Self-evaluation and internationalization in the SNPG: tensions between evaluation policy and postgraduate studies in education

Abstract

This article discusses the articulation between self-evaluation and internationalization in the National Postgraduate System (SNPG), with an emphasis on the implications for postgraduate education. It is a theoretical-documentary essay that analyzes the Report by the Internationalization Working Group set up by the Coordination of the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), institutional documents on evaluation and self-evaluation, and mobilizes excerpts from an interview with a manager-researcher from the CAPES Evaluation Directorate. In dialogue with the literature in the area, it is argued that, although CAPES advances in the formulation of concepts, dimensions, and indicators of internationalization applicable to all evaluation areas, the systematic integration of this axis with self-evaluation remains underdeveloped. This limits the evaluative model's capacity to recognize formative, social, and contextual impacts of internationalization, as well as its “invisible impacts”, particularly relevant in the field of Education. The analyzed interview reinforces tensions already pointed out in previous studies, such as the low weight of self-evaluation in the evaluation form, the centrality of traditional metrics, and the institutional "stiffness" resulting from the judicialization of evaluation. It is concluded that self-evaluation can constitute, for Postgraduate Programs in Education, a strategic space to re-signify internationalization and dispute other meanings of quality, provided that it is strengthened within the scope of evaluation policy and supported by institutional conditions that enable consistent reflective processes.

Keywords: self-evaluation; internationalization; postgraduate studies; education.