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In current literature on the university it is generally accepted that processes of digitization play an important role regarding both the daily functioning of the university as an institution and the academics that give shape to it. This article contributes to our understanding of the role that digitization plays in contemporary academic practices and does this by adopting a relational theoretical framework informed by sociomaterial studies. Furthermore, the article introduces a specific interview technique as methodological approach and makes use of topological visualizations in order to qualitatively analyze the composition of academic work in digital times. As such, combining textual and visual analysis, the article should be conceived as an explorative atlas. The atlas gives an account of how daily academic practices are relationally composed, which sorts of spatiotemporal constellations are enacted in these practices and how the digital is enacted in these practices. Based on three profiles of academic practices, this atlas concludes by exploring whether contemporary academic practices are characterized by a typical mode of existence, and gives some pointers as to how this mode of existence of the university is typically enacted nowadays. ispartof: Open Review of Educational Research vol:1 issue:1 pages:116-143 status: published

Contemporary research on the European policy space in education has paid much attention to decentralisation, deregulation and new modalities of privatisation and marketisation, but there is less focus on how these processes and policies are actually played out in education. It is argued that understanding the role of commercial actors, new local and global markets and public—private partnerships in the governing of education becomes increasingly important. The aim of the article is to introduce the special issue on commercialisation of the European Educational Research Journal by discussing some general issues: theoretical and methodological considerations when studying privatisation and commercialisation in the governing of education, conceptual clarifications, and finally, possible themes and topics for study, but also for further debate.

Over the last few years, different sociomaterial research orientations have emerged. In this article, we argue that most of these orientations are relying on a relational mode of thinking, that is, a way of conceiving of educational practices in terms of the relations between the different actors present in these particular practices. In doing so, these various sociomaterial studies share many of their theoretical assumptions with social topology, an approach inspired by the mathematical field of topology. In educational research, however, this connection between sociomaterial and sociotopological accounts is not commonly made. Therefore, this article calls for a more intricate interweaving of topological thinking with better-known sociomaterial approaches. Furthermore, we assert that using visualisations might play a crucial role in this respect. To that effect, we introduce the Foucauldian and Deleuzian notion of the diagram. This notion of the diagram, as the technique that brings the orders of...

This article takes up a text that Ranciere published shortly after The Ignorant School Master appeared in French, ‘Ecole, production, egalite’[School, Production, Equality] (1988), in which he sketched the school as being preeminently the place of equality. In this vein, and opposed to the story of the school as the place where inequality is reproduced and therefore in need of reform, the article wants to recount the story of the school as the invention of a site of equality and as primordially a public space. Inspired by Ranciere, we indicate first how the actual (international and national) policy story about the school and the organizational technologies that accompany it install and legitimate profound inequalities, which consequently can no longer be questioned (and become ‘invisible’). Second, the article recasts and rethinks different manifestations of equality and of ‘public‐ness’ in school education and, finally, indicates various ways in which these manifestations are neutralized or immunized in...

This article takes its point of departure in the current tendency of education policy to become more and more evidence-based. The use of statistics and numbers seems to be a prerequisite for conducting a policy that is both efficient and effective. The kind of knowledge thus produced is regarded as factual and scientific. This article tries to get a grasp on value-added modelling, a commonly used method supposed to produce such knowledge. Drawing on some conceptual underpinnings of actor-network theory, the article advances that such factual matters often take the form of matters of educational performance that are shaped and produced by means of calculative and inscription devices. However, the adagio that measures of performances should guide education policy is only one,albeit strong, point of view. Taking not only performances but also public issues into account could lead to what could be called a more ‘concern-oriented’ policy. ispartof: International Studies in Sociology of Education vol:21 issue:2 pages:115-135 status: published

The ongoing development of mobile devices like cell phones, iPods, PDAs, and so on is seen by an increasing number of educationalists as a chance to focus on a new kind of learning. This mobile learning, as it is called, should enable students to learn while on the move. Rather than giving a genealogy of the use of mobile equipment in education, this article tries to add understanding to the processes that made possible the emergence of this new research domain. In doing this, the authors use one specific theoretical approach, actor-network theory, which will lead to a profound elaboration of the processes involved in new, emerging research fields. ispartof: E-Learning and Digital Media vol:8 issue:1 pages:8-18 status: published

