Four different assessment practices: how university teachers handle the field of tension between professional responsibi
- PDF / 793,251 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 74 Downloads / 166 Views
Four different assessment practices: how university teachers handle the field of tension between professional responsibility and professional accountability Marie Jedemark1 · Mikael Londos2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Various efforts have been made in higher education in Sweden to meet the demand for more transparent governance and increased efficiency and quality. The purpose of this article is to investigate how university teachers handle standardized models for assessment and examination and orientate in this field of tension between professional responsibility and professional accountability. This study examines school-based courses in teacher education programs at a university and is based on observations from 20 seminars, 10 interviews with university teachers, and 11 focus group interviews with 55 students. The results show that university teachers interpret governing documents in different ways leading to a lack of equivalence. Within one course, four assessment practices are identified: governance as confirmation, governance with need for reinforcement, governance as distrust, and governance as others’ responsibility. This study reveals the variation in university teachers’ professional assessment practices that challenge and interplay with the context of a curriculum in different ways. Aspects of the university teachers’ professional obligation are under tension in the context of a more pronounced accountability. University teachers’ professional assessment practices emerges as fragmented in terms of what professional responsibility includes and what professional discretion involves. Keywords Accountability · Assessment · Equivalence · Professional responsibility · Teacher education · University teacher
* Mikael Londos [email protected] Marie Jedemark [email protected] 1
Department of School Development and Leadership, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
2
Department of Sport Sciences, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Higher Education
Introduction In recent decades, higher education in Sweden, as in most other European countries, has undergone a series of political reforms. These reforms have intended to meet the demands for increased quality and efficiency and obtain, among other things, greater transparency, a higher degree of standardized documentation, and more comprehensive evaluations (Stensaker & Harvey 2011; Hansen et al. 2019). An autonomy through collegial decisions based on competence, expertise, and discretion have thus increasingly been replaced by standardized assessments and accountability (Solbrekke & Karseth 2006). University teachers’ right of decision over their own teaching and examination has come to be challenged (Dunn 2014; Evetts 2003; Freidson 2001; Svensson 2010). Solbrekke and Englund (2011) maintain, “the underlying idea is to gain better control over professionals’ work by making it more transparent” (p 850). This is to ensure that the professionals are loyal to predefined goals and to accountability (Svensson & Karlsson 2008; Hansen
Data Loading...
