The Lecturer's Guide to Quality and Standards in Colleges and Universities

Front matter

The Lecturer’s Guide to Quality and Standards in Colleges and Universities

To my mother with love and thanks.

K.

Chapter 3 Ways of Using the Book

The Quality Context

Quality, Standards and the Reflective Practitioner Model Perspectives on Quality and Standards The Context for Teaching and Learning Outline of the Content of the Book Summary

Processes in Quality and Standards Definitions of Quality and Standards Quality Audit

Quality Assessment

Models of Quality Assurance Standards

Criteria, Standards and Quality Committee Processes

Committees and the Lecturer Executive Processes

The Micro-political Culture of the Institution Summary

Quality and Standards in Relation to Teaching and Learning

Judging Quality in Teaching

The Institutional Context and the Quality of Teaching and

Learning Judging the Quality of Learning

Assuring the Quality of Learning: Performance Indicators for Standards in Teaching Student Appraisal of Staff

Contents

Chapter 5 Chapter 6 vi

Strengths and Limitations of the Provider-Customer

Model of Education

Threats to Quality and Standards in Further and Higher

Education Competences as Statements of Teaching Quality Summary Notes References

The Context of Student Support

Student Rights and Quality

Employer and Community Rights and Quality Resources for Learning

The Role of Student Services

Guidance and Counselling at the Point of Entry Study Skills

Learner Support

Support for Work-based Learning

Personal Support of Students

Vocational Preparation

Non-teaching Facilities

Management, Teaching and Student Support Summary

The Context for Staff Development National Standards in Staff Development Management and Teaching Effectiveness The Appointment of Staff

The Induction of Staff

The Purposes of Appraisal

Systems for Successful Appraisal Appraisal of Teaching

Professional Updating, Quality and Standards Time Management

Management of Self and Others Summary

Implications of the New Context for Assessment Principles of Assessment

Purposes of Assessment

Forms of Assessment and Quality Criteria

Chapter 9 Quality Feedback on Students’ Work

Resource Issues in Assessment

Assessing Competences and Personal Qualities Assessment and the Development of Reflective Practice Assuring Quality in Assessment

Purposes of Evaluation

Evaluation and Quality Issues

The Political and Resource Context of Course Design Commitment in Course Design

Assessment of Needs

Mode and Structure in Course Development Aims and Objectives

Course Content

Course Operation and Quality and Standards Resources

The Politics of Course Development Documentation for a Course Proposal Summary

Funding and the Macro Systems of Education

Resource Allocation and Management Style

Principles of Financial Management

Business Planning, Quality and Standards

Applying for Internal and External Funding

Resource Management and the Measurement of Performance

Resource Management and People

The Context for Marketing and Recruitment Definitions of Marketing

Aims of Marketing

Factors in Successful Marketing

Researching the Client Perspective Admissions and Interviewing

Marketing Perspectives on Quality

Pricing and Costing New Developments Using the Media

Contents

154 154 157 157 159 162

167 169 170 172 172

Contents

Chapter 11 Vill

Summary Notes References

The Context for Research and Scholarship

Definitions of Research and Education

Quality Issues and the Funding for Research within Higher Education

Models of Research

Practitioner Research and the Development of Quality

Ways of Getting Started

Ethical Issues in Research

Developing an Institutional Research Culture: Issues of Quality

Facilities for Research

Support for Research Students

Staff Development and Research

Conclusion References

189 191 191

192 192 193

195 197 198 199 203

216 217

Chapter 1

My aim in this book is to provide a basic handbook for lecturers concerned with quality and standards in the post-compulsory education sector with an emphasis on an entrepreneurial climate, but at the same time retaining a clear educational philosophy. This philosophy is based on the model of the lecturer as a reflective practitioner. Reflective in this sense is more than ‘thinking about’, it also includes collecting data about practice and analysing it in the light of the social, moral and political context.

Even inexperienced lecturers can no longer ignore the quality context in which they work. Questions of quality and standards are the business of all those who work in educational institutions. All are concerned with maintaining standards and in documenting quality control processes. If they are to further the interests of students, lecturers have to play a role in defining what ‘quality’ might look like, what standards might be appropriately set and how they might be measured.

