INTRODUCTION

This article shows a state of knowledge review study over research on the implementation of educational policies and programs, published in journals in the field of Public Policy in Brazil. The work began in the second half of 2019 as part of the activities of the research group Laboratory of Education Assessment (LAEd - Laboratório de Avaliação da Educação), linked to the Graduate Program in Education at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PPGE/PUC-Rio), and within the scope of the Study Network on the Implementation of Public Educational Policies (Reippe - Rede de Estudos sobre Implementação de Políticas Públicas Educacionais).

Although the field of Public Policies is recent in Brazil, it is already possible to verify a strong expansion in studies on programs and policies, mainly in the areas of health and social assistance in recent decades. The area of education, although it is also expanding, has received less attention from Political Science compared to the area of health and social assistance, as shown by several studies on community health agents or the Bolsa Família Program, for example (^{LOTTA, 2015}; ^{BICHIR, 2016}; ^{OLIVEIRA; LOTTA; NUNES, 2019}).

This article seeks to draw a portrait of this production in the field of education and point out gaps and future paths for the development of a research agenda on the analysis of the implementation of educational policies and programs. A state of knowledge can show the development of the field of public policy studies and how, within this field, the analysis of the implementation of educational policies and programs has been approached. At the same time, it can also show how the educational field has looked at the implementation of educational policies, mobilizing authors and models of analysis of Political Science.

Educational policies and programs do not constitute a monopoly of Education investigation, especially of researchers in the field of Educational Policy studies. As analytical objects, educational policies and programs can be analyzed from different areas of knowledge, and recent research in the field of Public Policy has pointed to the growing interest of political scientists and public administrators in the national and international context of this topic (^{GOMES, 2009}; ^{MARTINS; LOTTA, 2010}; ^{FRANZESE; ABRUCIO, 2013}; ^{PASSONE, 2013}; ^{CASSIOLATTO; GARCIA, 2014}; ^{SEGATTO, 2015}; ^{SEGATTO; ABRUCIO, 2018}).

To establish a dialogue between these fields, we consider the relevance of carrying out a review study to map what has already been produced on the implementation of educational policies and programs in the field of Public Policy Studies, and to know the contributions that these studies bring, above all, in terms of approaches for researchers in the field of Education. In this mapping, we consider the results obtained in previous research (^{NASCIMENTO COCK, 2018}), resuming part of the discussion developed at the time, and we advanced in the production of new data and the discussion specifically about research on the implementation of public education policies.

Several researchers affirm the importance of review studies for the development of fields of knowledge and point out that such studies allow the understanding of the movement of a given area, its configuration, theoretical and methodological tendencies, and critical analysis, indicating recurrences, trends, and gaps. Hence its contributions to the general development of Science and, especially, to beginning researchers in a particular area of knowledge (^{SOARES; MACIEL, 2000}; ^{FERREIRA, 2002}; ^{ROMANOWSKI; ENS, 2006}; ^{VOSGERAU; ROMANOWSKI, 2014}; ^{NOGUEIRA, 2015}). The review study carried out and presented in this article is characterized as a mapping of the state of knowledge type, according to the classification of ^{Romanowski and Ens (2006}), ^{Vosgerau and Romanowski (2014}), and ^{Nogueira (2015}). It is a documentary, bibliographic and descriptive work, which focuses on the survey in only one sector of publications.

The focus of this mapping was the articles published in Qualis A1 journals, according to the 2013-2016 Quadriennium Periodical Classifications of the Sucupira Platform of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes- Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior), in the classic areas that gave rise to Public Policy studies - Political Science, Public Administration, and Sociology. The collection of information from journals on this platform took place between August and October 2019, with a review in April 2020. A1 journals were chosen because they are important vehicles for publicizing research, presenting peer-reviewed articles, and for their wide circulation in the academic and scientific environment. Considering the growth of studies on the implementation of public policies in recent decades, two guiding questions were considered in the design and development of this mapping: i) whether educational policies and programs have been constituted as an object of research for implementation studies in the field of Public Policy, and ii) what are the main theoretical and conceptual approaches and analytical models used by researchers in these investigations.

What leads the authors of this article to the production of education knowledge carried out in the field of Public Policies is based the recognition that education is an area of knowledge through which knowledge from different origins circulates. A field of knowledge in which, as stated by ^{Charlot (2006}, p. 9), “they intersect, challenge each other and, at times, fertilize each other [...] knowledge, concepts and methods originating from multiple disciplinary fields.” Looking at the production of knowledge on the implementation of educational policies from the original field of Public Policy is part of the recognition that it is a sphere that enables the insertion of intelligibility and rationality in this practical, complex and interdisciplinary field that is Education.

This article is organized into three parts, in addition to this introduction and final remarks. In the second part, we present the study methodology; then, we place the theoretical foundations and, in the fourth part, we discuss the data produced and the analysis performed. In the final considerations, we resume the main points of the text and present the contributions that this study offers to the field of Educational Policy.

