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Utilising Bacchi's what's the problem represented to be? (WPR) approach to analyse national school exclusion policy in England and Scotland: a worked example
Open accessAbstract
This paper examines and compares national policies on school exclusion, using a specific framework for public policy analysis developed by Carol Bacchi [(2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest: Pearson]. This framework is known as ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ or ‘WPR’. Bacchi’s framework has been applied to areas of policy as diverse as health care, labour markets, immigration and higher education, but its use in school-based education has been much more limited to date. Noting too, that the WPR framework itself is rarely interrogated or critiqued in the literature, our small-scale study therefore addresses two main objectives: (a) to offer an illustration, a worked example, of WPR in education as a contribution to methodological debate, and (b) to critically appraise the WPR approach, and its potential to acknowledge, challenge and disrupt normalising discourses within one key area of school-based policy – school exclusion.
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Scotland's focus on flexible, preventative use of AP contrasts with policy approaches in other UK countries, where alternative provision is more commonly positioned as a response to exclusion rather than part of a preventative approach.
“Scotland's focus on flexible, preventative use of AP contrasting with policy approaches in other UK countries, where alternative provision is more commonly positioned as a response to exclusion rather than part of a preventative approach”
From 'Alternative' education provision: a mapping and critique (2024) · cites this paper as Tawell & McCluskey, 2022
The WPR Q1 analysis and Discussion contrast Scotland’s prevention-oriented exclusion guidance with England’s greater emphasis on the exclusion process. They do not establish that Scotland uses alternative provision (AP) flexibly and preventatively, or that AP in other UK countries is more commonly a response to exclusion; the policy comparison examines England and Scotland, not all other UK countries. Page numbers were not available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Research works printed but not linked: 37
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Luo (Jess), J. (2024) · Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education · doi:10.1080/02602938.2024.2309963 · Cited by 366
“Therefore, rather than accepting policies at face value, the ‘problem questioning’ paradigm encourages critical scrutiny of what problems are represented and how they are represented through policy discourses (Tawell and McCluskey 2021).”
'Alternative' education provision: a mapping and critique
Taylor, A., & McCluskey, G. (2024) · Oxford Review of Education · doi:10.1080/03054985.2024.2373067 · Cited by 7
“…as a response to exclusion rather than part of a preventative approach, for example through the use of PRUs in England and Wales, and EOTAS centres in Northern Ireland, where young people typically attend after being excluded (McCluskey, Bridgeman, et al., 2023; Tawell & McCluskey, 2022).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Tawell, A., & McCluskey, G.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Tawell, Alice
- Venue
- International Journal of Research & Method in Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-09-16
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 137-149
- ISSN
- 1743-727X (ISSN-L)
- 1743-7288
- OpenAlex
- W3199329667
- Cited by
- 60
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 4.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- International Journal of Research & Method in Education (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J500112/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Evaluation and Performance Assessment
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Global Educational Policies and Reforms
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Education and Public Policy
- Keywords
- school exclusion, What's the problem represented to be, Bacchi, policy analysis framework, England, Scotland, comparative policy analysis, education policy
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