This book rests on the premise that ‘quality’ and ‘standards’ are highly problematic; that they may be examined from a number of alternative viewpoints; that these viewpoints and the power each exerts are highly political matters; and that these definitions cannot be separated from the values that underpin them and from the way that they are applied in institutional and individual practice. For this reason I consider several different definitions of quality and standards and intend that the whole book will help you develop an understanding of what ‘quality’ and ‘standards’ mean to you, and how what you do may be influenced by these definitions. My intention in writing the book is to make sense of the changing climate of quality control and academic standards.

I cover teaching, learning and management issues, specifically focused on the concerns of the lecturer. Lecturers manage the work of others, usually students, and thus could be said to have an equivalent role to that of middle managers in industry or commerce. They usually have little management training for this role. I focus on the development of key management skills and understandings necessary to understand, develop and monitor standards and quality in further and higher education, focusing especially on the role of lecturers and course leaders. I also explore ways of looking at the interests of the various ‘audiences’ for this activity (mainly students, but also external assessors, institutional managers, employers, funders and so on). The model of reflective practice I use within this book assumes that professional development will result from a willingness to define the quality of teaching and students’ learning and an interest in issues of standards and their relationship to those of differentiation and individual development and learning.

The Lecturer’s Guide to Quality and Standards in Colleges and Universities

Reflective practice cannot be divorced from its context, requiring you to deepen your understanding of the institutional and wider political context for your work. I hope to stimulate your interest in these matters and to encourage greater effectiveness within these structures, so that you can use them to the benefit of students and teaching. For instance, in the new climate of further and higher education, staff development, especially as it relates to your teaching and your students’ learning will be given a higher profile. The development of appraisal has been increasingly linked to performance-related pay for the individual and more indirectly to performance indicators for the institution. These assessments are likely to be increasingly related to funding. For example, in the UK, the new division of Quality Audit, which is part of the Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC), will focus exclusively on the quality of the management of teaching, learning and assessment in each institution.

The HEQC and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) have agreed to work more closely (HEQC, 1994) on such matters as documentation requirements; exchange of reports between the two councils; notes of guidance; training of auditors; scheduling of visits; and evaluation. Data from the auditing process will feed into the quality ratings and affect HEFCE funding for individual colleges and universities.

The Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) has instigated similar qualityassessment processes and funding arrangements for further education colleges. It has set up a committee to assess the quality of provision through a system of performance indicators, external inspection and audit of the college’s own systems of quality control. The FEFCE Quality Assessment Committee and its inspectorate will work closely with HEFCE, the Office for Standards in Ed ‘cation (OFSTED) and Local Authority Associations (LAAs) to ensure consistency of standards, develop clear divisions of responsibility and minimize disruption to institutions which would be caused by multiple inspections (Further -Education Funding Council, 1994). The operations of these organizations are described in more detail in Chapter 2.

The emergence of the UK funding councils’ concern with issues of accountability and quality assessment are related to a move from an elite to a mass system of post-compulsory education. Barnett (1994) sees this as resulting from a change in the relationship between education and society and, in particular, the incorporation of post-compulsory education into society’s mainstream. Education has become an economic good, and therefore the concern of Government, employers and education’s ‘customers’, rather than a cultural good, with quality defined by the cultural elite (and academe in particular). This change in the perceived value of post-compulsory education has in turn led to new definitions of ‘quality’ that focus on competence, outcomes, skills and transferability, rather than knowledge, truth, objectivity and the integrity of the discipline.

The discussion of quality and standards is located within a context of education that embraces entrepreneurial activity, in which issues of consistency, fitness for purpose and value for money become as much a part of the quality framework as absolute notions of ‘excellence’.

Introduction Ways of Using the Book

You may wish to use the book in various ways. You might use some of the enquiry tasks to collect evidence for an appraisal interview and ideas within the text to analyse the evidence according to your own and institutional criteria for quality. You might wish to work through the book as a professional development text or use it as a reference book to provide another way of looking at a particular problem. In the last case, you may find the synopsis at the end of each chapter is a useful starting point.

