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This article examines the spread of new public management (NPM) across European education\ud systems as it has traversed national boundaries. While recognising the transnational dimensions\ud of the spread of NPM, the authors offer new insights into the importance of national contexts in\ud mediating this development in educational settings by focusing upon NPM within three European\ud countries (England, Italy and Norway). We reveal its recontextualisation in these sites and the\ud interplay between NPM, and local and national conditions. This analysis is underpinned by a theoretical framework that seeks to capture the relationship between education and the state\ud and to reveal tensions produced by NPM both as a shaping force and an entity shaped by local\ud conditions in these contexts. The article concludes by focusing upon the complexities and\ud specificities of NPM recontextualisation in the three countries as a basis for a reflection upon\ud possible future policy trajectories

In this article, different inspection models are compared in terms of their impact on school improvement and the mechanisms each of these models generates to have such an impact. Our theoretical framework was drawn from the programme theories of six countries' school inspection systems (i.e. the Netherlands, England, Sweden, Ireland, the province of Styria in Austria and the Czech Republic). We describe how inspection models differ in the scheduling and frequency of visits (using a differentiated or cyclical approach), the evaluation of process and/or output standards, and the consequences of visits, and how these models lead to school improvement through the setting of expectations, the use of performance feedback and actions of the school's stakeholders. These assumptions were tested by means of a survey of principals in primary and secondary schools in these countries (n = 2239). The data analysis followed a three-step approach: (1) confirmatory factor analyses, (2) path modelling and (3) fitting of multiple-indicator multiple-cause models. The results indicate that Inspectorates of Education that use a differentiated model (in addition to regular visits), in which they evaluate both educational practices and outcomes of schools and publicly report inspection findings of individual schools, are the most effective. These changes seem to be mediated by improvements in the schools' self-evaluations and the schools' stakeholders' awareness of the findings in the public inspection reports. However, differentiated inspections also lead to unintended consequences as principals report on narrowing the curriculum and on discouraging teachers from experimenting with new teaching methods.

This article reports on the findings from a literature review of research on data use in education published in English, German and Scandinavian languages. The review is inspired by methods for systematic mapping. The analysis illustrates how the characteristics of the total corpus of 129 articles on data use in education vary across different contexts, countries and regions. In all contexts, the studies primarily investigate structures and systems around data use. While the Anglophone studies are mainly empirical and often concerned with implementation and effectiveness in terms of data use, the studies published in German and Scandinavian languages focus more heavily on discussions and analytical reflections upon the developments of data use in education. Six investigative modes of studies on data use that can contribute to creating a more nuanced understanding of research on data use in education are identified, presented and discussed. ARTICLE HISTORY

The introduction of the national evaluation system in the Norwegian education system can be described as a shift in the Norwegian educational policy from the use of input oriented policy instruments towards a more output oriented policy. The new tool-kit consists of different evaluation tools, such as standardised tests, diagonistic tests etc. which create new expectations to schools and principals. On the one hand, this article focuses on the policy purposes of the evaluation tools as they are formulated in policy documents. On the other hand, it investigates principals' perceptions of the use of the evaluation tools to improve student achievements. A text analytic approach focusing on language and discourse is used to analyse policy documents. The analysis of the principals' perceptions is based on a quantitative analysis of survey data and Structural Equation Modeling is applied as an analytic technique. Based on the analysis, questions can be raised whether all the policy purposes can be fulfilled or whether the tools might produce other effects than the objectives assigned to them. Problematic aspects related to the tools' modes of regulations and thereby the choice of tools are discussed, as well as inconsistencies between the policy purposes and the use of tools in practice.