School inspections have become an important instrument of quality assurance and quality development in many European countries. So far, the focus of empirical research on school inspections has been on the acceptance of the procedure among the school-internal actors, its influence for internal quality development and its effects on student…

Since the late 1990s, it has been the practice in Germany that decisions in educational policy and educational administration should primarily be subject to evidence in terms of reliable empirical data. However, little research has been conducted so far as to the question of how actors in charge receive and process the existing data, and how they…