Improving Researchers’ Capacity to Address Injustice: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Critical Policy Research in Education: A Framework

Surveying the field of education policy research, and building on Cairney (2023b), we identify three distinct approaches to conducting research on education policy: (a) policy analysis, (b) research on the policy process, and (c) critical policy research. Although the terms used to describe these approaches are varied, and scholars may work across them, each of these reflects a distinct focus of inquiry, often rooted in distinct research paradigms, and each plays an important role in our understanding of education policy. Each of these approaches offers unique insights for a range of policy audiences, from “scholars and policy analysts to journalists and education associations—working at local, state, and national levels”—the groups that have been the target audiences for Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis (EEPA) over the years.

The first strand, policy analysis, focuses on research that will inform decisions about policies, interventions, and practices. Policy analysis often investigates whether a particular intervention works to accomplish its stated aims, that is, “what works” to achieve desired outcomes, such as increasing student attendance or graduation rates. Methodological advances in policy research have allowed researchers to make causal inferences about policy impacts, that is, whether a program or initiative directly changes outcomes. EEPA has been a long-time home to this kind of policy research and is widely recognized for publishing high-quality policy analyses of this sort. Policy analysis can garner attention from policy actors, answering policymakers’ questions about the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions and providing insights that can guide new policy designs. For example, a recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers (2023) cited several articles published in EEPA that focused on the effectiveness of higher education policies (e.g., Baker, 2020; Bettinger & Baker, 2014).

However, policy analysis research has been critiqued for overlooking the unjust social, political, economic, and historical contexts in which policies, interventions, practices, and outcomes unfold. In addition, there has been limited critical examination and self-examination of the history of the field of policy analysis. Thus, the dominant categories, values, assumptions, and practices that policy analysis researchers use may reflect the very systems of inequality that some seek to challenge (Berman, 2022). Tackling pressing issues of educational injustice requires a broader conception of what constitutes education policy research, different research questions, and a wider array of theoretical, conceptual, and analytic tools. This includes, but cannot be limited to, the economics-influenced quantitative, causal inference toolbox that has traditionally dominated the field of education policy analysis (Jabbar & Menashy, 2022).

Policy process research, compared to policy analysis, is more attentive to the context in which education policy is “made,” the environments in which this occurs, and the actors involved in shaping policy, and it tends to more explicitly engage with politics (e.g., Stone, 2012). Scholarship in this vein has examined how education policies are developed and shaped over time, including how problems are defined, how policies get on policymakers’ agendas, how policies are formally adopted, and how they are implemented or enacted in schools and school systems. It illuminates the policy environment in which policy analysts work and the processes that shape policy, which are often untethered from that prescribed by policy research (Bertrand & Marsh, 2015; Coburn, 2001, 2004, 2005; Honig, 2006a; Weiss & Bucuvalas, 1980). While not as commonly found in EEPA, research on the policy process also has an important history in the journal. For example, research published in EEPA, often using qualitative empirical approaches, has revealed how teachers’ interpretations, or sensemaking, and district administrators’ roles influence how policies are implemented, with implications for the nature of learning and instruction in schools (e.g., Coburn, 2001; Honig, 2006b). Like policy analysis research, the area of policy process research can be limited in its acknowledgment of and response to issues of inequality and power, especially those beyond the immediate educational system.

Based on a commitment to research that advances justice and human flourishing, critical policy research is explicitly focused on power, inequality, and injustice and how everyday people act to challenge injustice. As critical education theorist and critical policy scholar Michael Apple (2019) has written,

Critical policy analysis is grounded in the belief that it is absolutely crucial to understand the complex connections between education and the relations of dominance and subordination in the larger society—and the movements that are trying to interrupt these relations. (p. 276)

This focus and commitment are essential in critical policy research.

