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Revue française de pédagogie, n°186/2014

Les trajectoires des inspections scolaires en Europe : analyses comparatives

Edited by Xavier Pons

Revue française de pédagogie - Recherches en éducation



School Inspections' Trajectories in Europe: Comparative Analyses

This issue asks a simple question: how do you understand and explain the permanence, disappearance or reappearance of the specific and age-old institutional body that is school inspection in various European education systems in a context whereby new educational governance methods may question its legitimacy? This issue shall answer the question by focusing on the analysis of school inspections' "trajectories" in various policy contexts and by using a long-term and comparative view. It compiles four contributions which analyse how school inspection bodies have evolved in England, France, French-speaking Belgium, Scotland and Sweden. Each of these contributions adopts a particular theoretical framework with a specific vision of trajectory and highlights various factors to explain the inspection bodies' durability: the differing repositioning strategies by the English and Scottish inspection bodies due to changes in governance methods (Martin Lawn & Jenny Ozga); the similar professional legitimacy work by the main French and English inspection bodies (Xavier Pons); the Swedish inspection body whose versatility has enabled it to undergo various institutional conversions (Linda Rönnberg) or the combination of institutional reconversion, sedimentation and hybridization in the case of the French-speaking Belgian inspection body (Xavier Dumay & Christian Maroy).