Tag Archives: accreditation

For Schools

Are adult learning principles at odds with accreditation requirements?

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Malcolm Knowles’ seminal text The Adult Learner sets out the principles of andragogy, an approach to teaching and learning which recognizes that children and adults learn differently. In pedagogy, the teaching of children, a relationship of dependency is assumed:

“The pedagogical model assigns to the teacher full responsibility for making all decisions about what will be learned, how it will be learned, when it will be learned, and if it has been learned.”
(Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2015, p. 41)

In practice, learners study to pass the course, not to apply their learning to their lives; they become dependent on the teacher’s decision-making; what they bring to the classroom is subordinate to the requirements of the curriculum and textbook; they are ready to learn when the teacher or the system deems them ready; and they are motivated by external motivators such as grades.

Based on this pedagogical model, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 sought to improve accountability in K-12 schools, in part by requiring states to develop ‘measurable objectives’ and assessments to measure student achievement. This meant that curricula were to be specified by each state in advance, and all students were to follow the curriculum on a pre-determined timeline.

In the early 2000s, this way of thinking bled into Department of Education requirements for accrediting agencies, including the two agencies that accredit intensive English programs, ACCET and CEA.
IEPs found themselves having similarly to specify learning objectives and timelines and to demonstrate that learners were achieving the specified objectives.

This pedagogy-based approach (whatever you may think of its effectiveness in the public schools) is inconsistent with the andragogical model proposed by Knowles, which makes the following assumptions:

  • Adults need to decide for themselves that they are ready to learn something; they must see its practical application to their lives.
  • Adults are self-directed and resist others imposing their will on them.
  • Adults bring a large volume of experience to the learning environment with them, that teachers must integrate as part of the teaching and learning.
  • Adults bring a problem-solving orientation to learning, and curriculum must address their life issues.
  • Adults are more likely to be motivated by internal factors such as satisfaction and self-esteem, rather than by grades.

If the assumptions of the andragogical model are correct, then the direction most IEPs have moved in as a result of accreditation requirements may not be appropriate for many of their adult students. Curricular items delivered on a specific timeline do not speak to adult students’ own readiness to learn. Talk of externally imposed ‘student learning objectives’ does not interest them. Imposition of topics by the teacher and/or textbook often fails to engage their self-directed nature.

I know of only one IEP that systematically addresses the principles of andragogy through customized, mutually agreed syllabi, assessments, and evaluations. It is very effective. Needless to say, it is also expensive and it requires enormous time and effort on the part of teachers and administrators. The IEP also has a hard time making its case to an accreditor which has curriculum and achievement standards that are based on a pedagogical, rather than an andragogical approach.

Reference
Knowles, M.S., Holton III, E.F., Swanson, R.A., The Adult Learner, Routledge, 2015

For Schools

Faculty freedom and curriculum design in intensive English programs

How much freedom do intensive English program (IEP) teachers have to design their courses, choose their materials, and teach to their interests? How much should they? These questions become ever more compelling as accreditation standards push programs to be accountable for their outcomes.

Teachers in proprietary (non-university-governed) IEPs have long been used to teaching within a structured framework, using prescribed textbooks and curricula that map out what is to be covered by the week or even by the day. This has been necessary because, adopting a customer-centric and profit-maximizing approach, they allow students frequent – weekly or monthly – entry and exit points. Students staying for a short program jump in and then out of existing classes with longer-term students. Those long-term students need to be able to move through a defined program of work and progress to the next, and then the next, level. This means that all teachers need to be on the specified part of the curriculum – in some cases on the specified page of the textbook – at all times.

Many university IEPs have inherited the university tradition of faculty autonomy, giving faculty the freedom to write their own syllabi, choose their own materials, and generally teach to their own interests. Under the influence of CEA accreditation standards, faculty are losing some of this autonomy, as student achievement standards require them to teach to a program-wide set of learning objectives. Student promotion to the next level must be based on student achievement of objectives, so faculty have to conform to standard assessment, evaluation, and grading practices. In order to ensure all students are getting the same course, university programs are increasingly prescribing textbooks. As a result, university IEP curricula and faculty work are looking more like those of proprietary programs.

This trend has caused much tension between faculty and administration at IEPs where faculty have fought to retain autonomy in their teaching. Some faculty claim that students are losing out because, being close to the students, they know what is best for them. Administrators charged with implementing accreditation standards argue in turn that students gain when there is a program-wide system that smooths out the differences between faculty styles and preferences.

In proprietary programs, curriculum can be imposed by administrative fiat. This is harder in university programs. Those that have adapted best are the ones where administrators and faculty have a trusting relationship and can jointly respond to the new requirements in a collaborative way that reconciles the divergent demands of individual autonomy and program standardization. Some programs continue to struggle.

 

 

 

For Schools

Unintended Consequences? Effects of the 2010 Accreditation Act on Intensive English Programs

The Accreditation Act passed in 2010 required that F-1 students pursuing an English language training program must attend a program that is accredited by a Department of Education recognized accrediting agency. University-governed programs were covered by their university’s regional accreditor, which meant that for them, an additional specialized accreditation was optional. All proprietary programs – mostly for-profit language schools – were required to seek and gain accreditation.

