Praxis und Verhältnis interner und externer Evaluation im Schulsystem im internationalen Vergleich

The overview article deals with the interaction of internal and external evaluation within the current paradigm of school governance. The actual practice of both approaches and the current state of research about the effects on school development is described. Both evaluation approaches are less focused on aspects of school output such as student performance, and more on school processes such as school management or the quality of teaching. External evaluation in the form of school inspection mainly fulfills the function of accountability and the identification of weak schools. Internal evaluation is probably a better way to achieve school development. However, the necessary competence to use internal evaluation as a systematic process of quality management for which each individual school takes responsibility is currently underdeveloped. Considerations about the future relationship between internal and external evaluation focus on using external evaluation as a kind of “meta-evaluation”. But before external evaluation can build on results of internal evaluation in this way, a broad capacity building in schools and a different understanding of the role of inspectors are necessary.     

Learning from and Reacting to School Inspection – Two Swedish Case Narratives

Throughout Europe, school inspection has become a visible means of governing education. This education and inspection policy is mediated, brokered, interpreted, and learned through networked activities where the global/European meet the national/local, giving national and local “uptake” a variety of characteristics. We explore the local features of this “uptake” as processes of learning in the interaction between schools and inspectors in Sweden. Drawing theoretically on Jacobsson’s notion of governing as increasingly done through meditative activities and on Leontiev’s activity theory, we suggest that school actors learn compliance through diverse emotions provoked by inspection processes in different local settings. Based on observations of inspections, interviews with teachers, head teachers and inspectors, documents, reports, and decisions, we portray how governing education is done through inspection processes in two Swedish schools. The case narratives underscore the importance of local context in these governing and learning processes.     

“Governing by templates” through new modes of school inspection in Norway

To date, few observational studies have addressed Scandinavian school inspectors in the field, specifically how inspectors use templates to monitor the formative assessment routines of schools and local school authorities. This paper investigates how the current inspection handbook is being adopted and enacted on the municipal level and the school level in Norwegian compulsory schools. Specifically, this study illuminates through observation two empirical examples of how one of the 17 County Governors’ Offices, as part of a larger study, conducted regular, state school inspection. Conceptually, the paper focuses on how inspection guides and steers though use of fixed templates. Analysis shows that inspectors and schools under scrutiny are struggling in combining the traditional focus on legal compliance with a more performative emphasis on formative assessment of students. In addition, the examples given highlight how combining field observation and the concept of “governing by templates” contributes to school inspection studies, in a dynamic policy context undergoing substantial change.     

Perilous times: an oral history of teachers’ experience with school inspection in the 1930s

School inspectors and school inspection were integral features of the elementary public school system in Ontario from the 1840s until the practice was abandoned in 1967. From its earliest beginnings and subsequent development, school inspection and school inspectors were established as an important institution of the educational state. By regulation every teacher in the province could expect a twice-annual unannounced visit from a state-appointed male school inspector – more frequently if difficulties arose. This study explores teachers’ experiences of school inspection and inspectors during the 1930s by drawing on the oral history accounts of 17 women and four men who taught elementary school in various regions of the province.     

Evaluating the quality of self-evaluations: The (mis)match between internal and external meta-evaluation

This article focuses on school self-evaluations (SSE). It addresses whether SSE meets quality indicators and whether differences can be found between the quality judgments of school principals and inspectors. Data stem from two complementary data collections: population data of school inspections and a survey of a representative sample of school principals. The results show that principals and the inspectorate declare themselves on average to be satisfied with the quality of the self evaluations. However, their judgments do not match. This raises questions about the validity and reliability of the evaluation by principals and the inspectorate. The article deals with the limitations of self-reporting by principals and of the inspectorate's framework and methodology in evaluating the quality of school self evaluations.     