Moreover, an animating assumption is that policy is a tool or “practice of power” (Levinson & Sutton, 2001, p. 1) that is disproportionately, though not solely, shaped by dominant groups and existing systems of inequality rather than simply a neutral, apolitical means for improvement. This starting point does not foreclose the possibility that education policy could contribute to alleviating inequality, but it recognizes that education policy—which may allocate resources and authority, constitute knowledge, and convey and legitimate values—has very often been a mechanism for maintaining injustice rather than challenging it, and that this is not merely due to chance or coincidence, but linked to broader social systems and patterns of inequality (e.g., Gillborn, 2005; Turner, 2020).

Beyond that, we conceive of “critical” education policy research broadly. Critical policy research includes, but is not limited to, research that uses critical theories, such as the neo-Marxist, feminist, postmodern, and poststructuralist perspectives from which critical policy research in education originates (Taylor, 1997). Critical race theories and critical qualitative approaches have also been influential in the approach (e.g., Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; see Diem et al., 2014; Dumas & Anderson, 2014). These theories and perspectives—which represent agreements as well as many disagreements—will continue to be a source of fruitful insights and tools for critical policy research (Apple, 2024). Critical policy research is enriched by a variety of theories that converge in their insistence on linking education policy to the broader social, cultural, material, and power relations that structure our society within and beyond the education and policy systems. Moreover, critical policy research may use a range of methods and data, including interviews, observations, ethnographies, historical methods, descriptive statistics, experiments, social network analysis, spatial analysis, and computational social science. Indeed, the interest and efforts to build a critical quantitative paradigm are one impetus for this special issue.

We draw on and slightly alter the work of Young and Diem (2017) to define critical policy analysis as a tradition of scholarship that interrogates policy constructions and histories; investigates the difference between policy rhetoric and enacted realities; explores the roles of power, resources, knowledge, and voice in education policy processes; documents the effects of specific policies on social hierarchies and social inequalities; and examines the nature of resistance, activism, and advocacy around education policy.

First, rather than simply accepting existing policies and the relations, institutions, and meanings that constitute them, a critical policy research approach investigates policy constructions and their histories. Critical policy researchers do not assume that policies are driven solely or even primarily by instrumental purposes or technical considerations. Instead, they question how and why particular issues come to the fore, how and why particular policies develop, and whose interests they truly serve (Ozga, 2000). Critical policy researchers may analyze formal policy texts or dominant discourses as symbolic acts that serve political purposes and trace connections between rhetoric and otherwise hidden or overlooked social, political, and economic relations that support it (e.g., Smith et al., 2004). Critical policy researchers probe how policies and policy rhetoric reinforce or challenge race, class, gender, disability, and other social relations and how they are linked to broader “cultural, political, and economic projects” (Apple, 2019, p. 277; see also Dumas et al., 2016). Such analyses may help explain why a particular policy does not “work.”

Moreover, critical policy research may examine the constitutive and expressive effects of policy (Rosen, 2012)—that is, how policy and policy processes socially construct categories for classification, such as “Title I” students (Stein, 2004) and “bubble kids” (Booher-Jennings, 2005), notions of equity (e.g., “substantially equal,” Alemán, 2007), and problems for solving (e.g., “achievement gaps,” Carey, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 2006; or “families in need of empowering,” Jabbar et al., 2022), in ways that become normalized. Critical policy analysis may also examine how education policies express and legitimate particular values and beliefs, including the values that should drive schooling, whom schools should serve, and who can and should speak on an issue.

Second, critical policy scholars do not assume a linear relationship between policy rhetoric and policy in practice; instead, critical policy research examines how policy is enacted and how this differs from policy rhetoric. Scholars focus on policy “implementers” to explain gaps between policy and practice. Rather than assuming that instructors, administrators, parents, students, and community members simply implement or resist implementation, these scholars highlight the agency of those enacting policy and view policy as a kind of locally situated negotiation or social practice (Ball et al., 2011; Levinson & Sutton, 2001). They investigate policy enactment, its relation to locally specific instantiations of power and ideology, and connections—or lack thereof—to policy text or policy rhetoric.

