Feminist Resistance to Assessment: Why haven’t we moved forward since The Courage to Question?

The lack of more current general assessments of the field may in part be due to continuing feminist distrust of assessment, or at least of certain models of assessment. Caryn McTighe Musil documented this “wariness” (14) in Students at the Center, but despite the FIPSE study, many directors of Women’s Studies programs acknowledge discomfort and distaste for the task. These feelings are rooted in several persistent concerns. Many perceive assessment as a process imposed by higher administration and antithetical to feminist beliefs in nonhierarchical structures. Others, who have had prior experiences with assessment, consider it another onerous service task when they are already overwhelmed, and the comments to this effect by participants in The Courage to Question study confirm their fears. More ominously, some Women’s Studies directors report that past assessments and program reviews have been used to deny their programs resources (or even dismantle their programs), especially when higher level administrators do not understand or accept that some of the best features of Women’s Studies programs, such as individualized learning, may be costly.

The nature of certain forms of assessment, together with the mystification wrought by some of assessment terminology and practitioners, may further alienate feminist scholars. For instance, at a workshop at Central Missouri State University (now the University of Central Missouri), I was instructed that anything that could not be measured was not worth assessing. This dictum violated my convictions that what was most valuable about learning in Women’s Studies, such as students’ increased perceptions of agency and civic engagement, were difficult if not impossible to measure, particularly in the short term. At another institution, an assessment specialist arrived in my office with a stack of three-ring notebooks two feet high to instruct me in the fine art of assessment, although she ultimately admitted that some of my simple strategies, such as counting the number of students in our program as a sign of increased interest, or counting the number of cross-listed courses as evidence of the multi-disciplinary nature of the program, would indeed suffice.

At the same time, even the simple but effective strategies described above are difficult for some small Women’s Studies programs. The database systems in many universities are designed only to track degree programs, so that it may be difficult to obtain lists of Women’s Studies minors or graduate certificate students, let alone to contact them. University development offices often grant the departments of graduates’ first majors the right to approach them for information and funds; this stymies Women’s Studies programs because their graduates are likely to have completed minors or second majors in the field (particularly in programs with majors that are less than five years old, the preponderance of baccalaureate students are enrolled as second majors).

Program heads cannot conduct exit interviews, contact alumnae, or collect other assessment data if they do not receive regular reports from their institutions. The lack of data ultimately makes it difficult to support requests for resources and thus inhibits the growth of the discipline. This, in turn, limits the extent to which the institution as a whole can document its commitment to diversity. NWSA therefore recommends that all institutions make every effort to provide Women’s Studies programs with the same data sets that are available to large departments.

Portfolio assessment, which was incorporated in several of the plans in The Courage to Question study, has proven particularly tricky in Women’s Studies, due to the nature of the student body—feminist programs in public institutions tend to attract nontraditional students, who may transfer, drop out of school and re-enter, or lack access to computer technology. Consequently, while portfolios may be created in individual classes, they do not work well for tracking progress over several years or semesters. Women’s Studies faculty members who have appointments in two units or large numbers of students also find portfolio reviews inordinately time-consuming.

Electronic portfolio assessment, which reduces some of the paperwork burden of this method, has been used even less frequently than paper portfolios in Women’s Studies.
Kristine Blair, Chair of English at Bowling Green State University, as well as an expert in assessment and an affiliate in Women’s Studies, is aware of many of these difficulties. At the same time, she believes that the emphasis on putting theory into practice and the encouragement of self-reflection in Women’s Studies programs lend themselves particularly to portfolio assessment, which offers students opportunities to document and comment on what they learn.

Electronic portfolios using multi-media can be especially useful in preparing for the job market (for instance, a student might include a video clip of herself giving a speech or a copy of a Powerpoint presentation). Yet in some ways, Blair wonders whether the ultimate benefit of electronic portfolios in Women’s Studies might be in improving digital literacy among students who might otherwise be intimidated by the technology. This notion raises questions of its own: if students are going to gain digital literacy in Women’s Studies, how will acquisition of the requisite skills be incorporated into the curriculum? Are Women’s Studies faculty prepared to teach digital video techniques and the like, or should students take special courses or workshops in media production? Is this an area where the arts, social science, and humanities professors who have typically staffed Women’s Studies programs can partner with their peers in the sciences?

Despite the ambivalence and questions about the forms Women’s Studies assessment should take now and in the future, the program heads and assessment specialists to whom I spoke seemed to achieve consensus on one point: assessment should be integral to learning in Women’s Studies. Ideally, it should not create new tasks for students or faculty, but rather consist of working with existing assignments and structures, while the information it generates should be used immediately in improving courses and programs. For example, a community college instructor might use a post-test on key concepts in Women’s Studies as a springboard for an end-of-semester review session. If student exit interviews consistently reflect negative attitudes toward women’s participation in science and technology, the program might add courses on the history of women in science or units on gender and technology.

As matters stand now, there is a contradiction between the field’s assertion that it is-- and has long been--at the forefront of educational change and the reality that program goals, student outcomes, and assessment methods have changed little in the past dozen years. Significant research questions posed at the end of the Executive Summary to The Courage to Question remain unanswered. This is not to say that the field of Women’s Studies has remained static—far from it. But we have not recorded and documented the changes that would demonstrate how and why we remain leaders in education. National organizations such as NASULGC are engaged in a movement to be proactive before federal calls for accountability in higher education impose arbitrary external standards. Women’s Studies must engage in renewed assessment efforts in order to maintain its position. At stake is the survival of the interdiscipline.