Examining school inspectors and education directors within the organisation of school inspection policy: perceptions and views

State school inspection creates expectations in the interface between transnational ideas and national policy contexts. This article investigates how inspectors and education directors understand and reformulate their regulatory roles in relation to the new framework for school inspection policy in Norway. Using data from the LEX-EL project, interviews with 3 educational directors and 6 school inspectors in 3 County Governors' Offices were analyzed. The article draws on organizational theory, within the concept of institutionalization. Findings suggest inspectors function as change agents, channeled through inter- and intra-institutional cooperation. Additionally directors are more tightly coupled to their counterparts in other counties. Moreover, the role of school inspectors is moving from a compliancy-based focus to increased emphasis on self-evaluation and quality assessment.     

Back to Square One: The “Re‐depoliticizing’ of Civic Education in Hong Kong

This article argues that the development of civic education in Hong Kong can be divided into three phases chronologically: (1) before 1984: “depoliticization” by the state and the school; (2) 1984‐1997: “politicization” of the intended curriculum; and (3) 1997 onwards: “re‐depoliticization” of civic education and official confirmation of nationalistic education. In general, for phases one and two, the development is described as moving from de‐politicization to politicization, in response to the political development of Hong Kong from a British colony towards the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of People's Republic of China. The article continues by exploring the third phase in detail with reference to the official document: Learning to Learn: Life‐long Learning and Whole‐person Development and the official speeches of the Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa. A phenomenon of re‐depoliticization of civic education is identified, together with a strong upheaval of nationalistic education. This leads civic education “back to square one"—"re‐depoliticized”. The article concludes by highlighting that the development of civic education in Hong Kong is a typical example of how civic education reflects the political context of the society.     

Measure for Measure,or Inspecting the Inspectors

This article considers the impact of an Ofsted inspection on an inner-city school. It focuses on the methodology of the inspection, on the data which the inspectors gather and the data which are omitted from their account of a school. It suggests that there are serious flaws in the model of inspectors as objective and impartial chroniclers.     

A match between university professors and school inspectors? Innovation and stagnation in the physical education curriculum

During the 1960s and 1970s, “traditional” secondary educational systems in various Western European countries made way for comprehensive education curricula. In contrast to the reforms within the “intellectual” subjects, the field of physical education (PE) remained largely underexposed in research. This study focuses on PE reform in Belgium, the first country in the world (apart from Sweden itself) to introduce, in 1908, so-called “Swedish gymnastics” in all levels of state public education and, in 1968, the last country apart from Portugal to abandon it. The question arises as to who was responsible for Swedish gymnastics being applied for so long and, ultimately, how and by whom reform was implemented. The results show that the power of the past and the positions of “Swedists” in the Government Inspectorate, universities and professional associations, perpetuated the domination of Swedish gymnastics in Belgian education. The final “dynamisation” of the subject of PE around 1968 did not come about through “revolution” but a “natural” generational transition, whereby a new guard of young government inspectors with a drive for reform took over from their Swedish-minded predecessors. The educational climate prevailing in Belgium at the end of the 1960s facilitated this reform. The state university PE institutes lost their position as pedagogical profile keepers during this process of transformation, while the hidden curriculum of the (Catholic) university institute in Leuven implicitly shaped the educational climate. Further comparative international research into the (changed) profile, position and power of school inspectors in educational reform appears necessary.     

History,nation and school inspections: the introduction of citizenship education in elementary schools in late nineteenth-century Sweden

It was in the late nineteenth century that teaching in Sweden’s elementary schools began its transformation from a religious education to a broader, national citizenship education that included history and geography. International research has pointed to a connection between the introduction of school inspections and the reform of public education during this period. In Sweden, however, the practice of inspection has not been explored at any length. This article therefore considers the part played by school inspections in the implementation of a more extensive curriculum in Swedish elementary schools in the period 1860–1900, with a particular focus on the subject of history, using a study of inspection reports from the diocese of Uppsala. It is argued that school inspectors had a key role in initiating reform at the local level, but also that the move towards broader-based citizenship education was not a simple, straightforward process.     

