The construction of meaning in Educational Policy. The Full Time School case

The following text aims to briefly present the main arguments of a research project on the political measures which form the idea of full time school in the 1st cycle of basic education. This is accomplished through an approach based on the “analysis of public policies” and particular focus on the formulation and implementation of these measures. It is, therefore, our intention to ground the study on two interconnected “types of approach”: one based on the analysis of the policy-making process, by which we will endeavour to understand how the policy emerged and was transformed/is transformed; the other on the implementation aimed, at an examination of the State’s action and the stance of its agents in interaction with other social agents. We have opted for the cognitive analysis of public policies as our choice of public policy with particular recourse to the concept of frame of reference and by means of an approach through instruments of public action.