Background/Context The article reflects on the public role of education on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Hannah Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education” and in facing the current transformation of public policy into “new public management.” Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Based on Arendt's essay, “The Crisis in Education,” the article explores that peculiar setting and architecture between family and world that is called school. The leading concern for this investigation is the school's public meaning. The point of departure is that today, the public role of education is an urgent concern, that is, the school's public role is questioned in view of the current processes of privatization, and what is critically described as the “capitalization of life.” In this contribution, based on a reading of Arendt's essay and relying on the analysis of a specific school design by the architect Wim Cuyvers, two different ways of thinking the public meaning of school education are explored. One way of thinking takes the school as an infrastructure of “intro-duction,” while the other way of thinking regards the school as an infrastructure of “e-duc(a)tion.” Research Design This article is an analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations The article shows that it is impossible to think “a new beginning in our world” without thinking the school as public space. Drawing on some thoughts of Agamben and the school architecture of Cuyvers, the article offers an outline for elaborating the Arendtian thinking of the “perfect school.” This school is conceived of as a space where people are exposed to things, and being exposed could be regarded as being drawn outside (or as e-ducation), that is, into public space. Public space is a “free space” or the space of “free time.” This free time is precisely the sense that the Greek “scholé” seemed to indicate—a space where (economic, social, cultural, political, private …) time is suspended and where people have time at their disposal for “a new beginning.” Whereas the museum is the setting that accumulates time, the school could be seen as the setting for suspending time. The school as “public architecture,” then, is not a space/time of “intro-duction” and “in-between,” but a space/time of “suspension” and “e-ducation.”

The article presents an introduction to the Special Issue on the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere who raises a provocative voice in the current public debate on democracy, equality and education. Instead of merely criticizing current practices and discourses, the attractiveness of Ranciere's work is that he does try to formulate in a positive way what democracy is about, how equality can be a pedagogic or educational (instead of policy) concern, and what the public and democratic role of education is. His work opens up a space to rethink and to study, as well as to ‘re‐practice’, what democracy and equality in education are about. He questions the current neutralisation of politics that is motivated by a hatred of democracy. This questioning is for Ranciere also a struggle over words. Against the old philosophical dream of defining the meaning of words, Ranciere underlines the need for the struggle over their meaning. The aim of the article is to clarify how and why education, equality, and democracy a...

Starting from a Foucaultian perspective, the article draws attention to current developments that neutralise democracy through the ‘governmentalisation of democracy’ and processes of ‘governmental subjectivation’. Here, ideas of Ranciere are introduced in order to clarify how democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of ‘political subjectivation’, that is, a disengagement with governmental subjectivation through the verification of one's equality in demonstrating a wrong. We will argue that democracy takes place through the paradoxical process of political subjectivation, and that today's consensus society tends to depoliticize all processes of subjectivation. A final step in the argumentation is to introduce the concept of ‘pedagogic subjectivation’—to be understood as the experience of potentiality—that is to be distinguished from governmental subjectivation and also from political subjectivation. The concept ‘pedagogic subjectivation’ is proposed as a way of thinking of the school as a publ...

This article explores how universities can function as spaces where a world citizenship takes shape. First, Kant's distinction between the ‘private use of reason’ and ‘domestic gathering’, on the one hand, and the ‘public use of reason’ and ‘public gathering’, on the other, is elucidated. This distinction is used, secondly, to argue that the actual university organises ‘domestic gatherings’. In the name of excellence, it requires an entrepreneurial ethos of its staff, i.e. an ethos of obedience to a permanent quality tribunal, implying a permanent (self-)mobilisation confining the entrepreneur to a domestic gathering and the private use of reason (‘private citizens’). Based on this understanding, the third section develops a proposal for a world university inhabited by ‘learned individuals' acting as world citizens. It is a habitat in which an experimental and attentive ethos is present and where the public use of reason is ‘finding (a) place’. This public use of reason is not just about making things known, but of making them present. The aim of the final section, then, is to make the proposal more specific, based on an exploration of ‘public lecturing’ as the time and space of public (world) gathering where things are made public.

