7

Seeking light as pursuit of reason and not of mere information, as pursuit of wisdom and not of mere knowledge

Promotion of seeking and sharing reason and wisdom as the basic process in education;

'Reinventing' the teacher as a 'sharing and learning facilitator' and of textbooks as channels of learning instead of authoritative 'last word' on anything.

Recognition and enhancement of sources of knowledge, skills and wisdom outside the school systems

Promotion of less-structured education systems for children that would encourage and enhance intuition, aesthetic appreciation and creativity, respect for self and others, love for all life, predisposition to team play, and basic spirituality.

Critique and repudiation of current data-memorization-based, competition driven, grades-indicated, teacher-centered & commercialized educational system, programs & policies

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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A New Scheme of Assessing Quality

 in Higher Education

By Dr. Romeo M. Barrios, Ph. D.

Director, University Center for Research, Conferences and Seminars, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila; and Member, Lambat-Liwanag Network Council

This is excerpted from the introductory portion of “Developing a Stakeholders’ Quality Assesment Model in Higher Education,” the doctoral dissertation of Dr. Barrios at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila a few years ago. Academicians interested in this study may contact him at PLM-UCRCS. He is in the process of developing ideas from this study to be submitted to Lambat-Liwanag as an input for “Reinventing the School” under the seventh Paradigm, titled “Light-Seeking, Light-Sharing Education.” This was presented at and adopted by the Lambat-Liwanag Paradigm-Specific Conference on Light-Seeking, Light-Staring Education held at the Philippine Normal University in June 2002.

EVALUATION is a matter of viewpoints. It depends on who is making the assessment and for what purpose. In higher education institutions (HEIs) where liberal thinking, networking, and consultations are constantly practiced, their performance is best evaluated by the stakeholders. The stakeholders (those who have actual and meaningful involvements with a college or university) are the most qualified people to tell whether an HEI has quality or not.

It was in this light that I designed the "Stakeholders' Quality Assessment Model in Higher Education" for my dissertation two years ago. In this instrument I sought the viewpoints of six sectors of stakeholders, namely: students, parents, educators, government employees, business employers, and socio-civic members. Then, through a 'process model’ I used their collective viewpoints as criteria / standards that will measure quality performance of HEIs.

While revisiting some existing evaluation tools used in various HEIs, such as the students' faculty evaluation and accreditation instruments, I noticed three major shortcomings: First, these instruments are competition-driven. The HEIs compete with one another in the quest for being the best and ranking high in the list; Second, many accreditation tools discriminate against low budgeted / funded schools because of the financial requirements they attach to quality, thus, it is not surprising that most of the private schools apply for accreditation.

Lastly, these tools are self-serving, i.e., educators tend to monopolize the process of formulating criteria to cater to their own standards and making their own claims of quality. In short, consultations and cooperation with concerned stakeholders were not utilized to validate the evaluation.

The issue on HEIs becoming competitors instead of partners may understandably be due to an HEI’s desire to attract enrollment to gain more profit. But, it should not be at the expense of public schools being discriminated against and considered as of low quality. The most acceptable purpose in evaluating school performance is to set the tone and pace for other institutions to encourage HEIs to improve on their own, using quality schools as models and benchmarks. No HEI has the monopoly of quality.

The most remarkable contribution of the Stakeholders’ Model is to have an efficient way of defining quality education. There has never been a common definition of quality even among educators and scholars until Bernadette Robinson (1994) made her explicit viewpoint about it:

“Quality does not exist in isolation from the context of use…and judgements differ according to whose views are being sought. The differences stem from the amalgam of different meanings under the labels of quality and variety of perspectives of stakeholders.” Robinson literally suggested a cooperative and consultative framework of evaluating quality. The truth is, there are as many viewpoints of quality as there are people who are sincerely concerned about HEIs. Therefore, the Stakeholders’ Model considered all the ideas from the simplest to the most ideal and ambitious - from the six groups of people (mentioned earlier) who are involved in HEIs.

