About the Project
A robust democracy requires meaningful citizen engagement in policy decisions and enactment. For several decades, critics and pundits alike have noted various signifiers of political apathy. This has been particularly true in provincial politics, between the 1990s and the present day. While voter turnout is one measure of political engagement, democracy can be strengthened when citizens are actively engaged in thinking about and engaging in policy. This research builds on the research team's prior work that sought to understand how citizens perceive and enact policy in their everyday lives.
While many citizens may lack enthusiasm when it comes to getting involved in (or even discussing) policy, policy actually affects almost every facet of our lives in very interesting ways. In the workplace, policy attempts to guide terms of employment (though laws and various other institutional and government policies); in public spaces, policy attempts to simultaneously create and limit activity; in the course of our intellectual and emotional development, policy shapes what is taught and, in turn, learned in schools. In fact, every citizen in a democracy (often unwittingly) “makes” policy though the act of accepting, supporting, resisting or subverting policy.
The purpose of our 5-year research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is to understand the complexities of policy layer enactment in Ontario secondary schools. Findings will shed new light on how policy is interpreted, prioritized and “done” in real-world contexts. The following objectives guide our research: (1) To contribute to better understanding of policy layer enactment in schools. Specifically, this objective addresses understanding of: interpretation, enactment, leadership, and role of contextual factors; (2) To identify strategies and factors that enable policy processes to productively address historical tensions between policy and practice; (3) To extend conceptual lenses through which policy processes are viewed by engaging conventional (Policy 2.0) and emerging (Policy 3.0) methods; and (4) To produce digital resources to support innovative policy research for use beyond this project.
We utilize post-qualitative, mixed methods to gather data in school settings (site observation, interviews, focus groups, policy audits, and third-party contextual data such as school/community demographics). The data will result in the construction of 6 case studies representing 3 or 4 different communities in the province of Ontario. We will engage a professional artist to interpret educators’ focus group creations as visual art pieces, in order to express educators’ metaphorical and visual representations of the experience of enacting policy.
While many citizens may lack enthusiasm when it comes to getting involved in (or even discussing) policy, policy actually affects almost every facet of our lives in very interesting ways. In the workplace, policy attempts to guide terms of employment (though laws and various other institutional and government policies); in public spaces, policy attempts to simultaneously create and limit activity; in the course of our intellectual and emotional development, policy shapes what is taught and, in turn, learned in schools. In fact, every citizen in a democracy (often unwittingly) “makes” policy though the act of accepting, supporting, resisting or subverting policy.
The purpose of our 5-year research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, is to understand the complexities of policy layer enactment in Ontario secondary schools. Findings will shed new light on how policy is interpreted, prioritized and “done” in real-world contexts. The following objectives guide our research: (1) To contribute to better understanding of policy layer enactment in schools. Specifically, this objective addresses understanding of: interpretation, enactment, leadership, and role of contextual factors; (2) To identify strategies and factors that enable policy processes to productively address historical tensions between policy and practice; (3) To extend conceptual lenses through which policy processes are viewed by engaging conventional (Policy 2.0) and emerging (Policy 3.0) methods; and (4) To produce digital resources to support innovative policy research for use beyond this project.
We utilize post-qualitative, mixed methods to gather data in school settings (site observation, interviews, focus groups, policy audits, and third-party contextual data such as school/community demographics). The data will result in the construction of 6 case studies representing 3 or 4 different communities in the province of Ontario. We will engage a professional artist to interpret educators’ focus group creations as visual art pieces, in order to express educators’ metaphorical and visual representations of the experience of enacting policy.