Introduction

This chapter explores the role and function of knowledge as a regulatory instrument. It examines how knowledge is produced and reproduced, thus performing its regulatory role within a specific policy process. It does so by means of a case study of the design and implementation of a programme of external evaluation of public schools in Portugal.

In a general sense, regulation is a form of policy. It is an expression of power, simply construed: it constitutes an attempt by one player to structure the behaviour of others. Now, in highly centralised countries like Portugal, the term ‘regulation’ is associated with the debate on reform and modernisation of public administration. It is imbued with a sense of governance rather than government, a ‘new public management’ where a priori direct control of procedures is replaced by a posteriori remote control based on results (Barroso, 2005). In the international context, Portugal offers a good example of the rise of ‘post-bureaucratic’ forms of regulation in education policy (Barroso, 2000; Maroy and Dupriez, 2000; Maroy, 2008).

Evaluation functions as a form of regulation in very specific ways. First, it shapes the behaviour of actors by measuring it against some standard, usually a specific level of achievement or a notion of best practice. This makes it very different from traditional bureaucratic forms of regulation, in which actors are governed by the application of rules. In evaluation, in other words, behaviour is considered wrong not because it is illegal, but because it is not effective. Second, and of particular interest here, evaluation entails the production and circulation of new knowledge and information: guidelines are drafted and examples of best practice set; data is collected and analysed; and performance is compared and assessed. Third, because information about organisational and professional performance is collected and processed by the actors themselves, often according to categories and standards set by their peers, regulation by evaluation is very often a process of self-regulation. In this way, evaluation forms an essential part of the cognitive framework within which the autonomy of actors such as these is exercised: the function of regulation is not simply to manage what they do, but to manage the way they think about what they do.