教育政策行动:解释与分析框架

Explaining Education-Policy Action

教育政策研究的一个重要目的就是要解释家为何采取特定的政策行动或计划而非其他方案。然而在公共政策研究以及社会科学研究领域内,解释社会行动不论在理论视域还是研究取向上,均存在着严重的分歧以至激烈的争论,其中以逻辑实证主义为基础的因果解释与由阐释理论而衍生的意图解释之间的对立最为明显,即使在意图解释模型内\现象学派、理性选择理论与功能主义等视域的分歧亦颇为明显。当教育政策研究者尝试解释国家对特定政策所采取的行动或计划背后的原因与理由时,对现存众多解释模型的分歧与争议往往无所适从?本文旨在对上述各种解释模型的理论与方法学基础加以梳理及评论,并尝试整理出一个较为综合的分析架构,供从事教育政策研究以及公共政策研究的工作者参考。

One of the primary objectives of education-policy studies is to explain why the state takes on a particular policy action or project, instead of other alternatives. For more than a century, the question of how to account for human social action has provoked serious differences and fiery contentions among theorists and researchers in the fields of the social sciences including policy studies. Among these contentious camps, the difference between the causal-explanation model advocated by positivists and the intentional-explanation model practiced by interpretive theorists has constituted one of the most prominent rivalries among social scientists. Even within the models of intentional explanation, there are salient differences among phenomenological, rational-choice theory, and funrlionalist scholars. Confronted with these diverse explanation models, education policy researchers will find it hard to make a choice of perspective in guiding their research in accounting for the particular course of action taken by the state in addressing a specific policy issue. This article sets out to give a comprehensive review to these explanation models. It attempts to synthesize them into an analytical framework, with which researchers in education and public policy may make reference.