These ideas, likewise, had been referred across to some globally accepted time-tested concepts of quality before these became valid quality criteria and indicators of the new assessment instrument. These references include the International Standards Organization (ISO), Dr. W. Edwards Deming 14 Points of Quality, Malcolm Baldridge Awards, Total Quality Management (TQM), Asiaweek’s Best Universities Accrediting Association of Chartered Colleges and Universities of the Philippines, and the PLM Student’s Faculty Evaluation.
The Stakeholders Model may be considered one of its kind, a revolutionary instrument/tool and a paradigm shift in assessment because it defied the popular and traditional assessment tools commonly used today. It followed the principle of the TQM: “Quality is the result of a quality process.”
Thus, the instrument underwent a dynamic process of 7 steps. The 15-page instrument contains 121 items of quality indicators / criteria arranged in specific menus of quality and measured by a 4 point rating scale of being evident in a given HEI. The quality menus are distributed as follows:

1. Academic Menu (To what degree does the institution manifest quality or excellence in the delivery of education)

A. Student Selectivity and Retention
B. Quality of Faculty
C. Curriculum and Instruction
D. Library Services
E. School Facilities

2. Accountability Menu (To what degree does the institution demonstrate its responsibility to its stakeholders)

A. Student Development
B. Faculty and Staff Welfare
C. Institutional Culture
D. Community Relations and Extension Services

3. Research Menu (To what degree does the institution engage in the search for knowledge & truth)

A. Institutional Support
B. External Connectivity
C. Research and Development

4. Management Menu (To what degree does the institution show effectiveness / efficiency in utilizing its resources)

A. Planning B. Controlling C. Directing and Leading

Again, “Stakeholders’ Quality Assessment Model in Higher Education” is independent of any existing tool for quality assessment. It may be used as a pre-accreditation instrument, as HEI’s self-assessment or self-introspection tool. Most of all, its results will be useful in policy formulation, program planning, human resource development, and the search for knowledge. It is non-traditional and is user-friendly. Since it was formulated through the collective viewpoints of the stakeholders, it is guaranteed to bring about more valid quality assessment results.

Stakeholders Quality Assessment Model for HEIs

A new evaluation model for higher education institutions (HEIs) was designed by Dr. Romeo M. Barrios, director of the University Center for Research, Conferences and Seminars of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila. Completed as the dissertation paper of the author, the "Stakeholders Assessment of Quality in Higher Education" is intended to be a mass-based and user-friendly instrument with quality indicators that came directly from six groups of stakeholders, namely, students, parents, educators, government personnel, employers, and socio-civic groups.

"I think this is the first assessment model of its kind ever developed for higher education," Dr. Barrios said. "It's new, because the criteria that are used to evaluate the status of a college or a university represent the collective views of the stakeholders." Dr. Barrios believes that the most qualified people who can honestly and sin-cerely judge the performance of an HEI are its stakeholders. "They are those who really care, support, and invest in quality education," Dr. Barrios continued. "The kind of return on investment they expect to derive from it are future family breadwinners, would-be professional employees, potential company managers, and even country leaders."

Unlike other existing evaluation instruments (which are oftentimes self-serving), the stakeholders model sought even the simplistic ideas of 480 respondents from the six community sectors in Metro Manila, as mentioned earlier. The general view of these people about quality education is the balance between quality process and quality output. Their yardstick for quality is not only based on the kind of graduates being produced but also on the system the school adapts to achieve quality results.

The ten highest viewpoints referred to are (1) globally competitive graduates, (2) employability of graduates, (3) highly responsible and productive members of society, (4) morally and ethically oriented graduates, (5) high sense of professionalism and leadership, (6) well financed and well managed college/university, (7) good instruction and teaching methods, (8) presence of experienced and qualified teachers, (9) liberal, independent and critical thinking, and (10) press freedom in the campus.

The evaluation model underwent several stages of development process which include survey, data gathering, content validation, pilot testing, bench marking and focus group discussion, and refinement.
 

The 13-page instrument has 108 indicators of quality that measure the four major areas in HEIs, namely, (a) academic goals (b) accountability (c) research and (d) leadership and management. The instrument is made robust by the psychometric properties it carries, i.e., content validity and informal consistency. The 4-point scale indexes the degree of evidence of every indicator in a given institution.

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