Objective
To seek comments on proposed processes for assessing whether masters programmes meet the criteria for taking a pluralist approach to teaching economics and ensuring ongoing compliance and collective learning.
Context
In general university department programmes are not accredited but do have to be approved by internal university processes, which take some time and are often very bureaucratic and slow. Business schools are though widely subject to accreditation systems, but not in terms of pluralism.
Accreditation systems, like all types of regulatory systems, face the risk of becoming expensive, bureaucratic, box ticking exercises that are resented by participants as a necessary evil from an external ignorant and misguided (at best) organisation. And that is when organisations see a need to participate or have no choice. If the need is not clear, organisations are also likely to avoid them altogether.
So we need to balance the need for assessment and compliance exercises to give credibility to the accreditation, while maintaining the spirit of a collaborating community in a shared and challenging endeavour.
Ultimately quality control of programmes is down to their universities and those relying on the accreditation system are likely to see it in that context ie their view of the overall quality of the university.
Question 1 How accurate do you think this context is? Are there other elements of context too?
Principles
Given our objectives and the above context, I suggest the following principles:
- The assessment should be very much a peer to peer process so there is no perception or reality of an external and ill-informed organisation completing the assessment;
- Requirements for evidence should be relatively open requesting the applicants to provide their own easily accessible evidence as to how they believe they meet the criteria as well as suggestions as to what evidence we might expect;
- If the peer review process suggests that an application has failed against any criteria, the first step should be to go back to the applicant with practical and constructive proposals from peers as to how they might revise the programme to meet the criteria.
- Compliance should be ensured mainly by empowering departments to self-monitor and continually improve, and students to challenge their departments if they feel the teaching is not meeting the criteria.
- Centrally organised compliance should be through peer review ideally linked with academics visiting departments as part of their normal activities.
- Assessment and compliance activities should be set within a larger process of sharing knowledge between peers on pedagogical learning and innovation facilitated by PEP.
- The default assumption will be that any applicant is seeking to meet the criteria because they support economic pluralism and believe their course meets the critieria. Only if evidence exists to the contrary will the applicant be considered a risk and more in-depth investigation carried out with ongoing monitoring if appropriate.
Question 2 Do you agree with these principles? Are any missing?
Proposed assessment process
Application
Applicants will be expected to complete a questionnaire on how they consider that they meet the criteria we have established and provide supporting official documentation. Such documentation would be expected to include:
- Responsible person for the accredited course
- The programme plan including details of required and optional units;
- Departmental policies, professional development and recruitment strategies;
- Examples of teaching plans and recommended reading lists;
- Details of lectures on the course the qualifications and experience that ensure a pluralist approach; and
- Details of and examples of their assessment processes.
This application will be checked for completeness particularly in terms of providing reasonably complete evidence against all the criteria. The application will then be allocated to three peer reviewers.
Question 3 Are these types of evidence reasonable? Should we be expecting any others?
Application discussion
We will set up an online meeting with the applicants and peer reviewers to fully understand the masters programme and how it seeks include economics teaching from a pluralist perspective.
Question 4 Will this be adequate to make an assessment of the programme?
Assessment report
The peer reviewers will provide a standard report on the application based on the evidence and online meeting including constructive suggestions for improvement. This will include a recommendation to a final assessment board on whether the programme should be accredited. [More proposals to come on the governance system here.]
Compliance
Heads of departments hosting accredited programmes should be primarily responsible for ensuring the programmes continue to meet the accreditation criteria. We would look to them to
- Provide an annual compliance report, to include changes made to the curriculum, staffing or teaching methods, student projects/dissertations undertaken, complaints received and how they have dealt with them, etc; and
- Ensure their students are aware of the accreditation system and our criteria.
We would organise a peer review of the programme every x years which could be brought forward if say issues are raised, the responsible person or other key staff change.
We would also have a facility for students on the programme to raise complaints anonymously if they do not consider their programme is meeting the criteria. However we would encourage them first to raise the issues with their department. Complaints would trigger a peer review. We would work with Rethinking Economics and other student groups to ensure students were aware of the complaint’s procedures.
Question 5 What do you think of this approach? Any other compliance procedures we might consider?
Ongoing collective learning and development
We would set up a collective learning and development process which all academics responsible for accredited masters programmes would be expected to be part of. Others would be welcome to join it too. This could be some combination of online discussions. webinars and conferences.
Question 6 How do you think this could best work? Can you suggest models we could learn from? Would a mechanism to share teaching material be useful? How might it work?
______________________________________________________________________
Please comment below making clear which question you are responding to or if you are not responding to a question, the topic.
thanks
Henry
Dear Economic Pluralists,
While this suggestion for how to inject pluralism into economics may seem absolutely outlandish, please be assured that it worked for over 100 years in the U.S. after it was mandated by Congress in 1862. The courses were discontinued in the 1980s to make room for tech education. So, as a result, many of the people currently working to change the whole market-driven nature of economics have never heard of it. It was called HOME Economics. That did not mean “stir & stitch”, it meant teaching all people how to remain financially solvent for an entire lifetime — common, ordinary, everyday economics. Without it, you have the world we have today. If Economics could dain to look below themselves, into what is now called Human Ecology, K-14, and get behind teaching every kid that every aspect of life has an economic impact, micro and macro, then you could achieve true pluralism. Homes produce human capital. Without crafting families to understand inter-related personal economics, they cannot produce human capital. If Economics could advantage itself of more common-sense and less misogyny, there would be hope for us all!
