Abstract

Recent work on ‘policy mobilities’ in urban and economic geography has centered on the transnational movement of policies, or in other words the movements and mutations of policy from one place to others, including in relation to global economic policy pressures. Increasingly there has also been discussion of the regional movements of policies, including how policies are constituted or adapted locally in relation to the specifics of place. Empirical studies have traced the mobilities and immobilities of policies in relation to the effects of policy actors, including policy entrepreneurs and activists; networks and agencies; technology, reports, and other material components of policy assemblages; and additional influences on whether and how policy develops, moves, or transforms across sites. Connecting these considerations to trajectories of education policy research, such as those focused on policy transfer and policy enactment, this presentation will highlight developing directions for critical policy studies in education.

Dr Marcia McKenzie is a Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations, and Director of the Sustainability Education Research Institute at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (seri.usask.ca). She is Principal Investigator of the Sustainability and Education Policy Network (sepn.ca), a $2 million SSHRC -funded project examining the uptake and mobility of sustainability in formal education policy and practice. Dr. McKenzie is co-author of Critical Education and Sociomaterial Practice: Narration, Place, and the Social (Peter Lang, 2016), Place in Research: Theory, Methodology, and Methods (Routledge, 2015); and co-editor of Land Education: Rethinking Pedagogies of Place from Indigenous, Postcolonial, and Decolonizing Perspectives (Routledge, 2016), and Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education (Hampton, 2009). Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections of environment, social theory, education policy, and the politics of social science research.