THE PATHS OF RESEARCH: A REVIEW STUDY OF THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE TYPE

Review studies can be classified into two major groups: mapping studies and evaluation and synthesis studies. The group of mapping-type review studies encompasses those that map fields of knowledge and have as their central purpose to provide paths or theoretical references for new research: bibliographic survey, literature review, bibliographic review, narrative review, state of the art, state of knowledge, state of the question and bibliometric studies. On the other hand, review studies of the evaluation and synthesis type comprise systematic review, integrative review, qualitative evidence syntheses, qualitative meta-synthesis, meta-analysis, and meta-summarization. Such studies have their origin in the area of Health Sciences and seek to identify the conditions in which certain evidence occurs and the possibility of identifying patterns of occurrence (^{VOSGERAU; ROMANOWSKI, 2014}).

The review study carried out for the production of this article is part of the group of mapping studies of the state of knowledge type. As with state-of-the-art studies, the state of knowledge aims to survey what is known about a given subject from research carried out in a specific area, producing a mapping that identifies recurring themes and points out new perspectives. However, it differs from that because it is a documentary and bibliographic study that addresses only one sector of publications on a studied topic (^{ROMANOWSKI; ENS, 2006}; ^{NOGUEIRA, 2015}).

A state of knowledge is not restricted to identifying production, but also analyzing it, categorizing it, and revealing its multiple approaches and perspectives used by researchers (^{SOARES; MACIEL, 2000}; ^{VOSGERAU; ROMANOWSKI, 2014}; ^{NOGUEIRA, 2015}). In this sense, when carrying out the survey, we organized the data to verify not only the number of articles but also the recurrences in terms of theoretical references and concepts, research strategies, themes, and educational policies or programs addressed. We consider it equally important to verify the area of knowledge of the authors, since researchers can publish their productions in journals that are not in their field of knowledge of origin, and also because educational policies and programs are analyzed in several areas.

The mapping performed and presented in this article is limited in space and time, since academic and scientific production is not restricted to what is published in the most qualified journals in a given area. Furthermore, a state of knowledge offers only one of several possible points of view on the treatment of a given theme or question when formulated as an object of research. Even so, we believe that the review study carried out provides a sample of what has been produced on the implementation of educational policies and programs in the field of Public Policies in Brazil and offers possibilities for new analyses, whether more comprehensive, such as those provided by mappings of the state-of-the-art type, or even deeper analysis in smaller and more vertical sections through content analysis, for example.

WHY ANALYZE THE IMPLEMENTATION PHASE OF PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL POLICIES

The field of Public Policy, in the category of the area of knowledge and academic discipline, was created in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. In Europe, the area emerged as an offshoot of works based on theories about the role of the State, its institutions, and the government as the producer par excellence of public policies. In the United States, the area was created in the academic environment with an emphasis on studies on government action. The analytical assumption that governed the establishment and consolidation of studies on public policies is that, in stable democracies, what the government does or does not do can be scientifically formulated and analyzed by independent researchers (^{SOUZA, 2006}).

There is no single or best definition of what public policy is, and several definitions have been formulated as the field has developed. However, all of them are directed to the locus where the clashes around interests, preferences, and ideas develop, that is, governments. Public policies are also understood as the “State in action” (GOBERT; MULLER, 1987 apud ^{HÖFLING, 2001}, p. 31), that is, it is the State implementing a government project through programs and actions aimed at specific sectors of society (^{HÖFLING, 2001}). In most studies, four basic phases or stages of public policies are presented: agenda setting, policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation (^{SOUZA, 2006}). However, the public policy process does not have clear rationality and does not correspond to a smooth order in which each social actor knows and plays the expected role in each phase (^{SARAVIA, 2006}).

The subfield of research on the implementation phase is considered relatively young in the Public Policy thematic area. Although currently considered multidisciplinary, it also developed primarily in Political Science, Political Sociology, and Public Administration. Studies on the implementation of public policies were only disseminated and systematized based on the widespread recognition of two central factors: the implementation process may be the main responsible for the low impact of public policies, and the fallacious character of the distinction between politics and administration. Such studies have demonstrated how operationalization varies according to the policy and its different types of formats and the nature of the agencies that implement it. Empirical studies developed since the 1970s have provided evidence that the performance of public bureaucracies is not neutral for a variety of reasons. Implementation inevitably involves choices and decisions that are taken by non-elected public agents, which are public bureaucracies (^{FARIA, 2012a}).

The publication Implementation, by Pressman and Wildavsky in 1973, in the United States, was the first specific study on the implementation phase of public policies. This work was considered responsible for the recognition of the centrality of the implementation of policies and the proliferation of academic works dedicated to the subject both in the United States and in Europe. This first generation, from the 1970s, came from concerns to understanding what happened when public policies were put into practice, with a strong normative concern based on a democratic ideal of state functioning, concerning a Weberian tradition of studies on bureaucracy. This generation was called top-down because it directs the analysis to find errors or implementation gaps and correct them (^{FARIA, 2012a}; ^{MARQUES; FARIA, 2013}; ^{LOTTA, 2015}, ²⁰¹⁹).

