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Exploring Teacher Evaluation in Flanders: Quality Assessment Frameworks and Challenges

This presentation by Mathias Decuypere and co-authors delves into the complexities of teacher evaluation within higher education in Flanders, Belgium. It highlights the quality assessment framework at the University of Leuven, exploring both the theoretical and practical aspects of evaluations. The discussion includes the role of devices and technologies in shaping educational quality, the implications of privatizing tendencies, and the need for a compositional approach. The goal is to make educational quality transparent while recognizing good practices and addressing issues in teaching methodology.

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Exploring Teacher Evaluation in Flanders: Quality Assessment Frameworks and Challenges

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  1. Teacher evaluation in higher education in Flanders: The construction of qualityMathias Decuypere (Presenter), Maarten Simons andJan Masschelein (Co-authors)Laboratory for Education and SocietyCenter for Education Policy and InnovationCenter for Philosophy of Education

  2. Overview • Background: University of Leuven • Quality assessment and assurance: • A concrete framework… • …put into practice • Focus • Devices and technologies • A rationale of teacher evaluation • Privatizing tendencies • A compositionist ‘Parliament of Things’

  3. Background: University of Leuven • Situated in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (“Flanders”) • 34,940 Students • 4,410 Junior researchers • 1,423 Senior researchers (academic staff) • 62 Undergraduate (Bachelor) programs • 120 Postgraduate (Master) programs

  4. Qualityassessment and assurance:A concrete framework…

  5. Qualityassessment and assurance:…put intopractice. • Biennial survey concerning the quality of education given by academic staff • This survey is filled in by students who followed the course • Purpose: making educational quality transparent in order to • Recognize & reward good practices • Adjust & remedy possible bottlenecks • Lecturer can contextualize the evaluation of each course given • Those results are transposed to her/his personal file • http://www.kuleuven.be/onderwijs/evaluatie/folder_onderwijsevaluatie.pdf

  6. Focus Not a plea for or against teacher evaluation as such Instead: a (theoretical) focus on rationales, technologies and devices used… … resulting in an alternative conception of teacher evaluation.

  7. A concrete example (Faculty of psychology and educationalsciences as a whole, course-specificinformationnotdisclosed…) http://www.kuleuven.be/onderwijs/kwaliteitszorg/kwaliteitsgarantie/ resultaten/evaopo/evaopo-ppw.html

  8. Devices and technologies Thisway of evaluating is dependenton the production of solidfacts (and correspondingvalues) in order to obtainlegitimacy. This is effectuatedbymeans of: • Calculativedevices (Callon & Muniesa, 2003) • Calculation: the perceiving and grading of differences, whichleads to estimations of courses of action associated with the perceived differences (means, standard deviations) • Calculative devices: devices that aim at rendering things more scientific (or enacting particular versions of what it is to be scientific), inspiring more evidence-based action • Evaluation of quality of teaching tries to differentiate (scientifically) and to trigger specific actions based on this differentiation (cf. ‘recognizing and rewarding’ vs. ‘adjusting and remedying’) • Inscriptivetechnologies (Latour, 1987; Law, 2004) • Inscription: the transformation of certainaspects of realityintofigures, diagrams, texts (the practice of a one-yearcourseintoonetable) • Inscriptivetechnologies: technologiesthataim at visualizing (scientific) results, henceinscribingthemselvesintoreality (e.g. table)

  9. The rationale of teacher evaluation Finalresultsinform Statisticalanalysisresults in

  10. The modern Constitution Archetypicalfor modern ways of thinking Nature-collectorlodges ‘matters of fact’: objectivefacts and objects (Latour, 1993; 1999/2004a; 2004b) vs. ‘matters of value’ in society-collector

  11. Privatizing tendencies • Dealing with teacher evaluation in this modern way gives way to privatizing tendencies: • A complete cold-shouldering of the constructed character of the quality obtained (e.g. calculation, inscription) • The power of numbers (‘M’ and ‘SD’ as embodiment of the entire teaching process) (cf. Rose, 1999) • The power of expertise and the inability of the tutor (who can be a professor in statistics…) • The opportunity to contextualize results, this is the opportunity to attach values to facts, only allowed post-hoc • Despite all contestations within the University of Leuven, evaluation has to be conducted this way (and no other) • This privatizes the process: other possible ways of (and opinions about) evaluation are being ignored and no (longer) welcomed • Secondly, this process also establishes a responsabilization of the teachers: ‘keep up with the rest’, ‘do better than the rest’

  12. An other, non-modern way: Teacher evaluation as a compositionist ‘Parliament of Things’? Students Lecturer Whatconstitutes a good teacher? “Thing” Otherspokesmen Staff Statistician

  13. An other, non modern way: Teacher evaluation as a compositionist ‘Parliament of Things’? • This Parliament has to be understood as ‘the place to make some-thing public’ (thus not in classical institutional meaning of the word) • Representation: • Traditionally understood in terms of legitimacy of the representing spokesmen (students, staff, lecturers, etc.) • This proposal however needs a second kind of representation as well: are the things one talks about accurately represented, e.g. do the spokespersons of the numbers obtained speak in name of those numbers (≠ do they consider them to be a mirror of reality, but: do they report of what those numbers mean (and what not), how they were constructed (and how not), what are their capacities and limitations, etc.) • Letting numbers ‘speak for themselves’ is something totally different than letting a spokesmen make an argument (or ‘composition’) based on those numbers

  14. Readings… Callon, M., & Muniesa, F. (2003). Les marches économiquescommedispositifscollectifs de calcul. Réseaux, 21(122), 189-233. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2004a). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy (C. Porter,Trans). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1999) Latour, B. (2004b). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225-248. Law, J. (2004). After method. Mess in social science research. London: Routledge. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom. Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  15. Mathias DecuypereLaboratoryforEducation and SocietyVesaliusstraat 2 Box 037613000 LeuvenBelgiummathias.decuypere@ped.kuleuven.be

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