Re)drawing Lines in Our Research: Using Policy Mobilities and Network Ethnography to Research Global Policy Networks in Education (original) (raw)

The flows and frictions of policy networks We are all scholars of policy to some extent. Such a definitive statement is not without merit-after all, we all experience and interact with policy across education, from the "eddies and flows" (Cochrane & Ward, 2012) of its movements to the "fixities and moorings" (Sheller & Urry, 2006) of its frictions. Regardless of whether we explicitly refer to ourselves as "policy researchers," the various dimensions of education and schooling upon which we choose to putatively focusincluding pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, and student wellbeing-are continuously being (re)shaped and (re)constituted by the various material and discursive elements of policy, in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Unsurprisingly, policy remains a central preoccupation of education research, leading to a continued focus on developing, adopting, and adapting different theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches to better understand the changing empirical contexts we face. These changes include not only the changing policies themselves but also the changing processes, actors, spaces, and relations by which such policies are developed, disseminated, contested, and enacted. It is fair to say that in this contemporary moment, all manner of