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Avaliação: Revista da Avaliação da Educação Superior (Campinas)
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Dossier • Avaliação (Campinas) 31 • 2026 • https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-57652026v31id30753423 linkcopy

Open-access SELF-EVALUATION AND INTERNATIONALIZATION IN THE SNPG: TENSIONS BETWEEN EVALUATION POLICY AND POSTGRADUATE STUDIES IN EDUCATION

Autoevaluación e internacionalización en el SNPG: tensiones entre política evaluativa y posgrado en Educación

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 Enhancement 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 selfevaluation 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.

Resumo

Este artigo discute a articulação entre autoavaliação e internacionalização no Sistema Nacional de Pós-Graduação (SNPG), com ênfase nas implicações para a pósgraduação em Educação. Trata-se de um ensaio teórico-documental que analisa o Relatório do Grupo de Trabalho Internacionalização da Coordenação para o Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), documentos institucionais sobre avaliação e autoavaliação e mobiliza excertos de uma entrevista com um gestorpesquisador da Diretoria de Avaliação da CAPES. Em diálogo com a literatura da área, argumenta-se que, embora a CAPES avance na formulação de conceitos, dimensões e indicadores de internacionalização aplicáveis a todas as áreas de avaliação, a integração sistemática desse eixo com a autoavaliação permanece pouco desenvolvida. Isso limita a capacidade do modelo avaliativo de reconhecer impactos formativos, sociais e contextuais da internacionalização, bem como seus “impactos invisíveis”, particularmente relevantes na área de Educação. A entrevista analisada reforça tensões já apontadas em estudos anteriores, como o baixo peso da autoavaliação na ficha de avaliação, a centralidade de métricas tradicionais e o “engessamento” institucional decorrente da judicialização da avaliação. Conclui-se que a autoavaliação pode constituir, para os Programas de PósGraduação em Educação, um espaço estratégico para ressignificar a internacionalização e disputar outros sentidos de qualidade, desde que seja fortalecida no âmbito da política avaliativa e apoiada por condições institucionais que possibilitem processos reflexivos consistentes.

Palavras-chave:
autoavaliação; internacionalização; pós-graduação; educação.

Resumen

Este artículo discute la articulación entre autoevaluación e internacionalización en el Sistema Nacional de Posgrado (SNPG), con énfasis en las implicaciones para el posgrado en Educación. Se trata de un ensayo teórico-documental que analiza el Informe del Grupo de Trabajo de Internacionalización de la Coordinación para el Perfeccionamiento de Personal de Nivel Superior (CAPES), documentos institucionales sobre evaluación y autoevaluación y moviliza extractos de una entrevista con un gestor-investigador de la Dirección de Evaluación de la CAPES. En diálogo con la literatura del área, se argumenta que, aunque la CAPES avanza en la formulación de conceptos, dimensiones e indicadores de internacionalización aplicables a todas las áreas de evaluación, la integración sistemática de este eje con la autoevaluación permanece poco desarrollada. Esto limita la capacidad del modelo evaluativo para reconocer impactos formativos, sociales y contextuales de la internacionalización, así como sus “impactos invisibles”, particularmente relevantes en el área de Educación. La entrevista analizada refuerza tensiones ya señaladas en estudios anteriores, como el bajo peso de la autoevaluación en la ficha de evaluación, la centralidad de métricas tradicionales y el “encorsetamiento” institucional derivado de la judicialización de la evaluación. Se concluye que la autoevaluación puede constituir, para los Programas de Posgrado en Educación, un espacio estratégico para resignificar la internacionalización y disputar otros sentidos de calidad, siempre que sea fortalecida en el ámbito de la política evaluativa y apoyada por condiciones institucionales que posibiliten procesos reflexivos consistentes.

Palabras clave:
autoevaluación; internacionalización; posgrado; Educación.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent decades, the National Graduate System (SNPG) has undergone a process of expansion, diversification and increasing regulation, in which the Coordination for Enhancement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) plays a central role in defining criteria, instruments and meanings of evaluation. More recently, this movement has gained a new outline with the adoption of the multidimensional evaluation model, formalized in the 2017-2020 Quadrennial Evaluation Report and in CAPES Ordinance No. 145/2018, which introduces specific dimensions (such as internationalization, impact on society, and personnel development) and incorporates self-evaluation as a formal requirement in evaluation processes. It is in this context of reconfiguration of the model, in which internationalization starts to appear as a structuring axis of the evaluation of all graduate programs (PPGs), that the discussion proposed in this article takes place. Among the axes that have gained prominence in this model, internationalization and self-evaluation appear, in official documents and in recent debates, as strategic dimensions: the first is associated with the insertion of Brazilian postgraduate studies in global circuits of scientific production; the second, with the need to qualify PPGs’ internal processes of management, planning and continuous improvement. To support the change in PPGs’ evaluation for continuous operation1 in the SNPG, CAPES composed working groups (WG) to develop proposals for approaches to strategic themes.

