Developed on the premise that how we conceive of 'policy' and 'successful policy' guides policy sciences' research and evaluation, this paper responds to the conceptual questions of "what is a policy?" and "when is a policy successful?" Formal or logical conditions are established to distinguish 'policy' from related concepts. The notion 'relevant public' is introduced to distinguish public policies from private policies and to identify fairly-declared policies. Further, conditions are developed that can be used as logical tests for three types of policy success: implementation success, instrumental success and success in normative justification.
This is a paper in applied philosophy. In it we try to utilize the techniques of philosophical analysis to generate a conceptual solution to a theoretical problem which arises out of the current practical context in which teacher education is being discussed and developed in the United States. We refer, of course, to the performance-based teacher education movement and the allied concern with teacher competency.It is often thought that theory precedes practice, but perhaps it is more often the case that practice creates a demand for theoretical inquiry. As ''the movement" toward performance-based teacher education demonstrates, even widely-adopted practices do not necessarily presuppose adequate theory-development. All that seems to be necessary to bring about an adoption of certain educational practices is a rallying point, for which most often a slogan or a set of slogans will suffice. Moreover, as again the movement of performance-based teacher education demonstrates, problems encountered in implementing slogan-motivated practices can force the need for greater theoretical sophistication.
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