Critical Perspectives on Education Policy and Schools, Families, and
Communities offers scholars, students, and practitioners important new
knowledge about how current policies impact families, schools, and
community partnerships. The book's authors share a critical orientation
towards policy and policy research and invite readers to think
differently about what policy is, who policymakers are, and what policy
can achieve. Their chapters discuss findings from research grounded in
diverse theories, including institutional ethnography, critical
disability theory, and critical race theory. The authors encourage
scholars of family, school, and community partnerships to ask who
benefits from policies (and who loses) and how proposed reforms maintain
or disrupt existing relations of power.
The chapters present original research on a broad range of policies at
the local, state/provincial, and national levels in Canada and the USA.
Some authors look closely at the enactment of specific district
policies, including a school district's language translation policy and
a policy to create local advisory bodies as part of decentralization
efforts. Other chapters reveal the often unacknowledged yet necessary
work parents do to meet their children's needs and enable schools to
operate. A few chapters focus on challenges and paradoxes of including
families and community members in policymaking processes, including a
case where parents demonstrated a preference for a policy that research
demonstrates can be detrimental to their children's future education
opportunities. Another set of chapters emphasizes the centrality of
policy texts and how language influences the educational experiences and
engagement of students and their families. Each chapter concludes with a
discussion of implications of the research for educators, families, and
other community partners.
