Northern exploring: A case study of non -Native Alaskan education policymakers' social construction of Alaska Natives as target populations

In theory, policymakers make decisions using empirical research and information that is accurate. They use analytic tools that are appropriate to the issue under study and apply judgments based on the best interests of the policy target. This, however, is an overly rational view of the policy process. In reality, policymakers, like all people, view the world through lenses and frames that reflect their understandings and meanings about the world and influence their policy actions and decisions. In the U.S., these filters include perceptions of race and ethnicity.;Ideas about the meaning of race in the U.S., and how those meanings interact with policymaking, have been relatively unexplored in the field of education policy analysis. Recognizing this gap, I set out to understand how race interacts with education policymaking. By merging sociological theories on the social construction of race with the political science theory arguing that policy targets are socially constructed, I posited that it was possible to uncover how perceptions about race influence educational policymaking in a profound way. In a case study of eleven legislators on the Health, Education and Social Services Committees of the Alaska State Legislature I asked: (1) How do education policymakers construct their target populations? Specifically, what are Alaskan education policymakers' constructions of Alaska Natives as a target population? (2) How do social constructions of race and ethnicity underlie these constructions? Specifically, what are Alaskan education policymakers' constructions of Alaska Natives as racial or ethnic groups? Are these constructions part of how they define Natives as policy targets? And, (3) Are these constructions related to decision-making? Can this be identified? Specifically, do policymakers with different constructions make different decisions?;During my analysis, the legislators' social constructions of Alaska Natives became discernable. I found that their social constructions of target populations were related to the policy positions they took, and that racial attitudes had an impact. Political ideology, which is fundamentally racialized according to critical race theory and the social construction of race, provides the link for understanding how the social construction of race impacts policymakers' social constructions of their target populations.