The policy cycle approach in Brazilian Postgraduate Programs: a map of theses and dissertations

This article is based on an analysis of documents from the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD). We searched theses and dissertations presented from 2000 to 2017, at Brazilian graduate programs, that investigated public policies and elaborated their respective analyzes through the policy cycle approach, authored by Stephen Ball and Richard Bowe et al. It briefly describes this approach and examines theses and dissertations, identifying the public policies and the research questions, as well as the type, institutional affiliation and date of the work - Dissertation or Thesis, programme and institution in which it was produced, location and year. We cataloged 78 PhD Theses and 92 MPhil Dissertations which evidenced the meaningful use of policy cycle approach in Brazilian Postgraduate Programmes. The results showed that all the academic production comes from universities, 74.1% from public and 25.9% from private institutions, predominantly of the south and southeast regions of the country, and within them from the state of Rio Grande do Sul (at UFRGS) and Rio de Janeiro (at UERJ)