Abstract:
This paper analyses the Education Department of Western Australia's policy: 'Making the Difference: Students at Educational Risk' (SAER) as a process extending between macro and micro levels of the organisation between 1998 and present. The study aims to develop an understanding of how the production and practices of the policy reflect wider - and potentially competing - economic and social justice rationales, and to what extent it advocates and/or marginalises the needs of students 'at risk'. Policy is identified as an interactive process that is shaped and reconstructed by different 'contexts'. It is how individual agents interpret, resist, accommodate or conform within and between these different 'contexts' that helps provide a clearer understanding of how the SAER policy intent is executed in practice.