Policy archaeology: a new policy studies methodology

Policy archaeology is a radically different approach to policy studies in education, drawn from the post‐structuralist work of Foucault, which completely reconceptualizes policy studies and, thus, significantly expands it as a critical problematic. Rather than beginning after social and education problems have emerged into social visibility, policy archaeology studies the social construction of these problems. Rather than acquiescing to the range of policy solutions debated by policy makers and policy analysts, it interrogates the social construction of that range. Rather than accepting policy studies as a ‘neutral’ social science, it questions the broader social functions of policy studies. And, finally, rather than concluding that social and education problems, policy solutions and policy studies are created by the conscious interplay of the free agents of history, policy archaeology proposes that a grid of social regularities constitutes what is seen as a problem, what is socially legitimized as a policy solution, and what policy studies itself is.