Using concepts from Gusfield, Scone, Reich, and Jenkins-Smith, this article develops an analytical framework of the process of constructing problem definitions for policy use. The work
emphasizes the narrative structure of each of the many features and elements of the framework
and demonstrates how and where definitions in policy competition can be challenged. The
framework is applied to the Reagan administration's attempt at defining U.S. education problems
in 1983 in A Nation at Risk and some of the responses and redefinitions that it drew from the
educatconal community.
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