I am totally with you, Sandy. More common-sense and less misogyny would make a lot of difference. Currently economics starts by telling you that everything you thought you knew about people caring for each other and collaborating is untrue as the ‘truth’ is that everyone is selfish! It effectively disempowers people by invalidating their common sense.
Q1.
Yes happy with these.
Q2.
3rd bullet: We have to be a bit careful if the peer reviewers make suggestions for improvement and then effectively approve the improvements they’ve recommended. So additional peer reviewers may need adding at that stage, or it could be that such instances have to be discussed by the accreditation board (final assessment board) to ensure impartiality.
Suggest replacing ‘compliance’ in 5th bullet with ‘ assessment’ and swopping it with the 4th bullet.
Maybe add as an additional principle: Accreditation will take a risk-based approach, ie less issues and closer compliance will result in less frequent and/or less intensive assessment, and vice versa.
Q3.
3rd bullet: not so sure about recruitment strategies but others OK.
5th bullet: ‘lectures’ should presumably be ‘lecturers’.
6th bullet: ‘assessment processes’ presumably means grading criteria and quality control – better to say this more clearly so it’s not confused with this scheme’s assessment processes.
Suggest adding another bullet: Details of the complaints procedure (eg feedback from students) and how. these are handled.
Q4.
I think this is the place to introduce on-site visits. I would suggest something along the lines of:
‘An on-site visit will generally take place within the first year of accreditation, and subsequently at least once every (say) three years. However, following a risk-based approach, the assessment panel may consider it necessary to increase their frequency.’ I say ‘generally’ as it may be obviously unnecessary and in which case can be delayed.
Q5.
All looks sensible, but I think there also needs to be mention of an appeals process, to allow recourse in the, hopefully unlikely, event of a disputed decision.
‘Heads of department’ should be the ‘responsible person’ identified in the application.
Question 2. Please check this sentence. Details of lectures on the course the qualifications and experience that ensure a pluralist approach. Any word is missing ?
Question 3. Better to consider more than one meeting and specify when they are expected to happen. Moreover, it would be good to say which are the expectation about the length of the initial stage of the accreditation process.
Question 4. We can add the current practice of including a kind of arbitrage process. In the Netherlands, for instance, many universities have included this practice as part of the resolution of internal problems
Question 5 and 6. We can propose the ceation of a network/shared platform on e-pluralism education
Congratulations for the project!
Question 1 (Context):
– Agree with ‘ need to balance the need for assessment and compliance exercises to give credibility to the accreditation, while maintaining the spirit of a collaborating community in a shared and challenging endeavour’, but more in spite of rather than because of the second paragraph. Consequently I suggest you replace “an external ignorant and misguided (at best) organisation” with a less loaded description such as “a less-well informed external organisation”.
-Not sure about your final remark that ‘..those relying on the accreditation system are likely to see it in the context of their view of the overall quality of the university.’ (When, as a mature student I was looking for real world relevant Masters courses, I was much more interested in the content of the particular programme and reputation of the faculty than that of the university providing it. consequently, I would like the drafting here to facilitate accreditation being effective at both the level of the institution and at the programme level.
Question 2 (Principles):
Fully agree with these principles, not least because they reflect a proportionate risk based approach where trust, shared values and purpose are essential.
Question 3 (Evidence):
These all seem potentially relevant types of evidence but perhaps you should not suggest that all are necessary or equally important, perhaps by replacing ‘Such documentation would be expected to include…’ with ‘Such documentation might include…’
Question 4 (Adequacy):
This seems a good starting point – no doubt it will become apparent in the pilot process whether more checks needed to be added
Question 5 (Reporting):
I like this approach – especially opportunity for students to be involved in the review and improvement of the process.
Question 6 (Ongoing development):
I strongly agree there needs to be a multi-stakeholder collective learning and development process, but I will leave it to others better qualified than me to comment on what this process might be.
Question 1 How accurate do you think this context is? Are there other elements of context too?
You have not as yet justified the need for a pluralist approach.
I would tend to take out “that are resented by participants as a necessary evil from an external ignorant and misguided (at best) organisation”
Question 2 Do you agree with these principles? Are any missing?
“The assessment should be very much a peer to peer process” which we aim to make supportive, rather than proscriptive.
Other than that, fine.
Question 3 Are these types of evidence reasonable? Should we be expecting any others?”
“Departmental policies, professional development and recruitment strategies;” this sounds rather prescriptive. I can that recruitment will make a difference – if neo-growthists are employed, for example, but all the same, I doubt institutions will be much interested in giving away much information on this.
“Details of lectures on the course the qualifications and experience that ensure a pluralist approach; and” Again, this seems a bit much and might make accreditation dependent on particular staff rather than the department as a whole.
It is the curricula, learning and assessment plans that are important.
Question 4 Will this be adequate to make an assessment of the programme?
I assume that all documentation will also be received.
Question 5 What do you think of this approach? Any other compliance procedures we might consider?
This seems fine.
Question 6 How do you think this could best work? Can you suggest models we could learn from? Would a mechanism to share teaching material be useful? How might it work?
TBH, I am not sure how this will work with staff who might not actually have enough time to deliver their units as it is. However, it would make sense to allow staff access to pluralist materials. Perhaps a programme of visiting lecturers might be useful – again, however, it will depend on the time commitment of the staff involved.
Compliance.: Q 5. I wonder whether we could include something about evidence of: 1. staff development in pluralism of approaches; 2. appointment strategy in relation to pluralism
Collective learning and development. I agree with the approach. we might also set up a site to list conferences, seminars, publications with pluralist content/approaches