quality assurance and evaluation in denmark

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Quality assurance and evaluation inDenmarkVibeke Normann Andersen a , Peter Dahler‐Larsen a & Carsten

Str⊘mbæk Pedersen a

a Department of Political Science and Public Management ,University of Southern Denmark , Odense, DenmarkPublished online: 20 Mar 2009.

To cite this article: Vibeke Normann Andersen , Peter Dahler‐Larsen & Carsten Str⊘mbæk Pedersen(2009) Quality assurance and evaluation in Denmark, Journal of Education Policy, 24:2, 135-147,DOI: 10.1080/02680930902733071

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Journal of Education PolicyVol. 24, No. 2, March 2009, 135–147

ISSN 0268-0939 print/ISSN 1464-5106 online© 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/02680930902733071http://www.informaworld.com

Quality assurance and evaluation in Denmark

Vibeke Normann Andersen, Peter Dahler-Larsen* and Carsten Strømbæk Pedersen

Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, DenmarkTaylor and FrancisTEDP_A_373477.sgm(Received 30 May 2008; final version received 1 October 2008)10.1080/02680930902733071Journal of Education Policy0268-0939 (print)/1464-5106 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & [email protected]

In recent years, international comparisons have become a powerful lever forchange in educational policies. Quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in manyforms is being incorporated in the steering and management of schools.However, the Danish use of QAE is a dynamic result of ongoing tensions andstruggles both around and within QAE initiatives. Romantic and communitariantenets in the traditional Danish view of enlightenment continue to influence theway QAE is used. However, the recent waves of QAE initiatives – comprising‘transparency’, goal-setting, tests and a number of new comprehensive andmandatory reporting mechanisms – restructure the world of schools and teachersin important ways.

Keywords: quality assurance; Denmark; evaluation; public schools; education

Introduction

Denmark was not an early adopter of quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) prac-tices in the political and administrative steering of schools. Thus, when they arrivedin Denmark, their effect was even stronger than in other countries. Internationalcomparisons became a powerful lever for change in educational policies. QAE inmany forms is being incorporated in the steering and management of schools. Theidea of a single European educational monotopia (see introductory essay in this issue)may be a powerful idea seeking to become real, but each national context responds inits own way to new international discourses, and the Danish case is no exception.Furthermore, ‘the Danish case’ is not an objectified solid ‘essence’, but rather adynamic result of ongoing tensions and struggles both around and within QAE initia-tives. We shall briefly return to analytical points resulting from this view by the endof this chapter, but first we must give our account of QAE in Denmark. This story canbe told in many ways. Here is ours.

Background

After the reformation in 1536, the church and the state worked in collaboration.Spiritual and secular authority was not kept separate. The church helped keepingregisters of all citizens and paved the way for early alphabetization, for a low level of

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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136 V.N. Andersen et al.

overt conflict in society and for a high degree of internalized trust in authorities(Knudsen 1995).

A historian of the Danish tradition for public enlightenment, Ove Korsgaard(1997) describes the dominant national tradition as a ‘vertical’ form of enlightenment.Vertical enlightenment is anchored ‘upwards’ in God (and metaphysical beliefs) anddownwards (metaphorically) in the soil, in history, tradition and legend. The Danish‘people-ishness’ (‘folkelighed’) is at the centre of these upwards and downwardsconnections; it is the enlightenment of the Danish people as a cultural, ethnic andspiritual community which defines the overarching ideal of enlightenment. (As such,‘awakening’ may in fact be a more precise term than ‘enlightenment’, as noted by anAmerican researcher who visited Denmark, Thomas Schwandt.)

In other countries, horizontal conceptions of enlightenment are more dominant.Horizontal versions of enlightenment emphasize the confrontation between humanbeings and the elements as a key to learning (‘the natural sciences’, ‘experimentalism’,‘empiricism’, etc.). One might add the cultural and social sciences as ‘horizontal’ waysto learn about one’s place in the universe.

