Visiting teams of assessors serve a key function in the accreditation process. While YÖK is responsible for seeing that accreditation decisions are made, it cannot visit every faculty, observe the facilities, see teaching in action, talk with students, and review the partnership arrangements. Nor can YÖK directly review evidence that new teachers meet the national competencies. YÖK relies on the work of the visiting assessors to gather the evidence and make judgements about how well faculties meet the accreditation standards. Teams should be composed so that their work is of the highest quality.
Good visiting assessors must be able to
do the following.
1
Understand thoroughly the accreditation standards and standards for
newly-qualified teachers.
2
Understand the indicators for the standards, and the kind of evidence
which can support the achievement of the standards.
3
Be able to apply the grading of standards in a way which is consistent
with best thinking in Turkey and with other visiting assessors.
4
Maintain confidentiality of the information gained from campus visits
after the visit.
5
Draw upon substantial experience in teacher education and work with
schools.
6
Read and understand the self-evaluation of the visited faculty in the
light of the standards.
7
Interview staff, students, mentors, and other relevant groups regarding
the standards and the self-evaluation, and record information objectively.
8
Assess a visited faculty in the light of both the standards and the
context of the particular setting, leaving aside inappropriate personal opinions
or political points of view.
9
Work well as a team, sharing work and information so that the total
product is thorough, fair, and coherent.
10
Present concise and coherent oral and written reports.
11
Give and receive feedback with other team members.
Developing a pool of visiting
assessors requires coverage of various aspects of the teacher education program
(for example, classroom teaching, chemistry, music, computer education). The total number of assessors should be proportional to the
number of faculties offering each program.
In selecting assessors, care should also be given, as far as possible, to
balance the group of assessors along the following dimensions.
·
Regions
within the country
·
Urban
and rural universities
·
Men
and women
·
Senior
and junior members
·
Representatives
from older and newer faculties
Selection and training No accrediting system can be better than the quality
of its assessors. Ensuring
quality is dependent on training, and on well-conducted visits.
After nomination and ensuring good balance, assessors should be trained.
In other countries, assessors may fail to pass the required training. They will be observed in the training sessions. They may be judged not to be suitable if, for example, they are unable to leave personal opinion aside and work toward the required standards. In such cases, these individuals are either not selected for teams, or their performance on the first visit or two is monitored.
Composing teams for visits In
composing teams for a visit, the considerations above are important.
In addition, the team has a team chair who does not have a specific
assignment. The chair’s job it is to manage the time and work of the
team. If there is a difficult situation he ensures that team members are
deployed to spend additional time, as necessary, to address it. He also chairs team meetings, and ensures that the team agree
on the major strengths and weaknesses to be included in the report, and on the
team’s confidential recommendation concerning accreditation.
During
the visit, each program is the primary responsibility of one reviewer.
For each program, another team member has secondary responsibility.
It is the task of these two visiting assessors to bring together all the
relevant data and information for their assigned responsibility. They also write
the section of the report on this program before the team leaves campus.
These assessors will work as a team both together for their program, and
with other assessors, gathering information and sharing it through the visit.
Conflict
of interest Members
of visiting accreditation teams do important work on behalf of Turkish
education. In their role, they read confidential information and may encounter
difficult personnel and other situations. At
the end of their visit, they make a confidential recommendation regarding the
accreditation status of the programs they have visited.
The
accreditation process must ensure that members of the visiting team do not have a conflict of interest with regard to the programs they
visit. Equally important, for the credibility of the accreditation system, they
must not appear to have a conflict of
interest.
Therefore,
it is the policy of the Turkish accreditation system that team members will not
visit faculties:
·
from
which they have received a degree
·
where
they have been employed
·
from
which they have sought employment in the past five years
·
at
which first degree relatives have studied or earned a degree or worked within
the past five years
·
at
which first degree relatives serve or have served within the past five years as
an academic or senior administrative staff.
In
every case, potential team members should consider whether they can
make impartial judgements about the faculty to be visited and about whether
their judgements will be perceived to
be impartial. They may want to
consider, for example, not visiting a faculty where a close friend serves or has
served within the past five years. Similarly,
they should consider whether any other condition exists which would prevent the
visitor from making an impartial judgement about the quality of the programs.
Faculty
members selected for visiting teams for which any of the above conditions
pertain will decline. They simply
state that they have a conflict of interest.
The
dean of a faculty, on learning the names of the visiting team may also ask YÖK
to replace a
proposed team member, explaining the conflict of interest.
The final decision about appointment rests with YÖK.