In contrast to many other European countries, in Germany school inspection is a rather new instrument of educational governance. The school inspection procedure has an equivalent framework within the whole country but characteristics vary between federal states.

According to Kotthoff and Böttcher (2010), similarities of the school inspection concepts are anchored in the following characteristics: (a) School inspection takes place as an evaluation of individual schools. Results are reported to the individual schools with the intention of evoking school development processes. In part local authorities are briefed about the results and consequently additional information for a comprehensive evidence-based educational quality assurance system is provided.

Furthermore, (b) school inspection procedures are standardized and based on data (though represented in varying degrees). As a consequence of that, a comparison of the results of the evaluation between individual schools with predefined norms is enabled. Benchmarks are normally based on a public orientation-framework for school quality, which formulates normative expectations toward the quality of school and education and thereby subjecting schools to accountability (cf. Kotthoff/Böttcher 2010, p. 295 f).

Despite these commonalities of the school inspection procedures, variations between German federal states have been identified and systematized in the literature.  Whereas Rürup (2008) distinguished between truth- and adequacy-oriented approaches focusing on the knowledge production through school inspection; Kotthoff and Böttcher (2010) discriminated ideal type modes of action by means of the formulas quality/school development via competition, consequences or comprehension.

Kotthoff and Böttcher (2010) developed a typology of school inspection distinguishing between controlling-type and peer-review-type. In general both types have common features of the inspection process (documentary analysis, school visitation, teacher interviews, feedback/report) but differ in the composition of the inspection team (full-time versus additional) and the consequences (handling of the inspection report, follow-up inspection, staff changes). However, the predominant function of German school inspection is to advice and support schools and to promote improvement (improvement-orientation).

In the theoretical framework about the impact of school inspection by Ehren and Visscher (2006), besides the improvement of student achievements, the external encouragement of school development is one of the main variables. The framework as well as the empirical work by Ehren and Visscher (2006, 2008) point to the central role of the features of school inspection (e.g. directive vs. reserved inspection style, feedback characteristics, strategies preventing negative side effects) for the acceptance and the handling of the results of the school inspection. We take up these results in our study and work on the following questions: (a) to what extent school inspection characteristics are correlated with perception and acceptance in the individual schools, and (b) whether varying conceptual ideas of school inspection leads to measurable differences in the evaluation of the procedure.

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