How and why do some ideas attain agenda status while others do not? This paper seeks to explore these questions in the context of the policy changes observed in European education policy. By drawing from the literature on agenda-setting and employing process tracing, the paper develops a theoretical argument to investigate the causal mechanisms…

The call to promote social justice sets the social work profession in a political context. In an effort to enhance social workers' preparedness to engage in political advocacy, this article calls on educators to integrate a broad theoretical understanding of power into social policy curricula. We suggest the use of a multidimensional…

There is a dearth of literature on how research agendas have been developed. In this article, the authors reflect on the process of developing a research agenda through a case study of a rural health university centre. The aim is to contribute to understanding how a team can effectively plan research. Two leaders of the process, as well as…

Executive power and status depends on others' belief in the executive's capacity for control via rational decision-making, "by the numbers" and above the fray of day to day minutia. By exploring his own experience in the complex social dynamics of a long, complicated merger process--characterised by misunderstanding, incomplete…

Examines changes in the 1994 reauthorization of Title I that shift flexibility and accountability to local schools and explores implications of these changes for the 1999 reauthorization. Congress will need to determine whether the structure of the Improving America's Schools Act is adequate to bring about educational improvement for all students.…

Explores policy formation in school councils and its implications for the future of educational decision making in Victoria, Australia. Focuses on the importance of agenda construction, utilizing theoretical works of Giddens, Bachrach, and others. Results suggest that human beings produce, reproduce, and transform the social realities enveloping…

Delineates two traditional assumptions of educational research: (1) social progress is tied to an evolutionary conception of change and (2) inquiry must identify actors as causal agents who create or suppress change. Argues that both assumptions are grounded in the effects of power and modernity and are complicit in social regulation. (MJP)