ABSTRACT

It seems uncontentious that policy development should be informed by evidence, and that researchers should be engaged to assess available evidence. In this paper, we tell the story of a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) about school exclusion, a task intended to inform a ‘root and branch’ policy review. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem?’ approach, we use the project brief and the changing texts that we wrote to show that, while we began reviewing literature with a generous definition of exclusion, our focus progressively narrowed to encompass only the literatures that fitted with the pre-existing policy definition. Our story shows that a need to focus on big E Exclusion policy eliminated insights about little e exclusion, in particular how wider social relations and the school itself were implicated. The case raises critical questions about how policy evidence about exclusion is produced – and limited.

摘要

政策制定应以证据为依据，研究人员应参与评估现有证据，这似乎没有争议。在本文中，我们讲述了关于学校排斥的快速证据评估 (REA) 的故事，该任务旨在为“根与枝”政策审查提供信息。借鉴 Carol Bacchi 的“问题是什么？”方法，我们使用项目简介和我们编写的不断变化的文本来表明，当我们开始审查具有宽泛的排除定义的文献时，我们的重点逐渐缩小到仅包含符合现有政策定义的文献。我们的故事表明，需要关注大电子排斥政策消除了对小电子排斥的见解，特别是更广泛的社会关系和学校本身如何受到牵连。该案例提出了有关排斥的政策证据如何产生和有限的关键问题。