Education is always implicitly or explicitly a political issue (Bell and Stevenson 2013). What is taught, what is not taught, how students are taught and how educational institutions are organized are fundamentally political questions. Education cannot be disconnected from wider views about the society in which it is located. Thus reproducing and reinforcing what exists are implicitly political but no less so than explicitly mobilizing for radical change. The extent to which the focus of policy is on conserving or changing is largely determined by political responses to the prevailing dominant discourses. It is such education policy that frames much of what happens in individual educational institutions and that shapes the experiences of those who study or work in educational institutions. However, it is important to understand more precisely what is meant by policy.
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