Session Information
23 SES 05 C, New Modes of Governing HE and Their Effects
Paper Session
Contribution
Several efforts and initiative have been taken in order to strengthen the European dimension in education during the last decades. For higher education, and in close connection with the European Union, the so called Bologna process spurred the development of a number of organizations aimed at facilitating student, teacher and research mobility, examples being the European Higher Education Area, the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), and the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education.
As in education in general, evaluative activities have expanded in higher education into both internal and external systems of evaluation and quality assurance, and are now an important part of governing, policy-making and educational practice (see e.g. Ozga, Dahler-Larsen, Segerholm & Simola 2010; Westerheijden, Stensaker & Rosa 2007). ENQA, in cooperation with other European organizations for higher education, has promoted the development of national and local/internal quality assurance systems for higher education in Europe since the beginning of the millennium, and has recently revised the standards and guidelines that have to be followed in order to qualify for membership (ENQA 2015).
In Sweden, national requirements for higher education institutions (hereafter called universities) to install and maintain internal quality assurance work have been in place for around 25 years. During this period, a number of different national systems have existed for evaluating quality in higher education (Segerholm, Rönnberg, Lindgren, Hult & Olofsson 2014). However, the latest national system was not up to the standards of ENQA, and in 2014 Sweden was no longer accepted as a full member. Simultaneously, heavy criticism from academics and students of the strictly outcomes-oriented national system, led the government to end it in 2014 (Segerholm & Hult 2015). In March 2015, the government sent out a memorandum (Regeringskansliet, 2015) for referral to universities, student and labour unions, giving the universities a frame of what QA reform to expect, should the parliament approve it. That is, in what can be labelled as a national reform interval, a new national QA system was being planned and prepared but the final design is yet to be decided.
The aim of this study is to illuminate policy processes and practices at universities - the enactment of a national policy interval concerning QA in higher education in Sweden.
The research questions are:
-What policy processes and practices (if any) are there at the universities in order to prepare for the QA reform/a new national QA system?
- How can such processes be understood from the perspective of education governing?
We draw on a conception of governing as processes where several means are applied and used to achieve certain ends (policy). One example of such means is quality assurance systems (Ozga et al. 2010). But governing is simultaneously also processes where several instances and actors are involved in interpreting, negotiating, translating, and enacting policy, i.e. actual work or ‘doing’ policy (Ball, Maguire & Braun 2012; Clarke 2015). Governing may be understood as a field ‘organised around projects’ (Clarke 2015, 13), and ‘projects, policies, schemes, strategies do not just come true by virtue of being announced (ibid.). The stress on the actual work of governing and ‘doing’ policy is captured in the concept ‘enactment’, which we find useful for this study. ‘Enactments are always more than just implementation, they bring together contextual, historic and psychosocial dynamics into a relation with texts and imperatives to produce action and activities that are policy’ (Ball et al. 2012, 71).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Ball, S. J., Maguire, M. & Braun, A. (2012). How Schools Do Policy. Policy enactments in secondary schools. London: Routledge. Clarke, J. (2015). Inspections: governing at a distance. In Grek, S. & Lindgren, J. (Eds.), Governing by Inspection. London: Routledge, pp 11-26. ENQA (2015). Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Brussels, Belgium. Available at: http://www.enqa.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ESG_2015.pdf Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen, P., Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (Eds.) (2010). Fabricating Quality in Education. Data and Governance in Europe. London and New York: Routledge. Regeringskansliet (2015). Promemoria 2015-03-18, U2015/1626/UH. Stockholm: Regeringskansliet. Segerholm, C., Rönnberg, L., Lindgren, J., Hult, A. & Olofsson, A. (2014). Changing evaluation frameworks– changing expectations? The case of Swedish higher Education. Paper presented at the European Conference for Educational Research, Network 23, Symposium Governing by Expectations: School Inspection and Evaluation across Europe and Beyond, Part 1, Porto, 2-5 September, 2014. Segerholm, C. & Hult, A. (2015). Manoeuvring the European Quality Landscape: the significance of ENQA policy in governing Swedish higher education. Paper presented at the European Conference for Educational Research, Network 23, Budapest 8-11 September, 2015. Stake, R. E. (2006). Multiple Case Study Analysis. New York, London: The Guilford Press. Westerheijden, D. F., Stensaker, B. & Rosa, M. J. (Eds.) (2007). Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Trends in Regulation, Translation and Transformation. Dordrecht: Springer.
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