‘Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I’ll Go Mine)’: School-level enactment of an educational innovation policy in Barcelona

Narratives on innovation in education are spreading fast and both national and local educational administrations have been recently promoting innovation policies and programmes in many different European contexts. Academic literature analysing the potential benefits of innovation in education has expanded accordingly, with some international organizations increasingly commissioning research aiming to study the impacts of educational innovation, especially on learning outcomes. Interestingly, less attention has been given to analysing how these policies and programmes are translated into different practices at the school level. Drawing on a policy enactment framework, this paper aims to analyse the ways in which schools interpret top-down policy text and prescription on innovation and enact innovation in education. To do so, we focus on the case of Xarxes per al Canvi (XC), an educational innovation programme launched by the educational administration of the city of Barcelona in 2017 that aims to create school networks in order to stimulate knowledge sharing and innovation. Findings show how schools make sense of the innovation policy diversely. Policy enactment outcomes appear to be context-sensitive, with schools enacting its precepts in different ways, especially to serve their needs in increasingly competitive local education markets.