However, the Danish tradition emphasizes ideas and values connected to verticalenlightenment such as on oral tradition, local values, communitarian values, nationalvalues and an anti-elite orientation. The primary figure in this tradition was N.F.SGrundtvig (Korsgaard 1997), of whom it is said that he more than any other personnot only helped define Danish enlightenment, but the very self-image of the Danishpeople, cast in a mould which is simultaneously ethnic, cultural, political andspiritual.

Why did the dominant version of enlightenment end up being the vertical one?This question is raised and answered by Korsgaard (1997). His view is that the warin 1864 played a decisive historical role. Before that, a number of ideologies wererepresented, partly brought in from different countries in Europe, where differentsources of inspiration were sought. However, in 1864, Denmark was defeated byPrussia and lost large segments of its territory, and population, respectively. Sincethe very identity and survival of the nation was in jeopardy, a version of enlighten-ment was in demand which would spiritually strengthen the feeling of nationalcommunity and awakening. It can be argued, however, that Danish national feelingswere not only a result of the events in 1864, but also one of their causes (Dahler-Larsen 2006b).

Nevertheless, the Danish vertical enlightenment tradition has led to a configura-tion of ideas and organizational principles unfavourable to evaluation (and later onQAE initiatives). For example, the teacher tends to be seen as a representative ofcommunitarian values, not primarily as a person representing a body of knowledge.Next, the Danish school is to legitimize itself with reference to particular values, notparticular outcomes. Finally, the emphasis on locality and community may have madeit difficult to introduce national systems for measurement, standards, comparison andtesting.

Two caveats should be mentioned: First, there are rationalistic and empiricisttenets in the Danish view of enlightenment, too, so the dominance of the vertical/spiritual/communitarian view is a matter of degree. The balance between vertical andhorizontal ideas is dynamic and unstable over time. As a corollary, it is continuouslydebated in Denmark how to strike the right balance between values connected toacademic achievement in schools versus values connected to personal growth,tolerance, community and democracy.

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Journal of Education Policy 137

Secondly, over the years certain forms of QAE have of course been accepted byDanish teachers as a part of their own professional practice, so there is a limit to howmuch one can generalize about QAE practices as such.

Nevertheless, our main proposition remains that the vertical view of enlightenmenthas prevented Denmark from an early and intense adoption of a QAE practices. Untilrecently, central rationalism and governmental control have not played as strong a rolein educational planning as in some of Denmark’s neighbouring and otherwise similarcountries (such as Sweden).

The exercise of authority and control with the policy area of education is ashared responsibility between the state, counties/regions and local authorities. Withinbasic education the Ministry of Education establishes goals, key areas of academicskills, examinations and a guideline curriculum, but a widespread decentralizationcharacterizes basic education. For example, primary schools are owned and managedby municipalities.

For a long period in Danish education policy, each sector within education andtheir associated institutions, e.g. primary schools, have preserved their own form ofgoverning and management (Christensen 2000, 203). The national regulation of eacharea follows distinct patterns that vary with regard to the degree of decentralization,the degree of local, regional and national control and the tradition for involving theusers of the institutions of the particular sector. In this way, each sector constitutes adistinct historical legacy to which a specific set of sector interests are connectedresulting in a complexity of institutions in the overall education sector (Christensen2000, 199, 202–5). The structure of the Ministry of Education also reflects thesegmentation of education policy. Sector policy rather than a coherent educationalpolicy has been dominant (Knudsen 2001, 46–7).

Traditionally, measurement and QAE initiatives were not necessary. Denmark wasconvinced it had the best schools in the world without comparison. Then camecomparison and spoiled the picture.