Could anyone reasonably oppose the idea that quality and excellence are essential to the university? However unlikely it seems, that is exactly what we would like to do in this article: we would like to reject the demand for quality and excellence in the university. We would like to arrive at a point at where the need for quality is no longer necessary. In this article, such a refusal will direct us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its teaching and research in a different way; in a way that transforms the university into a world university. This paper will argue that a world university is concentrated around attentive pools of worldly study. It is a university that has to invent new languages in order to answer the question “How can we live together?” In order to answer this question, and to be “present in the present,” we will clarify our argument that both acceptance and attention are needed in the world university. This position implies a kind of curiosity that is not driven by the “will to know” but by a caring attitude to what is happening now.

With the growth of the European Union – both in terms of its size and in terms of its influence and importance – questions have emerged about the relationship between the European Union and the inhabitants of its member states. These questions are increasingly being framed in relation to the idea of citizenship. The issue here is not only whether such a thing as European citizenship can exist. The issue is also what we should understand by European citizenship and, in relation to this, how European citizenship can be promoted and advanced. These questions are first of all considered to be important in relation to the democratic legitimacy of the European Union on the assumption that the legitimacy of democratic governance crucially depends on the extent to which it is supported and ‘owned’ by its citizens. But they are also considered to be important in relation to wider questions about social cohesion and integration and the emergence of something like a sense of a European identity. Whereas many opportunities for civic participation and identification are located at national and sub-national levels, there is at least one area where over the past decade something with a more European identity has been emerging. This is the field of higher education.[1] While compulsory education and, to a slightly lesser extent, vocational education have largely remained tied to national priorities, agendas and policies, the field of higher education is rapidly evolving into a sector which transcends national borders and agendas. Although the economic imperative is central in the policies that drive these developments, particularly in relation to the ambition of the European Community to become ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (Lisbon European Council, 2000), policy makers are clearly aware of the wider potential of universities in relation to questions of social cohesion and European citizenship (see, for example, European Commission, 2003, 2006). This is also what has been emphasised by the European universities themselves, who have stressed that their role encompasses more than just the creation of the next generation of workers for the knowledge economy, but includes a responsibility for cultural, social and civic development at national and European level (see, for example, European University Association, 2003). There are indeed good reasons for focusing on the higher education sector in relation to questions about European citizenship. One reason goes back to the Humboldtian tradition, which has always given the university a special role in the development of the democratic nation-state, a line of thinking which is now extended to the European level. This line of thought traditionally stresses the unique role of ‘academic’ education, that is, the edifying potential of research-based education in institutions for higher education. A second reason for a focus on higher education has

Instead of asking how universities can contribute to active citizenship and democratic participation (and seeking for ways to improve their contribution), this article asks what it is that universities, due to their specific mission, have to offer. After describing the transition of the historical university (and its focus on modernisation) to the entrepreneurial university (focused on innovation), the authors discuss the current framing of the university's public role in terms of civic employability. The notion ‘strategies of immunisation’ is introduced to point to the implications of the current focus on citizenship. Finally, an alternative conception of the public role of the university is introduced: the university can be regarded as a space and time to constitute a public by gathering people around matters of concern, and to make something a public concern for people.

Do historians (of education) need philosophy? The paper suggests that historians do not need philosophical doctrine or (meta‐)theory, or philosophical method, but that in so far as historians (as Koselleck states) are “writing their own time anew” and are “rewriting the past” (and so enlighten their present), they might find some help in a particular philosophical ethos: an ethos of discomfort or “attentive study”. First, how Koselleck describes the price that (famous) historians have paid for writing their own time anew and for rewriting the past will be sketched. This price entails, as will be argued, an uncomfortable exposition and estrangement of the researcher or writer. It is then suggested that such exposition and estrangement is also what is at stake in the ethos of a particular philosophical tradition implying exercises or askēsis of uncomfortable exposition (or attentive study). This ethos will be sketched following Foucault, calling himself a “historian of the present”, not in order to interven...

In this essay, Maarten Simons and Jan Masschelein reconsider the concepts “educationalization” and “the grammar of schooling” in the light of the overwhelming importance of “learning” today. Doubting whether these concepts and related historical-analytical perspectives are still useful, the authors suggest the concept “learning apparatus” as a point of departure for an analysis of the “grammar of learning.” They draw on Michel Foucault’s analysis of governmentality to describe how learning has become a matter of both government and self-government. In describing the governmentalization of learning and the current assemblage of a ”learning apparatus,” Simons and Masschelein indicate how the concept of learning has become disconnected from education and teaching and has instead come to refer to a kind of capital, to something for which the learner is personally responsible, to something that can and should be managed, and to something that must be employable. Finally, the authors elaborate how these discourses combine to play a crucial role in contemporary advanced liberalism that seeks to promote entrepreneurship.

