Policy instruments are never neutral — they shape ideas, actors, and change
ECNU Review of Education
When education systems introduce a new test, school-evaluation framework, performance indicator, or accreditation procedure, the change may appear technical. Yet such tools do much more than implement decisions already made. Indeed, they define what counts as a policy problem, establish which knowledge is credible, allocate roles to different actors, and shape how schools and education systems are governed.
That is the central message of a new scoping review published online on August 1, 2026, in ECNU Review of Education. Luís Miguel Carvalho and Catarina Gonçalves, of the Institute of Education, University of Lisbon, examined 42 peer-reviewed articles published between 2005 and 2023. Their study maps research in the sociology of policy instruments in education and asks what this perspective reveals about contemporary policy and educational change.
The sociology of policy instruments treats instruments as both technical and social devices. Legislation, contracts, assessments, benchmarks, indicators, funding mechanisms, and communication platforms embody specific values and assumptions about the relationship between government, education professionals, learners, and society. Studying them therefore makes it possible to see how power operates through apparently technical and practical arrangements.
According to the literature reviewed, researchers have concentrated especially on performance-based instruments such as PISA, national large-scale assessments, school evaluation and self-evaluation, indicators, standards, and accreditation. This focus reflects a broader shift toward governance through comparison, data, and performance-oriented accountability. The review also finds growing attention to European education governance, global intergovernmental organizations, private companies, and intermediary actors working between national policy and local practice.
The authors organize existing knowledge around three dimensions: the institutional ideas embedded in instruments, the trajectories instruments follow as they are designed and used, and the effects they generate. Instruments do not simply travel unchanged from policymaking centers to schools. National traditions, political interests, professional identities, and local conditions can lead to adoption, opposition, hybridization, or the creation of new tools. Similar instruments may therefore take quite different forms in different systems.
The review identifies six recurring effects. Instruments can legitimize certain actors and coalitions, reorganize political spaces and timelines, privilege certain forms of knowledge and expertise, gather actors around common issues, produce hybrid policies when several tools and governing logics interact, and generate unintended consequences. For example, comparative assessments may strengthen the authority of international organizations and structure national debate, while indicators designed to inform policy can become simplified rankings. Performance tools intended to encourage innovation may also intensify supervision or standardize practice.
“Studies on policy instruments are well suited to address the complexity of education policy: the multiple policy scales as interdependent contexts, the variety of individual and collective actors involved, and the various governance patterns, ranging from state-oriented to market-oriented regimes, and from norm-based governance patterns to performance-oriented ones”, said Carvalho and Gonçalves.
The study also identifies important gaps. The evidence base remains strongly centered on Europe, and researchers have paid less attention to combinations of multiple instruments. The authors call for a broader geo-cultural range of studies, clearer theoretical foundations, and more systematic explanations of why the same instrument follows different trajectories in different settings.
For policymakers and education leaders, the findings offer a practical caution: choosing a policy instrument is itself a political decision. A test, indicator, contract, or platform may affect not only whether a policy achieves its goals, but also what goals appear legitimate, who gains authority, and which realities remain visible or become obscured. For researchers, the review provides a map of a developing field and a framework for examining the complex links between technical devices, institutional change, and power in education.
Journal
ECNU Review of Education
Method of Research
Literature review
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Research on Policy Instruments in Education, 2005-2023: A Scoping Review
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