The Cultural Narration of Educational Policy Implementation from the Perspective of the Relational Theory

The Relational Theory holds that the policy implementation is an expression of culturally embedded relations, and is also collaborative actions of educational policy implementers in a cultural network of multiple relationships. Based on the relational theory, the cultural narrative of educational policy implementation abandons the static and immersive narrative methods in the discourse of western individualism and structural functionalism. Instead, it constructs a three-dimension cultural narration cube: on the "top-down" relationship dimension, it examines the cultural foundation of educational policy identification; on the "inside-outside" relationship dimension, it analyzes the cultural nesting and interactive influence of "large fields" and "small fields"; on the "front-back" relationship, it examines the sense-making changes and similarities. The cultural narration of educational policy implementation provides inspiration for optimizing the cultural "toolkit" of educational policy implementation, as well as enhancing cultural governance capabilities.