The place of emotions while inspecting schools: reflections of two Ofsted inspectors

This article investigates the role of emotions of inspectors while inspecting schools as reported by inspectors themselves within an education context of increased accountability that arguably privileges rationality over emotions. The study is built on an emotion management framework that regards emotions not only as unavoidably natural and intimately linked to ‘rational’ judgements that people make, but also that such judgements are social constructions used to regulate expression of emotions. In-depth interview data of one retired and another, semi-retired Office for Standards in Education, inspectors were thematically analysed to assess the extent to which their emotions formed part of school inspections. In the absence of an officially sanctioned narrative of inspectors’ emotions during inspections, two kinds of self-prescribed emotions emerged as key findings: emotions for accountability, to which inspectors gave expression, and emotions for improvement, that they suppressed. For an inspection body that needs to ensure both accountability and improvement of schools to justify its viability, these research claims open up a new area of discussion that should lead to a review of inspection body’s stance on emotions and individual inspectors’ self-reflections on the moral as well as professional obligation to pursue both emotions for accountability and improvement.     

Looking for a balance between internal and external evaluation of school quality: evaluation of the SVI model

This article describes the results of a study into the utility of the SVI model, a model in which internal and external evaluation are balanced. The model consists of three phases: school self‐evaluation, visitation and inspection. Under the guidance of school consultants, 27 Dutch primary schools have built up two years of experience with the SVI model. The results show that the school leaders developed a positive attitude towards school self‐evaluation and visitation. They found that both self‐evaluation and visitation have improved their insight into the quality of the school. However, a content analysis of the school self‐evaluation reports shows that the school self‐evaluations are often of low quality. For example, it appeared that most of the self‐evaluation reports do not provide answers to questions the schools have formulated at the beginning of the self‐evaluation. Moreover, the teams of critical friends and the inspectors concluded that the school self‐evaluations do have many shortcomings. Based on these results, we conclude that school self‐evaluation is a very difficult task for most schools. It is therefore crucial that schools receive external support and that they build up experience with school self‐evaluations over a period of years.     

The Myth of “Migrants as Problems”: Public School in Neoliberal Times and the Construction and Contestation of “Migrant” Identity

This article reports the findings of a sociolinguistic ethnographic inquiry into the constructions of internal rural-to-urban migrant students by one urban public school in China, and how these students positioned themselves to these constructions against the background of the school’s neoliberal transformation. This inquiry finds that, due to the case school’s pursuit of exam-performance-based academic excellence, its official documents discursively constructed migrant students as being of “low quality,” and a problem for and potential danger to the school. However, the daily positioning practices of school administrators, teachers, and these students did not just reproduce this uniformly negative discursive construction; rather, they contested it in a complex and contradictory manner. This article offers further evidence showing the complexity of identity constructions in late modern urban schools, wherein professionals and students are all involved in a marketized education context that brings crises and dilemmas to institutions.     

Student Identities and/in Schooling: Subjection and adolescent performativity

This article uses a fictionalized scenario to examine how three students at an “ordinary” suburban high school in Canada negotiate the context-specific conditions, discourses, and practices that make schools important sites of identity formation. It argues that drawing from Foucault's ideas on the “subjection” of individuals, as well as from the field of performance studies, provides a fresh perspective to redress the potential mismatches between official multicultural education discourses and the lived schooling realities of students. In the process, it demonstrates how subjection and adolescent performativity can be useful analytics through which to understand student identities and/in schooling. The article concludes with some implications for shifts in policy, pedagogy, and practice to help schools engage with student diversity.     

From restoration to transitions: delineating the reforms of education inspection in China

This article examines the reforms of basic education inspection in China since 1977, which is accomplished by drawing from a historical institutionalism approach. The empirical analysis is based on policy documents and laws and is supplemented with interview materials. Throughout this work, we have identified three distinct periods: the restoration stage from 1977 until the 1990s, the formalization stage from the 1990s until 2007, and the transition stage from 2007 onwards. The changes of education inspections indicate there is a perceptible path dependency, especially in the change from the first stage to the second one, where the expansion of education inspections was to consolidate the selected path by enhancing its jurisdictive power and promoting its disposition in the educational system. Reforming these inspections to some extent proves the historical stance of “positive feedback” as coined by Pierson (2004) for the growing stage of an organization, but in fact, the expansion of the system appears also to be significantly more problematic or complex than a linear development that is based on positive feedback. From the transition stage, interaction with global players is increasing, with implications for the development of the school inspection system. The finding shows that by 2015, the collaboration with global players influenced the development of Jiance system—a large-scale assessment of students’ academic achievement at grade four and eight—which the inspection sector managed to incorporate into itself. The article argues that this decision to extend the spectrum of education inspection to assessment practices reflects the aspiration of the inspection authorities to reinforce the capacities to survive and thrive in the changing local and global environments of educational quality assurance and evaluation.     