Practical exercises intersperse the text, some of which invite you to collect data from within your institution. These are designed to help you understand and use the concepts and to reflect upon the operation of ideas introduced by the text in the context of your own institution and in relation to your own values. Values tend to be so much part of our ‘taken for granted’ view of the world, that it is sometimes hard to examine them without help. For this reason, I suggest that you may need to involve a trusted colleague in some of your enquiry. The entry for the reflective diary at the end of each chapter is designed to enable you to interact with the material presented and analyse your developing ideas.

Because of the broad scope of the book, I am able to introduce only some of the possible perspectives and ideas which may stimulate your thinking and provide a ‘language’ for your analysis. I include an annotated reading list at the end of each chapter, so that you can target your reading and take forward those issues of particular relevance to you.

The Quality Context

With the introduction of a rapid expansion of the system of post-compulsory education in Britain, first in higher education and then in further education, fundamental changes in approach to the problems of teaching and learning have become necessary. Various bodies, such as the Committee of Scottish University Principals (1993), see the solution to problems presented by the new mass system in terms of innovative approaches to the delivery of the curriculum and to the structures needed to support these approaches. These structures included the development of systematic ways of monitoring and enhancing ‘quality’ of provision, in order to ensure that ‘more’ did not mean ‘worse’. The mass system could not easily be monitored through ad hoc systems which have sometimes existed in the past.

One of the most significant features of this debate is the emphasis on the quality of teaching and learning. This is sometimes presented as unproblematic and uncontroversial, as if there were no problems in defining what might be meant by ‘quality’. Alternatively, the notion of ‘quality’ may be presented as in some way synonymous with the elaboration of systems by which it is monitored.

The British Conservative Government of the 1990s introduced terms borrowed from the industrial sector, such as ‘quality control’, ‘quality audit’ and ‘quality assessment’, as if the intention to replace the gentler language and more evolutionary approach suggested by the culture of ‘evaluation’ and ‘critical review’ was part of a politically neutral agenda about ‘getting value for money’

The Lecturers Guide to Quality and Standards in Colleges and Universities

(DES, 1991). This signalled more than a change in rhetoric and has led to real changes in systems and procedures and their relationship to funding. The question of who should assess the quality, who should define it, and so on is now largely determined by the Government and justified in terms of free-market development. This takes place in a market that is essentially not free, where resources are strictly limited, and institutions can be rewarded in one year for responding enthusiastically to student ‘demand’ and penalized in the next.

The direct involvement of Government in the definition of quality clearly has had an effect on the relationship between universities and colleges and the State. This relationship is under great strain at the moment. The tensions are set up by the underlying conflict between the legitimate authority of Government and legitimate academic freedom. In a parliamentary democracy, the Government may properly exercise great authority over the institutions within the State. On the other hand, traditionally, the further and higher education systems have had considerable freedom, and so, in practice, have attained some degree of power. This subsidiarity has come to be valued as a useful check on the centralizing tendencies of Government.

The increasing direction of further and higher education by Government has also affected the lecturer’s relationship with the institution. The academic freedom that has been a traditional feature of the British educational system is sometimes in direct conflict with the interests of the institution, and may even threaten its financial viability. Difficult questions are being asked about the rights and responsibilities of institutions and lecturers and the legitimacy of limitations to academic freedom.

‘Quality’ issues have become more central to institutional concerns. New committees and senior posts have been created as institutions and departments become subject to ‘quality audit’, as wise institutions prepare themselves for teaching and learning to be subjected to a similar rating exercise to that which determines research funding allocations to individual institutions. In any case, the creation of league tables for results (such as ‘A’ Level results from further education colleges) has affected recruitment in some areas, and so certain definitions of ‘quality’ are already having a real influence on resources. In some cases, the debate had focused on issues of institutional self-protection, accountability and control, and deeper issues about criteria for good practice have been neglected.