Third, critical policy research identifies how power, resources, knowledge, and unequal voice shape policy and policy processes. Building on research which demonstrates that policy processes do not unfold in a techno-rational, stepwise process, critical policy research examines how policy is contested and how policy processes are shaped by uneven power, elite actors and advocacy groups, and broader social, economic, and political contexts at every step (Anderson & Donchik, 2016; Au & Ferrare, 2014; Buras, 2011; Dumas & Anyon, 2006; Moeller, 2018; Ozga, 2000; Scott, 2009; Turner & Beneke, 2020). Rather than being bounded within a single local context or formal policymaking system, education policy and policy enactment is viewed as occurring within a “policy ecology” (Weaver-Hightower, 2008), a complex system of formal and informal actors, histories, texts, institutions, policies, economic and political conditions, and relationships across local, regional, national, and global dynamics (see also Bartlett & Vavrus, 2014; Turner & Mangual Figueroa, 2019). Attention to how power, resources, knowledge, and voice shape policy is grounded in a “deep historical understanding of how power has become institutionalized particularly around class, race, and gender” (Horsford et al., 2018, p. 40).

Fourth, critical policy research documents the effects of policy on social hierarchies and social inequality. Policy analysis research often empirically examines and documents systematic variation in student outcomes and educational opportunities (e.g., “achievement gaps”); however, this work does not always situate these findings within broader contexts and arenas of power. This risks reinforcing stereotypical, deficit views that position individuals and communities marginalized by race, class, gender, ability, and other systems of oppression as solely responsible for the inequitable circumstances they navigate (e.g., Quinn, 2020; Williams et al., 2020). Critical policy researchers examine how policy outcomes are linked to broader social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. Researchers examine a wide range of policy consequences, including individual attainment; other educational, social, economic, and democratic consequences for individuals, schools, and communities; and how policies affect social stratification and systemic inequality such as school funding inequality (Alemán, 2007; Dumas & Anyon, 2006) or the school prison nexus (Horsford et al., 2018; Turner et al., 2021).

Fifth, critical policy research often examines resistance, activism, and advocacy in education policy. Researchers investigate how actors, especially nondominant ones, challenge educational policies that they view as harmful or as perpetuating injustice, and the strategies, knowledge, and skills they draw on to do so (e.g., Sampson & Bertrand, 2022). They also investigate the educational policies, practices, and strategies that marginalized groups develop and enact as alternatives to the status quo (e.g., Baldridge, 2019; Tarlau, 2019). This work has the potential to illuminate spaces of possibility and promising alternatives to the status quo that might otherwise fly under the radar in typical policy analysis research. In examining the broader contexts in which these efforts unfold, critical researchers seek to understand the conditions under which these actors are successful as well as the challenges to implementing or sustaining their efforts.

In terms of substantive focus, critical policy research examines questions that often overlap with dominant policy analysis and policy process approaches. In addition, critical policy researchers investigate a number of other questions about policy and how it serves as a practice of power. Across all of the foci, critical policy approaches, including critical quantitative research, emphasize that policy unfolds within sociocultural, economic, political, and historical contexts—and the unequal power relations, discourses, and social structures within them. Across a number of different policy-relevant questions, researchers examine how these contexts are linked to, shape, or underpin policy decisions and processes, educational policies and practices, individual actions, and thus inequality and other outcomes that are of interest to policy analysis and policy process researchers.

Critical policy research also draws attention to how these same contexts underpin the practice of policy research itself. Threaded throughout critical policy research is an understanding that “all our institutions and sets of social relations—and even our very identities—need to be seen as intimately connected to the inequalities that structure our society and to the movements that seek to interrupt such inequalities” (Apple, 2019, p. 279). Indeed, early critical education policy scholars’ work explicitly critiqued policy analysis research for a tendency to view policy analysis as a value-neutral, scientific endeavor instead of inquiring into the assumptions and interests that policy analysis—like any form of knowledge production—reflects and serves (Diem et al., 2014).