The Accreditation Act was supported, and its passage celebrated by, program directors and leaders at university-governed and well-established, already-accredited for-profit language school companies. They were motivated by a strong desire to bring greater professionalism to the field and to weed out a significant number of unscrupulous and fly-by-night operators who had cleared the relatively low bar for entry into the industry and whose low standards were tainting the field as a whole. Since the passage of the Act, the two specialized accrediting agencies for intensive English programs, CEA and ACCET, have added hundreds of intensive English programs to their rolls. Plenty of programs that sought accreditation have been denied, and the weeding out process has been largely successful.

But some consequences are not so unequivocally positive for the field:

  • The accreditation process costs up to $10,000, plus annual sustaining fees. This is a significant financial burden on programs, especially during a time of enrollment challenges. While university-governed programs have the option of sheltering under their institution’s accreditation and avoiding these costs, proprietary programs have no choice but to pay up or cease doing business.
  • The requirement for an IEP to be accredited creates a Catch-22 for potential new entrants into the market. A proprietary program has to be in business for two years (ACCET) or one year (CEA) before it can apply for accreditation. The accreditation process itself takes around 18 months, and if it succeeds, the program must then wait for F-1 issuing approval from the federal government. In the words of one IEP administrator in this situation, “It felt like being choked to death for four years.” During this time, the program has to survive on non-F-1 students. The near-impossibility of this makes the price of entry extremely high for those wanting to enter the field. While there were always requirements to become an F-1 school, the Accreditation Act raised almost insurmountable barriers to new proprietary players.
  • A consequence of this is greater consolidation in the proprietary IEP market. If you cannot start a new school, you have to purchase an existing one. Inevitably, those with the resources to do this are large companies seeking to develop branded chains of English schools. Further, accrediting agencies make it relatively easy for existing schools to open new branches through a simplified accreditation process for the new branch, thus allowing existing companies to expand while new entrants continue to struggle to gain entry.
  • Accreditation likely has the effect of curbing innovation in the field. Adherence to accreditation standards tends to result in institutional isomorphism (the phenomenon of institutions of a certain type looking the same), and programs are reluctant to launch anything radically different for fear of not complying with accreditation standards. Aside from surface details (number of levels, number of weeks per session, etc.), IEPs can be quite difficult to tell apart. This, combined with the lengthy SEVP approval process for new programs, in turn leads to commodification in the industry: potential students have difficulty telling one program apart from another, and use price, location, and established brand reputation to make their choice rather than any specific features of a program.

Overall, the benefit to the field has been positive. Students can apply to U.S. IEPs with the knowledge that their chosen program has been verified by an accreditor to meet high standards. The price to the industry as a whole is high though, and we should look for ways to mitigate the downsides – in particular to find ways to foster innovation and be open to new models – as we continue to face challenging market conditions in the years to come.

For Schools

The Accreditation-Ready Program

There are few obligations for faculty and staff that cause knots in the stomach and departmental wrangling than preparing the accreditation self-study. It is often viewed as a burden, a distraction from everyone’s ‘real’ work, and a process of bureaucratic box-checking or of trying to fit the round peg of the program into the square hole of accreditation requirements.

In Five Dimensions of Quality, Linda Suskie draws on years of experience with accreditation, institutional and program assessment, and accountability to re-frame the role of accreditors as “low-cost consultants who can offer excellent collegial advice” (p. 245) to schools and programs seeking to demonstrate their value to stakeholders in an increasingly competitive market.  Accreditation should be viewed not as an imposition of alien practices on an established program, but as a way for a school or program to gain  external affirmation of already-existing quality. The challenge is not to make the program ‘fit’ accreditation standards, but actually to be a quality program and demonstrate that quality.

Accreditation success, then, flows naturally from the pursuit of quality, and is not an end in itself. But what is quality? Suskie breaks it down into five dimensions or ‘cultures’:

A Culture of Relevance
Deploying resources effectively to put students first, and understand and meet stakeholders’ needs.

A Culture of Community
Fostering trust among faculty, students, and staff, communicating openly and honestly, and encouraging collaboration.

A Culture of Focus and Aspiration
Being clear about school or program  purpose, values, and goals.

A Culture of Evidence
Collecting evidence to gauge student learning and program or school effectiveness.

A Culture of Betterment
Using evidence to make improvements and deploy resources effectively.

Fostering these cultures is the work of leadership, since they require widespread buy-in from all stakeholders. The challenge in many institutions is institutional inertia, as Suskie points out in her chapter, “Why is this so hard?” Faculty, staff, and governing boards may feel satisfied that the school’s reputation is sufficient for future success; resources – especially money and people’s time – may not be forthcoming; faculty and staff may live in comfortable isolation from the  real-world needs of students; there may be an ingrained reluctance to communicate successes; there is frequently resistance to change; and siloed departments in programs and institutions make across-the-board cultural change difficult to pull off.

