| | The Question of Accreditation and Academic Standards in TEE - By Rev Dr Adrian Chatfield A: Accreditation Why seek accreditation? There are 4 reasons for seeking accreditation for a theological and ministerial qualification: 1. to ensure academic parity through the provision of quality control One of the present realities of the Christian Church in the developing world is that some of our pastors and ministers now have congregations who are far more qualified than they are. We know that the minister's call is not validated by intellectual capacity or academic achievement. The Church has always recognised that its holy women and men stand outside the norms of civil society. So as long as we have a leadership that is holy, we shall not go far wrong. However, we do need a growing community of teachers and pastors which is capable of training the body of Christ competently and in a way that can be received and processed. We need better trained pastors and teachers. Hence the need for higher academic standards. We can, in theory, achieve these without any link with registered Universities. However, the world often thinks that everything that Christians do is second-best. As Christians, we sometimes excuse the poverty of our thinking on the basis of our supposed unworldliness. We also respond to the criticism that we are cheap in our approach to education, by saying that we cannot afford to do better. So we need to show the world that we take education seriously, and one of the ways of doing this is to demonstrate academic parity: our Certificate is equal to their Certificate, our Degree to their Degree, and so on. In order to be accredited and to achieve parity, we are required to show that we have systems of quality control in place, both to maintain standards and to avoid corruption. Accreditation processes require us to involve others in checking up on our work. This is scary, but it is no bad thing. My own experience is that non-Christians from secular institutions are perfectly capable of understanding that we operate with different [though not inferior] criteria. The secular institutions will often make allowance for that, but they challenge us to maintain our own Christian standards. Accreditation is of benefit to us, therefore, because it forces us to be accountable to the measure by which we claim to measure our work. And here we are not talking only about levels of academic work. Quality control makes us regulate levels of knowledge, to be sure. But it also makes us regulate other competencies: the skills which we want to teach, the values we want to communicate, and the human and social and spiritual change which we want to foster. 2. to achieve academic respectability My 15 years of working with Extension Education have shown me that when it comes to respectability, the Church authorities are quick to assume that TEE is thought of as a poor cousin to residential theological education. I am not here to argue the case, though I wouldn't have chosen to stay so long with TEE if I didn't believe in TEE! A simple illustration: the present Anglican Bishop of Harare has sabotaged the TEE process in Zimbabwe over the last year, at least so far as Anglicans are concerned, by refusing to ordain anyone who has been trained in the TEE way. It is regularly assumed that the only justification for TEE is a financial one. It is assumed that if we had the money to build ivory towers, we would build them. We need to convince the Church otherwise, and one way of doing so is to team up - through accreditation - with other institutions. Let it not be forgotten that in the secular world Education by Extension is the fasting growing form of education, for example in the booming world of Business Studies. It is the Church whose conservatism makes it difficult for them/us to see that the new wine may be better than the old. 3. to make it possible for credit transfer to take place Education is a means towards an end. The end in general is the ability to do something that we could not do before: to preach the gospel, to interpret the scriptures, to counsel those who are bereaved. Adult education in particular recognises that learners know what they need better than the training institution. We are here to serve learners. We are service providers. We no longer think that every learner must do the same course, or that every preacher needs to study Job as a set text. We recognise the need for variety in education to suit a range of needs, contexts and issues. In order to make this variety available to our own people, we need to accept the principle of credit transfer. We need to find ways to measure qualifications and courses that our learners have already taken, and credit them with those that are relevant to the qualification they are pursuing with us. Further, we need our qualifications to be transferable into other areas of expertise. It is silly to have walls between academic qualifications in theology, counselling, teaching, the healing professions. Typically, credit transfer requires a formal registration of credits in qualifications, and this is where national institutions, like universities and departments of education, come into play. By tapping into the accreditation process, we are able to register our qualifications with a given credit rating. In the broader picture, it is also a way of linking into the international educational scene, though that is still fraught with difficulties 4. sharing facilities and resources At its best, accreditation allows the Church to tap into the resources of the accrediting institution. This is most likely to happen where there is a shared qualification, or shared learner body. Accreditation also can mean that training staff from the other side are more willing to share their expertise, give training time, or commit themselves to the TEE programme, knowing that it will look good on their CV. This isn't a guaranteed way of enlarging one's library, but it can be a lifesaver for a learner struggling with a drought of books. Objections to accreditation So far, so good. But it is only fair to list a couple of objections to accreditation before we continue. 1. validating institutions are not really interested in usWe need to ask the question why Universities are willing to validate our programmes. The answer is sometimes money, or survival, or status. Validation is an expensive process, and one of the arguments against it is certainly the cost. Do we need to achieve academic respectability, or maintain high academic standards, or provide credit transfer for someone who is likely to spend his or her whole ministry in a rural or underdeveloped context? In the cutthroat world of modern tertiary education, one of the ways in which Faculties and Universities maintain their high ranking is by showing that they are widely used academic service providers. The more learners they are indirectly responsible for, the more points they earn. A certain University has courted TEECSA partly because we have a pool of 2600 learners, more than they can dream of. Conversely, when the University's needs change, it is possible for them to cut the relationship with the weaker institution without any apology, leaving it high and dry. Nottingham University did this to St John's College in Nottingham when I was there, leading to a decision that we would never again allow one single University to validate us. Now, the College spread its validation across three institutions. 