However, the way in which these two axes are articulated within the evaluation model is still to be made more explicit, especially when considering the heterogeneity of the areas of evaluation and the specificities of postgraduate studies in Education. On the one hand, CAPES (2018) instituted, through Ordinance No. 149, of July 4, 2018, a WG on PPG self-evaluation and, in 2019, published the Report of the Internationalization WG (Brasil, 2019a), with conceptual recommendations and propositions of variables and indicators to be considered in the evaluation of all areas. These recommendations were later incorporated into the CAPES guidelines for the program evaluation for continuous operation in the SNPG (Brasil, 2025a) and dialogue with the new National Plan for Postgraduate Education - PNPG 2025-2028, which reinforces internationalization and self-evaluation as structuring dimensions of postgraduate policy.

Notwithstanding, interviews and public statements by managers of the CAPES Evaluation Division, as well as area coordinators - such as Verhine (2018), head of the Education Area in the 2017-2020 Quadrennial Evaluation - show ambiguities in the implementation of these agendas in a highly regulated and judicialized system, guided by high-impact metrics. In this scenario, the Education Area - broad, diverse, and strongly linked to public policies, school networks, and social movements - faces specific tensions in the incorporation of internationalization and self-evaluation, given the weight of the Portuguese language in the production and circulation of knowledge, the centrality attributed to social impact, and the critical tradition in the face of productivist evaluation models. Recent CAPES Area Documents2 for Education point out, at the same time, the need to qualify international insertion and to recognize forms of internationalization "through the local" (such as South-South cooperation, partnerships with school networks, and professional development projects), which do not always translate into traditional high-impact indicators (Brasil, 2025b).

It is in this intersection between national guidelines, official definitions of internationalization and self-evaluation, and specificities of the Education Area that this article is situated. It is not intended to account for all the complexity of the articulation between these axes in the SNPG, but to discuss some of their contours and tensions in the light of central documents of the evaluation policy and the perspective of a CAPES manager-researcher. Thus, the problem that guides the text is: to what extent - and under what emphases - has CAPES articulated, in its recent guidelines and instruments, the axes of self-evaluation and internationalization, and what implications does this articulation carry for postgraduate studies in Education?

This article aims to critically analyze this articulation as it appears in institutional documents and discourses, taking as sources the Report by the CAPES Internationalization Working Group (Brasil, 2019a), Ordinance No. 149/2018 on selfevaluation (Brasil, 2018), CAPES dissemination materials on changes in the evaluation form3 in the 2017-2020 Quadrennial Evaluation (Brazil, 2019b) and excerpts from an indepth interview with a manager-researcher from the CAPES Evaluation Division (GestorEntrevistado, 2023). Methodologically, it is a theoretical-documentary essay, in which the interview is mobilized as an illustrative voice, problematizing the tensions in the evaluation policy, in dialogue with literature on evaluation, self-evaluation and internationalization in higher education - with special attention to the production of the Education Area.

From this corpus, it is argued that, although the Report of the Internationalization WG and the recent CAPES guidelines advance in the formulation of concepts, variables and indicators of internationalization applicable to all areas, the systematic integration of this axis with self-evaluation remains scarcely developed. This opens space - and, simultaneously, imposes challenges - for areas such as Education to mobilize selfevaluation as a strategy for critical reflection on the meanings, models and impacts of internationalization, overcoming an interpretation limited to traditional metrics and the logic of accountability.

The text is organized into four movements: (i) it presents the context and concepts of internationalization and self-evaluation in the SNPG in the light of the multidimensional model; (ii) analyzes central dimensions of the CAPES Internationalization WG Report; (iii) discusses contributions from the interview with the interviewed manager-researcher to the understanding of tensions around these axes; and (iv) explores implications for postgraduate studies in Education, with emphasis on possibilities of resignifying internationalization through self-evaluation.

