The paper will discuss the use of a narrative perspective to analyse the way in which education policies are constructed by policy makers. This discussion will be based on a study of the problem of radical policy discontinuity in Peru. In it, a narrative perspective was combined with a thematic analysis of interview data to offer a picture of how institutional dynamics give rise to particular cultures of policy making in education. The latter helped explain the existing radical levels of policy discontinuity, which go beyond normal or expected changes in policies and hinder the development of educational reforms.The narrative perspective was used to analyse interviews conducted with elite policy makers who had been involved in the development of policies during a particularly busy period of educational reform. While clarity about the need for reform during the latter period was high, the focus of policies shifted continuously, usually following equally frequent changes in policy making teams. The narrative view revealed the deeply idiosyncratic roots of these changes. In a national context characterised by weak institutional arrangements policy makers appeared to operate with only loose constraints to limit their actions. This generally meant that they could redefine the aims of policies and problems themselves often without giving reasons to the public or paying little attention to existing demands and criticisms.The focus of the presentation will be particularly set on the methodological assumptions of the narrative perspective, as well as on its relevance to analyse policy makers' talk. As education policy theorists have often warned, such analyses needs to go beyond the face value of interviewees' statements in order to understand the particular dynamics and processes that lead to the definition of policies. Because of this, more traditional methodological perspectives that focus on the 'themes' found across interviews often miss out the storied ways in which policy makers make sense and justify particular policy decisions. Such stories tend to focus on the experience of policy making and offer relevant insights into the ways in which existing institutional arrangements are interpreted and on the particular struggles to which policies respond. The latter have often got to do more with the aim of advancing or maintaining positions of power, than with achieving desired policy aims. As will be argued, the narrative perspective is particularly useful to explore such aspects of policy makers' discourses and it can be complemented with other forms of analysis to offer more holistic accounts of the complex paths followed in the making of education policies. In this discussion the place of the narrative perspective within contemporary post-empiricist analyses of policy making will also be discussed. The research was based mainly on interviews with elite policy makers (i.e. education ministers and their close collaborators, and other individuals influential to the policy process) which were analysed on the basis of a narrative methodology. The latter was combined with a thematic analysis in order to achieve a more detailed understanding of the processes that are beneath the making of education policies and which explain the radical levels of discontinuity in Peruvian education policies. The research findings are detailed in the description of the paper (above). Balarin, M (2005) Radical Discontinuity: a study of the role of education in the peruvian state and of the institutions and cultures of policy making in education. PhD Thesis. University of Bath. Ball, S.J. (1994). Political Interviews and the Politics of Interviewing. In: Researching the Powerful in Education. G. Walford (Ed.) London: UCL Press. Fischer, F. (2003). Reframing Public Policy - Discursive politics and deliberative practices. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Riessman, C. (2004). Narrative Analysis. In: Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods. M. S. Lewis-Beck, Bryman, A., Futing Liao, T. (Ed.) London UK, Newbury Park CA: Sage. Vidovich, L. (2001). A Conceptual Framework for Analysis of Education Policy and Practices. Presented in: Australian Association for Research in Education (Conference), Freemantle. [Online] http://www.aare.edu.au/01pap/vid01267.htmIt is intended for publication in an international journal.