International comparisons

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Denmark has participated in a number of internationalcomparisons and benchmarking conducted by the IEA (The International Associationfor the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) and the OECD (Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development). The result of the first international readingtest in which Denmark participated showed that nine-year-old Danish studentsperformed poorly in reading tests compared to children in similar countries. However,by the age of 14 the reading skills of the Danish students were practically at the samelevel as in those countries. Socially, the Danish students were among the more well-functioning children. Anyhow, the reactions in Denmark to the results of the first testfocused on the lower performance of Danish students in basic education. In comparisonto other countries, the result was not regarded as satisfactory. Other tests followedpointing to the same results within areas of, for example, science. The reactions to thetests were probably a result of the Danes having a conception of their education systemas one of the best in the world (Norrild 2004, 16). Denmark is among the countriesspending most resources on education (OECD 2005). The assumption seems to havebeen that one of the most expensive school systems in the world ought to perform better.The international comparisons continuously made headline news and defined perhapsthe most important agenda-setting events for Danish school policy in the years to come.

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Quite an intense debate among educators, politicians and the public in general followedfrom the international comparisons, and the performance of students was defined as apolicy problem with policy implications (see below).

In 2007, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results indicateda small improvement of the Danish score in some subjects. Another debate followed,which included methodological critiques of PISA. No immediate political conse-quences were drawn, perhaps because the results this time were less dramatic. Or theywere presented in a less dramatic way, because the present government had been inpower for some time now, so it would no longer be meaningful to blame the previousgovernment for the mediocre PISA scores.

The Danish Evaluation Institute

The Danish Evaluation Center (to become the Evaluation Institute in 1999) wasfounded in response to the unsatisfactory results of international performancemeasurements (Dahler-Larsen 2006b). It is an independent institution under theauspices of the Ministry of Education. The Institute is required to cooperate with theministries in charge of education. However, the Institute is financially independent ofthe ministries and the education institutions subject to evaluation (Leeuw 2003, 14).The task of the Institute is to monitor and evaluate by and large all areas of theeducation sector. In an explanatory memorandum to the Act on the Danish EvaluationInstitute (2005), the purpose of the Institute is stated as, first, contributing to thedevelopment and assurance of quality in education through independent evaluations,and secondly, performing an actual control of the goal attainment of education(Kristoffersen 2003, 26). Compared to similar institutional arrangements in othercountries, the Danish Evaluation Institute has a high level of independence (and manyemployees). However, the tasks the Institute carries out do not differ substantiallycompared to other countries despite their different institutional arrangements (Leeuw2003, 15).

The Evaluation Institute has the right and is obligated to initiate and carry outevaluation of education from primary schools and upper secondary and basicvocational education to higher education and adult and post-graduate education.Evaluations may also be initiated on request from ministries, advisory boards, localauthorities or education institutions. It is obligatory for education institutionsto participate in the evaluations conducted by the Institute (Leeuw 2003, 14).Evaluations are carried out at public education institutions as well as privateeducation institutions that receive state subsidy. State subsidy is a substantial part ofthe budget of most private education institutions in Denmark, and the Institute fromtime to time assesses whether students at private teaching institutions are qualified tothe Danish state grant. In this way, the evaluations carried out by the Institute canhave a substantial impact on the activities and survival of the particular educationinstitutions.

The Danish Evaluation Institute has produced what they call ‘The DanishEvaluation Model’. The Institute states that it is aware of different methodologies andevaluation typologies being relevant to different areas e.g. programme evaluation,auditing, benchmarking, accreditation or more broad evaluations of teaching orinstitutions (see Kristoffersen 2003). With regard to the content of the evaluationsconducted some are cross-institutional, e.g. reviewing similar types of educationlocated at different institutions, while others review the transition of children from e.g.

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lower to upper secondary education. However, as part of ‘The Danish EvaluationModel’ a number of fixed elements are repeated in every evaluation conducted by theInstitute disregarding the content of the evaluation or the type of institution evaluated.First, a project team of employees from the Institute is put together and initial studiesare conducted. It is also in this phase that the framework of the evaluation is defined.Next, an external evaluation group of academics with special expertise of theevaluation in question is appointed. Thirdly, a self-evaluation is conducted bymembers of the institution subject to the evaluation. The requirement of self-evaluation is actually stated in a memorandum to the Act on The Danish EvaluationInstitute. The self-evaluation has to follow guidelines provided by the DanishEvaluation Institute (Kristoffersen 2003, 31). The so-called ‘self-evaluation’ is apeculiar variation of self-evaluation, where the school in focus does not set its ownagenda. Instead, each school has to report its own view on a list of items sent in printto the school from the Evaluation Institute. It is not evident whether the term ‘self-evaluation’ is an appropriate term for this practice (Dahler-Larsen 2003, 29–40).