Schools and classrooms, as well as the work place and the Internet, are considered today as learning environments. People are regarded as learners and the main target of school education has become 'learning' pupils and students how to learn. The roles of teachers and lecturers are redefined as instructors, designers of (powerful) learning environments and facilitators or coaches of learning processes. The aim of this paper is to argue that the current self-understanding in terms of learning environments is not merely about a renewal of our vocabulary, but an indication of a far more general transformation of the world of education. It is argued that the current self-understanding in terms of 'learning environments' and 'learners' indicates a shift in our experience of time and place; a shift from (modern) historical self-understanding towards (post-modern) environmental self-understanding. The essay draws upon Foucauldian concepts in order to map the modern organisation of time and space in 'schools'. This past organisation is confronted with the current organisation of time and space in 'learning environments'. By contrasting both maps the paper focuses on the main characteristics of the current experience of time and space, that is, 'environmental self-understanding', and explores in the final section the dark side of this self-understanding.

This article uses the new Decree on teacher education in Flanders, Belgium, as a case study to critically examine the changes in the conception of teacher professionalism in education policy. In this examination, the focus is on the ‘form of problematisation’ (Foucault) that is enacted in the texts of the Decree. It will be argued that the Decree reflects the movement from a profession‐oriented to a market‐oriented form of problematisation of teaching and teacher education. The new conception of teacher professionalism will be identified at four levels in the new Decree on teacher education: (1) the definition of the teacher (and her training) as a strategic policy target, (2) the structural reform of teacher education, (3) the qualitative reform of teacher education, and (4) the organisational framing of institutes for teacher education. Based on this analysis, the article concludes that ‘profession‐oriented virtues’ (expertise, responsibility and autonomy) are replaced by ‘entrepreneurial’ or ‘market‐or...

This article presents and discusses the results of a literature review that was conducted in order to understand ambivalences observed in reflections on the research–teaching nexus. As a result of this literature review, it is possible to attribute these ambivalences to the mixed use of two approaches: on the one hand, a functional approach that regards research as a tool in the learning environment in order to develop competencies that are functional for the knowledge society, and, on the other hand, an idealistic approach that regards research as a process of edification and understands academic education as participation in research. This article examines these two approaches and discusses the critical issues that have to be taken into account in order to deal with the ambivalences.

The aim of this article is to argue that the evident exchange of information on performance (and its supply, demand and use) should be regarded as a symptom of a new governmental regime that installs less evident power relations. Educational policy in Flanders (Belgium), and in particular the need for feedback information from the Flemish government, will be used as a case to describe this regime. Based upon the analytical framework of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault), the article focuses on the ‘governmentalization’ of Europe and Flanders that accompanies the need for feedback information. The main result of the analysis of European and Flemish policy documents can be summarized as follows: government or the ‘conduct of conduct’ currently takes the form of ‘feedback on performance’. This means that the strategy of the governmental regime is to secure an optimal performance for each and all (member states, schools), and acts upon the ‘need for feedback’ and ‘will to learn’ of the actors involved. On the basis...

A ‘renaissance of the university’ in the European knowledge society is regarded today as a necessity. However, there is an ongoing debate about what that renaissance should look like. The aim of this article is to take a closer look at these debates, and in particular, the disputes related to the public role of the (future) university in the European knowledge society. The aim however is not to assess the validity of the arguments of each of the protagonists but to place the discussion within a broader socio-historical context. From a genealogical point of view, and drawing upon the work of Foucault and Hunter, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of milieu, each embodying their own “intellectual technology” and each leading to a specific conception of the public role of the university: firstly the principled milieu (with the persona of the academic as critical intellectual), and secondly the governmental milieu (with the persona of the state official or governmental expert). From this genealogical point of view, I will argue that the modern (research) university was from the very beginning a hybrid institution due to the claims and scopes of both milieus. Furthermore, I will argue that the current discussions reveal the ongoing influence of both milieus and their respective gazes and approaches.