The top-down approach was the object of harsh criticism that pointed to the excessive rationalism and linearity present in the understanding of implementation as a step that would succeed in the clear definition of the objectives of a given policy formulated by rational actors. Based on these criticisms, a new bottom-up perspective was developed in the early 1980s, which began to consider the multiplicity of actors that interact at the local level around a specific problem (^{SABATIER, 1993}). In this type of study, the focus is on local implementation processes, at the base of hierarchical chains, that is, in the context of delivering policies to citizens or organizations, with great emphasis on implementing agents who work with policy users. Michael Lipsky's work on policy implementation processes with a focus on the actions of street-level bureaucracy was the major milestone of this second generation of research. Lipsky proposed to analyze the implementation of public policies from the actions of the agents implementing the daily life of the policies that are on the front line, which he called street-level bureaucrats (^{LIPSKY, 2010}).

The studies that are based on the implementation of policies in Lipsky's work consider that the implementing agents of public policies (police officers, teachers, social workers, etc.) deal in practice with processes of interaction with users that involve different values, beliefs, references, and identities. These actions occur in a context in which the most varied identities, demands, needs, and references, in addition to constraints and norms, must be negotiated for the construction of implementation practices. Such processes require conciliation between the various factors that appear in the interaction so that public policies can be effectively implemented, and contextual factors that affect implementation are emphasized (^{LIPSKY, 2010}; ^{FARIA, 2012a}; ^{MARQUES; FARIA, 2013}; ^{LOTTA, 2015}, ²⁰¹⁹).

The third generation of studies sought to synthesize elements of these two analysis models, top-down and bottom-up, based on the understanding that they would be looking at different policy contents by emphasizing formulation and implementation. This new generation gave rise to synthesis models that combine the analysis of implementation structures, instruments, and incentive structures with consideration of local actors and relationships, their values ​​, and objectives. The main authors of this generation, predominant in the 1990s, were ^{Sabatier (1988}, 1993), with the advocacy coalition framework; and ^{Matland (1995}), who proposed to analyze the formulation and implementation environments by looking at the binomial ambiguity and conflict about means and ends, as elements that determine the ability to implement a public policy. “What these models have in common is an attempt to get out of the opposition between formulation and implementation, comprising continuous decision-making processes that involve public policies and their results” (^{LOTTA, 2019}, p. 17).

The fourth and current generation of implementation studies, beginning in the 2000s, is characterized by contributions from different disciplinary fields. Transformations in policy production processes have led to the incorporation of some themes, such as coordination systems, state capacities, public policy instruments, institutional implementation arrangements, governance structures in considering the relationships between state and non-state actors in the provision of policies, multilevel and multilayer processes in implementation and micro-interactions in implementation and their relationship with the (re)production of inequalities (^{HILL; HUPE, 2003}; ^{DUBOIS, 2010}; ^{SMITH, 2010}; ^{RADIN, 2010}; ^{KAZEPOV, 2012}; ^{LASCOUMES; LE GALÈS, 2012}; ^{GOMIDE; PIRES, 2014}; ^{MARQUES, 2016}; ^{PIRES, 2016}; ^{BICHIR; BRETTAS; CANATO, 2017}; ^{BICHIR, 2018}; ^{PIRES; GOMIDE, 2018}; ^{PIRES, 2019}). This generation is marked by multiple models and different forms of analysis and by a greater influence from other fields of study, especially Sociology. Several assumptions have already been overcome, especially the consideration that formulation and implementation are distinct phases when they came to be characterized as continuous decision-making processes involving a variety of actors (^{MARQUES; FARIA, 2013}; ^{LOTTA, 2019}).

In Brazil, with the expansion and consequent consolidation of the field of Public Policies, although with a certain fragmentation and heterogeneity, there was also an expansion of research and publication of implementation studies. The analyzes closer to implementation were initially produced with some isolation from the theoretical models already disseminated internationally, and it was only at the end of the first decade of the 21st century that an empirically grounded and theoretically informed debate began to be structured on the delivery phase of public policies. The representation of the public policy process has become more complex nowadays, with the phases of the cycle considered overlapping and specific, in an intricate mix of new and old policies and programs (^{FARIA, 2012a}; D'ASCENZI, 2013; ^{HOCHMAN; FARIA, 2013}; ^{LIMA, 2013}; ^{MARQUES; FARIA, 2013}; ^{LOTTA, 2019}).

When observing how the field of Public Policies has been institutionalized in Brazil in different areas of knowledge, for example, through the creation of specific graduate programs and lines of research in existing programs, in addition to the expansion of product literature, we can say that he has reached maturity. This consolidation took place in the 2000s in both teaching and research. Another indication refers to the fact that there is no longer the prevalence of public bureaucracies in the production of public policy analyzes (^{FARIA, 2012b}).

^{Faria (2012b}) supports his statements based on the results of bibliometric research for which he collected data from the Capes Theses and Dissertations Bank of final papers between 1987 and 2010. His results pointed to an exponential growth in both theses and dissertations, including professional masters, with a strong concentration in the 2000s, especially in the second half. Another indication refers to the number of articles published in journals found through the descriptor “public policies” in the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo) database in 2011, even though the result was “less powerful”, according to the author.

