Generally speaking, this view regards education policy as a branch of the policy system and an organic part of the overall policy, and attaches importance to their commonness and connection. It should be said that this is correct and beyond reproach. But if you are satisfied with this, it may not help, but it will constrain people's further thinking. For many years, China's education policy research has been hovering at this level, and it is difficult to go deep.
In fact, it is an inevitable trend and an objective fact that education policy should be separated from general policy and become a relatively independent research field. It is not enough and too superficial to explain all kinds of vivid and complicated educational policy problems simply with general policy theory. American scholar f·s· Combs put forward three reasons when discussing that educational policy research should become an independent field:
First, the formulation of education policy is extremely complicated. This dazzling formulation requires thousands of people to participate, with specific formulation procedures and technical terms, and its content is extensive and changeable. Without special research, it is difficult to understand the essence of education policy.
Second, most citizens have some contact with the education system and think they have a special understanding of it. Have the desire to personally participate in the management of public schools. This situation is rare in other policy areas, such as national defense institutions and public welfare systems.
Third, the power in the field of education is quite scattered. When discussing the characteristics of the educational management system, some people pointed out that the educational management system is a loose organizational system, which is very reasonable. The power in the field of education is not as centralized as that of military organizations and government departments, and it has hierarchical constraints, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty and complexity of education policies. [6] Cobbs's views may help us to pay attention to and think about the particularity of education policy, and urge us to carry out relevant research in this field.
Another point of view is that education policy is regarded as a static "result", which is the general name of various documents formulated and issued by the state, such as policies, laws, outlines, decisions, notices, plans, regulations, opinions, methods, regulations, detailed rules and minutes. When explaining the connotation of education policy, this view does not directly answer what education policy is and should be, but describes various education policies formulated by a country, such as basic education policy, vocational and technical education policy, general higher education policy, adult education policy, normal education policy, education policy in ethnic minority areas, rural education policy, urban education policy and so on. , as comprehensive as possible. This view has two advantages: first, it is convenient for people to form a general understanding of the education policy of a country or region; Second, the objective description method can make researchers avoid the negative impact of preconceived ideas in the research process. However, the shortcomings are also obvious, mainly because the connotation of education policy is deeply hidden in various education policies, which is difficult to grasp. Moreover, the essence and characteristics of education policy are not clearly pointed out in a large number of seemingly complicated contents.