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This paper draws on recent research in Europe and England to discuss the politics of accountability. It is suggested that, as policies in education are increasingly focused on delivering technical-managerial accountability, that is accountability understood as evidenced in international, national, institutional and individual comparative measures of performance, so the shifting power relations of system redesign supported by data use are concealed and suppressed. System redesign is promoted by 'networked' governance and the de-centred state, in institutional 'freedom' from bureaucracy, in the de-professionalisation of public sector workers, in the proliferation of managers, in the redefinition of citizens as consumers. The implications of such reforms for politics are profound, as political legitimacy is a fundamental precondition for the sustainability of the welfare state and welfare state organizations are dependent on active political processes of producing legitimacy and political accountability.

This article analyzes how public art commissions provide opportunities for informal dialogue and alternative forms of inquiry within the secondary school environment in Europe and North America. Through case studies of site-specific works produced between 1995 and 2012, I examine how permanent photography installations question and reinforce educational authority, encourage critical thinking, and raise social consciousness among secondary school students. Techniques used by Susan Bowen, Rita Marhaug, Dennis Adams, and Frank Video include murals, montage, backlit display, and object-integration. The diversity of the works profiled, which alternately invite and avoid student participation, as well as references to local history, demonstrates that no single formula yields works that provoke, encourage, and inspire students. Using different means, these artists reflect the values of their host communities, enabling educational facilities to feel less institutional. Beyond placemaking, school-based public art can incite viewers to question how images are made both within and beyond the art education classroom, strengthening emotional and cultural literacy. In bringing the past alive, public art also breathes new life into the school environment.

Background and aims: The increasing number of diagnosed hepatitis E virus (HEV) infections in Europe has led to the implementation of the testing of blood products in various countries. Many nations have not yet implemented such screening. To assess the need for HEV screening in blood products worldwide, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis assessing HEV RNA positivity and anti-HEV seroprevalence in blood donors. Methods: Studies reporting anti-HEV IgG/IgM or HEV RNA positivity rates among blood donors worldwide were identified via predefined search terms in PubMed and Scopus. Estimates were calculated by pooling study data with multivariable linear mixed-effects metaregression analysis. Results: A total of 157 (14%) of 1144 studies were included in the final analysis. The estimated HEV PCR positivity rate ranged from 0.01 to 0.14% worldwide, with strikingly higher rates in Asia (0.14%) and Europe (0.10%) in comparison to North America (0.01%). In line with this, anti-HEV IgG seroprevalence in North America (13%) was lower than that in Europe (19%). Conclusions: Our data demonstrate large regional differences regarding the risk of HEV exposure and blood-borne HEV transmission. Considering the cost–benefit ratio, this supports blood product screening in high endemic areas, such as Europe and Asia, in contrast to low endemic regions, such as the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The nursing profession in Poland is subject to continuous transformations, but it should follow the directions based on the common framework for the development of specialist nursing, drawn up by international specialist nurses associations in Europe. A change in the nursing education system in Poland has provided an opportunity for progress based on consistent framework. Summary. Nurse education organised in a system of first cycle and second cycle university courses was a milestone towards improving the status of the nursing profession. The improved position of Polish nurses paved the way for further advancements in this profession and in the related scientific research, which in the past was rarely conducted by Polish nurses; today more and more research teams are launched and operate both at universities and in nurses' scientific associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the first, completed phase of a research project on inspection as governing in three European inspection systems. The data presented here draw attention to the rather under-researched associational activities of European inspectorates and their developing practices of policy learning and exchange, and highlight their significance as contributing to an emergent European Education Policy Space (EEPS). The paper is framed by original approaches to inspection that locate it as a set of governing practices, connected to changing governing forms and the growth of networks of relationships and flows of data across Europe. Comparisons are drawn between the relationships with Europe of inspectorates in Scotland, Sweden and England, drawing on Jacobsson's conceptualisation of regulative, inquisitive and meditative governance as a framing device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article discusses the investigation of accountability in different national contexts in the rapidly developing and increasingly important policy field of education in Europe. It draws on recent and current research to argue for a focus on what changing practices of accountability in education tell us about changes in governing education (and by extension, other public policy areas) within and across shifting policy spaces. The article further argues that accountability in education is increasingly defined as technical accountability through international and national comparative measures of performance, so that political accountability has been displaced, and performativity contributes to growing problems of diminished trust across and within education systems.Points for practitionersThis article seeks to place the development of comparative measures of performance – in education and in other public sector provision – in a critical frame that draws attention to the reduction in political accountability that accompanies the explosion of performance measurement. The article underlines the extent to which competitive measurement of performance both drives out other, more complex forms of assessment of performance and creates relations of mistrust between education professionals and governments. Professionals working in the education sector are encouraged to scrutinize the operation of technologies like PISA and to be informed about their political effects and assumptions [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article studies the replacement of bureacratic systems of command and control by networks based on technologies, where co-operation and co-ordination are constantly negotiated and regulated in different ways, and where policy-makers negotiate new power relations with new actors. The comparison between England and Scotland highlights the fact that information and data cannot be transformed immediately into efficient initiatives, and that it requires a constant effort to find a consensus and to preserve it. In the centralised system of England, it is left to technocrats to make this conversion effective. In Scotland, the strategy of self-evaluation is adapted to a discourse of autonomy and progress for all. In both cases, the analysis of the available political tools, as well as the use of information and the role of the school inspectorates enable us to understand the conception of governance for nation-states in a framework of international and European developments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on a comparative study of the growth of data and the changing governance of education in Europe. It looks at data and the 'making' of a European Education Policy Space, with a focus on 'policy brokers' in translating and mediating demands for data from the European Commission. It considers the ways in which such brokers use data production pressures from the Commission to justify policy directions in their national systems. The systems under consideration are Finland, Sweden, and England and Scotland. The paper focuses on the rise of Quality Assurance and Evaluation mechanisms and processes as providing the overarching rationale for data demands, both for accountability and performance improvement purposes. The theoretical resources that are drawn on to enable interpretation of the data are those that suggest a move from governing to governance and the use of comparison as a form of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nursing in the 21st Century is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)