Another evidence of growth is registered in the area of education, through the creation of new undergraduate courses dedicated to public policies and management and/or public administration, since, until then, the teaching of public policies was more restricted to graduate studies. Currently, in Brazil, there are studies on this area and the implementation phase of public policies in all major areas of knowledge, according to the classification proposed by Capes for the promotion of academic and scientific activities. However, growth has occurred mainly in the Great Areas of Applied Social Sciences and Human Sciences (^{FARIA, 2012b}).

In the Great Area of ​​Applied Social Sciences, the following stand out: Public Administration: sub-area “Governmental Policy and Planning”; Economy: sub-area “Brazil's Fiscal Policy”; Urban and Regional Planning: sub-area “Urban Policy”; and Demographics: sub-areas of “Public Policy and Population”, “Population Policy”, “Population Redistribution Policies” and “Family Planning Policies”. In the Greater Area of ​​Human Sciences, the following stand out: Education: sub-areas of “Educational Policy” and “Educational Planning”; and Political Science: sub-area “Public Policies” (^{FARIA, 2012b}, p. 127-128). We agree with the author when he says that, given the diversity of areas of knowledge that develop studies of public policies in the country, it is necessary to understand their analysis not in terms of a specific area of ​​knowledge, but as studies of different fields that have the public policy as a common object.

Education, therefore, is among the areas of knowledge that have developed research on public policies, with emphasis on the sub-areas of Educational Policy and Educational Planning. This growth has already been demonstrated, for example, in studies that sought to understand theoretical, epistemological, and methodological aspects and the institutionalization of the thematic field of Educational Policy in Brazil, highlighting the role played by the National Association of Education Policy and Administration (Anpae), by the National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Education (Anped- Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação da Educação) and by the graduate courses in the production and dissemination of the research developed (^{AZEVEDO; AGUIAR, 2001}; ^{SANTOS; AZEVEDO, 2009}; ^{MAINARDES; STREMEL; SOARES, 2018}; ^{MAINARDES; STREMEL, 2019}; ^{STREMEL; MAINARDES, 2019}). Other works sought to understand the dialogue between the field of Educational Policy and Public Policies in their institutionalization (^{SILVA; SCAFF; JACOMINI, 2016}; ^{STREMEL, 2016}; ^{JACOMINI; SILVA, 2019}) and studies on the implementation of educational policies published in journals of highlighted in the field of Education (^{OLIVEIRA, 2019}).

However, recent empirical research developed in Education has approached the field of Public Policy through the mobilization of its theoretical-methodological and analytical framework to analyze the phase of implementation of educational policies and programs. However, its results point to the contribution that theoretical references and analytical models from the field of Public Policy offer to the development of research in the area of ​​Educational Policy, whether to understand, for example, defense coalitions (^{CARVALHO, 2019}), governance structures (^{TRIPODI; SOUSA, 2018}), institutional implementation arrangements (^{CASSIOLATO; GARCIA, 2014}; ^{NASCIMENTO COCK, 2018}; ^{RAMOS, 2020}) or even the daily implementation of policies from the point of view of the actions of their middle-level or street-level implementing agents (^{OLIVEIRA, 2017}; ^{MOTA, 2018}; ^{OLIVEIRA; PEIXOTO, 2019}; ^{MUYLAERT, 2019a}; ^{MUYLAERT, 2019b}; ^{BONAMINO et al., 2019}; ^{MELLO et al., 2020}; ^{RAMOS; MUYLAERT, 2020}). We also highlight the work of ^{Passone (2013}), which presents a critical review of the international literature on the implementation of educational policies as an important contribution to the field of Brazilian Educational Policy in this dialogue with the field of Public Policy.

These studies point to recent trends of rapprochement between the theoretical and academic field of Educational Policy and that of Public Policies, in the Brazilian context, by mobilizing theoretical references, concepts, and analytical models that have traditionally been used in the study of other social, infrastructure and social policies even those of an intersectoral nature in the field of Public Policies, to understand the specificities of educational policies and programs. The consolidated experience of implementation studies in the field of Public Policies offers theories, concepts, and analytical models that can be operated by researchers in the field of studies of Educational Policy, in a process of knowledge construction that also allows demonstrating the specifics of policies and programs education among social policies.

Based on this understanding, we pay attention to the importance of researchers in the field of Educational Policy to analyze the implementation phase of public policies and educational programs to understand how they have been interpreted, how they have reached their beneficiaries, students, and their families, teachers, managers or other education professionals in different regional and local contexts. The implementation studies also make it possible to analyze how the institutional arrangements of these policies and programs have been structured, their multiple levels and multiple layers, the governance structures involved, the public action instruments used, the federative coordination mechanisms, and the present state capacities in the arrangements, as well as the daily micro-interactions between frontline workers in the educational process - especially teachers and managers - and students in educational spaces, as well as their relationship with the production or maintenance of educational inequalities.

We pay attention to the relevance of review studies as a type of research that supports the challenge of knowing what has already been produced on a given topic (^{FERREIRA, 2002}). To achieve the objectives defined in the present review study, we venture to go beyond the limits of what has already been produced on educational policies and programs in the field of Educational Policy to know how these objects of research that are expensive for us are being analyzed by the thematic field of Public Policies, deepening the fundamental dialogue between Education and other fields of knowledge.

