A Framework to Conceptualise the Scoring Work of School Inspection Teams

This chapter presents a conceptual framework to analyse the challenges school inspectors face in their judgements and scoring decisions. It adopts the valuation constellation perspective to examine how the positions and relations between actors, formal and implicit rules, and enabling and constraining infrastructures shape inspection teams’ scoring work. The chapter also draws on the street-level bureaucracy perspective to acknowledge the potential disconnect between mandated actions and actual scoring practices, and the need for discretion by inspectors. Additional concepts such as the complexity of scoring tasks, internal and external constraints, and the distinction between scoring processes and products further illuminate the dynamics of inspection judgements. The framework avoids overreliance on a single rigid approach, instead carefully employing multiple lenses to engage meaningfully with the empirical data on scoring work.