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This appendix serves the purpose of informing readers about the design, the overall theoretical approach and methodology, and the different sub-studies, methods and materials in the research project that is reported in the book: Governing by evaluation in higher education in Sweden, 2013–2018. Two particular issues concerning our research process are also included: the redirection of one sub-study due to unforeseen policy developments, and the problem of denied access. Both, we believe, may be concerns for researchers in the social sciences in general, that can open possibilities or restrict the knowledge generation process so vital for democratic societies.

In this chapter, we describe and analyse the design of the evaluation and quality assurance system decided by the Swedish Parliament in 2016. Particular stress is put on how one part of this system – the institutional reviews of the higher education institutions' internal quality assurance processes – was set up by the Swedish Higher Education Authority (SHEA). The aim was to explore governing of higher education in the signals expressed through the design and requirements decided by the SHEA. The SHEA public reports, guidelines, criteria, and templates for the higher education institutions and evaluators, and interviews with SHEA staff were used for this purpose. The analysis shows that the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area were important influences in the design work. It also shows that the design supports the governing by objectives and outcomes logic and a notion of "quality" in higher education as equivalent to work with internal quality assurance systems at higher education institutions. We argue that this design forms the basis for constitutive effects like an instrumental notion of higher education.

In December 1972 a group of scholars engaged in educational evaluation and curriculum reform assembled, in what was later to be called the Cambridge conference, to challenge what they viewed as the then "traditional style of evaluation" (MacDonald & Parlett 1973:74). Their aim was to develop guidelines for the future of educational evaluation, and to challenge the traditional evaluation style. In the present policy context, it is instructive to revisit the manifesto that summarised this conference MacDonald & Parlett 1973) to see what these scholars wanted to challenge, what they viewed as problematic and what they wanted to promote.

AbstractContemporary educational evaluation policy and practice can be challenged by applying critical theory and hermeneutics perspectives in evaluation and by asking whose interests are being served through evaluation. Using educational evaluation in Sweden as the context, the author argues for an explanation‐oriented evaluation approach that assumes education is complex, multilayered, and infused with conflicting interests and intentions. The author concludes that evaluations that attend to this complexity have the potential to influence educational policy significantly. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.

The National Agency for Higher Education in Sweden carried out an evaluation, during 1995–1996, of all higher education programmes in care and nursing. The aim was to see if the programmes reached standards appropriate for higher education. Several care and nursing schools and programmes were found to be below the necessary standards, i.e. the criteria set by evaluators engaged in the national evaluation. According to those responsible for the programmes, the evaluation and its criteria were used at the local level to set out plans for development, even though the evaluation was criticized. Therefore in this article it is argued that national evaluations can work as national governing instruments, to support national policy. Two different theoretical frameworks are used to explain how actors at the local level are 'governed'. Through this, it is believed that a more comprehensive understanding can be gained of how evaluation is related to governance.

The increased importance given to European policy concerning evaluation and quality assurance in higher education in the Swedish national policy context is explored in this chapter. The description rests on interviews with what here is labelled policy brokers and on the material from the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), as well as government bills, parliamentary minutes, national agency reports, and university teachers' union journals. The results show that ENQA membership requirements played a significant role in the Swedish policy debate on the design of the 2016 national evaluation and quality assurance system. Dissemination channels between Europe and Sweden are populated by individuals with similar functions and positions, e.g. that ministers often meet ministers. Within Sweden, European policy is disseminated by and through individuals who move between different positions within the ministry of education, national agencies, and higher education institutions. Different organisations also communicate with each other within Sweden, ensuring European policies reaching into higher education institutions. Such European governing attempts are carried out in activities like networks, conferences, papers, guidelines, and by using different forms of knowledge, both inscribed, embodied, and enacted.

The national reform context for evaluation and quality assurance (EQA) in Swedish higher education along with the designs of the different national EQA systems during 1995–2014 is described and analysed in this chapter. This historical account establishes the background for the coming chapters in the book. Our aim is to scrutinise the relationship between the EQA systems and governing. We used government bills, official reports, research reports, articles, and books to describe and analyse the different policy contexts and EQA systems. In the analysis, we observe shifts and continuities as institutional reproduction and change. In this chapter, we also discuss governing in terms of the different expectations raised by the national EQA systems and liken the historical expansion of the systems to an evaluation machinery.

Public sectors in Europe and elsewhere are the subject of regular, recurrent and systematic evaluations. Evaluations have become institutionalized. This article examines the influence of institutionalized evaluation in higher education in Sweden. In this decentralized education system several kinds of effects of evaluation are detected locally, i.e. at whole-university and at department levels. Through an evaluation process characterized by self-evaluation, external reviews and public reports produced by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, all universities are examined. Governance operates by making universities visible, and thereby promoting comparison and competition, control and self-control. Centrally defined criteria are implemented in the process, via direct contact between the National Agency and university departments, leading to the recentralization of power. Strategies to deal with these evaluations at departmental level are developed and unintended influences, like learning resistance strategies, are highlighted.

This Open Access book analyses the interplay between governing, evaluation and knowledge with an empirical focus on Swedish higher education. It investigates the origins, logics, and mechanisms of evaluation and quality assurance reforms and their dynamic interactions with institutional, national and European policy contexts. The chapters report findings from extensive empirical studies that offer detailed insight into the work of governing in higher education, by giving voice to actors at various levels and positions including the ministry, national agency and University employees. Central themes include the influence of European policy, changing system designs, media relations and quality assurance enactments in University institutions. The book also explores the ways in which an emerging professional cadre, labelled qualocrats, enacts and mediates evaluation and quality assurance policy and practice. Taken together, the expanding evaluation machinery in Swedish higher education highlights the pivotal role of knowledge as a governing resource, and points to special features of evaluation as a particular form of practice that makes knowledge work for governing.