Quality, Standards and the Reflective Practitioner Model

The model of the Reflective Practitioner underpins the analysis of approaches to quality and standards in further and higher education within this book. I have previously outlined this model (Ashcroft and Foreman-Peck, 1994), which draws on Dewey’s (1916) description of reflective thinking, as developed by Zeichner (1982) and others (Carr and Kemmis, 1986; Isaac and Ashcroft, 1986; Ziechner and Teitlebaum, 1982). The model sees professional development as progressing through a process of critical enquiry and problem-solving, that is in turn dependent upon the development of key qualities: openmindedness; responsibility; and wholeheartedness.

Openmindedness refers to the ability to seek out and evaluate alternative viewpoints. This is seen as a deliberate, and sometimes systematic enquiry into the behaviour and feelings of others which will yield data for the lecturer to assess. This assessment should not be an automatic acceptance of the viewpoints or a rejection of those notions which do not immediately chime with your own, but rather an honest assessment of what they mean for you, for the individuals holding them and for action and development. Openmindedness therefore implies a certain humility in the face of alternative interpretations of practice and context, tempered by a rigorous analysis.

Responsibility involves the willingness to look at both the immediate and the long-term consequences of action for all concerned. This implies that you wish to move beyond a consideration of ‘what works’ in order to ask essentially moral questions of worthwhileness. Again, questions of worthwhileness require you to examine and sometimes systematically collect evidence of the effects of action from the point of view of various parties.

Wholeheartedness requires that you take openmindedness and responsibility as your aspiration for your ‘life position’ (aspiration, because it will never be wholly achieved). This means that you are willing to eschew instrumental considerations of personal advantage; that you are willing to take the risks entailed in examining your practice in the light of your values and in examining what those values themselves imply; and that openmindedness and responsibility are not stances for part of your professional life, that can be abandoned in certain circumstances (for instance in the context of entrepreneurial activity).

These qualities imply a willingness to undertake certain kinds of action and to develop certain prerequisite skills. For instance, openmindedness requires you to examine your action from the point of view of others. To achieve this you will need a range of interpersonal skills (such as empathy), communication skills (such as listening skills), research skills (in order to collect systematic data) and analytical skills (in order to organize the data for evaluation). Responsibility and wholeheartedness require similar skills and actions in order that you can investigate the real effects of your action and evaluate the results. Thus, in addition to the list above, responsibility requires qualities of imagination and for you to know and to care about what will happen in a future which may not involve you. Wholeheartedness depends upon perseverance and an optimism about your own and others’ ability to change.

Reflection does not take place in a social, political or economic vacuum. It does not require perfect circumstances. Rather the contrary, it may help to make sense of the context for practice and examine actions and values in the light of adverse circumstances in order that practice will improve. I am talking here about a process of professional development in which your practice is explored in the context of the political and social issues and values. This examination may result in changes to values and/or practice. This process should empower you to understand and operate differently within your context, and, perhaps in the longer term, to change that context.

One of the centrally important features of reflective action is its relatively public nature. Reflection as defined in this book is much more than a ‘collecting, organizing and thinking about evidence’ (although it does include this). It also requires that you share thinking, interpretation of events, and successes and failures with others. This process of sharing encourages the articulation of developing theories of teaching and learning and exposes them to critical examination. This can be a surprising and sometimes painful process (especially when your most

J

The Lecturer’s Guide to Quality and Standards in Colleges and Universities basic, taken for granted assumptions are challenged); but it is probably essential for real professional and personal development. The very process of articulating values and the way they might be actualized tends to refine them. It may challenge you to look at issues in new ways and to look for and confront transformational resolutions (solutions that transform the nature of a problem) to the dilemmas inherent within education.

Enquiry Task Talk to:

e a small group of students e a trusted colleague to find out how they would define quality in teaching and/or learning.

What do the definitions of the students and the lecturer have in common and how do they differ?

