Joël Bonamy

Using Evaluation to Create ‘Provisional Stabilities’: Bridging Innovation in Higher Education Change Processes

This article reports the evaluation experience in two SOCRATES (European Union funding mechanism designed to support innovation in teaching and learning) projects focused on change in higher education. The projects were international in scope involving six countries and ten institutions within the last four years. The article reflects on change in institutions specifically, especially those introduced by the use of information and communication technologies, and it suggests the hypothesis that in such a phase of transition, new rules are not yet established and a state of anomie can occur at the level of courses, departments and institutions. The article details what happens in educational institutions in which rules and practices are well established and validated and a new event radically changes or challenges the traditional practices. Instead of the psycho-social notion of ‘resistance to change’, the theory of Durkheim and followers that analyses human responses in times of social change may be of use to interpret situations in which change or the will to change creates conflicting systems of rules and practices. The article will argue for a crucial role for evaluation in negotiating such periods of change.

‘Bridging Tools’ for change: evaluating a collaborative learning network

This paper outlines the evaluation approach associated with the Learn-Nett project under the SOCRATES initiative. It describes the project, locates the role of evaluation within it and finally conceptualises the role evaluation might play in a change process. The paper argues that evaluation in these circumstances can be essentially formative but also be prompted by a search for new knowledge in the area of changing practices in learning. It identifies ‘transition’ as anomic and the need to develop ‘provisional stability’ for change to occur effectively. In such periods of change, evaluation products can act as useful ‘bridging tools’ which can support the development of ‘provisional stability’.

Finn Organisation and Spatial Dynamics

For the past three years the world economy has suffered a recession. In contrast to earlier global, as well as national,recessions when manufacturing industries were most vulnerable,business services have been signijicantly affected. Not surpris-ingly, this has revived old doubts about the role of services in modern economies. The papers in this section re-examine the problematics associated with the efficiency and productivity of service organisations. Even if the social division of labour is a strong argument to support the growth of service industries, attempts to understand better the connection between service firm location and different ways of internally organising and coordinating production might be one useful direction for future research.

Local Care Services: A Reflection on the Conditions for their Emergence and Development

Local care services are making a comeback in the headlines (with the Borloo plan, CAE report). The development of this market (or markets) and the policies linked with them nonetheless give rise to problems. This article seeks to identify the levers on which current policy can rely to become effective and emphasises the shortcomings that need to be resolved to ensure impetus. It attempts to specify certain macrosociological and macroeconomic conditions, and analyse the conditions specific to demand and the constraints in building efficient supply that may explain the failures of the policies implemented so far.