Moura, Leides Barroso Azevedo2024-01-292024-01-292013-07-25https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14135/927Created by 2009, the Network of National Accreditation Agencies (RANA) has as its function to deepen the MERCOSUR´s integration process through the Regional Accreditation of Graduation Courses System (ARCU-SUR). Due to centrality of RANA, the main objective of this thesis is to know about the role performed by the Network of National Accreditation Agencies (RANA) in the recognition of higher education quality in MERCOSUR. Among its aims there are to establish regional criteria of quality for higher education courses to stimulate permanent improvement on the tertiary formation and to develop institutional evaluation skills. Thus, it emerged as an opportunity to open this black box to better know its structure (actors, processes, connections etc.), relations, advances and challenges in the integration of national higher education systems of member and associated countries, which were described on the Ministries of Education Agreement N. 17/08. With exploratory-descriptive purposes, transversal delineation, using qualitative methodology, this essay adopted as method the content analysis of official documents and semistructured interviews with representatives of RANA and experts on this subject. In terms of theory which is the base of this research, the applied categories belong from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), created by Bruno Latour and Michael Callon. For collecting, it were used the software Atlas T.I., which facilitated the organization of the data and information. About results, this research pointed that RANA is on the track of worldwide globalizing policies whose interests belong to central countries. At the same time, RANA is far from regional and national perspectives. Grounded on ANT, this study still found some problems on RANA that interfere on the transparency and acceptance of its work by the societies of the involved countries, among which there are communication difficulties, limits of low institutionalization, unawareness and distrust between them.Documento textualporAcesso abertoEnsino SuperiorEducação SuperiorAvaliação da EducaçãoMercosul EducacionalDissertação120516