Networks and Contexts of Reform

Reforms and their contexts have unsettledboundaries. Actors construct themselves ascontexts for reforms in part by advancingdefinitions of those reforms: Reformsthemselves both presuppose and createcontextual frames. Drawing on actor networktheory and related approaches, this paperexamines the play of context and reform interms of efforts to construct and stabilizeeducational networks of differentconfigurations and scale. The fall and rise oftwo attempts at statewide curriculum reform inVirginia (USA) provide illustrations of how thenature of reform artifacts and the networksthrough which they circulate shape the politicsof reform.