Educational Policy as an Ecology of Games

Educational policy can be considered as a set of overlapping games. Each has its own winners and losers, but each feeds and is fed by others. This metaphor identifies some of the functions and dysfunctions of the policy process. The time perspective of all players is shorter than the whole process, so no one sees the whole picture. Policies interact, so decisions do not reflect what is good for just one issue. Viewing the policy process as multiple games makes uniformity of response to policy less important so that implementation mechanisms that take advantage of local variation can be built. The ecology-of-games metaphor clarifies research use. Research can also be conceived as a game that provides inputs to and gets output from various policy games. The difficulties of putting research to use stem from the discontinuities among games.