Perspectives on Quality and Standards

Openmindedness, responsibility and wholeheartedness require you to look at the alternative perspectives on quality and standards of each of those groups involved in the educational process. These groups include lecturers, students, parents and the community, employers, the academic community represented by your ‘discipline’, institutional managers and funding bodies. Ways of exploring these perspectives are considered in the chapters which follow. Each of these groups may be considered to have some kind of interest in education that constitutes an entitlement. You can therefore only act in an openminded way and with responsibility if you seek out these groups to explore their viewpoints, values and the effects of your action upon them. As Elliott (1993) states, enquiry into action must embrace your own and others’ values, since these are part of educational reality. There is no value-free, objective context for ‘insider research’ (or enquiry into real practice) within education.

Institutions are introducing new models of quality and standards which seem to be defined in terms of quality assurance systems: that is, by the measures taken to check that processes conform to defined policy. Standards may be defined in terms of quality indicators. These refer to measures taken to check on outcomes. Thus, in a context of quality control, you may be involved in predetermined processes of monitoring. These may be mechanistic and fail to take account of the moral and political values implied within them. As a reflective teacher you will be willing to explore the meanings behind the systems, and to allow that it may be irrational to ignore feelings in your assessment of quality. You will see assumed knowledge about quality and standards as highly problematic, and recognize the need for shared discussion and meanings in this area. Entitlements can be defined, for instance, in terms of the services and curriculum which students can expect.

Introduction The notion of entitlements can be a starting point for quality, but they only provide a base-line that you should be aiming to go beyond. Aspirations need to be articulated also.

Think about a course that you teach.

Identify some ‘entitlements’ you should ensure for each of the following groups:

Entitlement

Students e.g: to have work marked and returned within fourteen days

Other lecturers e.g: to have a planning meeting two weeks before the course starts

The ‘discipline’ e.g: to develop students’ understanding of the ‘fair test’ as part of the scientific process

The institution e.g: to receive an evaluation report within one month of the course finishing

Employers

The Funding Body

The Community

What problems did you find in defining ‘entitlement’? What limitations do you see to this approach?

The Context for Teaching and Learning

Brown et al. (1993) point out that the quality of teaching can only be assessed if it is part of a process and a context that include the whole teaching environment. Therefore, the observation of teaching in individual sessions may be of some value but it cannot tell the whole story. For instance, the quality of the teaching the student receives also depends on the quality of the learning environment, including learning equipment and library provision, as well as how well the lecturer uses these resources.

The quality of the teaching is also dependent upon the congruence of that teaching with your own and institutional aims, for instance, whether you wish to cater better for people from particular ethnic groups, or women; whether the institution is interested in a competency-based approach to learning; or whether you or the institution define ‘quality’ learning in traditionally academic or other terms. In each of these cases, particular teaching styles may be more or less appropriate.

The balance of skills within the institution depends in part on the recruitment policy of the institution. For instance, research experience may be prized over teaching experience and competence. Alternatively, the institution may be interested in recruiting ‘cheap’ staff who may be relatively inexperienced. How these

The Lecturer’s Guide to Quality and Standards in Colleges and Universities kinds of priorities are handled may affect the quality of teaching and learning. The possibility of linking resources to quality in the management of teaching, learning and assessment has led to a developing interest in each of these areas at institutional level.

The institutional knowledge required for effective management of the teaching and learning process is underestimated by many lecturers. Because most of us are interested in people, we may underestimate the importance of systems and structures. As you develop as a reflective practitioner, it is almost inevitable that you will wish to change things. If you do not have an understanding of the committee and executive structures of your institution and the principles of strategic and financial planning, you will lack much of the basic data which might enable you to come to wise decisions. At the most basic level, if you lack this information you are less likely to succeed. Perhaps more importantly, the educational, economic and political climate of the institution where you work, and its relationships to the wider educational, economic and political context, are part of the alternative viewpoints sought out by openminded lecturers who take responsibility for their actions.

How well do you understand the institutional framework for your teaching and the students’ learning?

Do you know the following:

Who to go to if you have a student with a severe personal problem? Who to go to next if the student’s problem is not solved?

