Between indicators and meaning: self-assessment, internationalization, and epistemic coherence in postgraduate education

Abstract

Self-assessment and internationalization have become structuring axes of Brazilian postgraduate education. However, they have frequently been conducted under a predominantly instrumental rationality, centered on maximizing quantitative results and adapting to external evaluative standards. In this sense, this article analyzes the articulation between self-assessment and internationalization in postgraduate education, problematizing the centrality of quantitative indicators and discussing their effects on knowledge production, academic training, and the institutional identity of the programs. As an analytical key, the Relational Theory of Epistemic Coherence of Learning (RTECL) is used, which understands knowledge systems as relational fields structured by links, tensions, and levels of coherence. From this perspective, postgraduate education is analyzed as an institutional epistemic field in which indicators, policies, and practices of internationalization operate as relational updating mechanisms capable of strengthening or destabilizing formative coherence. It is argued that only self-evaluation conceived as a reflective and epistemically responsible practice can support ethical, pluralistic, and intellectually consistent internationalization processes. The article thus proposes a reconceptualization of evaluation and internationalization policies that places training, meaning, and epistemic coherence at the center of postgraduate education. The analysis highlights the need for a reconceptualization of evaluation and internationalization policies, since the analyzed mechanisms tend to reconfigure the epistemic coherence of postgraduate programs in a fragmented manner when dissociated from the formative project.

Keywords: institutional self-assessment; internationalization; RTECL.