Critical approaches to quantitative research raise and attempt to address these kinds of critiques, offering important contributions to the field of critical policy research in the process. A real challenge with using quantitative analysis methods in critical education policy research has been that “traditional” quantitative research has often worked to “control away” the systemic effects of oppression or, more perniciously, to actively work to create justification for the subjugation and extermination of whole peoples (Sablan, 2019; Viano & Baker, 2020; Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008). In education, scholars have pushed us to examine how power plays a role in the distribution of resources, opportunity, and the set of choices available in our society for certain individuals while providing recommendations for how scholars can infuse quantitative investigations with critical perspectives (e.g., Baez, 2007; Carter & Hurtado, 2007; Castillo & Babb, 2023; Castillo & Gillborn, 2023; Garcia et al., 2018; Gillborn et al., 2018; Irizarry, 2015; Lopez et al., 2018; Rios-Aguilar, 2014; Stage, 2007; Teranishi, 2007; Viano & Baker, 2020; Walter & Andersen, 2016). These applications can vary from explicitly using critical race theory as a framework within a quantitative analysis to embedding larger principles exploring power and the social construction of the research process (Tabron & Thomas, 2023). Regardless of the exact application, this focus has required scholars to go beyond the typical instruction on statistics and quantitative methods in order to examine the ways that critical perspectives could more clearly guide data collection, analysis, and interpretation. This exploration has expanded the power of quantitative methods to investigate how power and the distribution of resources influence the promise of education policy. Thus, critical policy research is not just research on a given topic, or the use of a different method, or a data set. Critical policy analysis demands more.

We contend that a critical approach to education policy research demands critical understanding of the histories of our quantitative and qualitative methods and data, of our disciplines, and of the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts in which researchers do their work. More than awareness, it requires efforts to address past wrongs within our disciplines, methods, and data through a variety of research and institutional practices, proactively articulating theories and interpretations that challenge dominant assumptions that reinforce inequalities (e.g., deficit views), and practicing reflexivity, so that we do not inadvertently exacerbate injustice.

The Contributions of Articles in This Special Issue

The articles in this special issue are varied, yet they provide a taste of the central themes of critical policy analysis in education that Young and Diem (2017) identified, and in different ways, authors push those themes in new directions. These articles also speak to the evolving social contexts of education policy and education policy research, including the rise of “edtech,” the re-emergence of “the culture wars” through debates about the views of race and gender that schools should uphold, and educational interventions during COVID.

The first three articles interrogate policy constructions and histories, examining the discourses—including the ambiguous and shifting meanings actors give to values that commonly justify education policy and the emotions that animate advocacy and policymaking. In attending to the discourses that are embedded within key education policy texts and the policy venues in which they were formulated, these articles illuminate the taken-for-granted assumptions that undergird new and long-standing education policies, including how the federal government funds colleges, how schools discipline students, and how “anti-Critical Race Theory” legislation has gained traction. These analyses require us to consider the value-laden nature of policy and the work that policy does to maintain or reproduce inequality at the very onset, before it has been enacted.

McCambly and Mulroy (2024) open this special issue with a historical analysis of the ways that equity and quality have been pitted against each other, over time, in higher education policy. In “Constructing an Educational ‘Quality’ Crisis,” the authors analyze the racialized political antecedents and discourse in policy documents focused on the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FISPE), a federal source of higher education funding whose contested beginnings in the 1970s and 1980s elucidate the too frequent juxtaposing of social justice aims against a mission of excellence within higher education policy. This historical case study helps to show how policy actors have often used fears about diminishing “quality” within higher education as a key reason to reduce policy commitments to equity and social justice. The article outlines how the social construction of who is deserving of a college education, much less a “quality” one, can contribute to undue burdens on racially minoritized students’ access to higher education. It also provides a clear example of why the analysis of education policy must include historical investigations of power and resources in the crafting and implementation of policy.