2 INTERNATIONALIZATION AND SELF-EVALUATION IN THE SNPG: CONTEXT AND CONCEPTS

2.1 Internationalization in the SNPG

The internationalization of higher education and postgraduate studies has been consolidated, in recent decades, as one of the central axes of science, technology and innovation policies in several countries. In Brazil, this movement was initially expressed in specific development programs, such as Science without Borders (CsF), focused on student mobility and insertion in foreign universities of "excellence", and, more recently, in the Institutional Program for Internationalization (CAPES-PrInt), which shifts the focus to institutional projects of academic cooperation, coinciding with the adoption of the CAPES multidimensional evaluation model. In this context, internationalization goals and indicators are now incorporated more organically into the SNPG's evaluation instruments.

In general, internationalization has been associated with participation in international networks and projects, the mobility of professors and students, the offer of courses in a foreign language, and publication in journals of international circulation, especially in English. At the same time, both in the international literature and in Brazilian production, criticism of narrow conceptions of internationalization has intensified, considering it cannot be restricted to the valorization of certain indicators and the uncritical adherence to hegemonic standards of excellence. Authors such as Knight (2020) and De Wit (2020) defend internationalization as a multidimensional process, which involves not only flows of people and products, but also curricular transformations, reconfiguration of research agendas, circulation of epistemologies, and redefinition of power relations between academic centers and peripheries.

This debate converges with the responsible evaluation agenda, synthesized in the Leiden Manifesto-which questions the acritical use of bibliometric metrics and the transformation of indicators into ends in themselves-, and dialogues with critical analyses of "governance by indicators" in Brazilian postgraduate studies (GestorEntrevistado, 2023). Besides, decolonial perspectives (Abba; Leal; Finardi, 2022; Ballestrin, 2017; Santos, 2018) demand thinking about internationalization beyond the reproduction of academic hierarchies from the Global North, promoting the affirmation of epistemologies from the South and less asymmetrical forms of cooperation.

Within the scope of the SNPG, CAPES recognizes this complexity by establishing the Internationalization WG, whose report defines that

[...] the evaluation of internationalization refers to the form and content of the education offered by postgraduate programs, attested by multilateral collaborative research, dissemination of intellectual production, mobility of professors and students in collaboration and institutional performance, as well as specific institutional affordances (Brasil, 2019a, p. 5, free translation).

This formulation makes explicit a conception of internationalization that articulates academic practices, institutional conditions, and cooperation strategies. An articulated set of academic and institutional practices is proposed beyond the presence in rankings and the establishment of ad hoc agreements, which reinforces its centrality in the multidimensional evaluation model.

In the case of the Education Area, this agenda acquires specific contours. Area Documents and reports of the 2017-2020 Quadrennial Evaluation point out, on the one hand, the need to expand the international insertion of Graduate Programs in Education (PPGEs) and, on the other hand, the importance of recognizing forms of internationalization that are not reduced to publication in high-impact journals in English, such as South-South cooperations, Latin American networks, research projects with an impact on public policies and continuing teacher education (Brasil, 2021). These specificities tension standardized models of internationalization, by recentering dimensions such as language, context, and societal implication.

2.2 Self-evaluation in the SNPG

In parallel with the changes in the conception and instruments of internationalization, CAPES began to institutionalize self-evaluation as a component of the evaluation model. Ordinance No. 149, of July 4, 2018 (Brasil, 2018), created the Working Group on Self-Evaluation of Graduate Programs, with the purpose of "proposing guidelines and guidelines for the incorporation of self-assessment into the CAPES evaluation model." In institutional news about the changes in the evaluation form, CAPES (Brasil, 2019b) indicated the search for a "more qualitative, less volumetric" evaluation, valuing aspects such as self-evaluation and strategic planning, however recognizing their "lower weight" in the final judgment of the programs. Part of the WG's recommendations and subsequent discussions were incorporated into the guidelines for evaluating the continuous operation of programs in the SNPG (Brasil, 2025a) and dialogues with the new PNPG 2025-2028, which reinforces self-evaluation as a structuring dimension of postgraduate policy.

From this perspective, self-evaluation is presented as a mechanism through which programs analyze their trajectories, identify strengths and weaknesses, and formulate development plans. The Brazilian literature, especially in the Education Area, insists that this practice should not be understood as a merely formal requirement, but as a formative, participatory and political process (Afonso, 2019; Dias Sobrinho, 2003; Saul, 2015). Leite (2005) emphasizes its potential as a space for democratizing management, questioning criteria, and collectively constructing institutional projects, while Verhine (2018) underlines the importance of self-evaluation in multidimensional models, as it allows programs to contextualize indicators and give visibility to results that escape standardized metrics.

