ABSTRACT

In recent years there has been a growing body of work that has sought to analyze the complex webs of individuals and organisations that are collectively working to transform the processes by which educational policies are conceived, challenged and implemented. Researchers have been drawn to these questions as it has become clear that these webs – or policy networks – both mediate and circumnavigate the institutional contexts of policy-making processes (Rhodes 2006). At the most general level, policy networks are selforganising sets of interconnected actors (organisations, individuals, agencies, etc.) who exchange a variety of resources to achieve desired policy outcomes (Davies 2005). The proliferation of policy networks in education has, in part, been an outcome of the shifting political and economic landscapes that have fundamentally changed the ways states and markets work to shape educational institutions around the world (Apple 2010, 2006; Ball 2012). Policy networks have come to play an influential role in multiple domains as social democratic contracts have eroded in the context of advanced deregulation, trade liberalisation and other neoliberal reforms (Harvey 2005; Stedman Jones 2012). Thus, the focus on policy networks is strongly linked to the broader project of understanding and rethinking the ways politics, markets and culture shape educational and social change (Apple 2013).