Background Inguinal hernias are a common entity with nearly 31,000 repairs annually in The Netherlands and over 800,000 in the USA. The aim of the present study is to determine whether a laparoscopically diagnosed patent processus vaginalis (PPV) is a risk factor for the development of groin hernia. Methods The study population was originally composed of 599 consecutive cases (189 male, 32%) of laparoscopic transperitoneal surgery for different indications performed in 4 teaching hospitals in The Netherlands between November 1998 and February 2002. During laparoscopy, the deep inguinal ring was inspected bilaterally. The PPV group was compared with the obliterative processus vaginalis (OPV) group. Results After a mean follow-up of 5.5 years, the studied population consisted of 337 cases (94 male, 28%). In this study 12% of the studied population appeared to have PPV in adult life. The percentage PPV of our study group is much higher than the percentage of hernia repairs performed in the Dutch population. A greater proportion (12%) of hernia repairs in the PPV group was found as compared with the OPV group (3%). The chance of developing an inguinal hernia within 5.3 years is four times higher in the group with PPV. No significant correlation between age and the prevalence of PPV was observed. Conclusion This study demonstrates that PPV is an etiologic factor and a risk factor for acquiring an indirect inguinal hernia in adults.

NOSSAS CRIANÇAS NÃO SÃO NOSSAS CRIANÇAS OU PORQUE A ESCOLAR NÃO É UM AMBIENTE DE APRENDIZAGEM

The aim of this article is to analyse the evident use of the notion ‘educational quality’ from the perspective of a critical ‘ontology of the present’ by focusing on governmental relations. Through mapping present discourses on educational quality and related technologies, the authors analyse how our present concern with quality is part of a particular regime of government and self-government. In this governmental regime the ‘quality apparatus’ seeks to assure an optimal relation between supply and demand. In conclusion, the perspective of a ‘creative ontology’ of the educational present is introduced in order to formulate alternative ideas on education and in order to indicate the limits of education policy.

Traditionally, ‘education through research’ is understood to be a main characteristic of education at the university. In this article we will explore how ‘education through research’ is argued to be of major importance for the European knowledge society, how there is still a reference to the idea of Bildung or liberal education, and what research is presumed to be like if it is to have this edifying potential. It will be argued that the edifying potential of research is related to a normative component in the research activity and that this normative orientation and its presuppositions are problematic today. This lays the way for the exploration of alternative approaches to the edifying potential of research (with reference especially to Jurgen Mittelstrass and Jacques Derrida) and for the discussion of what could be at stake for ‘education through research’.

This paper presents an overview of the elements which characterize a research attitude and approach introduced by Michel Foucault and further developed as ‘studies of governmentality’ into a sub‐discipline of the humanities during the past decade, including also applications in the field of education. The paper recalls Foucault's introduction of the notion of ‘governmentality’ and its relation to the ‘mapping of the present’ and sketches briefly the way in which the studies of governmentality have been elaborated in general and in the context of research in education more particularly. It indicates how the studies of governmentality can be related to a cartography of the learning society, a cartography which helps us to get lost and to liberate our view.

The ‘European Space of Higher Education’ could be mapped as an infrastructure for entrepreneurship and a place where the distinction between the social and the economic becomes obsolete. Using Foucault's understanding of biopolitics and discussing the analyses of Agamben and Negri/Hardt it is argued that the actual governmental configuration, i.e. the economisation of the social, also has a biopolitical dimension. Focusing on the intersection between a politicisation and economisation of human life allows us to discuss a kind of ‘bio‐economisation’ (cf. Brockling), a regime of economic terror and learning as investment. Finally it is argued how fostering learning, i.e. fostering life (as a learning process) could turn into ‘let die’ and even into ‘make die’.

This article explores the so-called studies of governmentality that address the field of education policy at the level of the enacted modes of government and self-government. Governmentality is a neologism introduced by Michel Foucault and refers to a perspective on the assembly of particular rationalities and forms of thought (‘mentalities’) with specific technologies and strategies to govern. ‘To govern’ is to be understood in a very broad sense: the structuring, guiding or shaping of people’s behaviour in very different contexts and in very different areas. Except for a specific approach of educational policy, the point of departure of studies of governmentality is a particular concern for the present and for how we live the present. The article reports on a research project that focuses on a particular region of what is considered to be important in ‘our’ present education: the collection and distribution of feedback information. By taking this case as a point of departure, the article discusses what is at stake in a so-called ontology of the present, the exact focus of an ‘interpretative analytics’ and the critical ambitions of studies of governmentality.

