Exploring policy and practice relations: A teaching and learning perspective

In this paper we examine relations between education policy and local practice. Situating our work within the literature on the local implementation of education policy, we develop a pedagogical perspective for understanding relations between policy and local practice. We argue that policy-makers’ attempts to enact policy can be viewed as a form of teaching and that local educators can be seen as learners from policy. This pedagogical perspective provides a theoretical frame for the papers in this volume. We trace the evolution of this pedagogical perspective in our work, and we preview the contribution the papers in this volume make to developing this frame. We also present details of our research methods.