More Questions, More Courage: Where Do We Go From Here?

With the possible exception of increasing students’ involvement in assessment, the questions and areas for assessment described above are ones that can easily be culled from recent educational technologies, trends, and movements.

See Table 5. Summary of New Areas for Assessment

The questions posed above are not the only or necessarily the best questions that can and should be asked. Any good researcher knows that not all the questions are apparent at once, and even more importantly, how you ask the question is as important as what you ask. In other words, for a new assessment movement in Women’s Studies to take hold, the ideas in this document need to be discussed, challenged, and redirected in a series of open forums. Participants in these forums should include not only Women’s Studies practitioners and representatives of the NWSA, but also students, academic administrators, employers of Women’s Studies graduates, and representatives of higher education associations, accrediting organizations, and foundations that have sponsored research in Women’s Studies. The NWSA PA&D listserv and NWSA conference provide good venues for internal discussions, and an ad hoc committee needs to be formed to constitute a project advisory board. The advisory board could then convene external stakeholders in a 2008 one-day working conference similar to the one sponsored by the Spencer Foundation in 1999. The Spencer conference focused on “Women’s Studies and the Study of Women: What Should We Know About Them and Their Influence,” and the agenda is available at www.spencer.org/publications/conferences/WomenStudies/agenda.htm

The proposed working conference would have a different focus, less on the influence of Women’s Studies, and more the questions that need to be asked now about the field’s contributions to student learning, and how those contributions are best assessed.

Together, this document and the report from the working conference can form the basis for grant proposals to public or private funders for new studies. With the advent of better electronic communication, it is possible that NWSA member institutions might participate in a broad-based survey on some aspects of learning. In addition, more focused local studies, similar to those conducted at the seven institutions participating in the Courage to Question study, are necessary to understand the subtler and more complex aspects of learning in Women’s Studies. Therefore, an in-depth study involving a limited number of institutions is recommended as well, with a particular emphasis on participation by women of color, which remains limited.

In looking ahead, it is clear that the new questions to be asked will also require new forms of courage, for the current climate of accountability focuses more on asking “how many” questions than on asking the “what” and “how” queries listed above. As Judith S. Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, comments in the spring 2007 issue of Liberal Education, “The indicators of quality that are mentioned most frequently [by the Department of Education] include graduation rates, job placement, course completion, pass rates on licensure and certification examinations, and successful transfer or entry to graduate school. Quality is defined as tangible benefits gained from a collegiate experience.” In other words, the Spellings Commission is suggesting a return to the notion that what cannot be measured does not count (literally).

We in Women’s Studies know that a student can excel in terms of all of the proposed measures and still fail to succeed in public and private life, at work and in the family. Graduation rates, GPAs and job placement numbers do not necessarily indicate whether individuals possess the innovative thinking and communication skills requisite for the global workplace; whether individuals demonstrate empathy and a willingness to help those with fewer advantages; and ultimately, whether graduates possess the greatest benefit of a higher education—the ability to apply it throughout a lifetime. For these reasons, it is imperative that we continue both local and discipline-wide assessment efforts and that we use what learn from these efforts as we in Women’s Studies continue to lead in higher education innovation.

Table 5: Summary of New Areas for Assessment