In “Feeling the Threat of Race in Education,” Vue et al. (2024) provide a timely analysis of the “anti-Critical Race Theory” bills being proposed and passed in state legislatures across the United States. They examine the discourse in legislative sessions in four states—Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—early adopters of these bans. Their focus on the role of racialized emotions in education policy is novel and underexplored, yet, as they argue, central to understanding the racialized discourse on these policies. By systematically coding for emotions, they provide a useful framework for future researchers to take up and apply, and they demonstrate empirically how the emotional and psychological wellness of White people is centered in these debates while silencing the traumas of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) students and their families. The authors connect these racialized emotions, which arise in policy debates, to broader racialized politics, demonstrating how broader macropolitics interact with racialized emotions to advance policy. Vue et al.’s (2024) work reminds us that emotions are racialized, are integral to policy debates and discourse, and have power and consequences. Future policy research could more systematically attend to the role of emotions, a core dimension of the social world that social scientists—including sociologists, political scientists, and economists—have begun to take seriously and incorporate into their analyses of human behavior.

In “Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child?” Dhaliwal et al. (2024) draw attention to a particularly violent form of discipline policy, corporal punishment, which is still legal in 15 states in the United States and, similar to other discipline policies, disproportionately affects Black, Latinx, and Native American students. Their work examines state policy documents and codes that govern the use of corporal punishment in schools, and they use critical discourse analysis to uncover the rationales and underlying themes to explain the persistence of these policies. Critical perspectives in policy research are often rooted in or at least cognizant of history, and the authors exemplify this by connecting the prevalence of corporal punishment policies to the histories of racialized violence in the South. Using qualitative coding methods, they examined the policy documents from each state and then used quantitative analyses of the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection to track the implementation of corporal punishment. Their mixed-methods analysis allowed them to understand the connections between logics and discourse (how state policy documents described corporal punishment) and actual disciplinary outcomes (incidences of corporal punishment and their racial disproportionality), illustrating how discourse matters.

Dhaliwal and colleagues’ (2024) article also exemplifies a second theme in critical education policy research: the difference between policy rhetoric that often professes goals of equity, democracy, and upward mobility and the enacted realities of policy as it is practiced. Two other articles also help us to consider how “implementers” practices may differ—intentionally or not—from policy rhetoric. These next two articles also uncover key structures reproducing inequality in education. They have implications for the ability of education policies and practices to achieve their stated aims and for researchers seeking to use the data and infrastructure of these systems. Relatedly, they illuminate a third theme of critical policy research: the uneven roles of power, resources, knowledge, and voice in education policy processes.

Jaquette and Salazar (2024) examine a topic that may seldom be discussed outside of admissions and enrollment management offices but can play a key role in the segregation of students in U.S. higher education: student lists. In “A Sociological Analysis of Structural Racism in ‘Student List’ Lead Generation Products,” the authors explore the “student lists” procured by public higher education institutions across the country using a sample obtained via public records requests. These institutions pay external vendors for lists of students, usually based on students who have taken college entrance examinations and who fit certain criteria, such as holding high GPAs or living in certain neighborhoods. Institutions then use those lists to communicate with students about the potential of applying and ultimately enrolling at their institution. These authors argue that the student lists play a key role in racial stratification and segregation due to who can be selected as a worthwhile target of admissions campaigns. The authors articulate that this is most true for the proprietary criteria of the student list vendors, which purport to predict students’ college-going behavior. These proprietary criteria, which were a generally hidden facet of these lists prior to this article, intertwine education technology, machine learning, and college admissions in ways that are still not fully understood by either scholars or practitioners. There remain concerns about institutions’ ability to encourage students to attend, especially in light of the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. cases recently decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. There is also a real potential for a reduction in the scope of data collected by third-party vendors due to institutional shifts to test optional policies. Future research can build off this work to help us better understand how third-party vendors collect students’ data, how it is sold to institutions, and whether public policy solutions might increase the effectiveness of these types of tools, especially for students of color.

In “Platform Governance and Education Policy: Power and Politics in Emerging Edtech Ecologies,” Nichols and Dixon-Román (2024) bridge “critical platform studies” with education policy to explore the political role of platform technologies (e.g., Google, Microsoft, and Apple), arguing that platforms are not neutral technological tools, but actually de facto policy actors. They present a novel framework to explore the connections between platform governance and other regimes in education policy, such as privatization and accountability. Importantly, they argue that the implications of platform governance for educational equity go far beyond simple access to technology—the focus of much public discussion—or even privacy concerns; the consequences of networked platforms can conflate business and educational interests or perpetuate bias and discrimination through the algorithms used. By bridging critical perspectives on technology and data systems with education policy to uncover previously unexamined structures in education and policy, the authors provide a new way of conceptualizing platforms in education and identify fruitful lines of future research.