DATA AND ANALYSIS

First, we identified the names of all journals in Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Public and Business Administration, Accounting Sciences, and Tourism, which are in the Qualis A1 stratum, and then we selected only those that are national. After this selection, we accessed the journals' virtual pages and read the sections referring to their focuses and scopes to identify those most dedicated to the dissemination of research in the intended areas of knowledge: Political Science, Public Administration, and Sociology. As we can see in Table 1, we obtained a total number of 30 national journals, whose names are described in Annex 1.

According to the data consulted in the 2013-2016 Classification of the Sucupira Platform and organized in Table 1, there was no record of national A1 journals for Public and Business Administration, Accounting Sciences, and Tourism. In addition, two journals - Cadernos de Saúde Pública and Dados Revista das Ciências Sociais - are classified as A1 both in Political Science and International Relations and in Sociology, as can be seen in Annex 1. Therefore, the final number of selected journals was 28, counted by names (N1 journals = 28). We consider it important to highlight that many of the selected journals are also classified in the area of Public and Business Administration, Accounting Sciences, and Tourism in other strata of Qualis, such as A2 and B1.

To search for articles in selected journals, we used the Scientific Electronic Library Online (Scielo) database. As our objective was to identify studies that focused on the implementation phase of educational policies and programs, we considered this the fundamental keyword for searches in titles and abstracts. It is important to highlight that there was a significant difference in the results found when we searched for articles using the word “implementation” only in the titles and when we searched for abstracts in the title words “or”, which returned more results. Given this significant difference, we chose to search for the keyword “implementation” in titles or abstracts.

With the help of the Excel spreadsheet editor, we organized all the results in a first database with links to the articles found, separated by journals and areas of knowledge. After this organization, we refined our searches by reading the titles, abstracts, and keywords, seeking to find the expressions “educational policy”, “education”, “school”, “academic” or their variations in the plural. We obtained a total of 99 articles (N1 articles = 99) with the word “education” or its variations, as described in Table 2:

The data in Table 2 show us that, of all the selected articles that have the word “implementation” in the titles or abstracts, only 99 also contain the word “education” (or its variations), that is, 11.23% are studies that somehow encompass the educational dimension. Separating by areas, we can say that both have the same proportions, with a slight difference for more in Sociology.

Other information obtained in this first selection of articles also caught our attention, such as the result by journal. Among those classified in the Political Science area, the general result in descending order for articles with the word “implementation” was: Cadernos de Saúde Pública (169), Saúde e Sociedade (88), Revista de Administração Pública (73), Cadernos de Pesquisa Fundação Carlos Chagas (FCC) (37), Revista de Administração de Empresas (35), Revista de Sociologia e Política (21), Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional (10), Revista Brasileira de Estudos da População (9), Dados e Revista de Economia Política (7) e Opinião Pública (6). Os periódicos classificados na área de Sociologia apresentaram os seguintes resultados: Ciência e Saúde Coletiva (270), Educação & Sociedade (39), Sociologias (15), Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais (13), Cadernos CRH, História, Ciências e Saúde e Horizontes Antropológicos (12), Sociedade e Estado (11), Lua Nova (9), Novos Estudos CEBRAP (8), Cadernos Pagu (6), Cadernos Metrópole (5), Civitas (4), Tempo Social (2) e Sociologia e Antropologia (1). Maná and Revista de Antropologia (1). Maná and Revista de Antropologia did not present any results. We can observe that both Political Science and Sociology journals focused more specifically on the health theme concentrated most of the general results. This data corroborates the findings of previous research (^{FARIA, 2012b}; ^{LOTTA, 2015}, 2019; ^{NASCIMENTO COCK, 2018}), which have already highlighted that studies on the implementation of public policies in Brazil present a greater amount of empirical research on policies and public programs in the health sector.

Analyzing only the articles that presented the word “implementation + education”, the data by journals presented a different configuration from the general result. Among those classified in the Political Science area, we obtained the following results: Cadernos de Pesquisa FCC (33), Saúde e Sociedade (5), Cadernos de Saúde Pública (4), Revista de Administração Pública e Revista de Sociologia e Política (3), Dados, Revista de Administração de Empresas e Revista de Estudos da População (1). Opinião Pública, Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional and Revista de Economia Política did not present results. Sociology journals also presented a different configuration of the general result when we analyzed this same column of results Educação & Sociedade (39), Sociedade e Estado e Ciência e Saúde Coletiva (2), Caderno CRH, Cadernos Pagu, Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, Tempo Social e Sociologia e Antropologia (1), História, Ciências e Saúde, Horizontes Antropológicos, Lua Nova, Novos Estudos CEBRAP, Sociologias, Caderno Metrópole and Civitas did not show any results. It is worth noting that all articles selected from the Educação & Sociedade journal with the word “implementation” are related to an educational policy or program. Thus, the same 39 articles from the first refinement were maintained in the second.

