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Policy actors and coalitions use narratives to frame higher education policy problems and solutions. In this article, I illustrate how I employed narrative policy analysis (NPA) in practice to demonstrate how state policy actors and coalitions created policy storylines that offered social orientation, reassurance, or guidance for a stubborn higher education policy problem in one state. I begin the article with a review of NPA, followed by a discussion of the methods and tools that guided my analysis and scholars interested in NPA can employ. Next, I provide a brief overview of the policy problem context followed by a detailed description and examples of analysis for policy artifacts and the construction of policy storylines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates and discusses how three contemporary Norwegian White papers and the OECD document Improving School Leadership: Policy and Practice narrate the relationship between school leadership and student learning outcomes. First, the article describes the identified dominant policy narrative connecting pupils' learning outcomes to school leadership, before the narrative techniques used to make this connection are explored in more detail. The analysis shows how a dominant public narrative describes the relationship between school leadership and pupils' learning outcomes as a hierarchical one-way chain of influence, and not as a dialogical and dynamic relationship where the elements are interdependent and influence each other. The one-way, hierarchical chain of influence constructed by the narrative plot meets the need policy has to reduce complexity in order to express governmental goals and distribute responsibility. The linearity and causality embedded in the policy narrative produces an understanding of the relationship between school leadership and learning outcomes that also signals a narrow range of options available to school leaders and teachers. By proposing a limited range of teacher- and leader practices as significant for the fulfilment of the policy goals, the narrative plot also constructs a relatively narrow frame for the professional work of school leaders and teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilizes narrative policy analysis to examine social justice narratives embedded within No Child Left Behind with respect to economic inequities. It juxtaposes national educational policy dialogues against the stories of educators working within an elementary school that serves a high-poverty community. The qualitative research findings suggest that it is vitally important for policymakers to acknowledge and value the challenges faced by teachers and staff who serve children whose families lack proper healthcare, affordable and quality early childhood education, nutrition, literacy, safety, and livable wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]