Critical educational research offers the researcher a position and an ethos of comfort. Even the declared recognition of the relativity of principles, norms or criteria so characteristic of much cr...

Objective: To assess the value of a written questionnaire in the follow-up of patients after inguinal hernia repair. Design: Prospective study. Setting: University and two district hospitals, The Netherlands. Subjects: 314 patients with 362 inguinal hernias. Main outcome measures: Correlation between answers to questionnaire and clinical examination in the diagnosis of recurrent hernias. Results: 13/24 recurrences (54%) after a mean follow-up of 33 months with a follow-up rate of 93% were not diagnosed by the questionnaire. Conclusion: Follow-up after hernia repair must be by physical examination. Copyright © 1998 Taylor and Francis Ltd.

We will focus on the recent concern — and even ‘obsession’ — with quality in education from the perspective of changes in how we are governed and governing ourselves. Therefore, we will explore advanced liberalism as a form of ‘governmentality’ and point out that (political) government has to submit itself to a ‘permanent economic tribunal’, i.e. judge everything constantly by the principles of entrepreneurship and competition. Furthermore, not only political government, but foremost self-government should be understood in relation to the tribunal: free people objectify within them skills and competencies, which are valuable in a (market) environment. Moreover we argue that management rationality and technology try to establish a double bond within the organization by regarding the worker as an enterprising self. Having pointed out the relationship between entrepreneurship and (self-)management, it is possible to describe how quality becomes a permanent obsession to those managing their life or an organization as an enterprise. After describing management and quality (and their relation) as a ‘function’ of entrepreneurship it is possible to understand how learning is part of it, and how quality management and schooling become entwined at all levels.

The article starts from the questions: what is it to be an inhabitant or citizen of a globalised world, and how are we to think of education in relation to such inhabitants? We examine more specifically the so–called ‘European area of higher education’ that is on the way to being established and that can be regarded as a concrete example of a process of globalisation. In the first part of the paper we try to show that the discursive horizon, and the concrete techniques and strategies that accompany the establishment of this space of higher education, invite the inhabitants of that space to see themselves as entrepreneurial and autonomous entities. In the second part we show how this specific kind of subjectivation (this production of subjects), related as it is to this globalised space, involves what we call an immunisation that also affects our thinking and our ideas in and about education. To refer to this as a kind of immunisation implies that globalisation could in fact be considered a closing or enclosing rather than an opening up. We argue, therefore, that this immunisation needs to be refused in favour of the invention of other kinds of subjectivity, other ways of speaking and writing about the world and about education, such that we relate to ourselves in a different way.

Central to this article is a case study of one particular governmental instrument in Flanders, the educational magazine ‘Klasse voor Ouders’ (‘Klasse for Parents’). This popular magazine aims to provide information for and communication with parents as one of the target groups in the educational field. Despite the claimed formal and neutral character, in this study, we assume that ‘Klasse voor Ouders’ plays a larger role by contributing to the (re-)organisation of the public debate. We suggest that through the ‘order of discourse’ and thus, through what is said and written, an educational reality is created in which parents and the government are ‘positioned’ and are asked to reflect on themselves and to act in a well-defined way. By means of a critical discourse analysis in line with Fairclough, we illustrate how parents are understood as having a continuous ‘drive’ for improving the quality of their own parenting practice while the government is positioned as in charge of and in control for creating a kind of ‘parental learning community’. peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=tedp20 ispartof: Journal of Education Policy vol:29 issue:6 pages:785-803 status: published