Finally, supplementary surveys may also be carried out by the Institute followedby site visits by the project team and evaluation group. A concluding report isproduced by the Institute and the follow-up on the evaluation is specified.

All reports produced by the Institute are to be made publicly available. Further-more, the evaluated institutions have to draw up a plan of how they expect to follow-up on the recommendations made by the Institute. According to legal requirementsthe evaluated institutions have to make this plan publicly available in an electronicform. Based on its regulatory foundation, resources and organization to produce andimplement a model of evaluation, the Danish Evaluation Institute has a substantialimpact on the nature of evaluation in the sector of education. However, the Institutealso has to deal with a large and complex group of stakeholders at all levels of society.Several ministries, labour and employer organizations, local and regional authorities,teachers organizations, etc., may be stakeholders in the evaluation in question (Leeuw2003, 21), and thus, affecting the evaluation design more broadly as well as particularevaluations in question.

At the outset, the Act on the Danish Evaluation Institute specified that reportsproduced by the Institute were not allowed to make reference to grades or test resultsnor to publish league tables of the evaluated institutions. At this point, the continuityof a particular Danish tradition became a bulwark against what some call ‘the madindicator decease’ (V.N. Andersen 2006; N.A. Andersen 2007).

Openness and transparency

However, after the parliamentary decision on the Act on Transparency and Opennessin Education (L414) in 2002, the above-mentioned restriction on grades in the Act onthe Danish Evaluation Institute was lifted. The Act on Transparency and Opennessintroduces performance monitoring of the Danish education system. In order to ensurea performance of high quality, all education institutions are to document their perfor-mance by publishing on the Internet their value statement, pedagogical philosophy,average grades, and evaluations of the quality of teaching. Although not all have doneso in practice, the Act has enforced substantial changes in the Danish educationsystem. First, average grades of individual education institutions have not previouslybeen publicly available. Second, the Act ‘forces’ the education institutions to formu-late and publish a value statement and pedagogical philosophy. Third, each education

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institution has to create its own webpage containing evaluative information. Finally,with some exceptions, conducted evaluations of the individual institution are to bepublished on the Internet as well. These components are supposed to help solve theproblem of education performance with reference to the conceived unsatisfactoryperformance of Danish students in international comparisons.

Making the evaluative information public on the internet is partly an end in itself,but it is also a means to several ends. The officially stated purpose of the Act onTransparency and Openness in Education is that education institutions shall be able tolearn from each other through the spread of ‘good examples’. The communication ofevaluative information about performance is supposed to encourage the users and theprofessionals employed at the education institutions to work together in order toachieve a better performance. Furthermore, the awareness of good performance will –according to the official stated purpose – be strengthened through competition amongthe schools. The term ‘competition’ among public institutions is not usual in theDanish public policy discourse, but the term was used explicitly in the officialcommentary to the legislation (L414). Finally, the users of schools shall have accessto information about the performance of the institutions in order to be able to make aqualified choice among different education institutions and solutions (Andersen andDahler-Larsen 2007). In practice, however, school choice is often restricted forgeographical and other reasons. There was no documentation that parents reallywanted league tables or similar evaluative information to inform their choice of schoolfor their children.

