Implementation Influences: Complexity, Networks, and Policy Adaptation

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: Education Policy and Politics

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the complex interaction of factors that influence policy implementation. Using complexity theory, an emerging theoretical framework, and cutting-edge analysis techniques including social network analysis (SNA), this presentation illustrates the implementation of an urban high school district’s mission to become a college-going district. The purpose of this study was to explain how, in a complex system, system actors and contexts influenced policy implementation and enactment. Rather than seeing implementation as a dichotomy (the policy is implemented or it is not), this study sought to reframe policy implementation into a more varied phenomenon. Findings suggest that the district’s site-based management structure contributed to its uneven implementation of the mission and related policies.

Author

• Lenay D. Dunn, WestEd