Sammendrag
Introduction
Educational reforms in higher education since the 1980s have been criticized because they contain steering
principles as managerialism and neoliberalism. These reforms are said to challenge traditional understandings
of educational quality and the independency of academic teachers. Educational evaluation is an example of how
a historically academic self-driven pedagogical tool for educational development has shifted towards an external
tool for control and accountability governed by university management or external agencies. In Norwegian
higher education where this study takes place, student evaluation has become a mandatory activity that
regularly is audited by an external agency for quality assurance, NOKUT. This paper argues that student course
evaluation is a pedagogical tool and therefore should be included to a greater extent in curriculum design and
constructive alignment. Academic developers are suggested as central actors in reconceptualizing student
course evaluation as pedagogical practice that teachers have ownership of, and in helping teachers gaining
insights about student learning processes.
Research methods
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with academic leaders from eight profession education programs at
one Norwegian university. In addition, document analysis of evaluation templates, evaluation policy and
educational quality documents at the same university were conducted.
Results
The study found several organizational dimensions with student evaluation practice limiting the opportunity for
evaluation to be an integrated part of students’ learning processes and to be actively used for educational
improvements. Some possible explanations were found in the development and communication of quality
assurance system and the evaluation guidelines which academics were expected to follow. The guidelines were
developed and communicated by administrative staff on behalf of the university management. Academics
seemed to have a low sense of ownership to these guidelines and were left to themselves in carrying out
evaluation. The academics expressed a need for more support, knowledge, dialogue about evaluations and
better evaluation systems. Academic developers had no formal role in the evaluation practice, neither in
development of evaluation procedures nor as support for academic staff at the university. It is up to the
academics to decide which evaluation method to use. Written evaluation methods were the dominating
ICED 2022 Conference Sustainable Educational Development
evaluation practice, but different dialogue-based methods were used for some courses. Many of the written
evaluations were teaching oriented asking non-specific questions about satisfaction with teaching, which could
not be used for educational improvement. The dialogue-based evaluations had a more open format and invited
students to dialogue about what facilitated and inhibited their learning.
Discussions and conclusions
There is a potential to include a student learning focus in evaluation practice. We suggest including evaluation in
constructive alignment and use the term “system alignment” proposed by Edstrom (2008) to illustrate this.
Academic developers may be central change agents in including evaluation in constructive alignment. We aim to
invite conference participants in discussions about how the formative purposes of student course evaluation
can be strengthened in higher education and the role academic developers may have in supporting teacher’s
agency in evaluation processes and in re-establishing evaluation as central part of pedagogical practices.
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