‘Where you stand depends on where you sit’: the social construction of policy enactments in the (English) secondary school

Abstract

Drawing on a study of education policy enactments in four English secondary schools, this paper argues that different ‘types’ of policies call-up different forms of enactments, and that teachers and others who work in schools will have different orientations towards some of these possible ways of ‘doing’ school. Through exploring the ways in which two main policies are being enacted, ‘Behaviour Management’ and ‘Standards and Attainment’, we argue that policy type, power and positionality, space and time constraints, as well as different subjectivities, render policy enactment a more fragile and unstable process than is sometimes documented in policy analysis and implementation studies. Thus, in policy enactment terms, ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’.