Existing research on community education policy in China predominantly adopts a descriptive approach to policy text analysis or focuses on policy instrument allocation, failing to adequately reveal the dialectical interaction between institutional constraints and discursive practices, and leaving unaddressed the deep mechanism of 'ecological reconstruction' in policy evolution. This study constructs a dual analytical framework of 'institutional constraints–discursive practices,' integrating Scott's three-pillar model of institutions and Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, to systematically examine the evolutionary logic of China's community education policy based on twenty-one national-level policy documents. The findings reveal three stages of evolution: the institutional establishment period, characterized by regulative dominance and passive acceptance practices; the institutional expansion period, marked by the strengthening of normative constraints and negotiated practices; and the institutional deepening period, featuring the construction of cultural-cognitive constraints and participatory practices. The interaction between institutional constraints and discursive practices exhibits a dialectical logic of 'constraint–negotiation–reconstruction,' with four groups of structural tensions constituting the endogenous driver of ecological reconstruction. This study provides a theoretical tool for moving beyond the 'institution–discourse' dualism and offers a Chinese case for international research on policy discourse and implementation.

Xiaoyu Huang, Panjing Feng. From Institutional Constraints to Discursive Practices: Paradigm Evolution and Ecological Reconstruction of Community Education Policy in China. Frontiers in Educational Research (2026), Vol. 9, Issue 6: 89-96. https://doi.org/10.25236/FER.2026.090612.

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