Abstract:
The paper is organized in two parts. A theoretical framework for the analysis of the current Spanish university reform is presented in the first part. It is an ideological and critical analysis that tries to reveal how and why the reforms, not confined to organizational and pedagogical issues, represent an intentional form of State and other powerful agencies' intervention on educational systems, which is market-oriented. In this direction, we adopt some interpretive concepts of Stephen Ball and other authors such as the concept of performativity culture related to the obsession with the results and the concepts of deregulation, re-regulation and fabrications as peculiar forms of government that seem to have more autonomy, but they actually imply a greater regulation producing new organizational and professional identities in the university. In the second part, the theoretical framework is applied in order to describe and value two programs that, in the Spanish context, can be considered as good examples of some of the decisions aiming to guarantee the quality of education in the European Higher Education Space. The programs are the called Verifica, which accredits curricula and Graduate Degrees, and the called Docentia, which evaluates the teaching skills of university teachers. On both, we ask, among other questions: To what degree are both of them singular examples of a performativity culture? What kinds of regulation and forms of government prevail?
Keywords
university educational reform; quality assessment; performativity; regulation; fabrications; career and teachers' accreditation schemes