The paper proposes a composite approach to education policy analysis that combines the interpretative lenses of Foucauldian ‘governmentality’ with the analytical tools offered by the sociology of translation (Callon, 1986). Such an approach is problem-centred and present-centred (Dean, 2010, p. 3) and aims at exploring the contingencies and singularities of education policy-making in the contemporary ‘eduscape(s)’ (Stronach, 2010, p. 38).

In developing our proposal we first draw on the notion of “governmentality” as “analytics of government”, implying the analysis of “the specific conditions under which particular entities emerge, exist and change…” (Dean, 2010: 30), within the singularity of different ways of governing. We consider the regimes of practices where our events are located and analyse the characteristic techniques, instrumentalities and mechanisms through which such practices operate, by attempting to reach their goals, and having a variety of effects. Second, we propose the use of the repertoire of the sociology of translation (Callon, 1986), in order to deconstruct the events and displacements that have occurred and reshape them in a “public storytelling” (Apple, 2005). The lenses of translation enable, we argue, to read policy stories not only as “vicissitudes of war” (Foucault, 1996, p. 239), they make visible the power relations as emerging through the assembling of human and non human actors, in addition to the deployment of tactics and strategies.

Apple, M.W., (2005), “Education, markets, and an audit culture”, Critical Quarterly, vol. 47, 11-29. Ball, S. J. (1999) “Labour, Learning and the Economy: a policy sociology perspective”, Cambridge Journal of Education, 29(2), pp 195–206. Callon, M., (1986), Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay, in Law, J., (ed.), Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge?, London, Routledge, pp.196-223. Dean, M., (2010), Governmentality. Power and rule in modern society. 2nd Edition, London: Sage. Foucault, M. (1996) Foucault live, New York, Semiotexte. Jones, K., (2010) 'Crisis, what crisis?', Journal of Education Policy, 25:6, 793-798. Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., (2010), Globalizing Education Policy, London and New York: Routledge. Stronach, I, 2010, How Method Made Me Mad, London, Routledge. Youdell, D., (2011) School Trouble. Identity, Power and Politics in Education, London and New York, Routledge.