In an era of test-based accountability, school inspections can offer a more nuanced understanding of why schools fail. Yet, we have limited knowledge of how inspectors arrive at their decisions on school quality. Analyzing inspectors' decision-making can reveal the underlying views regarding school accountability and open opportunities for school…

Low response rate and quality are common challenges when administrating student evaluations of teaching (SETs). This study aimed to increase SET response rate and quality by investigating a widely recommended strategy to overcome an underlying reason for students' non-responsiveness, namely the lack of transparency about SET processes. In Study 1,…

Universities, and business schools specifically, are experiencing a transformation of their societal mission. Similar to the STEM fields, business schools are nested in global competitive environments facing multiple competing pressures, one being the need to demonstrate their social impact (SI). While business schools signal their commitment to…

Across OECD countries, the increasing demand for evidence-based policy making has further led governments to design policies jointly with clear measurable objectives, and to define relevant indicators to monitor their achievement. This paper discusses the importance of such indicators in supporting the implementation of education policies.…

The purpose of this article is to describe the effects of university governance on campus management based on the examples of the Netherlands and Poland. The study connected theory on campus management with a concept of five dimensions of university governance (autonomy, management, participation, accountability and transparency) into an…

Standardised tests play an important role in early childhood (EC) education in many countries. Although teachers' conceptions largely determine whether and how these instruments are used, research on this topic is scarce. As a result, factors that influence conceptions of standardised testing have remained largely unexplored. To examine teachers'…

European institutions of higher education have increasingly sought to improve the accountability and transparency of teaching and research with formal procedures and performance criteria. In a longitudinal analysis conducted in faculties of social sciences and economics at universities in the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, we examined…

In this paper, I argue for more and better learning metrics in higher education, eventually through an international, comparative assessment of students' learning outcomes. Better learning measures may help to improve transparency in the system by addressing the information asymmetry problem. If not addressed adequately, the lack of transparency…

Due to national and international policy drivers The Dutch Inspectorate of Education is reforming its supervision with a mission to promote school improvement in all Dutch schools. One of the chosen mechanisms to achieve this is the provision of feedback by inspectors to school leaders, special educational needs coordinators, and teachers…

Responsive evaluation honors democratic and participatory values and intends to foster dialogues among stakeholders to include their voices and enhance mutual understandings. The question explored in this article is whether and how responsive evaluation can offer a platform for moral learning ("Bildung") in the interference zone between…

How teachers and students deal with assessment practices is largely influenced by the conceptions they hold about the purpose of assessment. This means that, given the current plea for a paradigm shift from Assessment "of" Learning to Assessment "for" Leaning with a balance between the formative and summative purposes of…

Self-evaluation is supposed to be a valid, reliable and easy-to-use instrument to commit professionals to external quality assurance. The writing of a self-evaluation report is the first step in most higher education accreditation systems all over the world. Research on accreditation in the Netherlands and Flanders shows that professionals…

The paper reports from a comparative study on systems of quality assurance in 19 countries around the globe, and how these systems function as accountability mechanisms. Based on a theoretical framework for assessing how accountability mechanisms can contribute to build trust in the higher education sector, the analysis of the quality assurance…

A recent development in educational accountability is a risk-based approach, in which intensity and frequency of school inspections vary across schools to make educational accountability more efficient and effective by enabling inspectorates to focus on organizations at risk. Characteristics relevant in predicting which schools are "at risk…

Today's universities are, accordingly to Clark's entrepreneurial model, sustained by managerialism, whereas collegialism may remain in contrast or work in a different way. More recent literature suggests the clash such as the potential for coexistence between managerialism and collegialism. The study analyses data from a survey of 26 universities…