, this chapter moves to offer an orienting overview of education policy – how it can be understood and defined, how it can be and has been analysed, and current trends and points of focus in education policy analysis today. Finally, this chapter provides a road map to reading the rest of this book, in which each chapter explores a distinct approach to analysing policy, appropriate to different kinds of research questions. Part 1 of this book looks at methods for text and document analysis – analysing ‘policy’ as a written document or via text available in the media or online. Part 2 looks at policy analysis via the views of human participants – those who create, enact or otherwise experience policy.