In this article, the focus is on educational governing in the making. Drawing on conceptual underpinnings of socio-technical approaches, this implies an interest both on the way in which a sound knowledge base for policy measures is created, as on the distribution of that knowledge through publically available instruments. Governing by evidence only is possible when it relies on concrete instruments, such as feedback reports, publically consultable audits and examples of good practice. Since knowledge-related practices increasingly make use of online tools where knowledge is accessible for each and all, three websites are analysed in a particular way to describe the making of evidence. First, considered as active devices, the websites are analysed as essential components of the governing by evidence: by publishing specific data and information in a particular way, they come to constitute what comes to count as evidence and the way in which it comes to count. By addressing their visitors in a particular way, moreover, they constitute for whom it comes to count as evidence. As such, we argue, it becomes visible that digital spaces of evidence actually make schools real, and, at once, that there are different modes for schools to exist. peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=tedp20 ispartof: Journal of Education Policy vol:29 issue:5 pages:617-639 status: published

The ascendancy of neoliberal modes of governing has caused a shift in accountability practices in the public sector, including in the field of education. This shift can be observed in the accountability regimes introduced into education systems around the world. They reflect a strong focus on quality assurance/control and efficiency in order for countries to be able to survive in a global competitive environment. Increasingly operating in a global context, Ecuador also engaged in a series of policy initiatives to restructure accountability in its educational system. Based on a critical analysis of recent accountability policies in Ecuadorian education, this article determines the regime ofaccountability that is promoted in Ecuador today and discusses the emerging tensions ispartof: Policy Futures in Education vol:11 issue:1 pages:1-12 status: published

The chapter develops a specific perspective for thinking about the educational potential of research, related precisely to a very specific conception of research that might be particularly important for educational research. In contrast to the common knowledge-oriented/based way of doing research, the existential-ethical oriented way of doing research is explored. In the latter type of research, the existential and ethical conditions of the researcher are always at stake, and precisely for that reason her research is always clearly a form of self-education, i.e. research as education. Due to an existential-ethical transformation, the researcher, when speaking about her research results, can claim: “This truth that I say to you, well, you see it in myself”. The knowledge-oriented researcher makes a different claim: “This truth that I say to you, well, the method and my disinterested research attitude prove it is based on true/valid knowledge.” Elaborating on the later work of Michel Foucault , we explore the value of the existential-ethical way of doing research, suggesting philosophy of education (as a way of life) as being part of education research, and finally we attempt to reformulate the Humboldtian idea of ‘education through research’.

Our starting thesis is that the university is not the name of an institution. It is the name of a particular universitas, that is, an association of scholars and students, which means precisely of people who are not members (not yet, or no longer, members) of a professional, civic, religious, or economic institution, or organization (e.g. guild, religious order, civil service, or administration), people who do not gather around some defined production aim or under some defined rule, but around some “thing”.

Cet article porte sur la relation qu’établit un enseignant avec la discipline qu’il enseigne. Il rend compte des diverses façons dont cette relation est conceptualisée dans la recherche en éducation. Une revue de la littérature a permis de dégager quatre champs thématiques: les croyances des enseignants à propos de leur discipline, la connaissance qu’ils ont de celle-ci, les émotions qu’elle suscite et leur engagement pour leur discipline. Dans chaque champs thématique nous avons décrit les principales résultats au sujet de la relation entre l’enseignant et leur discipline dans la recherche en éducation. Basé sur cette revue, nous insistons sur la nécessité de la recherche qui prend non seulement sérieusement la relation cognitive, mais aussi affective, de l’enseignant avec la discipline., The particular relationship between a teacher and his/her subject is the focus of this article. It reports on an analysis of the way in which this relationship is conceptualized in educational research. Four thematic fields emerged from the review,i.e., teachers’ beliefs on, knowledge of, emotions on, and commitment to the subject. Within each thematic field we described major findings regarding the way in which the relation between the teacher and the subject taught is described in educational research. Based on the review, we stress the need for research that takes not only seriously the cognitive, but also the affective relationship of the teacher with its subject., Este artículo se centra en la particular relación que existe entre un profesor y su asignatura, y en él se analiza la forma en la que esta relación se conceptualiza en la investigación educativa. Cuatro campos temáticos se desprenden de este análisis: las creencias de los profesores sobre su asignatura, su conocimiento de la asignatura, los sentimientos hacia su asignatura y su dedicación a la asignatura. En cada campo temático hemos descrito las principales conclusiones sobre la relación entre el profesor y/o su asignatura en la investigación educativa. Basándonos en este análisis, acentuamos la necesidad de la investigación no sólo de la relación cognoscitiva, sino también emocional, entre el profesor y su asignatura.