Purposes and tensions in organising knowledge: trajectories of student evaluations in two research universities

Student evaluations of courses and teaching (SETs) are used for various purposes, are omnipresent in academic teaching, and cause tensions within universities. Their analytical power is contested, and specific uses are problematised for negative effects on lecturers and academic relationships. This interpretive interview study addresses how academic actors navigate tensions and purposes, and how they use, shape and deliberate on student evaluations in practice and policy processes. It reconstructs the trajectories of student evaluations in two Dutch research universities. Twenty-one interviews were conducted with actively involved students, support staff and academics in various positions including management. Elias’ processual approach to human figurations was combined with framing analysis to understand how interviewees deal with tensions and create space to change evaluation processes. The two universities differed in their articulation of problems and policy trajectories. In both universities, programme committees and management smoothed tensions by guiding lecturers and students in adjusting behaviours towards each other. Issues persisted, and multifaceted questions like performance evaluations of lecturers were addressed only indirectly. Student evaluations operated as boundary objects, bounding specific perspectives and problems while leaving others untouched. The study invites more articulate deliberation and concerted action, especially concerning persistent negative structural effects.