Faculty Publications

Policy Field And Policy Discourse: The American Federation For Children Network

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Network Analysis, Policy Discourse, Policy Networks, Policy Sociology

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Education Policy Analysis Archives

Volume

27

Abstract

This article presents findings from an analysis of the American Federation for Children Network (AFC) policy network using tools from network ethnography and qualitative content analysis. Specifically, we examined tax forms and carried out extensive web searches to spatialize and map the AFC network, mined text from policy-actors in the AFC network, and analyzed the policy discourse promoted by these network actors to achieve their political goals. The task for this study was to use AFC as a heuristic device to explore the complexity of the education policy field and to understand how network policy-actors work to achieve their policy goals through advocacy and marketing. Findings from the study indicate that the AFC network demonstrates a hierarchical ordering, this hierarchical ordering is reflective of the elite planning and social engineering associated with neoliberal reforms, and that the policy-actors in the AFC network employ discursive strategies to frame an elite political project to advance school choice policies as an anti-elite movement oriented toward political empowerment and educational justice.

Department

Department of Educational Psychology, Foundations, and Leadership Studies

Original Publication Date

1-1-2019

DOI of published version

10.14507/epaa.25.4242

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa

Language

en

Link to Full Text

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