The question administrators and faculty should ask themselves is, “Do we put our efforts into pursuing quality, or into maintaining our accreditation?” Suskie’s book presents a convincing case that working on the former will make the latter much easier and will result in quality rather than box-checking. For its straightforward prose (including jargon alerts scattered throughout), its sound advice, and its call for schools to demonstrate quality in a highly competitive environment, Five Dimensions of Quality should be a go-to resource on the reference bookshelf of decision-makers and leaders in higher education programs.

Suskie, L., Five Dimensions of Quality, Jossey-Bass 2015

More of my education-related book reviews are at Amazon.

For Schools

Challenge and change in intensive English programs

From left: Bill Hellriegel, Carol Swett, Michelle Bell, Amy Fenning, Alan Broomhead

Challenges over the past few years have deeply impacted intensive English programs, forcing irreversible changes in their organizational cultures that result in anxiety and tension, but also innovation and adaptation. That was the theme of a panel session, “Organizational Culture in University and Proprietary IEPs: Challenges and Changes,” presented by Michelle Bell (University of Southern California), Amy Fenning (University of Tennessee at Martin), Bill Hellriegel (Southern Illinois University), Carol Swett (ELS Language Centers at Benedictine University, Illinois) and myself at the TESOL International Convention on March 28. Recognizing the cultural types of IEPs and how they are affected by changes is the first step in adapting and surviving in an increasingly competitive field.

IEP cultures can roughly be divided into collegial and managerial types, following Bergquist and Pawlak’s (2007) typology of academic cultures. A collegial culture, more likely to be found in a university-governed IEP, is faculty-focused, with faculty scholarship and teaching, academic autonomy and freedom, and faculty ownership of the curriculum as the organizing principle. A managerial culture is administration-driven, motivated by considerations of fiscal responsibility and effective supervision, and organized by systems, processes, and standards.

The massive shift to accreditation in IEPs has moved collegially-oriented programs in a managerial direction. Faculty are required to plan, teach, and assess in compliance with program-wide student learning outcomes; policies and procedures have to be written and followed; and program success is measured by data, which has to be systematically collected, analyzed, and evaluated. Proprietary IEPs are seeing a a shift in the other direction: faculty standards require minimum levels of certification, experience, and ongoing professional development, and these are affecting faculty hiring and employment practices in many proprietary programs.

The severe enrollment challenge of the past two years has also affected both types of program. University IEPs are becoming more revenue-driven and entrepreneurial, actively seeking new recruitment partnerships and designing new programs – such as short-term high school programs – to respond to changing demand. Faculty may have little say in these initiatives. Meanwhile, proprietary IEPs are increasingly developing conditional-admit and TOEFL-waiver agreements with partner universities, requiring them to make programs more academically-focused and hire masters-level teachers who are qualified to teach English for academic purposes.

These are ground-shifting developments, and program leaders who recognize the need to address profound cultural change in their organizations – and not just surface-level adjustments – will be in the strongest position to navigate these challenging times.

Reference
Bergquist, W.H. & Pawlak, K., Engaging the Six Cultures of the Academy, Jossey-Bass 2007

For Schools

Aligning assessment and IEP culture

Since the passage of the Accreditation Act of 2010, intensive English programs (IEPs) have been under pressure to justify their quality claims by recording and reporting on student achievement. This has meant devising program-wide systems for assessing and evaluating students, and has been a challenge for many IEPs.

The type of system a program develops is influenced by its culture. A more managerial (top-down, administratively driven) culture typical of proprietary English schools tends to favor standardization of assessment that includes program-wide level-end tests. Many university IEPs have more of a collegial (faculty-driven with a degree of shared governance) culture in which individual faculty decision-making and autonomy are valued. In the latter type, it can grate against the culture when there is an attempt to introduce or impose standard testing. It may be more agreeable to retain faculty autonomy in assessment but introduce checks to ensure that assessments are aligned with course objectives and outcomes.

Both approaches (and blends of the two) are used by CEA-accredited programs and are able to meet the CEA standards. There is no need to create standard assessments across a program if they do not fit the culture. On the other hand, the imperative to assess students in a more consistent way can be a catalyst for culture change. This will need leadership, persuasion, and buy-in from faculty.

I’ve designed and overseen assessment and evaluation systems in proprietary and university programs, and can support programs in determining and developing the right approach. Get in touch if I can help!

Have a great weekend!

(Learn more about academic cultures in Engaging the Six Cultures of the Academy by William Bergquist and Kenneth Pawlak. I highly recommend it.)

For Schools

Where most IEPs trip up in CEA accreditation

The CEA Planning, Development, and Review standards have proven tricky for many intensive English programs to get right at the first attempt. The seriousness of failing to measure up has been mitigated in recent years by CEA’s decision to collapse what were four planning and review standards into two – meaning that a program will have fewer standards of concern if it is having difficulty in this area. Nonetheless, the challenge for many programs is that they have never had a plan for regular review of their academic and administrative areas in place. Even knowing what such a plan would look like can be an obstacle to developing one effectively.

I’ve created development and review plans for a rolling-intake proprietary IEP and a semester-based university IEP. They were very different plans, each one tailored to the needs of its program, but both worked well and met CEA standards. If this is an area your IEP is having difficulty with, why not contact me to find out how I can help?

Have a great week!