Policy as the Transformation of Intentions: Making Multicultural Education Policy

Abstract

This qualitative policy study applies an interactionist framework for policy analysis, especially the concept of intentions, to an examination of the construction of multicultural education policy in a midwestern U.S. school district. Intentions-purposes and goals meant to shape the behavior of actors in the future and at other sites-motivate actors to act in the policy arena, to use policy as a vehicle for realizing their purposes. Initiated in response to a racial conflict in a high school, the policy process entailed the school board's creation of a committee including many African American community members to generate recommendations for improving race relations. During the process, the school board's intentions, and those of many community members, were transformed due to the administration's reinforcement of district conventions and power structures. Race relations became multicultural issues. Community members who misconstrued the process as granting them real policy-making authority were most disappointed with the outcomes.

Divided and Drifting: Interactionism and the Neglect of Social Organizational Analyses in Organization Studies

“…Collectively, this set of literature provides a sophisticated conceptual understanding of social organization and offers a powerful heuristic for organizational analysis called mesodomain analysis. Mesodomain analysis, and variations of it have been applied to and successfully used to drive interactionist analyses of religious organizations (McCallion, Maines, and Wolfel ), educational organizations including state‐level departments of education and the organization of state‐level government and legislative practices (Hall and McGinty ; Placier et al ), as well as public school districts and individual schools (Hall and Spencer‐Hall ; Henson and Hall ), and a state‐wide network of schools and schools districts seeking organizational change (McGinty ).…”

Public housing and the fear of crime

“…Part of the difficulty for housing authority managers centers on the fact that as administrators, they are given the responsibility of implementing policies created by others. They are, in the words of Placier, Hall, McKendall, and Cockrell (2000), given the responsibility of "transforming" the intentions of legislators into actions. From this perspective, policy is viewed as an effort to dictate and control the behavior of other actors, in this case housing administrators.…”

Making Sense, Making Do: Local District Implementation of a New State Induction Policy

“…This study falls within the category of a general interpretivist design employing methods consistent with other policy analysis and implementation research (Hall & McGinty, 1997;Placier, Hall, McKendall, & Cockrell, 2000;Timar, 1989).…”

“…Policymakers face the dilemma of crafting policy, developing instruments, and communicating their expectations to implementers in ways that will result in policy being carried out as intended (Hall & McGinty, 1997;Placier, Hall, McKendall, & Cockrell, 2000). Implementers face the problem of enacting policy within their local contexts, often without clear direction from policymakers or without the resources necessary to carry out policy as intended (Berman, 1978;Lipsky, 1980;Placier, Hall, McKendall, & Cockrell, 2000;Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002;Timar, 1989). These disconnects often result in a transformation of intentions from policymakers to implementers, potentially leading to outcomes that are very different from those intended by policymakers (Berman, 1978;Hall & McGinty, 1997;Placier, Hall, McKendall, & Cockrell, 2000).…”