Meta: Other methodological inspirations

Among other folks who are doing work similar to the ideas I'm thinking about are Sandra Stein's (2004) The culture of education policy (Teachers College Press: New York). Stein looks at how discussions of Title I in its various (re-)authorizations define the children who are supposed to receive the benefits of their policies as deficient, and how those definitions create unintended consequences (e.g., the perverse incentive to continue to define children in these terms to continue to receive money), either creating new problems or proving the policies inadequate to solving the problem (as its posed through that definition).

I have to say that I fully agree with what she's doing in this work; the major difference between what she's doing and how I envision my work is that she looks at the language of the policymakers, and then shows how (the perverse consequences of) those constructs are embodied in the ways practicioners talk about (and subsequently) implement that policy. While I think that's important, I don't think practioners are following the actual words of policymakers particularly closely; I think media play an important mediating (pardon the pun) role in communicating the constructs of policymakers to practioners (and communicating the "array of possible choices" to policymakers, and in so doing, setting the parameters of the debate), and therefore pose an important point of/for intervention.