THE POLICY CYCLE APPROACH

a Reading through the Discourse Theory

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss Stephen Ball´s proposal to include a context of political strategy and a context of outcomes in his policy cycle approach, because of the risk of reintroducing a centrality in policy meaning. On face of it, we aim to deepen the criticism to this centrality and to the separation between proposal and implementation in the curriculum policy designed by Ball. In this way, we have emphasized the points on the discourse theory potentialities for such purpose. Therefore, we argue that Ernesto Laclau’s discourse theory is more powerful to explain how subjects act in policy production in different contexts and how meanings are discursively produced and hegemonized.