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The objective of this article is to explore differentiation of education through juridification. We examine changes in school governing, including trends towards globalization and marketization, as well as increased regulatory intervention in addressing complex social problems. Drawing on Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation and Teubner’s problematization of juridification, we scrutinize three sets of distinct legislative regulations in a Swedish context. We uncover a multifaceted juridification alongside a multifunctional school organization nested in a complex web of differentiated and interconnected subsystems. Traditional forms of differentiation persist, albeit with juridification as a lever, thus sparking renewed tensions.

This chapter exemplifies a strategy for understanding and examining Policy and Practice Nexuses concerning education reform trajectories. Education policy-making is an increasingly complex process, mostly neither linear and rational nor unidirectional. However, to understand such processes, we advocate complexity reduction through analytical distinctions, sequencing, and entity-relationship-thinking. While policy-practice nexuses are conflated in the reality of public education, our analytical approach must produce a somewhat linear, sequential understanding. Drawing on this argument, we propose a model which displays education reform trajectories and explore the model in terms of empirical objects. With the distinction between entities and relationships, we facilitate analytical definitions in Policy-Practice Research regarding what affects what and how it does so. Relationships are units of re-contextualization, process, and transfer, which demand the presence of at least two entities. Moreover, Time becomes an analytical device. Each unit conditions the next. The prior development of ideas always conditions the current context of the analyses. Finally, we advocate comparative education reform policy analyses. While selecting (national and sectorial), cases become critical. Comparisons may uncover the different layers of universality and particularity.

In this chapter, we outline the notion of peer review and its relation to the autonomy of the academic profession and the contract between science and society. This is followed by an introduction of some key themes regarding the practices of peer review. Next, we specify some reasons to further explore different practices of peer review. Briefly, the state of the art is presented. Finally, the structure of this volume and its individual contributions are presented.

While research merits have long been the priority in the recognition of institutions and scholars, teaching is often downplayed, appearing as a practice of less worth in Academia. To counteract this tendency, various systems to upgrade the value of education and to promote teaching excellence have been introduced by higher education institutions on a global scale. In this chapter, we explore the values and beliefs unveiled in the promotion of academics in such a system. We employ empirical data collected from an inquiry into the promotion of distinguished university teachers at a comprehensive university in Sweden. An analysis of reviewers’ judgements and legitimations shows that the intersection between promotion, peer review, and excellent teaching affects not only the peer review process, but also the notion of the distinguished university teacher.

This open access volume explores peer review in the scientific community and academia. While peer review is as old as modern science itself, recent changes in the evaluation culture of higher education systems have increased the use of peer review, and its purposes, forms and functions have become more diversified. This book put together a comprehensive set of conceptual and empirical contributions on various peer review practices with relevance for the scientific community and higher education institutions worldwide. Consisting of three parts, the editors and contributors examine the history, problems and developments of peer review, as well as the specificities of various peer review practices. In doing so, this book gives an overview on and examine peer review, and asks how it can move forward.

The purpose of this study is to discern and discuss issues with relevance to the tension between contextuality and generalisation, which recurrently are identified over time in research reviews of teaching methods. The 75 most cited reviews on teaching methods listed in the Web of Science from 1980 to 2017 were analysed. Since our interest is the claims made in each article about the teaching method under study, the analysis concerned the abstract, results, discussion, conclusion, and implication parts of each review. Three main issues, cutting across the reviews over time, were identified: 1) the abundance of moderating factors, 2) the need for highly qualified teachers, and 3) the research-practice gap. It is argued that the three issues reflect tensions in original research. The implications of these findings are discussed in the article. One main conclusion is that such issues ought to be more explicitly attended to and elaborated in both primary and secondary level research. The importance of viewing validity as a multidimensional concept, including internal, external, and ecological aspects, is underlined. Further, ideas from realistic reviewing are used to discuss a contextually bound approach to causality.

The recruitment of full professors is critical for the formation of academia. The professorship is critical not only for the prosperity of the HEIs, but especially so for the establishment, development and communication of the discipline. In this chapter, we analyze the initial step of the typecasting process in the recruitment of full professors. We use a few cases to illustrate how the intellectual and social organization of the field of education science(s) is manifested in publicly posted job advertisements. The analysis shows that the field is characterized by heterogeneity and no longer has a basis in one single discipline. New relations between research, teaching, and society can be observed, as well as a narrowing of authority of the professorship but an increase of responsibilities.