The current empirical research on school inspection in Germany as well as internationally has focussed primarily on the acceptance of the instrument by actors in schools as well as its function to stimulate school improvement (see e.g. Ehren und Visscher 2008; Dedering 2012). Furthermore, some studies investigated the impact of school inspection on student achievement (e.g. Rosenthal 2004). The explicit focus on the impact of this steering instrument as ‘intervention’ has – in comparison – led to significantly less attention to school inspection as social practice. In particular the actions of school inspectors and their modus operandi regarding their actual evaluation of school quality signify a gap in the current research literature. This presentation adresses this point. It attends to those processes that take place during the judgement formation process of school inspection teams. The attention centres on the question of how inspectors arrive at the joint judgement as a team. This implicates the question of how inspectors deal with potential disagreement regarding specific judgements. Of further importance is which inspectors eventually are successful with realising their judgement preferences. Theoretically, the intention is to highlight which discourses are activated by the inspectors' statements and which patterns of legitimacy can be identified.

Dedering, K. (2012). Schulinspektion als wirksamer Weg der Systemsteuerung? Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 58(1), 69-88. Ehren, M. C. M. & Visscher, A. J. (2008). The relationships between school and inspections, school characteristics and school improvement. British Journal of Educational Studies, 56(2), 205-227. Kuckartz, U. (2012). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung. Weinheim & Basel: Beltz Juventa. Rosenthal, L. (2004). Do school inspections improve school quality? Ofsted inspections and school examination results in the UK. Economics of Education Review, 23(2), 143-151.