Assessing Women’s Studies (part 2)

Finally, the document includes a section on questions for the future, which are grouped into six categories: curriculum, pedagogy, student learning, retention, remedial work and Women’s Studies, and commuting students (10-12). While researchers have studied many of these questions, such as “What is the relationship between peer pressure and the numbers of women who go into the fields of science and engineering” (11), other important concerns remain to be addressed, such as “what makes a student take her or his first women’s studies class” (10).

Students at the Center: Feminist Assessment, the third text to come out of the FIPSE study, also maintains its relevance. This book grew out of the efforts of the external consultants to the colleges in the study; as they began work, they realized that they needed to define feminist assessment, its methods and goals. The resulting book provides that definition as well as sample assessment instruments, summaries of the approaches to assessment taken by each of the colleges in the FIPSE study, a list of consultants (now somewhat dated), and a bibliography. For Women’s Studies practitioners wary of assessment, Pat Hutchings indicates that “feminist assessment is shaped by a coherent system of values and by feminist theory” (22), enacting central tenets of the discipline by being “student-centered because of a theoretical, practical, and personal commitment to women—and ultimately all students—to how they learn and thus to the things students themselves can tell us about how they learn” (23). For this reason, feminist assessment uses multiple research methods, drawing on qualitative as well as quantitative data. This mode of assessment incorporates the kind of self-reflection that was characteristic of feminist consciousness groups and the women’s liberation movement and has become a distinguishing feature of Women’s Studies classes. It focuses, too, on skills, such as the application of knowledge, and not merely on content, such as names and dates. When this book was published, its participatory and formative approach may have troubled those accustomed to the gate-keeping functions of assessment; however, recent efforts take many of these tenets for granted.

A later study, Feminist Evaluation: Explorations and Experiences, edited by Denise Siegart and Sharon Brisolara, would be more useful as a text in a course on feminist research methods than as a guide to conducting assessments of the discipline of Women’s Studies since it focuses on evaluations of non-academic programs.

Nevertheless, the text offers useful reminders of essential strategies in feminist assessment, such as the use of multiple methods and the importance of situating evaluations within a context (see references to Beardsley and Miller in this text under "program reviews").

The books and reports discussed above are complemented by the Women’s Studies assessment plans and reports now available on line through university web sites. Some of the plans focus exclusively on student learning (both graduate and undergraduate), while others are designed for a more comprehensive program review. Moreover, some focus on assessing processes rather than outcomes (“students will present their research in class” is evidence of a process, but it does not tell us whether students have actually improved in the area of oral communication). Because these multiple varieties of assessment are linked, this report provides some information on all of these activities, though its primary focus is on undergraduate student learning and assessment of the field.