In order to promote quality assurance and quality improvement in schools, most European countries introduced instruments supporting the idea of evidence-based policy (such as e.g. school inspections, educational standards and annual comparative student assessment) in order to enhance the quality of the educational system. According to the idea of this evidence-based policy, goals have to be communicated more explicitly, goals achievement has to be measured more rigorously, and feedback data (i.e. of student assessment) has to be communicated back to actors on all levels of the school system to provide information and motivational stimuli for quality improvement. In order to make this rationale work, re-contextualisation processes are necessary (Fend, 2006). Actors on all levels of schooling have to understand both, the goals and the performance feedback and have to know how to translate them into practical action on their respective level.

Empirical research has revealed that the new governance instruments do not always quickly produce these effects they were propagated for (see e.g. for school inspections Husfeldt 2011; for feedback of performance data Altrichter, Moosbrugger & Zuber, 2016). There is only a small percentage of teachers reporting data use (20% - 50 %) for school improvement (i.e. Demski, van Ackeren & Clausen, 2016). Even though teachers report positive attitude towards data feedback (Bonsen, Büchter & Peek, 2006), it seems hard for them to translate feedback data into constructive teaching improvement measures (Peek, 2006). Usually, their focus is put on repeating contents, slight changes in interaction (Groß Ophoff, 2013) and training test formats (Maier, 2006; Hosenfeld & Groß Ophoff, 2007). There are hardly any reports on more thorough innovations in teaching (Groß Ophoff, 2013). However, communication between members of the school seemed to increase and became more professional (Schildkamp, 2007).

An explanation for the generally inconclusive results is that to date there is only little knowledge of actual (long term) processes of appropriating and using these new instruments on the operative levels of schooling, in schools and classrooms (see e.g. Husfeldt, 2011).

This symposium aims at analyzing some of these processes on school level in different countries and under different work conditions aiming for a better understanding of recontextualisation processes when using new governance-instruments.

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