The New Governance of Educational Research: Comparing Research Funding and Evaluation Systems in Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom

Over the past several decades, the relationship between the forms of public governance of education and knowledge production has been transformed in many countries. This is due to the development and strengthening of research evaluation systems and specifically new modes of governance via funding mechanisms, such as performance-based funding distribution, thematic programs, and project funding that replace more traditional mechanisms like block grants, formula funding, and ad-hoc project funding. This contribution presents a synthesis of the forthcoming co-authored book European Educational Research Reconstructed: Institutional Change in the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway and the European Union (Oxford: Symposium Books). It includes a cross-national comparison of Germany, Norway, and the UK, embedded within Europe. Evaluation and performance-based research funding systems have assumed a major role in allocating public funding to research organizations and individual researchers and these are diffusing widely and in a highly diversified manner. Thus, we ask: How has the development of significant new research funding mechanisms and evaluation systems (re)shaped educational research? Whereas previous research funding mechanisms used formula funding or project-based funding calls that were relatively open to all kinds of projects, the new forms of public research funding – performance-based research funding and thematic programs – often define in advance certain priorities in terms of themes, approaches, or objects of research, affecting the shape and form of educational research. We show this impact of policy in Germany, Norway, and the UK both in the organization(s) of scientific activities and the contents of educational research.