Baltic Sea Universities Network The 10th Baltic Seminar of University Administrators Role of governi

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Baltic Sea Universities NetworkThe 10th
Baltic Seminar of University AdministratorsRole
of governing bodies in higher education. Recent
developments in higher education governanceRiga,
Latvia, 14-15 May 2009 The ways universities
assure.RHEA in Gdansk

• Maria Mendel
• University of Gdansk, Poland
• pedmm_at_ug.edu.pl

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The contextual understanding of quality assurance
in Polish universities

• The sources of popular thinking and the dilemmas
  it evokes
• Global and local (glocal)
• Market-driven world (economic rationalisation of
  social life) increasing role of measurement and
  parametric assessments knowledge-based society
  credential society academic capitalism and
  lack of sense of education when professors dont
  care of their students mass-higher education
  lack of work.
• DILEMMAS increasing feeling of false in the
  university performances (meanings of not fair
  game, political cheating, etc.) everybody
  knows that university education is incomplete
  and hardly acceptable as fair.
• Specifically Polish
• process of social, political and educational
  transition .Democracy under construction and
  testimony of former system (peoples ambivalent
  approach to the institutions, lack of trust in
  public sphere, etc.).
• DILEMMAS one could ask It is not in accordance
  to be honest and talk of quality assurance in
  Polish HEI.
• Thus ambiguity and frustration become the
  features of now-a-day rhetoric in which Polish
  academics approach the issue of HE quality
  assurance.

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Redesigning of thinking democracy in quality
assurance - RHEA -

• Redesigning of Higher Education and Academy -
  RHEA (www.ug.edu.pl)
• This is a period of every-year conferences (2-3
  per year) called RHEA, the name that
  metaphorically refers to mythical Mother of Gods.
  
• Gdansk RHEA is planned to give the birth the
  excellence understood as good - democratic and
  including all the voices of HEIs stakeholders -
  discursive practice of quality assurance.
• It means
• 1. to soften the autocracy of contemporary
  university
• 2. to deliver
• democracy in quality assurance
• democratising quality assurance..

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How to get such things done? The basic attempts
to democratise quality assurance

• Following the concept by Lee Harvey 19922008
  and in the light of RHEA results we may say that
• On the one hand UNIVERSITIES LOOK/FEEL AUTOCRATIC
  (perhaps that is the fate of quality assurance).
• On the other they are BASTIONS OF DEMOCRACY
  through their social critical role.
• QUALITY NEEDS DEMOCRATISING (it needs to be a
  more democratic process)
• QUALITY IS A DEMOCRATISING PROCESS (it acts as
  agent for democracy)
• Therefore we ought to develop and appeal for
• AN INCLUSIVE QUALITY ASSURANCE APPROACH

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Thus RHEA conferences are aimed to

• establish the HE community (in local, regional,
  national and European level), network of
  different entities and individuals (such as
  university people students, academics and
  administrators, international and Polish invited
  speakers, Bologna Experts, etc.) mutually
  involved in critical thinking and reflective work
  on higher education, research, development, and
  university management.
• give them a chance to the peer-reviewing via RHEA
  conferences forum discussions, debates,
  exchanges of their experiences and their critical
  opinions.
• Peers are insiders to the sector, provide
  insight, understand issues and are, therefore,
  supporting and sharing Harvey 2008.

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The ways universities assure...Towards
democratising quality

• AGENCIES OR INSIDERS?
• Maybe quality assurance, to become democratic,
  needs to focus not on external agendas but the
  internal agendas of higher education institutions
  (...) Democracy in quality assurance is not
  achieved by agencies (...) Harvey, 2009.
• This is essential in an inclusive quality
  assurance approach. The university insiders are
  stakeholders being able to evaluate themselves
  for the best results.
• HOW WILL QUALITY BE ASSESSED?
• The external quality assurance methodology
  (represented in majority of the procedures)
  caused some concern in institutions as it
  involves outside assessors going into
  institutions and, among other things, observing
  what takes place in teaching and learning
  situations Harvey 2008.
• The internal, inclusive quality assurance
  approach seems to identify the nature of quality,
  assess the perceptions of different stakeholders
  and attempt to identify a flexible and dynamic
  methodology that will take account of the
  disparate perspectives and ever changing
  circumstances Harvey, Burrows and Green, 1992.

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What else? The nearest future...

• 2008-2009
• RHEA conferences
• 1. School and university education system
  cohesion or a big gap (November 2008) - with
  participation of Minister of Education and
  Vice-Minister of Science and Higher Education
• 2. The quality assurance and internal systems of
  quality assurance (March 2009) - with prof. Hakan
  Hult (Linkoping University) and the experts from
  Jagiellonian University and Warsaw University who
  are responsible of internal quality assurance
  system.
• 3. The efficacy of higher education (June 2009)
• The RHEA conferences since the end of September
  have huge and wonderful audience about 500
  participants.

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• The next, June 2009 RHEA conference will give the
  forum for the Polish Universities Accreditation
  Commission (UKA), unique institution which is
  composed of pro-rectors representing all Polish
  universities and which organises evaluation by
  peer-reviewing that emphasises the educational
  goal of mutual institutional and individual
  learning and that significantly use soft,
  qualitative assessment (observation, mutual
  interviewing, etc.).
• The UKA presents one of the ways in which
  universities democratically assure about quality
  of education they offer.
• However the UKA is the agency and - quoting
  Harvey - the insiders, not agencies achieve
  democracy in quality assurance. But the UKA - by
  its influence and organisational role - may
  fruitfully support and help to train democratic
  quality assurance.
• RHEA - as perhaps influential concept - could do
  more. It evokes democracy, it is democracy in
  practice which stabilise university in its
  meaning of a bastion of democracy where
• a public pedagogy is produced in a range of sites
  and public spheres Giroux, 2008.

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• Thank you!