Despite this recognition, which also unfolds in the proposition of instruments to evaluate internationalization in universities (Amorim; Finardi, 2020), the incorporation of self-assessment into the SNPG has been gradual and ambiguous. In the CAPES evaluation form, it appears with a reduced numerical weight, as one of the elements of a broader dimension. Its enactment is not always accompanied by institutional support in terms of training, time and resources. In a high-stakes system, in which the grade assigned to programs by CAPES is directly related to funding, scholarships, and prestige, there is a tendency to prioritize dimensions of evaluation that have greater weight and immediate effect on the classification. This helps to explain why self-evaluation, although rhetorically valued, remains in many cases marginal in practice.

In the Education Area, this tension is accentuated. On the one hand, Area Documents and experiences reported in the literature indicate efforts to build more participatory self-evaluation processes, involving collegiates, students and administrative staff, in line with a tradition of criticism of productivist evaluation models and excessively centralized regulation (Fávero et al., 2025; Trevisol; Balsanello, 2023). On the other hand, the pressure for performance in conventional indicators and the overload of academic work limit the possibility of consolidating self-evaluation as an effectively formative practice, beyond a bureaucratic response to the requirements of CAPES.

It is in this intersection between internationalization as a systemic requirement and self-evaluation as a promise of qualification and contextualization of evaluation that the debate of this essay is situated. In the following section, we analyze how the CAPES Internationalization WG Report seeks to operationalize internationalization in variables and indicators applicable to all areas. Subsequently, we mobilize the speech of the Manager-Interviewee to understand how these guidelines are problematized and reinterpreted within the scope of the evaluation policy.

3 THE CAPES INTERNATIONALIZATION WG REPORT: CONCEPTS, VARIABLES, AND INIDICATIONS IN CHANGE

The Internationalization Working Group was established with the purpose of "uniformly defining, for all CAPES evaluation areas, concepts, variables, and indicators that represent the theme and dimension of internationalization in the evaluation process of stricto sensu4 graduate programs" (Brasil, 2019a, p. 3). Its importance stems, in part, from the need to update the evaluation criteria in the face of the transition from the quantitative to the multidimensional model, marked by the progressive incorporation of new axes since the 2017-2020 Quadrennial Evaluation. We analyze here not only the content of the report, but how its proposals were reflected in the evaluation sheets of the last quadrennia.

At the conceptual level, the report advances by recognizing internationalization as a transversal process, involving teaching, research, extension and management, and not as a topical attribute. The incorporation of criticisms of limited conceptions of internationalization (Bianchetti; Thiengo, 2024; Knight, 2020; Morosini, 2011, 2021; Morosini et al., 2023) materialized in the revision of the items of the evaluation form, which began to include, as of 2019, dimensions such as:

  • ● International scientific cooperation (projects, networks, agreements);

  • ● International mobility of professors and students;

  • ● Intellectual production with international co-authorship;

  • ● Internationalization of the curriculum (courses in a foreign language, double degrees);

  • ● Internationalization at home (participation of foreign researchers, international events).

This structure represented a significant expansion in relation to the previous quadrennium (2013-2016), when internationalization was restricted to indicators such as publications in international journals and academic mobility, without clear articulation with institutional policies. However, the expansion of dimensions did not eliminate the logic of governance by indicators, since most of the criteria remain quantitative (Brasil, 2019a, 2021), favoring programs with greater symbolic capital and consolidated infrastructure.

In terms of the appropriation of these changes in the different segments of the SNPG, the Education Area considers it important to encourage its programs to fully participate in processes to promote internationalization offered by international, national or state agencies. The rationale is the contact with experiences, experts and international literature is essential for the development of innovations and advances in Brazilian education at its different levels (Brasil, 2025a).

The WG report innovates by proposing the inclusion of "contextualized initiatives", such as South-South partnerships and projects with an impact on public policies (Brasil, 2020), reflecting debates on cognitive justice (Abba; Leal; Finardi, 2022; Santos, 2018). In practice, however, these dimensions occupy a reduced space in the 2017-2020 evaluation form, bearing a residual presence compared to traditional metrics. This suggests that in the Education Area, the change in the proposal has not yet translated into effective recognition of these initiatives.

A critical aspect is that the report, while acknowledging internationalization as a complex process, does not explicitly integrate self-evaluation as a tool for reflecting on its impacts. The mentions of self-evaluation are limited to suggesting that programs "critically analyze" their strategies (Brasil, 2019c), without proposing concrete mechanisms to articulate this analysis to the evaluation processes.

