Multifocal Educational Policy Research: Toward a Method for Enhancing Traditional Educational Policy Studies

This article emerges from a perception of educational policy studies as restrained in its theoretical and methodological tools. It is argued that because most educational policy studies take place within a traditional rationalist frame, the findings of these studies do not provide a comprehensive understanding of the policy problems being researched and, thus, should not be used as the sole basis for making educational policy. In response to this problem, the author argues in favor of, describes a procedure for, and demonstrates the utility of using more than one theoretical frame in educational policy research. As a means of illustrating this process, traditional and critical theories and methods are used to examine and analyze the same issue: the relationship between parental involvement policy and the participation of Mexican-American mothers from a low-income community in their children's education. This bitheoretical process, it is argued, reveals not only a fuller portrait but also the narrowness and constrictedness of each perspective when used alone.