Nichols and Dixon-Román’s (2024) work also provides a strong example of how new theories can provide a powerful analytic tool for educational policy research. The author’s framework—drawing from the field of platform studies and critical policy analysis—provides just such a tool. Future researchers might use this framework to think critically about dominant assumptions related to edtech and the role of platform technologies in education policy research, policymaking, and practice.

Finally, the last two articles in this special issue speak directly to the nature of resistance, activism, and advocacy around education policy. In “Racially Just Policy Change: Examining the Consequences of Black Education Imaginaries for K–12 Policy,” Daramola (2024) explores Black families’ political strategies and community organizing efforts around education. She positions her work in the politics of education, which has traditionally focused more on elite actors, and in theoretically rich territory as she connects systemic racism and radical Black imaginaries to education. Yet, her work also explores these ideas empirically. Through an in-depth comparative case study, she situates the decisions of Black families to work outside of the traditional school system during the COVID-19 pandemic as a form of resistance and contextualizes these actions within a long history of marginalized communities advocating for alternative forms of schooling for their children. By bringing to light the experiences and resistance of Black families and community organizations, the work provides a counterpoint to the dominant “learning loss” discourse that positions Black students as merely victims or objects of policy during the pandemic.

We end the articles in this special issue, as many policy analysis papers do, with recommendations. In this final paper, “Recommending Reform: A Critical Race and Critical Policy Analysis of Research Recommendations about School Resource Officers,” Zabala-Eisshofer et al. (2024) conducted a critical literature review of the policy recommendations of 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on school resource officers (SROs). The authors analyze these recommendations through the critical race theory concepts of majoritarian narratives and counternarratives. They find that, despite research evidence that might support the abolition of school-based law enforcement, most articles recommended retention or reform of school policing programs, reflecting majoritarian views of police officers as benevolent and necessary. Counternarratives that acknowledged harm to students and recommended removing or reducing the use of SROs in schools were far less common. The authors conclude that researchers’ assumptions about school-based policing limit the recommendations they make to those that will reform SRO programs rather than consider more transformative, structural change like abolition. While policy recommendations may not have as direct an effect on policy as policy analysts might like (Weiss & Bucuvalas, 1980), they still matter. For example, scholars outside a specific subfield may look to these sections to understand the core takeaways and implications of the work and to frame their own knowledge of a critical issue in education policy.

In closing out the featured articles in this special issue, Zabala-Eisshofer and colleagues (2024) illuminate issues of power in the conduct of policy research, offer an important call for more careful attention to writing policy recommendations, suggest new lines of policy process research, and provide an opportunity for greater reflexivity in policy research. In doing so, they demonstrate the commitment among critical policy researchers to conducting reflective analysis of the field and to providing new lessons for carrying it out.

Three sets of commentators—Michael Apple, Wendy Castillo, and the team of Michelle Young, Sarah Diem, and Carrie Sampson—offer their reflections on these papers and the developing field of critical policy analysis. Given the leadership they have shown in developing this field, we are honored to include their thoughtful commentaries in this special issue.

Bridging Critical Policy Analysis and “Traditional” Approaches

While critical approaches to education policy analysis reflect a distinct turn toward analyzing policy and policy analysis itself, these papers also suggest key analytic moves that education policy researchers of all kinds can make to bridge more “traditional” analyses with the critical tenets described above.

First, all researchers can question taken-for-granted policy discourse and the assumptions made in policies. Critical policy researchers often critically examine the definition of the “problem” and espoused or implicit values in policies. Research on policy processes already explores some of these ideas, such as who makes policy, how groups are differentially positioned based on social context and power within policy processes, and what assumptions underlie policies. Policy researchers can draw on these forms of criticality to empirically study the politics of education policy, question assumptions embedded in policy proposals, and challenge the notion of truly “unintended” consequences of policies. For example, McCambly and Mulroy (2024) interrogate the widespread notions of “equity” and “quality” used in higher education policy discourse and how these constructs have been positioned as if in opposition to one another. Researchers could similarly call attention to actors whose voices are often excluded from policy decisions and policymaking (e.g., teachers, communities of color, youth), focusing on these actors in future studies.

