(Re)thinking the Adoption of Inclusive Education Policy in Ontario Schools - Conceptual Framework for Policy Enactment

Oct 15, 2026

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This article advances a proposal for analyzing how inclusive education policies in Ontario schools are adopted and put into practice. It uses the notion of Policy Enactment to reconceptualize policy translation as context-informed work rather than a simple transfer of text into action. The paper argues that traditional implementation models undervalue context and concludes that a neo-institutional policy enactment perspective offers a more robust tool for policy analysis and research practice.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Purpose and conceptual approach

Limits of implementation models

Context, enactment, and institutional theory

(Re)thinking the Adoption of Inclusive Education Policy in Ontario Schools Ayman Massouti University of Western Ontario Abstract The purpose of this article is to advance a proposal for the analysis of how inclusive education policies in Ontario schools are adopted. In particular, I use the notion of Policy Enactment to re-conceptualize the processes of putting inclusive education policies into practice. The argument is that the traditional implementation model to analyze the adoption of inclusive education policies devalues the significant role of context in both policy analysis research and practice. Analyzing education policies based on the construct of enactment offers a context-informed approach that can help policy actors and researchers to better understand how inclusive education policies are incorporated into practices. The paper concludes that a policy enactment perspective empowered by the constructs of Neo-Institutionalism theory is a more robust tool for analyzing inclusive education policies as their translation is far from being a mere upfront conversion of text into action. Keywords: inclusive education policy, implementation, enactment, context, Ontario schools, policy actors, practice, policy analysis Introduction Despite the existence of a large body of research on inclusive education policies (Bourke, 2010; Johnstone & Chapman, 2009; Kelly, Devitt, O’Keffee, & Donovan, 2014; Peters, 2007), little knowledge exists on how such policies are incorporated into practices (Ahmmed & Mullick, 2014; Forlin, 2010a; Naicker, 2007; Poon-McBrayer & Wong, 2013) from a policy enactment and institutional perspective. This paper seeks to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of the adoption of inclusive education policies through the lens of policy enactment (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012) that examines the interpretation and translation of policy texts into context-relevant practices. As it will be evidenced in my critical review of the literature, the enactment construct has not been sufficiently used in policy research that particularly relate to inclusive education in Ontario. Instead, policy analysis and the practice of inclusive education have been widely examined through the implementation model. The implementation model is a perspective that portrays policy adoption as a hierarchical, top-down, and formal transfer of text into action without attention to the policy’s contextual dimensions, namely the social, organizational, and cultural dimensions that are highly significant in policy practice and research (Ball et al., 2012) . Globally speaking, the existence of challenges associated with the implementation of policies, particularly those related to the inclusion of students with special needs, is evident in the literature (Engelbrecht, Nel, Smit, & van Deventer, 2016; Hamdan, Anuar, & Khan, 2016; Mosia, 2014; Vorapanya & Dunlap, 2014). After examining many policy implementation studies, Werts and Brewer (2015) found that the aims of education policies are not usually in line with what teachers believe, as well as the motivations and capacities they have. Addressing the significance of context, Heimans (2014) claims that contextual fac- tors are rarely considered in education policy research. Giving priority to the element of context can help us to understand how “policies are taken up, variously inflected, translated and interpreted”(Heimans, 2014, p. 308). According to Singh, Heimans, and Glasswell (2014), context is an analytic construct that allows policy enactment researchers to realize how policies are translated and incorporated into actions and practices in schools. They contend that the notions of enactment and context together constitute a significant contribution that supports the literature of critical policy analysis, such as inclusive education policy research and practice. Adding to the critique of formal implementation models, Werts and Brewer (2015) state that education

FAQs

What is the paper’s main purpose?

It proposes an analysis framework for how inclusive education policies in Ontario schools are adopted and enacted in practice, using policy enactment as the core lens.

Why does the author criticize traditional implementation models?

The author argues these models treat adoption as hierarchical transfer and overlook social, organizational, and cultural context that strongly shapes policy practice.

How does the policy enactment perspective change policy analysis?

It reframes analysis from the abstract meaning of policy texts toward how policies are interpreted, translated, and incorporated into context-relevant school actions.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Muffet