Vague and diffuse arguments of transparency, openness, quality assurance, qualitydevelopment and competition have been associated with the Act on Transparency andOpenness. Not one particular set of assumptions about the behavioural patterns of theusers, teachers and education leaders seems to be dominant in the minds of decisionmakers (Andersen and Dahler-Larsen 2007). The value statement and the statementabout pedagogical philosophies which each education institution is supposed to writediffer from conventional evaluation documents as they are forward-looking and donot require the application of an exact methodology. Together with more traditionalevaluative information, the forward-looking information is supposed to provide abroader understanding of the performance of each institution, but it also provides foreach institution some degree of autonomy (Andersen and Dahler-Larsen 2007). To theextent that more systematic evaluations are carried out, they need to be published onlyif they are not ‘internal’, again leaving a bit of ambiguity as to what is exactly meant.Information, relating to the teaching of individual teachers and evaluation carried outby and only involving employees of the specific education institution, that is, internalor self-evaluation is not required to be published. A year after the Act was put intoeffect, 62% of the education institutions had not published all the required informationon the Internet, e.g. 40% had not published the average grades on their webpage(Ministry of Education 2004).

The stated public provision of evaluations in the legislation refers to all externalconducted evaluations of current interest of the quality of teaching. Furthermore, theeducation institutions are required to ensure that evaluation data in the form of averagegrades of all final exams are accessible at their homepage. Public schools and gram-mar schools partly share a national curriculum which makes the average grades ofthese schools comparable. In order to facilitate a comparison across institutions, theMinistry of Education provides an annual online publication of average grades of allpublic and private schools. The Ministry has stated that it is not its policy to produce

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league tables (Andersen and Dahler-Larsen 2007). However, the Danish newspaperspublish league tables based on the online publication by the Ministry. Although thedata appearing in the newspapers and the data on the homepage of the Ministry aresimilar in principle, the particular presentation of the data in the name of the newspa-pers and not in the name of the Ministry takes the aura of official authorization out ofthe league tables (Andersen and Dahler-Larsen 2007).

Andersen and Dahler-Larsen (2007) found that although some ranking tookplace, journalists also gave space to school principals from low-performing schools,allowing them to explain why they think they did a good job in spite of difficult socio-economic and ethnic tensions in their district. It would probably have been moredifficult for low-performing schools to present their views, if a statistical expert hadclaimed that the results were already controlled for socio-economic backgroundfactors. In other words, although the raw data were criticized for low validity, theyalso allowed multiple interpretations to appear in the media.

Only average grades are subject to potential comparison across education institu-tions. The remaining evaluation information in general is not presented in a systematicway allowing for comparisons. It is to a large degree left to the individual institutionto decide which information to reveal and how to present it. The Danish legislation ontransparency and openness in education thus makes room for education institutions topublish their own view on the quality of schools. The institutionalized framing of thedata following from the Act on Transparency and Openness allows for a morenuanced set of data and a more active role of the individual institution, than wouldhave been the case in an evaluation regime based solely on comparative indicators(Andersen and Dahler-Larsen 2007). The combination of different types of evaluativeinformation stated in the Act on Transparency and Openness encourages each educa-tion institution to work with the types of evaluations under its own control. In thisway, the historical legacy of sector policy within the policy area of education mayhave affected the evaluation regime introduced (see V.N. Andersen 2006; N.A.Andersen 2007).

To complete the picture, private think-tanks have started making their own leaguetables of schools based on available official statistics. These league tables have –among other things – demonstrated that the placement of a particular school from oneyear to another is very unstable.

More official attempts have also been made to publish more advanced indicatorson school quality based on average grades statistically controlled for socio-economicbackground variables. These attempts have met resistance from circles of parents whofound it unfair that their demographic characteristics, such as the ratio of single moth-ers or low-income families, should be published as ‘control variables’ along with theindicators.

Clarification of goals

Over the recent decades, an important dimension of policy-making has been a numberof initiatives under the headline of ‘clarification of goals’. The underlying theoryseems to be that one of the reasons for the poor performance of pupils in Denmark hasbeen the absence of clear goals and objectives in the school system. A number of rela-tively specific national goals have thus been defined for pupils in different subjects atdifferent grades. In a similar vein, municipalities have intensified their work withstatements about goals and objectives. Still, research has shown that these official

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political and administrative goals are relatively unknown and make limited differencein practice (S.C. Andersen 2004). Another initiative seeking to steer schools moredirectly towards a particular direction has been the establishment of an official canonof literature and culture. This initiative can be understood as an ethnic and nationalresponse to an otherwise contingent and flexible, international world. A similar‘democratic’ canon has been established, defining particular texts such as traditionallaws or constitutional chapters as ‘must-read’ material. The democratic canonincludes Danish texts as well as European classics. There is no promise that thecanons will ever be evaluated.