Based on these results, we observed that the N1 articles are concentrated in only two journals: Educação & Sociedade (39) and Cadernos de Pesquisa FCC (33), totaling 72 articles. It is important to note that these two journals are also classified in the A1 stratum of Qualis in the area of Education in the same classification period (2013-2016). Therefore, this result may indicate a concentration of Education authors publishing articles on this topic in these journals. We will return to this discussion later when we deal with the origin of the authors and the theoretical and conceptual references present in the selected final articles. We can say that there are still few studies on the implementation of public policies that have an educational policy or program as their research object, at least those published in more qualified journals in the classic areas of the Public Policy field, as shown in Table 2.

When the word “implementation” is present in the title, keywords or abstract does not always present the results of empirical research on the implementation phase of a policy or program, whether educational or not. Therefore, after selecting the first 99 articles related in some way to education, we proceeded to the final consolidation of the database. For this, we read the abstracts and parts of the full texts of the articles to identify those that present empirical studies of the implementation phase of an educational policy or program.

We are not restricted to reading the abstracts for the final selection of articles, given the limitations in terms of the size and scope of the content to which they refer. The abstracts only tell a certain reality of production and do not present all the elements of the original text, which can result in incomplete analyzes in the review studies (^{FERREIRA, 2002}). Therefore, in addition to the abstracts, we also read the introduction, the theoretical and methodological foundations, and the conclusions of each article.

We adopted ^{Lotta's (2015}, p. 32) definition of what characterizes the implementation phase of public policies to select the final articles: “implementation refers to the moment when policies already formulated come into action and are put into practice.” Far from being a rational process of execution of what was established in the legislative and normative instruments by the formulators of a policy or program, according to the author, the implementation phase is a complex process that involves actors, interests, needs, power, resources, disputes, knowledge and ignorance. This process also involves small decisions and the discretion of implementers. Therefore, the implementation phase can be seen as the result of varying combinations of practices, values ​​, and interactions between implementers and the different actors involved in the process, such as beneficiaries, other policy professionals, and political actors in different contexts. Based on this understanding, we included in the final selection articles that present empirical data on the action phase of a specific or intersectoral educational policy or program.

As we present in the theoretical review of this article, in the field of Public Policy implementation there is a diversity of approaches and analytical models, especially those related to the third and fourth generations of studies. Therefore, we also seek to consider the diversity of perspectives presented by the authors in the selection of articles, including those focused on aspects of governance, institutional arrangements for implementation, and the interaction between the phases of educational policies and programs when associated with implementation, such as formulation/implementation and implementation/evaluation.

We organized the information about the texts by consolidating a final database in a spreadsheet, again with the help of Excel, in which each line (case) corresponded to an article. The highlighted information was: journal name, article title, year, author(s), keywords, author(s) area of knowledge, author(s) institution(s), region, group of research in which it operates, theme, theoretical references, main concepts, approach (quantitative or qualitative), methodological procedures, educational policy investigated, level of education, empirical field, and main results. We also used the Lattes Curriculum (Lattes Platform, CNPq) of the authors to clarify information that was not included in the texts. As a result, the final number of selected articles was 27 (N2 articles = 27), published in eight different journals (N2 journals = 8), as we can see in Table 3.

This result shows that less than half of the articles in the first selection present an analysis of the implementation phase of an educational policy or program, even though this term was present in their titles and/or abstracts. The Political Science area concentrated most of the selected articles, especially the journal Cadernos de Pesquisa FCC, with 10 (62.5%) of the 16 publications. The area of Sociology showed a strong concentration of publications in only one journal, Educação & Sociedade, with 9 (81.8%) of the 11 selected articles. Together, these journals concentrated on 19 of the 27 selected articles, that is, 70.3%. This result once again demonstrates the centrality of these two journals, which are also A1 in the area of ​​Education, in publications on the subject in question. Only eight (29.7%) articles were published in other journals that are directly linked to the field of Public Policy, especially the Revista de Administração Pública and the Revista de Sociologia e Política, with two publications each.

In table 4, we organize the final articles by years of publication. As demonstrated in previous research (^{NASCIMENTO COCK, 2018}), the milestone of growth in research on the implementation of public policies in the national context was the second decade of the 2000s, with social public programs and policies in the area of ​​health and social assistance the predominant research objects. In this research, the selected articles are concentrated between 2001 and 2020. Until 2000, only two (7.4%) publications were found. We found a greater concentration of publications of articles on the implementation of educational policies and programs from the second decade of the 2000s onwards, especially between 2016 and 2020. We can say that the consideration of the implementation of educational policies and programs as an object of research in The field of Public Policies follows the general growth movement of this field in Brazil. However, it is still a very recent theme, since the last five years concentrated 40.8% of the total publications.

We organize, in Chart 1, information related to the authors' areas of knowledge and their institutional origin. We seek to verify whether the selected articles come from the field of Public Policies or even from Education, due to the predominance of publications in two journals, as highlighted in the previous paragraphs.

According to the data presented in Table 1, we can observe, firstly, that authors from different fields of knowledge belonging to the Great Areas of Human Sciences, Applied Social Sciences, and Health are present, corroborating the results of the bibliometric study by ^{Faria (2012b}). This result also reinforces the multidisciplinary nature of studies on the implementation of Public Policies currently in Brazil (^{MARQUES; FARIA, 2013}).