This gap in the conceptual articulation between the axes yields a paradox: although CAPES defines an expanded repertoire of dimensions of internationalization, it does not offer instruments for PPGs to problematize how these dimensions relate to their institutional projects. In the Education Area, for example, programs with grades 6 and 7 mentioned in their reports difficulties in reconciling the requirement for publications in English with the commitment to disseminate research in Portuguese to school managers (Brasil, 2021), a contradiction that could be the subject of reflection via self-evaluation, but which remains invisible in the official criteria. In view of this, proposals such as that of Amorim and Finardi (2020), that the self-evaluation of internationalization should also cover language policies and reflect on the stages of institutional consolidation of international cooperation, represent an important contribution.

The analysis of the report and the recent evaluation forms indicates, therefore, an ambivalent movement: advances in the conceptualization of internationalization coexist with the permanence of mechanisms that reduce its complexity to standardized indicators. In the following sections, we examine how this ambivalence is experienced by the PPGs, especially in the Education Area, and what role self-evaluation can play in this scenario.

4 A CAPES MANAGER-RESEARCHER’S PERSPECTIVE: TENSIONS BETWEEN POLICY AND PRACTICE

The in-depth interview analyzed in this section was conducted in 2023, within the scope of the first author's doctoral research, with a manager-researcher who was linked to the CAPES Evaluation Division at the time of the 2017-2020 Quadrennial Evaluation and participated in working groups on evaluation and internationalization. The conversation, conducted online, lasted approximately 90 minutes, was recorded and transcribed in full, following ethical procedures of free and informed consent. For confidentiality reasons, the interviewee is not identified by name and will be referred to as Manager-Interviewee [Gestor-Entrevistado]. Their institutional place and insertion in international networks of evaluation research give their speech a privileged character in understanding the backstage of the formulation and implementation of evaluation policies in the SNPG. Although their speech does not refer specifically to the Education Area, it illuminates tensions that cross the system as a whole and helps to understand the ambivalent place occupied by self-evaluation and internationalization.

When commenting on the incorporation of self-evaluation in the evaluation form, the Manager-Interviewee recognizes the movement as an advance, but emphasizes that "at the end of the day, self-evaluation still has a very small weight" (Gestor-Entrevistado, 2023), revolving around a fraction of one of the evaluation dimensions. They point out that quality self-assessment "is complex to develop," as it involves qualified human resources, time for collective reflection, data organization and, often, technical support. In view of this, they ponder that, in a context in which self-evaluation represents only a minor fraction of the final score, programs and coordinators tend not to prioritize it if they know that it "will count very little for the final result" (Gestor-Entrevistado, 2023).

This analysis converges with criticisms present in the Brazilian literature, especially in the Education Area, which warn of the risk of transforming self-evaluation into a bureaucratic requirement of ritualistic compliance, emptied of formative meaning when there is no substantive change in the hierarchical logic of evaluation. Authors such as Leite et al. (2020) insist on the need to understand self-evaluation as a practice of institutional democratization, in which graduate students can discuss, dispute, and reformulate projects, criteria, and priorities, and not just justify to CAPES whether previously defined goals are met.

When talking about internationalization, Manager-Interviewee problematizes the centrality of traditional indicators-international co-authorships, mobility, publications in high-impact journals-and draws attention to what they call, at different times, "invisible impacts", those not captured by metrics (Manager-Interviewee, 2023). Among these impacts, they mention transformations in pedagogical practices, qualification of internal debates based on contact with other realities, strengthening of academic solidarity networks, advocacy in public policies, and reconfiguration of curricula. Such effects, although decisive for the quality of training and research, do not appear directly in the formal counts of articles, projects or mobilities. Manager-Interviewee, when addressing the search for a deeper understanding of the effects of internationalization, emphasizes the unique role of self-evaluation:

What are the situations that you can't see simply by counting mobility, counting scientific collaboration, counting paper co-authorship, counting participation in congresses? What are the benefits of an internationalization process that are not evident? These benefits-and there, the group is setting up workshops with the different graduate programs, with the different areas, to try to reap the benefits of this internationalization-, they can only be counted in a selfevaluation system. So, I think that self-assessment will integrate with others [forms of evaluation], but it will be a stage where what is not easy to measure, what is not evident, can be shown (Manager-Interviewee, 2023).

At this point, their speech suggests that self-evaluation could be a privileged space for programs and institutions to make visible these less measurable aspects of internationalization, articulating quantitative data and qualitative analyses. Instead of relying exclusively on standardized indicators, evaluation could also be based on narratives and reflections produced by the programs themselves about their experiences, choices and impacts of internationalization-which dialogues with the international agenda of responsible evaluation and with recurrent claims in Education Area for greater recognition of formative and social dimensions.