Towards an ‘evaluation culture’: tests, school reports and pupil reports

In other areas, further steps towards what one might call an ‘evaluation culture’ weremade. International comparisons continue to ‘inspire’ policy-making. Figures fromOECD (2005) point to Denmark being among the OECD countries spending mostresources both measured per student and as part of GNP. However, the linkagebetween resources spent and performance is still lacking. Taking a third place amongthe 30 participating OECD countries, with regard to resources spent on education asa means of GNP, ‘only’ leads to a place as number 12 when it comes to the mathskills of 15-year-old students (OECD 2005). The Danish Minister of Education didnot find the result satisfactory (http://www.uvm.dk/05/pm130905.htm?menuid=641015).

In a country review of basic education conducted by the OECD in 2004, it isstated that the idea of evaluation is embedded in the Danish education system, but ithas not penetrated praxis at the Danish schools. In particular, the absence of wide-spread self-evaluation at the individual school is mentioned (Ministry of Education2004, 65, 129). This may also refer to Denmark being a relatively late starter withregard to evaluation practice when compared to other countries (Hansen and Hansen2001).

The government responded by requiring an ‘evaluation culture’ in schools.Evaluation culture is thus part of the official answer to problems concerning theperformance of primarily basic education.

Structurally, the Ministry of Education has responded to the demand for evaluationby establishing a special government agency (‘styrelse’) for evaluation and qualitydevelopment. Besides from furthering an ‘evaluation culture’ of Danish basic educa-tion, the agency is for instance to promote good examples of well-performing schoolsto other schools and to monitor the quality assurance of local authorities of education.A number of more specific initiatives have followed:

(1) A system of mandatory testing was introduced. The test results are not to bepublished, but are to be used for pedagogical planning, school improvementsand better school management. This is an interesting deviation from the exist-ing policy on average grades, which are published. However, the OECDcommittee, headed by an Englishman, was explicit in its recommendation notto publish test results. Great care has been taken in installing a flow of testresults based on the ‘need-to-know’ principle. Only the teacher knows thescores of all pupils. School principals only know the average scores of classes.Politicians will only know the overall score a school. At the implementationstage, tests failed dramatically. The technical computerized support structure

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collapsed, and the content of tests was also criticized. Proposals were made toban tests until they actually worked. The tests and their implementation are tobe evaluated in the years to come.

(2) The local authorities of education are obliged to produce a yearly qualityreport. A number of standardized information is required to be published in thereport. The primary focus of the report is to describe the performance ofschools as well as the initiative taken by the local authorities. The figuresreporting on test results are to be referred to in such a way that no direct figuresare revealed in the report. One may speculate about whether this restriction canbe implemented and maintained in a sustainable way, but authorities maintainthat breaches in confidentiality have been very, very few, and the official lineis that the need-to-know principle will be respected. If the performance of aparticular school is judged as unsatisfactory, the local authorities of educationproduce an action plan with focus on improving the performance of the school.In case of continuous, unsatisfactory low performance, the managerial author-ity of the school can be handed over to municipal authorities. At Danishschools, an elected school board with parent representatives holding themajority of the seats is elected for a four-year period. The school board isobliged to make a statement to the quality report. The quality report is to bepublished on the internet along with action plans and the statement made bythe school boards. The report is to become an integrated part of schoolmanagement procedures in the municipalities.

(3) Reports on the progress of each and every student and the initiatives taken toimprove the progress are to be produced by the school and shared with pupilsand parents. These reports are not made public.

