Competing Policy Meanings: The Struggle Over Public Funding of Private Schools in Ontario, Canada

• In Event: International Considerations of Educational Policy and Politics

Abstract

The paper reports findings from a study of the ways two coalitions of policy actors have engaged in discursive struggles over policy to provide public funding to private schools in Ontario, Canada. Grounded in argumentative discourse theory and utilizing its attendant methodology, argumentative discourse analysis, the findings reveal that the two coalitions have both mobilized equity and diversity discourses in their arguments for their preferred policy, but their meanings of these discourses differs. A second finding is that members within each coalition also define and mobilize equity and diversity discourses differently as they pursue varying interests despite sharing the same policy goal. The study’s findings can assist critical policy scholars in their efforts to explain how contexts impact policy making.

Authors

• Paulie McDermid, York University

• Sue Winton, York University