Policy analysis frameworks: A phenomenological study of education policy researchers’ practices

Abstract

Aiming to broaden the discourse on methodology in education policy analysis, this phenomenological study explores the real-life experiences of policy researchers and the methodology they follow in their studies. Eleven senior policy researchers holding both liberal and critical political views of education were interviewed about their approaches beginning from defining a policy issue to reporting their findings. The results revealed marked differences in policy researchers’ attitudes and experiences. While policy scholars with a liberal outlook were found to be driven mainly by data to determine how policies work, researchers following a critical approach were more likely to base their studies on theory and to focus on meaning and questions regarding how and why. This paper also presents a framework to map out a pattern comprising key concepts and questions based on policy researchers’ approaches to policy analysis.