Finally, the Manager-Interviewee points out important institutional obstacles to the consolidation of these agendas: the "judicialization" of evaluation, which would have led to a "stiffening" of criteria and instruments; the need to set parameters well in advance, making adjustments difficult along the way; and the context of successive crises (political, economic, health) that the SNPG has gone through in the last decade (Manager-Interviewee, 2023). These elements reinforce the idea that, despite documents such as the Internationalization WG Report (Brasil, 2019a) and ordinances on self-evaluation (Brasil, 2018), daily evaluation practice remains strongly anchored in traditional metrics and consolidated hierarchies, which limits, but does not eliminate, the breeches for more critical uses of self-evaluation in the resignification of internationalization.

5 IMPLICATIONS FOR POSTGRADUATE STUDIES IN EDUCATION

By shifting the focus to postgraduate studies in Education, the issues discussed so far gain specific contours. The Education Area is one of the largest in the SNPG, with high institutional and regional diversity, combining academic and professional programs, many of them strongly articulated with education systems, public policies, social movements and teacher training practices. In this context, the effects of internationalization and the meanings of self-evaluation take forms that do not always easily adjust to the predominant indicators in the evaluation model.

Robert Verhine's (2018) interview with the National Association of Postgraduate Studies and Research in Education (ANPEd), when he took over the coordination of the Education Area at CAPES (2018-2022), already pointed to the need for a multidimensional evaluation, in which self-evaluation would occupy a relevant place as a complement to external evaluation. He insisted that self-evaluation should allow programs to make their projects explicit, contextualize their production, and highlight results that are not limited to publications in high-impact journals, but include, for example, training staff for schools, influencing educational policies, producing pedagogical materials, and strengthening inclusive practices (Verhine, 2018). The programmatic content of this position is also registered on three other fronts: the movement of the Education Area to understand self-evaluation as part of its functioning; established criticism in relation to the vision of internationalization based on competitive metrics; and the political relationship between the proposition of selfevaluation as a requirement of CAPES evaluation and the criticisms that the Education Area has historically presented to this procedure.

First, in relation to self-evaluation, recent special issues and articles show an important movement in the Education Area. The special issue, "Self-assessment in Graduate Programs in Education: possibilities, challenges and tensions", published in the journal Práxis Educativa, brings together studies that analyze experiences of PPGs from different regions and profiles, highlighting processes that go beyond mere compliance with formal requirements of CAPES (Fávero et al., 2025). The articles show self-evaluations developed as participatory processes, involving collegiates, teachers, students and administrative staff, with debates on pedagogical projects, critical analysis of working conditions and reflection on the place of research in Education in society. Researchers who composed the CAPES Self-Evaluation WG pointed out that this practice should induce the maturation of the academic community with co-responsibility, collaboration, and engagement in the pedagogical improvement of the PPGs (Leite et al., 2020). In common, these studies indicate that the Education Area has a relevant theoretical-methodological accumulation to dispute meanings of self-evaluation within the SNPG, bringing it closer to a formative and democratic institutional evaluation, as defended by authors such as Gatti (2006), Dias Sobrinho (2010), Leite (2005), Leite and Polidori (2021).

Another point to be considered, regarding internationalization, is that the Area's production has problematized the centrality of bibliometric metrics and the pressure for publication in English, evidencing tensions between internationalization and commitment to the Brazilian educational reality. The literature discusses, for example, how the logic of excellence and ranking reinforces inequalities between areas and regions and favors graduate models that are more aligned with market rationality (Abba; Leal; Finardi, 2022; Bianchetti; Thiengo, 2024; Paiva; Brito, 2019; Morosini, 2011, 2021; Morosini; Dallacorte, 2021; Feijó; Trindade, 2021). Empirical research focused on PPGEs shows that many internationalization experiences relevant to Education take place through South-South cooperation, partnerships with Portuguese-speaking countries, internationalization activities at home, circulation of training materials, and participation in international networks focused on topics such as educational inequalities, curriculum, inclusion, and indigenous education - practices that do not always translate into indicators valued by the traditional evaluation model (Maués; Andrade, 2020; East; Vilela; Rothen, 2020; Santos; Zanardini; Hotz, 2022; Streck; Abba; Nicolay, 2019). Moreover, the vision articulated at ANPEd before the institution of the multidimensional model highlighted the challenges of the Area to access and establish dialogue with international scientific production, as well as to disseminate its production and develop collaborative projects beyond national borders (Gouveia; Azevedo; Neves, 2017). The vectors identified to face these difficulties, intensified by the lack of funding for research and higher education in general, were partnerships with international scientific associations, seeking reciprocity, horizontality and solidarity, according to principles historically defended in the Area (Dias Sobrinho, 2010; Leite, 2005; Morosini, 2011).