Most of the authors (21) come from the areas of knowledge most used in the field of Public Policy, which include Political Science (5), Public Administration (4), Sociology (4), Social Sciences (4), Management of Public Policies (3) and Social Policy (1). Then, there are researchers from Education (17) and Health (9), including Nutrition (3), Public Health (2), Health Sciences (1), Biomedical Engineering (1), Nursing (1), and Food Science (1).

Regarding the institutions of origin, we can say that they are diverse; however, most of them are concentrated in the Southeast region, followed by the South and Northeast regions. Among Education researchers, the predominant home institutions are Unicamp and UFMG. USP and UFABC stand out among researchers in the field of Public Policy. The Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT), the Anísio Teixeira Educational Research Institute (Inep- Instituto de Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira) and the Municipal Health Foundation of Niterói (Fundação Municipal de Saúde de Niterói-RJ) are government institutions that are represented in this selection.

Separating this result by journals, we observed that the articles by authors in the area of Education are concentrated in the journals Cadernos de Pesquisa FCC and Educação & Sociedade, that is, in journals that are A1 in their area of origin. In the same way, authors in the areas of health knowledge are concentrated in the journals Cadernos de Saúde Pública and Ciência e Saúde Coletiva. The authors of the traditional areas of knowledge of Public Policies, although they are concentrated in the respective journals, are also published in the two journals most related to the area of Education.

Based on these results, we can say that there is a movement of approximation between the traditional areas of studies on the implementation of Public Policies and the area of Education, demonstrated in the interest of researchers in the field of Public Policies in the analysis of educational policies and programs and in publishing in journals that are A1 also in Education. Regarding Education researchers, who are concentrated in journals in their area, it remains to be seen whether the approaches, research strategies, and analytical models used in their research demonstrate this approximation.

Seeking to answer the question about the theoretical, conceptual, and analytical approaches used by the researchers in these investigations, in Charts 2 and 3, we organize the articles selected from the themes and educational policy or program analyzed and the theoretical-conceptual affiliation and strategies of investigation used by the authors, separating them by journals to obtain a mapping of this production and compare it with the authors' areas of knowledge, already presented in Table 1. For this stage, we built an interpretation of the texts trying to identify what type of analysis the authors have developed. In some texts, the authors were more explicit in the objectives of the analysis and the theoretical and conceptual references and analytical models used. Other authors, on the other hand, constructed the texts in such a way that this information appears indirectly, which required more time to read the complete texts and build an interpretation.

In the theme/policy or educational program column, we present the educational policies or programs studied. To cover as much as possible the theoretical-methodological-analytical diversity present in the set of texts, we admit four possibilities for approaching the implementation phase of educational policies and programs, according to our interpretation of the analysis carried out by the authors: 1) implementation; 2) the institutional arrangement of implementation; 3) the association between formulation and implementation, and 4) the association between implementation and evaluation. These possibilities were admitted following the diversity of approaches to implementation studies in the field of Public Policies in their generations of studies, as discussed above. The association of phases follows the same reasoning. The consideration of different ways of approaching the implementation of educational policies and programs is also justified by the diversity of the authors' areas of knowledge. As shown in Chart 1, the selection of articles included researchers from fields of knowledge belonging to the Human Sciences, Applied Social Sciences, and Health, which have different research development methods. In the theoretical-conceptual affiliation and research strategy column, we organize the main information from the articles related to the predominant theoretical-conceptual linkage, observed in the respective references, and to the research strategies and methodology.

Based on the information in Charts 2 and 3, firstly, we can say that the educational programs and public policies studied were diverse in terms of themes, levels of education, and administrative categories, including some that are intersectoral and have education as one of its pillars, such as the Bolsa Escola and Bolsa Alimentação cash transfer programs and the NutriSUS strategy for nutritional supplementation. We can say that, in addition to the diversity of educational policies and programs, there is also a wide spectrum of thematic coverage and research cuts. Regarding the methodology, qualitative studies that are used as research techniques predominate document analysis, bibliographic research, critical literature reviews, observations, and interviews. The use of secondary data was also present in most of the research. In some of them, data production occurred through the use of mixed methods in quantitative-qualitative studies.

Analyzing the theoretical-conceptual affiliations predominant in the literature used by the authors, we can observe that, of the total of 55 records, 23 (42.8%) are directly linked to the field of Public Policies, including federalism, public management, governance, and state reform. In these researches, analytical models specific to the area were mobilized, including synthesis models, and others more related to the study of public health policies for the analysis of intersectoral programs (Bolsa Escola, Bolsa Alimentação, and NutriSUS). This theoretical link is observed mostly in articles published in typical field journals of Public Policy, in which authors who originate from this field predominate.

However, most of the records, a total of 32 (58.2%), indicate that the authors mobilized traditional theoretical-conceptual references in the area of Education, with a predominance of those linked to teacher training, professionalization and teaching work, higher education, educational assessment, early childhood education and references related to the Sociology of Education. In these cases, the studies developed on educational policies and programs had as their interpretation strategy, predominantly, the critical analysis of documentary data and bibliographic material mobilized. Most of these studies also do not present an identifiable analytical model. Furthermore, the implementation of educational programs and policies was studied predominantly based on the formulators' documents and based only on the policy objectives, which approximates the top-down perspective. Other authors have approached the analysis of the institutional arrangements of these policies, and few studies have sought to analyze the day-to-day implementation. These studies also tend to incorporate aspects of formulation and evaluation in their critical analyses.

