Predictable Patterns: An Approach to Bridging Policy-Implementations Gaps in Service of Educational Equity

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together a new generation of leading scholars of education policy implementation who demonstrate how a “predictable patterns” approach can help reformers and researchers overcome persistent challenges of moving good policy ideas into practice in service of educational equity. Across four papers, authors present comprehensive reviews of research that reveal: (1) how implementation processes can be predicted and explained by frameworks derived from theories of politics, social capital, behavioral economics, and sensemaking and (2) the importance of taking race-explicit approach to their application. Each paper presents the focal framework and demonstrates how to apply it using important equity cases.

Sub Unit

• Division L - Educational Policies and Politics / Division L - Section 9: Policy Implementation and Going to Scale

Chair

• Meredith I. Honig, University of Washington

Papers

• Policy Implementation From a Micropolitical Perspective - Julie A. Marsh, University of Southern California

• Policy Implementation: A Behavioral Economics Perspective - Huriya Jabbar, University of Southern California

• Sensemaking as a Racialized Implementation Process - Kara S. Finnigan, University of Michigan; Christina C. Leal, University of Rochester

• Social Capital and Policy Implementation - Lok-Sze Wong, University of North Texas

Discussant

• Meredith I. Honig, University of Washington