Finally, from the point of view of politics, it is important to remember that discussions on self-evaluation in the Education Area do not arise only from isolated initiatives of the PPGEs, but also dialogue with the guidelines of CAPES itself. The Working Group on Self-Evaluation, established by Ordinance No. 149/2018, had the participation of representatives from different areas, including Education, and its recommendations were discussed at Area meetings and ANPEd events. Education Area Documents for the 2017-2020 Quadrennial Evaluation reinforce the importance of selfevaluation processes that consider the historicity of the programs, their insertion in school networks and public policies, and their commitments to teacher training and the reduction of educational inequalities (Brasil, 2019c). At the same time, these documents indicate that the operationalization of self-evaluation is still marked by heterogeneity and by limitations of time, resources, and institutional support in many PPGEs.

In light of the Internationalization WG Report (Brazil, 2019a) and the ManagerInterviewee's speech (2023), self-evaluation appears, then, as a strategic place for PPGEs to make explicit and debate their internationalization projects. In dialogue with the objectives of the Education Area expressed in the Area Document-such as emphasis on the training of researchers and professionals committed to public schools, social justice and the production of situated knowledge-and with the circumstances analyzed in the quadrennial evaluation reports, self-evaluation processes can be designed to guide the discussion of themes that hardly emerge only from numerical indicators. Through selfevaluation exercises, PPGEs can, for example:

  • ● reference the relevance of specific international partnerships (such as cooperation with Portuguese-speaking African universities or Latin American networks) in relation to their training and research objectives;

  • ● narrate qualitative impacts of internationalization processes at home, such as curricular changes, reformulation of courses, creation of components in international co-teaching or innovation in pedagogical practices;

  • ● discuss tensions between production in Portuguese and English, explaining the reasons for privileging certain audiences, formats and means of dissemination, especially when the focus is on school and educational policies;

  • ● highlight the effects of internationalization on public policies and educational practices (production of materials, advocacy, advisory services and participation in forums), which escape the count of articles in high-impact journals or the number of international missions.

However, as Verhine (2018) and Manager-Interviewee (2023) underline, the effectiveness of this strategy depends on two interconnected factors: on the one hand, the strengthening of self-evaluation as an institutional practice, supported by training, time, and resources; on the other hand, the recognition, on the part of CAPES and the evaluation areas, that what is produced in the self-evaluation matters for the final judgment, and not only as a peripheral complement to the numerical indicators. In this sense, the recommendations of the Internationalization WG Report (Brasil, 2019a), addressed to the SNPG as a whole, can be appropriated by the Education Area meeting challenge with opportunity. Indeed, the absence of a more robust explanation of the role of self-evaluation in qualifying internationalization-combined with the persistence of traditional metrics as the main basis for comparison between programs-implies the continued hegemony of productivist criteria linked to publication as guides for the actions of the academic community. However, the advancement of indicators related to internationalization at home and diverse forms of international collaboration provides space for internationalization proposals that are closer to the practices and commitments of PPGEs, with critical perspectives and rooted in local contexts.

6 FINAL REMARKS

By discussing the articulation between self-evaluation and internationalization in the SNPG, in light of the CAPES Internationalization Working Group Report (Brasil, 2019a), the normative on self-evaluation (Brasil, 2018) and the interview with a managerresearcher from the Evaluation Division (Gestor-Entrevistado, 2023), this essay sought to highlight advances and gaps in the recent evaluation policy, with special attention to the implications for postgraduate studies in Education. The report represents an important effort to systematize the concepts, dimensions and indicators of internationalization, recognizing its procedural and transversal nature, pointing to internationalization at home, South-South cooperation and the need to consider institutional conditions, including strategic planning and self-evaluation, as part of the "institutional conditions" for internationalization. At the same time, the still peripheral position of self-evaluation in the evaluation form and the persistent centrality of traditional metrics suggest that the integration between these two axes remains incomplete.