Second, researchers can critically examine the framing of their analyses and the recommendations they offer stemming from that. Even studies that focus their unit of analysis on the individual can acknowledge the social inequalities and the White supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other systems of oppression that shape those individual actions or outcomes. This acknowledgment is particularly important in interpreting disparities observed—by race or income or gender—in order to situate those inequalities within broader systems of oppression, not solely individual choice or agency. For example, Dhaliwal et al. (2024) in this special issue situate the practice of corporal punishment in its history and the disparities in its implementation across geographies in the particular racist historical context of the U.S. South. This often subtle care in framing and interpretation of traditional policy analyses can ensure that policy actors and readers understand the structural forces that interact with policy to reproduce or interrupt inequities. It also has important implications for the framing of recommendations. For example, as Zabala-Eisshofer et al. (2024) argue in their article, it is important to take care when writing policy recommendations that arise from empirical studies. While small changes may offer some immediate improvement in circumstances, they may legitimate an overall policy that perpetuates inequality. Furthermore, such recommendations may keep policy researchers from building up the courage to state when such programs ought not to be adopted—even if they are already widespread—or from thinking “outside the box” about changes that could more significantly move education toward a broader goal of transformation. In other words, the abolition of existing systems, practices, or institutions should be an option in researchers’ recommendations.

Third, from a broader standpoint, scholars can use their research to explore the “inevitability” of larger societal trends that can play a direct role in schooling. In this special issue, authors (Jaquette & Salazar, 2024; Nichols & Dixon-Román, 2024) document how aspects of technology work to reproduce inequity. These authors are able to highlight how current practices are actually based on assumptions about technology, its fallibility, and its beneficiaries. Thus, the articles help us to see structural inequity and how it could be or is being challenged. Even more, the articles highlight how public policy can play a role in addressing these issues, which begins with challenging the notion that our existing systems and the inequalities and injustices produced within them are inevitable and that they are “infeasible” to change.

Finally, researchers should look to other fields and disciplines to enhance and elaborate education policy, as many of the examples here do. Daramola (2024), for example, bridges the concept of Black radical imaginaries with education policy, Nichols and Dixon-Román (2024) connect critical platform studies with policy analysis, and Vue et al. (2024) connect emotions to analysis of policy discourses in their work on anti-Critical Race Theory legislation. There are endless possibilities for bridging critical theories with quantitative and mixed methods or using emerging critical ideas in other fields and disciplines to study schools. The use of theory plays a particularly important role in critical policy research. It can sensitize critical policy researchers to how inequality works and is reproduced, providing potential explanations for their analyses by clarifying how policies and related phenomena are linked to broader, inequitable social, economic, and political contexts. Theory can also offer insights into how inequality can be challenged. Explicit use of theory in critical policy researchers writing may also provide alternatives to dominant explanations, whether tacit or explicit, that reinforce social inequality and systems of oppression and are circulating among practitioners, policymakers, or other researchers. For example, Blissett and colleagues (in press) argue that educational effectiveness scholars need to use theories of race to justify their inclusion of race categories in their analyses and challenge essentialist assumptions about race. Theory can also make explicit researchers’ tacit standpoints and hidden assumptions (Young & Diem, 2017).

Researchers can connect their findings to theory by explicitly interpreting results and their meaning, paying particular attention to how the findings might challenge dominant ideologies or reproduce inequality and injustice. Researchers might also consider adding extended descriptions of local context and history to help audiences understand relevant social, political, and economic contexts and the inequalities embedded in them.