Who to go to if you have a student presenting you with a discipline problem you cannot handle?

Who to go to next if the problem is not solved?

What processes should a revision to an existing course go through? What is the system for approving a new course?

What is the institution’s equal-opportunities policy as it relates to students and to staff?

How would you get a new item into next year’s budget?

What does the institution’s mission statement contain?

What are the major items within the institution’s strategic plan for the next three years?

What are the major sources of funding for your institution?

Discuss the answers with a colleague you trust. What do they imply about the way quality is perceived in your institution and its priorities?

Outline of the Content of the Book

This book is intended to inform the teacher in further and higher education about issues in quality and standards as they affect them. In this context, I have used the term ‘lecturer’ throughout. This does not imply that the main job of the teacher in colleges and universities is ‘lecturing’. Indeed, it should become clear to the reader that I take the responsibilities of the lecturer to include among other things: teaching in all its modes, managing learning, sustaining the learning environment, personal support of student, research and scholarship and contributing to institutional management.

In writing this book I am trying to provide you with the tools for understanding and developing your practice within a framework of quality control, quality audit and the maintenance of academic standards. In Chapter 2, I explore the external context for this process: financial, political and moral. I look at the ways in which these external factors commonly influence the internal committee and executive systems within colleges and universities, so that you can start to analyse the relationships between these systems and the micro-political culture of the institution. I believe that such an understanding is important because of the influence that people, systems and management perspectives have on course delivery, and thus on the learning experience of your students.

In Chapter 3 Lorraine Foreman-Peck focuses on the students’ learning itself, and in particular its relationship to issues of quality and standards. She looks at the models of quality which are implied by certain definitions of learning, and in particular, the competency model that underpins the standards introduced by the National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). She looks at institutional definitions of quality in the student learning experience, and their relationship (if any) with lecturers’ definitions, particularly in the area of group size. She explores the learners’ perspective on quality and standards and focuses on the needs of adult learners and the quality control system.

In Chapter 4, I explore the relationship between formal and informal systems of student support and the maintenance of quality and standards. I look at the problems and opportunities that the new climate and definitions of quality and standards offer for management, teaching and student support, taking assessment, and monitoring of equal opportunities as a starting point.

Staffing and staff development are central to many quality issues. In Chapter 5, I explore the appraisal system as a starting point for such a focus. I examine the problems inherent in certain definitions of appraisal and the conflict between the bureaucratic, political and developmental purposes of appraisal. I look at the role of research, scholarship and professional updating in maintaining quality, and the link between management issues and quality, particularly team working, time management and the change process. I also explore the role of institutional and management style in promoting teaching effectiveness.

In Chapter 6, Lorraine Foreman-Peck and I explore models of assessment and their role in monitoring standards. We look at student appraisal and issues in self-assessment, especially its relationship to formal systems of assessment. We discuss different models for the assessment of performance and how they relate to issues of equal opportunities. We examine the role and purposes of evaluation and how these relate to formal systems and course and personal development.

Chapter 7 deals with the principles of course design. I make distinctions between aims and objectives, processes and outcomes. The importance of mapping consistency between rationale, aims, objectives, content and assessment is considered. Institutional issues, such as the maintenance of academic standards, committee systems and the relationships between committee systems and executive

The Lecturer’s Guide to Quality and Standards in Colleges and Universities processes are analysed. The role of the committee within the micro-political culture of the institution is explored. I finish by looking at course design as a process that involves systems, people and the management perspective on course delivery.

Chapter 8 examines issues within resource management. I look at what the lecturer needs to understand about funding and the macro systems of post-compulsory education. I provide material that may assist you in applying for funding within your institution or for outside funds, especially researching and writing bids for different audiences. I describe how you might find out about what sources are available and ways in which you might access them.

In Chapter 9, I explore marketing and recruitment as a human process that involves researching ‘client’ perspectives. I look at admissions procedures and interviewing as part of the induction process and the ways in which the quality of teaching and learning are related to marketing perspectives. I explore ways of pricing and costing new developments and ways you may use pricing as part of a marketing strategy.