The Manager-Interviewee’s perspective reinforces this diagnosis by highlighting, simultaneously, the strategic importance of self-evaluation and the concrete difficulties of its implementation in a high-stakes, judicialized and normatively "stiffened" system (Gestor-Entrevistado, 2023). Their emphasis on the "invisible impacts" of internationalization-related to transformations in pedagogical practices, academic networks, and public policies-indicates that self-evaluation can play a central role in qualifying the evaluation of internationalization, as long as there is institutional space and effective valorization of this dimension. The evaluation reports of the Education Area in the last two cycles (2013-2016 and 2017-2020) go in the same direction by acknowledging, both the relevance of internationalization experiences linked to Latin American networks, partnerships with Portuguese-speaking countries and projects aimed at teacher training, and the lack of visibility of such initiatives in the indicators used to compare programs. The interview with Verhine (2018) and experiences reported in special issues (Fávero et al., 2025; Polidori; Rodrigues, 2024) show that the PPGEs have sought to build denser self-evaluation practices, but still face the challenge of seeing them recognized as a substantive part of the evaluation, and not just as an accessory requirement.

The reflections presented do not intend to exhaust the theme, but rather to signal an agenda of research and institutional action for postgraduate studies in Education. As a background, the Area has a critical tradition and a strong insertion in social and political contexts that enable it to propose broader and more contextualized readings of internationalization and self-evaluation, in line with debates on cognitive justice and the decolonization of knowledge (Abba; Leal; Finardi, 2022; Ballestrin, 2017; Morosini, 2021; Santos, 2018). As a task, it must face pressures to adapt to homogeneous parameters that often disregard the centrality of the Portuguese language, South-South partnerships, production aimed at teachers and managers, and projects rooted in local realities, as indicated in the Area Document and the quadrennial Education reports.

In this scenario, strengthening self-evaluation as a daily reflective practice can be a strategy to dispute meanings of internationalization that are more coherent with the historical commitments of the area and with the demands of Brazilian education, approaching the perspective of self-evaluation as an "entrepreneurial act" of institutional improvement defended in the report of the Self-Evaluation WG (Brasil, 2019d). From a research point of view, it would be important to develop empirical studies on how PPGEs have appropriated the guidelines of the Internationalization WG Report (Brasil, 2019a), integrating internationalization into their self-evaluation processes and building their own indicators to analyze formative and social impacts- in line with recent proposals for (self-)evaluation matrices of internationalization in the Brazilian context (Amorim; Finardi, 2020). From the point of view of policies, the challenge is to advance in evaluation models that recognize, in a more consequential way, self-evaluation as a legitimate instance of production of meaning about internationalization, opening space for different areas, such as Education, to formulate with greater autonomy their projects for international insertion and future in the SNPG.

1

Translation Note (T.N.): Every four years, CAPES evaluates all PPGs to determine whether they meet the quality standards required to remain operational in the SNPG, that is, to issue degrees that are officially recognized by the Ministry of Education. The process is conducted by specific evaluation areas to which each PPG is affiliated.

2

T.N.: Area Documents are guidance documents published by each CAPES evaluation area, explaining the rationale and expectations behind the criteria applied when assessing graduate programs in that field. They also provide an overview of the scenario composed by the programs, outlining a diagnosis with trends and recommendations for the next quadrennia.

3

T.N.: The evaluation form is a document issued by CAPES whose general outline, in terms of dimensions and their broader items, is common to the ensemble of the SNPG. Each evaluation area then specifies the criteria, indicators, and weights used to assess graduate programs within their purview.

4

T.N.: In Brazil, programs that award master's and doctoral degrees as diplomas, are considered stricto sensu graduate programs, as opposed to lato sensu programs, which are non-degree programs which award, for instance specialization certificates.

AI USE DECLARATION

The artificial intelligence tool Gemini was used for spelling review and suggestions in structuring paragraphs and locating and formatting references.

DATA AVAILABILITY DECLARATION

The entire dataset supporting the results of this study was published in the article itself.

REFERENCES

Editor de Seção:

Rafael Ângelo Bunhi Pinto | Editora de Layout: Silmara Pereira da Silva Martins Editoras convidadas: Cristina Zukowsky-Tavares; Martha Maria Prata-Linhares

Revision by:

Júlia Anne Braz de Oliveira Email: juliaabraz@hotmail.com

Translated by:

Bernardo Sfredo Miorando E-mail: bernardo.sfredo@gmail.com

CONFLICT OF INTEREST DECLARATION

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest with the article "Self-evaluation and internationalization in the SNPG: tensions between evaluation policy and graduate studies in Education".

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    05 Oct 2026
  • Date of issue
    2026

History

  • Received
    10 Apr 2026
  • Accepted
    12 June 2026
  • Reviewed
    13 July 2026
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