(4) The Ministry of Education has delegated the responsibility for initiating anumber of practical initiatives related to the construction of an ‘evaluationculture’ to a consulting company. These include the development of practicalevaluation tools for teachers, a webpage on evaluation and nationwide info-meetings about evaluation culture.

(5) Furthermore, a number of loosely defined and non-specific initiatives with thepurpose of the improving the evaluation capacity of teachers and schools havetaken place all over the country. Most of these initiatives focus on internalevaluation, self-evaluation and school development. The Ministry of Educa-tion has in particular encouraged the use of internal or self-evaluation at avariety of institutions in the education sector, schools, grammar schools,vocational schools and universities. An open and flexible form of self-evalua-tion is legally mandated for free boarding schools. This version of self-evalu-ation is much different from self-evaluation defined by the EvaluationInstitute. The concept of self-evaluation appears in several publications by theDanish Ministry of Education. However, there is still a lack of clarity in theconceptual use of the term internal and self-evaluation. How self-evaluation isperceived and why it should be utilized by education institutions is seldomdisclosed in otherwise than very broad phrases such as ‘improving the qualityof education’.

These initiatives fit into a context where authorities (and teachers at high schools andother institutions) over the years have encouraged the education institutions to imple-ment self-evaluation and thereby create an evaluation culture. These initiatives are

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non-specific, because criteria and methods remain loosely described, as do proceduresfor utilization and follow-up.

The individual education institution is encouraged to make self-evaluation aneveryday practice in order to develop an evaluation culture at the local level.However, one could question whether all education institutions are methodologicallyas well as organizationally equipped to conduct a self-evaluation that meets a formaldefinition of evaluation (see Vedung 1997, 3). In some instances, one also has to seeself-evaluation as a way for national authorities to control and oversee the perfor-mance of education institutions as well as impose self-disciplinary actions internal tothe individual institution. Thus, self-evaluation does not just refer to whether anevaluation is dichotomously internal or external. Its conceptualization is morecomplex.

Will the publication of evaluative data and information support internal processesof quality development? We do not know much about the link between internal andexternal processes when evaluative information is published, thus reflecting existingvague theories about publication (Andersen and Dahler-Larsen 2007). Education insti-tutions may find themselves redefining their need to control their image in the light ofthe published evaluative information. They need to reflect on how they present them-selves and how much to disclose of the evaluative information on their webpage lead-ing to a strategic behaviour of the education institutions (Andersen and Dahler-Larsen2007). Instead of organizational learning across different education institutions,reduced cooperation and less sharing of good practices among the institutions may bean overlooked side-effect of the evaluation regime’s focus on publishing evaluationinformation. It is being debated whether the increased focus on goals, grades and testswill have a number of unintended consequences for teaching practices.

van Thiel and Leeuw (2002) identify so-called ‘measure fixation’. Measurefixation happens when practitioners focus on exactly what is being measured as anindicator of quality, often at the expense of genuine quality. This may be termed a‘trivial’ form of measure fixation because it still operates with a sense of ‘genuinequality’ from which the measure fixation deviates. In this sense, measure fixation is‘unintended’. In contradistinction, under advanced measure fixation, the indicatorprovides a definition of quality along with an indicator of how to measure quality. Forexample, ‘Nobody knows what school quality is, but in our municipality we think thatgood test do represent school quality’.

With advanced measure fixation it is not possible to demonstrate a cleavagebetween genuine quality and quality measured by an indicator, since the latter helpsdefine the former. This is a constitutive effect which should be taken seriously andwhich is not properly understood when categorized as ‘pathological’ or ‘unintended’.The trick is that while the indicator is socially constructed, the phenomenon it issupposed to measure is also socially constructed. A critique of the measure, whichholds the phenomenon constant as something we all know and agree on or rationallyintend, is therefore insufficient (Dahler-Larsen 2006a). The extent to which theseeffects of QAE occur in Danish schools today is unknown and under-researched. Evenif instrumental effects of QAE may be limited, the discursive effects of QAE may not.The Danish language includes no direct terms for such phenomena as ‘performance’and ‘achievement’, but the contemporary discursive machinery of QAE may helpintroduce the type of thinking which would have been possible if these terms hadexisted in Danish. However, how QAE actually ‘works’ is an uncomfortably openquestion.