Comparing charts 1, 2, and 3, we can say that these differences in the theoretical-conceptual affiliation of the research can be associated with the areas of knowledge of the origin of the researchers. In the articles selected from journals that are also A1 in Education - Cadernos de Pesquisa FCC and Educação & Sociedade -, authors from the area of Education predominate. In these journals, research on the implementation of educational policies and programs is more detached from the references in the field of Public Policy. However, although numerically small, in some of the articles by the authors of Education there is an interface with the field of Public Policies.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Within the limits established for this review study, we found important results that give us an overview of the movement in the field of Public Policies in considering educational policies and programs as objects of research. The field of Public Policies, as well as the sub-area of ​​implementation, is considered multidisciplinary, given the diversity of areas of knowledge that have contributed to its development under different approaches and analytical models both in the international and national context, and Education is one of them. However, Political Science, Public Administration, and Sociology are the pioneering fields. Studies on the implementation phase of public policies began to be published in the 1970s in the United States, interested in understanding the practices of policies already formulated, also understood as governments in action, and since then, they have presented four generations of studies. In Brazil, studies on the implementation of public policies showed significant growth, especially in the second decade of the 2000s, and health and social assistance policies have constituted most of the research objects in the field.

The results of this research showed that among the articles found that present the word “implementation” in their titles or abstracts, those that also present the word “education” or its variations constitute 11.23% of the total. Among the 27 final articles selected, 40.8% of them were published between 2016 and 2020, demonstrating a very recent growth. There are a variety of themes, administrative categories, and teaching levels of the educational policies and programs studied, in addition to those that are intersectoral with the health area. There is also variety in the research cuts and approaches. Among the publications, we observed the centrality of two journals that are A1 both for Political Science and Sociology and for Education in the dissemination of these researches: Cadernos de Pesquisa FCC and Educação & Sociedade.

Based on these data, we can point out two trends in the development of these researches. On the one hand, studies on the implementation of educational policies and programs produced by researchers in the field of Public Policy from theoretical-conceptual frameworks and analytical models in this field, and mainly based on the approaches and themes of the fourth generation of implementation studies, such as governance, public management, and federalism. Some articles produced by Education researchers also presented this profile, through dialogue with the field of Public Policies. This group of articles corresponded to 42.8% of the results found. On the other hand, we have a majority of selected articles, 58.2%, in which the researches were developed by researchers predominantly from Education from theoretical-conceptual references distant from the models of analysis of public policy implementation and dialogue with this field.

From these results, we can say that the phase of implementation of educational policies and programs has grown among the research in the thematic field of Public Policies in Brazil, although it is still a small growth compared to other social policies. In this sense, the deepening of this research in more comprehensive review studies of the “state of the art” type, including other sectors of publications, should be developed to produce a more comprehensive panorama of the growth of this theme in the field of Public Policies in Brazil. We emphasize the contribution made by Education researchers who, in the Brazilian context, have developed studies on the constitution of the theoretical and academic field of Educational Policy, as well as empirical research on the implementation phase of educational policies and programs in dialogue with the field of Policies Public, in theses, dissertations, annals of academic-scientific events and articles in journals in the field of Education, as already mentioned in this article.

Especially in the first two decades of the 2000s, there was an increase in the number of educational policies and programs formulated in Brazil, most of them of federal origin with institutional arrangements for implementation in regimes of collaboration with subnational entities. This growth may be the reason for the recent interest of researchers in the thematic field of Public Policies in taking them as an object of study. We also consider the recent struggle of Education for the constitution of a National System - given the provisions of the I and II National Education Plan (PNE- Plano Nacional da Educação), the Education Development Plan (PDE- Plano de Desenvolvimento da Educação) and taking as an example the Unified Health System (SUS- Sistema Único de Saúde) and the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS- Sistema Único de Assistência Social) - have brought greater social and academic visibility to public education policies and programs and the search for more defined institutional arrangements in terms of governance, instruments and specific financing.

Although the field of Educational Policy organically deals with educational policies and programs as objects of research, we point to the potential for substantial gains for us, Education researchers, in the approximation and greater theoretical-methodological dialogue and, why not, to a certain epistemological point, with the thematic field of Public Policies. This potential has even been defended by other Education researchers (^{SILVA; SCAFF; JACOMINI, 2016}; ^{STREMEL, 2016}; ^{MAINARDES; STREMEL; SOARES, 2018}; ^{JACOMINI; SILVA, 2019}; ^{MAINARDES; STREMEL, 2019}) when they highlight, among other aspects, weaknesses that still exist in the analyzes developed and in the training of researchers in the field of Educational Policy. In addition, the discussion and analysis of the results of research produced in the thematic field of Public Policies on educational policies, through a view that starts from Education and that is attentive to the objectives and its substantive contents, can promote analytical gains favorable to the growth of the field of Educational Policy and point out ways for more direct interventions in disputes around the definition of political agendas, in the formulation, implementation and even in the evaluation of educational policies and programs.