Assemblage, Enactment, and AgencyEdition 1

Assemblage, Enactment, and Agency offers an exploration of the emerging shift in policy research towards the notion of policy enactment, namely, the creative recontextualization and translation of policy ideas into social realities by policy actors in education. Bringing together recent work on the intersections between assemblages, enactments, and agencies in educational policy analysis, the authors call attention to issues of subjectivity, practice, power, and relationality as they offer critical perspectives that challenge linear/instrumentalist views of policy processes. In doing so, they not only interrogate conventional understandings of policy design, implementation, and evaluation, they also recognize the role of agency, interpretation, sense-making, translation, embodiment, and meaning throughout policy processes. They also explore the contested nature of policy, situating educational policies as sites of conflict and negotiation between actors, highlighting the uncertainty, fragility and instability of policy work. By offering a non-linear and heterogeneous account of education policy, the collection furthers contemporary conversations on the nature and goals of education reform. This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.