Finally, researchers can work to reorient their relationship with marginalized groups, avoiding damage- and deficit-oriented assumptions (Tuck & Yang, 2014) and intentionally lifting up the voices of social movement actors and others who are already sounding the alarm about educational injustices and working to address them (Apple, 2012). Such perspectives provide valuable knowledge of policy, and these actors may also be important audiences for and users of policy research (Dumas & Anderson, 2014).

Conclusion

With this special issue, we hope to advance understanding of and attention to critical approaches to policy analysis in education and to these important papers. Yet, there is plenty more work to do. Thus, we offer a few last thoughts on where we hope the field will go.

Given the growing interest in critical policy analysis, we see a need for additional scholarship and training that guides researchers on how to do critical policy analysis, especially for quantitative scholars. We have already noted several publications and in-progress initiatives that aim to help expand the capacity for education policy scholars to incorporate critical perspectives into their scholarship or teaching. We see significant promise in this regard.

As suggested above, critical policy research can provide “traditional” policy analysis researchers with critical insight into inequality and injustice and means for challenging them. A greater understanding of inequality should also improve the quality of traditional policy analysis and policy process research. Without taking into account how education is embedded in broader social, economic, and political contexts, researchers “rip the actors who feature in the dramas of education out of their social totality and their multiple struggles” (Ball, 1997, p. 269) and foreclose or limit their ability to interpret policy phenomena. Awareness of broader contexts aids the interpretation of the findings from policy analysis. For example, it is important to understand not only the academic impacts but also the meaning of “anti-Critical Race Theory” legislation, which includes understanding the networks of actors undergirding and resisting such proposals given their ties to broader ideological movements in the United States. Indeed, knowledge of broader contexts and processes provides insight into the conditions that constrain and enable policy change (McDonnell, 2009a).

Moreover, tools from critical policy research can provide traditional policy analysis with insights on how policy researchers’ data and practices may contribute to or disrupt injustice and inequality. Critical policy research also suggests analytic methods and practices for key tasks, such as linking policy outcomes and processes to broader social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Furthermore, familiarity with critical policy research may help traditional policy researchers to avoid unintentionally reinforcing inequality and injustice. For example, through reflexivity about power and inequity in the research traditions, concepts, methods, measures, and data used in traditional policy analysis, critical policy research can offer important insights and raise crucial questions about the research methods used in the field (e.g., Dumas & Anderson, 2014; Garcia et al., 2018; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Viano & Baker, 2020; Viano et al., 2024). Without an understanding of these contexts and reflexivity on the roles of policy researchers and policy analysts working in these contexts, policy analysts risk contributing to the problems they may seek to challenge.

Finally, scholars taking critical approaches often make a moral commitment to bettering society and acting on that by collaborating with marginalized groups and social movement actors beyond the research process. In doing so, they gain a greater understanding of the realities of inequity, exclusion, and oppression and of efforts to challenge it, which enables them to better address these in their work (Apple, 2012). There may be similar roles for traditional policy scholars to play in giving back to the communities they study and draw upon for data, or including communities in the process of data collection or analysis. Through these contributions and others, critical policy research and a greater understanding of it offers useful contributions to traditional policy analysis and to moving the policy research field forward.

As the understanding of critical policy analysis and its contributions solidify, we hope that editors and reviewers begin to systematically consider their review processes and how “quality” research is defined. This might include more explicit guidelines for reviewers regarding how to assess research from different streams or paradigms, such as how to consider values of “neutrality” and “objectivity” in the context of community-engaged work, and how to critically reflect on data sources and measures used in quantitative research. We also hope that scholars can find ways to incorporate some of our suggestions into their teaching on education policy and mentoring of early career scholars in addition to their research design and writing. Through these shifts, we hope that our field can better analyze inequality and injustice and how they can be challenged, create more opportunities for critical policy perspectives to be integrated into the curriculum, and identify new avenues for research and possibilities we have not even begun to imagine.

We were unable to invite and publish every very good paper that was submitted for consideration; we hope that EEPA can continue expanding publication of this kind of work in tandem with other journals, continuing their commitment or finding ways to authentically expand what they publish to include critical education policy scholarship. This is simply one step, and we invite readers to help move this work forward.