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Customers, partners, rights-holders: School evaluations on websites
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of applied educational science.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2554-1810
2016 (English)In: Education Inquiry, E-ISSN 2000-4508, Vol. 7, no 3, p. 327-348Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper explores how evaluation, which has expanded at all levels of school governance throughout Europe, shapes parental roles by studying how local school governors and schools in Sweden represent evaluation to parents on their websites. Websites are prime locations for public communications and are useful for exploring the functions of evaluations intended for parental use. In recent decades, parental influence over school has increased through “choice and voice” options, while the role of evaluations has continued to expand in school governance. Evaluations construct social roles, identities, and relations and as such are constitutive of the social world and our place in it. By drawing on Dahler-Larsen’s concept of “constitutive effects”, the discursive implications of evaluation are discussed. The dominant type of evaluation represented on websites is performance data used for accountability and informed school choice purposes. Parents are primarily positioned as customers who exert influence through choice and exit options, reinforcing the almost unquestioned norm of parental right to educational authority. Representations of evaluation differ depending on local political majority, school performance, and public versus independent provider; as such, they are not hegemonic but tend to strengthen the position of parents as individual rights-holders, marginalising forms of collective action. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Umeå, 2016. Vol. 7, no 3, p. 327-348
Keywords [en]
evaluation, local school governance, parents, school choice, user influence
National Category
Public Administration Studies
Research subject
political science; educational work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-121229DOI: 10.3402/edui.v7.29971Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85020135343OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-121229DiVA, id: diva2:931626
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 721-2011-6157Available from: 2016-05-30 Created: 2016-05-30 Last updated: 2023-03-23Bibliographically approved

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Carlbaum, Sara

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf