these struggles are set and how these articulate and constrain the interpretation and enactment of policies.
It is important to note that owing to the fact that the change management perspective neglects the socio-cultural context of policy whilst the core issues at the heart of the
democratic perspective is subsidiary to the policy implementation process, the post- modernist conceptualisation of policy as ‘text’ and ‘discourse’ is adopted as a framework
for analysing the ‘fCUBE’ policy. The decision to opt for this is grounded in the potency of such a conceptualisation as a discourse based, participants oriented and
languagesocio-culturally focused framework to critical policy evaluations.
3. The study methodology
In consideration of the research questions asked, the study adopts the interpretivist approach and its qualitative strategies to research. It takes the implementation and
institutionalisation of the ‘fCUBE’ policy as a ‘case’ and studies it in its natural setting. Data from both primary and secondary sources have been gathered and is being analysed
to document the extent to which the ‘free’, ‘compulsory’, ‘universal’ and ‘basic education’ components of ‘fCUBE’ are genuinely reflected in the implementation and
institutionalisation process. Specifically, documentary evidence from four main ‘fCUBE’ policy documentation have been extracted and are being analysed using Taylor’s 2004
model of critical discourse analysis. The documentary analysis is geared towards explicating what these documents say or suggest explicitly and implicitly about the
‘fCUBE’ policy implementation. For purposes of research triangulation, the documentary data is complemented by semi-
structured opened-ended interviews with 16 education officials from four of the ten regions of Ghana who are involved in the implementation process at the meso-level.
Given their unique position as recontextualizers of policy, the researcher deems it necessary to explore the various ways by which the meso-level implementers
conceptualise, articulate and interpret the ‘fCUBE’ policy provisions and components and how these affect the process of implementation. Equally, the rationale for the selection of
officials from four of the ten regions of Ghana is to explicate and exemplify the diverse socio-cultural, economic, political and cultural contexts within which the policy is being
implemented and how these affect the implementation process. In keeping to research ethics, pseudonyms are being assigned to the respondents to safeguard and ensure their
anonymity.
4. Data analysis
The analysis of data generated to answer the research questions posed employs the common-sense hypothetico-inductivist model Wengraf, 2001. The common-sense
hypothetico-inductivist model derives theories from the examination of the ‘relevant facts’ gathered for empirical study through the process of induction. In this regard, the
interview data is being interpreted using the interpretativecontent analysis approach. The interpretative approach allows researchers to see and treat social actions and human
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activities as texts or as a collection of symbols expressing layers of meaning Berg, 2004, p. 266. In deriving the actual meanings from the texts for theorizing, the verbatim
transcription is preferred as it offers the advantage that all possible analytic uses are allowed for. Although laborious and time consuming, the researcher is of the opinion that
since he does not know in advance what the most significant point of analysis are, doing it verbatim means he will not lose any data which may later become significant. In
presenting the interview data, the researcher has decided to adopt the narrative account. This is to ensure that he remains very close to the words of the respondents and with a
minimum interpretation so as to understand their views before jumping to conclusions Cookson, 1994.
The documentary data is being analysed and organised for theorizing using Taylor’s 2004 critical discourse analysis CDA framework. This framework draws on
Fairclough’s 2003 distinction between textually and non-textually oriented discourses and is thus a model for analysing social policy which focuses on both the social context
and the linguisticsemiotic features of texts. The analysis of the texts extracted from the ‘fCUBE’ documentation is being done at the linguisticsemiotic and inter-
discursiveintertextual tiers. The former centres on bringing to the fore, the linguistic and semiotic choices which have been made in the writing and layout of the ‘fCUBE’ policy-
texts. This will be achieved through the examination of the following aspects of the texts extracted for analysis:
• Whole text organisation structure: for example, native, argumentative, descriptive etc;
• Clause combination; • Grammatical and semantic features transitivity, action, voice, mood, modality;
and • Words e.g., vocabulary, collocations, use of metaphors, etc Fiarclough, 2001a,
pp. 241-242. The inter-discursiveintertextual tier of analysis focuses mainly on identifying and
analysing which genres and discourses are drawn on and how these are worked together in the texts. It is geared specifically towards identifying and documenting multiple and
competing discourses within the ‘fCUBE’ policy-texts, highlighting the marginalised and hybrid discourses as well as exemplifying any possible discursive shifts in the policy
implementation process. The use of this model is grounded in consideration of the fact that it enables the researcher to go beyond speculation and demonstrate how policy texts
work in practice. Similarly, the CDA is relevant to this study because it allows a detailed investigation of the relationship of language to other social processes, and of how
language works within power relations Taylor 2004, p. 436.
5. Conclusion