Friendship and the Public Stage: Revisiting Hannah Arendt's Resistance to “Political Education”

Hannah Arendt's essays about the 1957 crisis over efforts of a group of youth, the “Little Rock Nine,” to desegregate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, reveal a tension in her vision of the “public.” In this article Aaron Schutz and Marie Sandy look closely at the experiences of the youth desegregating the school, especially those of Elizabeth Eckford, drawing upon them to trace a continuum of forms of public engagement in Arendt's work. This ranges from arenas of “deliberative friendship,” where unique individuals collaborate on common efforts, to a more conflictual “public stage,” where groups act in solidarity to change aspects of the public world. While Arendt famously asserted in her essay “The Crisis in Education” that political capacities should not be taught in schools, it makes more sense to see this argument as focused on what she sometimes called the conflictual “public stage,” reflecting the experience of the Little Rock Nine. In contrast, Schutz and Sandy argue that Arendt's own work implies that “deliberative friendship,” as described in her essay “Philosophy and Politics” and elsewhere, should be part of everyday practices in classrooms and schools.     

Understanding the influence of teachers’ cognitive and affective responses upon school inspection feedback acceptance

Despite the developmental perspective of school inspections, teachers in inspected schools are not always willing to accept the school inspection’s feedback for their further improvement of teaching and learning processes. Literature distinguishes several aspects of feedback that stimulate or hinder the acceptance of feedback, such as recipient’s cognitive and affective responses to feedback. This study investigates teachers’ cognitive and affective responses to school inspection feedback in relation to feedback acceptance. It draws on data from 21 in-depth interviews with teachers in eight primary schools. We found that positive perceptions of the inspectors’ credibility enhance teachers’ feedback acceptance. This is also the case for positive, clear feedback. Under these circumstances, emotions of joy, happiness and relief are expressed. Conversely, respondents tend to reject feedback when inspectors are perceived to be inadequately informed, arrogant or disrespectful. When negative feedback is rated as unfair, negative emotions, such as anger and sadness, interfere with feedback acceptance. In essence, we conclude that both feedback content and feedback source characteristics are decisive in the acceptance of process. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest there is a need to build on supportive relationships between teachers and school inspectors.     

The performative shift: middle leadership ‘in the line of fire’

ABSTRACT

State school inspection in Norway is currently changing with targeted schools becoming subject to more complex methods of inquiry. Not only school principals but middle leaders are exposed to this shifting system, for the latter are in the frontline of their schools’ everyday practices. The article examines how state school inspection is used as means of controlling legal compliance, as well as evaluating the formative assessment routines and practices of schools, middle leaders, and individual teachers. Drawing on the concepts of accountability and performativity, field observations of inspectors interrogating department heads in primary education are analysed. The empirical study demonstrates how use of standardised rubrics steer the inspection process in schools, aiming more towards completing on task, rather than supporting middle leaders in their struggle to comply with legal standards. During such interrogation, the department heads comply with the system, and are at the same time open towards the inspectors’ questioning concerning the school’s lack of fully implemented routines.     

对发展西南温泉休闲旅游的思考

西南温泉休闲旅游开发应注重将本地区特色资源——丰富的地热资源、自然生态的奇特性及民族文化资源的丰富性整合起来,由于各温泉地所处的行政位置关系,在开发中面临重复建设的问题,要采取温泉旅游区域管理委员会这样一种管理机构模式进行开发,该管委会应该有一定数量的群众代表,表决机制为一票否决制;同时要运用“前台、帷幕、后台”模式进行开发,“前台”作为温泉休闲旅游的综合开发空间,“后台”为奇特自然资源、民族文化资源,而“帷幕”是前台后台的过渡。