The Multiple Silos of Higher Education Accountability

Culture of Interculturality, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (IDEI) Assessment: Lessons from a Social Justice-Based Intercultural Learning Certificate Program for Preservice Teachers

“…This important partnership helped to ensure that the program developed specific and measurable goals aligned with relevant standards, as well as a practical and sustainable process for collecting, evaluating, and analyzing data on students' growth and development. This collaboration between the ILCP and assessment staff can also help to penetrate departmental or institutional silos [34]. The research suggests some programs may be developed without intentional alignment with program learning outcomes or professional standards and without collaboration from assessment professionals [33].…”

What if engineering students had a bill of rights? A thought experiment

“…I considered how each of these strategies might inform what accountability practices would be useful in the context of engineering education. Next, using an institutional logic framework, Brown (2017) highlights different "sources of rationality" related to accountability in higher education. Each source was connected to a market, state, or profession.…”

“…For example, most engineering programs periodically go through accreditation processes—sometimes improving their practices—even though pursuing accreditation is not always required. Accountability serves a vital role in higher education, and university performance is monitored and managed in various ways (Brown, 2017; McCormack et al, 2014). Because accountability is already such a central process in higher education, I find it disingenuous to suggest that engineering education cannot hold people accountable for what they do in relation to one another.…”

“…Third, I will propose a set of rights for readers to consider, leveraging Young's (1990) Five Faces of Oppression as a conceptual framework. Lastly, I will propose some alternative paths for upholding such rights, leveraging insights from literature about accountability and punishment (e.g., Brown, 2017; Greene, 2021; Holly & Quigley, 2022; McCormack et al, 2014; Schenwar & Law, 2020). I offer these thoughts without expecting confirmation or disconfirmation and only ask that you suspend judgment until the experiment is over, allowing yourself to entertain the possible before descending to the probable.…”

Assessment as sensemaking: Community college faculty chair perspectives

“…Brown (2017) lists "assessment" as one of the seven silos of the higher education accountability movement (along with accreditation, institutional research, institutional effectiveness, educational evaluation, educational measurement, and higher education public policy). He argues that assessment is unique in its insistence on the development of a standalone "culture," drawn from the professional logic of learning, to support its practice, which includes specialized vocabulary ("student learning outcomes" or "essential learning outcomes") and the promotion of principles and best practices sometimes at odds with the other silos (Brown, 2017).…”