This area of emphasis involves critical analysis of the relationship between educational policy and practice in K-12 settings and beyond. Work pursued in this area is holistic, examining both the explicit and tacit ideas, strategies, and world views of educators and policymakers who create, implement, and rationalize education policies.
Examination of state standards, for example, is geared less toward developing particular curricular content than toward exploring broad questions of the form and content of curriculum shaped by the standards. The breadth and depth of these issues necessitates concern for education extending beyond K-12 schooling, for example, to higher education and the impact of admission requirements upon elementary and secondary schools, or to whether and how state and federal-level policy making is appropriately democratic and responsive to particulars of local communities and families. Inquiry in this area is based in understanding of the conflicting aims of education, the nature of knowledge, and the demands of justice and democracy. Informed by the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy and a broad range of research methodologies, work in this area is thus ultimately pragmatic, concerned with the practical consequences of policies as they are learned and implemented by practitioners in and around educational settings..