OECD Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education: Sweden 2011

Implementing Test Enhanced Learning: Swedish Teacher Students’ Perception of Quizzing

“…On the other hand, test anxiety appears to be a learnt phenomenon (Bandura, 1982). That tests, in the Swedish goal-oriented education system, is one adjacent method in summing and assessing learners' achievements not used to compare students, that no formal final examinations exist, that tests results are not linked to accountability, and that Swedish teachers may curry favour with testing among students (e.g., play down stakes see Nusche, Halász, Looney, Santiago, & Shewbridge, 2011), test anxiety could be argued to be a fairly unrecognised educational issue in the present context. .…”

Mechanisms of Change in Dutch Inspected Schools: Comparing Schools in Different Inspection Treatments

“…Inspection feedback becomes relevant when it supports actors on various levels in providing ideas for improvement actions. A number of studies note that feedback following an inspection has a great impact on school improvement, particularly when the feedback is specific, frequent and adapted to the school context (Matthews and Sammons, 2005;Ehren and Visscher, 2008;McCrone et al, 2007McCrone et al, , 2009Nusche et al, 2011;Dedering and Muller, 2011;Dobbelaer et al, 2013). Brimblecombe, Shaw, and Ormston (1995) and Chapman (2001), for example, describe how teachers seem to regard oral and written feedback from school inspectors as an important stimulus for school improvement.…”

Evaluation – the (not so) softlysoftly approach to governance and its consequences for compulsory education in the Nordic countries

“…Techniques of quality assurance, performance management and the use of evaluative data in educational decision-making have been introduced (Nusche et al 2011;Andersen et al 2009;Segerholm 2009) that build on social technologies utilising the liberal core concept of choice where the citizen-consumer is able to make comparisons between competitors (Moos 2009). In other words, new "soft" governance ways of managing more dispersed and fragmented systems at arm's length have also appeared in the Nordic countries.…”

“…New forms of governance, adapted to arm's-length steering, have emerged incorporating new management methods collectively known as New Public Management (Tolofari 2005). There has been a shift from norm-based management to management by objectives (Antikainen 2010;Nusche et al, 2011) requiring, amongst other things, quality assurance and performance management through techniques of audit and evaluation (Andersen et al 2009;Simola et al 2009;Segerholm 2009). These "soft" or more indirect forms of control involve new ways of regulating that may be as powerful as, or even more coercive than, traditional methods of direct control (Moos 2009).…”