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Conclusion and perspectives

QAE initiatives have played a major role in defining the issues and providing theoccasion for a number of important policy issues in Danish school policy in recentyears. However, the road towards an integrating Denmark in a single monotopianeducational space in Europe is far from direct and linear.The following observations summarize our analysis:

● The design and implementation of QAE cannot be understood apart fromspecific conditions in the national context. Denmark was a late starter in large-scale QAE, and the hesitation to produce official league tables lasted longenough until an international committee recommended not doing so. A cleartenet of nationalism in the Danish responses to international QAE can be iden-tified, especially in the establishment of national canons.

● The framing of data by the Ministry of Education plays a role. No official leaguetable is produced in the name of official authorities, although an increasingamount of data have been made publicly available.

● The multiplicity of forms of data in QAE especially at the school level suggeststhat although indicators (such as average grades) do catch attention, they are notthe only descriptors of school quality.

● Media have been instrumental in casting Denmark as a loser in the international‘horse race’ of comparative tests. However, the media have also transmittedcritiques of the content and methodology of these tests, as well as reports fromunder-achieving schools.

● Although regimes of QAE have definitely been on the move forward onnational, municipal and school levels, their progress is not linear. Tests havefailed. Parents have refused to be described as ‘control variables’. League tablesproduced by a private think-tank had school quality jumping up and down overthe years, thus undermining the credibility of the measurement.

● Although part of the QAE initiatives do install hard quantitative measures, QAEregimes in Denmark also include a number of contested terms with vague mean-ings, such as ‘publication’, ‘self-evaluation’ and ‘quality’. The meanings ofthese terms are being negotiated and discursively constructed along the way inspecific situations in a sort of unfinished way.

● Not much is known about the influence of QAE on the daily life of teachers andpupils. While some research show the decoupling of official goals from thedaily life in class rooms, others warn about the potentially colonizing effects.

● Perhaps the most important function of QAE initiatives have been to set theagenda, direct attention to what appears to be ‘low performance’, and creating asense of a need to initiate new mentalities and new policy initiatives. Ratherthan provide direct and predictable ‘steering’, QAE perhaps blazes the trail as itseeks to find its way in a world full of contradiction and tension.

Theoretically, our view is consistent with Stehr (1994, 95) who defines knowledgeas a capacity for social action. He emphasizes the socially productive role of knowledgein contemporary society with regard to not only ‘the appropriation of appropriatednature’ (1994, 103) but also to the organization of the social order (rather than the mate-rial interaction with nature). Briefly stated, under modernity knowledge shapes socialrelations. However, Stehr immediately points out that knowledge as a capacity foraction often assumes a bureaucratic or otherwise smoothened social order with linear

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structures which are ‘prepared for data processing’ (1994, 103). This assumption is,of course, often out of place. Therefore, knowledge rarely produces opportunities forperfect planning of a particular social intervention. Instead, the typical result is anincreasingly fragile social order (Stehr 2001). This means an order which is constantlyripe for change due to its ongoing integration and interaction with knowledge.

Notes on contributorsVibeke Normann Andersen is an associate professor in public administration and head ofDepartment of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark.Her research interests are reforms and change of public organizations, education policy andevaluation. She has previously published papers on evaluation, transparency and openness.

Peter Dahler-Larsen is professor of evaluation in the Department of Political Science andPublic Management at University of Southern Denmark, where he is director of the MasterProgram in Evaluation. His research interests include cultural, institutional and sociologicalaspects of evaluation. He is former president of European Evaluation Society.

Carsten Strømbæk Pedersen is a postgraduate fellow of evaluation at the Department ofPolitical Science and Public Management at the University of Southern Denmark. For furtherinformation, see http://www.sdu.dk/staff/csp.aspx.

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