Opening the black box of the Dublin Descriptors: First steps towards an exploration

The academic profession is nowadays challenged by multiple tensions. Quality assurance is one of the most relevant. Such processes emerged in the arena of higher education since at least the 1990s, with the articulation of the European agenda of ‘knowledge economy’ and the Bologna Process. The ‘Dublin Descriptors’ were assembled in such a context as a framework describing the typical learning outcomes at the end of each Bologna cycle. The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of the Dublin Descriptors policy artefact on the European space of higher education. Its genealogy will be traced by highlighting the associations among heterogeneous entities through which it reached its final policy form. Future directions for this research will also be sketched.