2. political control There is a particular case in South Africa which is worth mentioning, which is the case of political control. This probably doesn't apply to any other African Department of Education at the moment, but it may serve as a warning. Because of the need to distance itself from apartheid and the Bantu Education process, the South African government has become very controlling in its approach to education, and is closing down institutions which will not come under its purview. This includes private educational institutions, including theological colleges and programmes. The stated aim is to make sure that there is no education going on in South Africa which runs contrary to the goal of transformation, or exploits the gullibility of the citizens. So far, so good. But when the goal of national unity begins to demand that we become theologically inclusive, alarm bells begin to ring. In our case, we have two choices. Register, or be illegal. We certainly have a fight on our hands, but we do not know what direction it will take. This is simply a warning to us all that governments come and go, and make very uneasy bedfellows. We need to be politically astute, the further we climb into bed with state sponsored institutions and programmes. 3. overload By overload, I mean that the demands of the validating institution may diminish the effectiveness of the TEE programme. a. Some Universities place academic demands on the TEE programme greater than those they place on their own learners. This may be because they do not quite trust the programme's standards. But the academic overload that follows may mean that an ordinand spends all her time in the study, instead of applying her studies to the practical demands of her vocation and ministry. b. There is another kind of academic overload, which I shall call inflation. There was a time when very few Christian ministers and pastors had formal qualifications. My father was one such. The opposite is now true in some places, where the norm is that a minister have a university degree. Nothing wrong with that. But if I have learnt anything from the educational debate in South Africa, it is that we need to augment the skills that our ordinands have, and strengthen the values, not only raise the level of academic competence. Need we be reminded that knowledge in the head does not automatically convert into wisdom in the soul?
Of course, it is easy for me - with all my privileged education - to sound as though I am saying that others do not need it. I do not mean this at all. But my view on accreditation and validation of programmes of training for ministry is that they are a mixed blessing, and probably a necessary evil. On the positive side, accreditation provides
• good academic checks and controls;
• the opportunity for our people - many of whom are historically disadvantaged - to benefit more fully from the education system;
• opportunities for greater collaboration locally and globally;
• in the case of TEE programmes, a chance to prove themselves to a sceptical world and church.
We simply need to be aware of
• the dangers of worldly compromise;
• political control and exploitation;
• the use of the training programme simply as a ladder to greater opportunity
• what I like to call the 'pieces of paper1 syndrome;
• falling into the Western trap of assuming that academic competence and the acquisition of knowledge are signs of spiritual maturity or wisdom.
B: Academic Standards
In this part of the paper, I aim to be practical and detailed. The assumption here is that the maintenance of academic standards is a crucial part of the educational system in which we operate. *•
1. The setting of standards - OUTCOMES
In the good old days, we designed programmes with outcomes that fitted the ministerial context of the learners to perfection. At least, that was the idea, and it often worked. All we wanted was to equip catechists, evangelists, clergy and the like for very clearly defined ministries in very specific and limited contexts.
Even if that worked then, times have changed. Our institutions are now typically training people from widely disparate regions and socio-economic contexts, with a wide range of educational backgrounds, often from a range of denominational settings.
The consequence of this is that it is not enough for us to decide standards in a Diocesan Board of Education, without reference to anyone else. We are now in the business of setting standards that have some claim to wider validity. How can we do this? The short answer is, with difficulty! Often, those of us with long experience rely on an intuitive sense of level, and know a range of programmes well enough to be able to compare them with some accuracy.
The only really scientific way to set standards, however, is to define clear outcomes for the courses and programmes we design and teach. We say that "if you have completed this course successfully, you will be able to..." If we make this our starting point, then it makes little difference whether the course is being taught in Johannesburg or Mukono or Cape Coast, or London for that matter. By starting with desired outcomes rather than with course material, we design an educational process rather than listing a set of facts that have to be acquired. In doing so, we make the course transferable, and we make space for contextual variation.
Let me illustrate by way of an example. The Outcomes for our Certificate Introduction to the Old Testament look like this:
If you complete this course successfully, you should be able to
• explain how the Bible came to be written;
• outline the contents of any Old Testament book;
• place the major events in Israel's history, from Abraham to the return from Exile, on a timeline;
• inform others about the importance and value of the Old Testament to Christians today;
• relate the lives and experiences of Old Testament characters, especially the prophets, to relevant issues people face today;
• value the Old Testament's link with the New Testament.
At first sight, this seems like an impossible set of outcomes, because the course lasts for a mere 200 hours [20 credits]. How can a learner learn to outline the contents of any Old Testament book in that time? Surely it would take several years?
Indeed it would. But what the outcome is defining is a skill. This skill, which we aim to transfer to the learner during the course, requires him or her to
• read any Old Testament book intelligently and critically
• identify key elemenjts
• summarise competently
When we get into the detail of how the course is actually taught in TEE, we actually test this competence in relation to one of the 8th century prophets. But when a learner has done this once or twice, in relation to one or two books, we can assume that they could apply the skill to many - if not all - of the Old Testament books.
In South Africa, the Old Testament prophets have been particularly important because of the apartheid struggle. In other contexts, you might choose to assess the skill with other Old Testament books. But if we shared the same course outline and course outcomes between TEE Uganda and TEE Southern Africa, a learner could do this course with you or with us, and be presumed to be working to the same standards. At the end of the course, wherever in the world they had studied, they would have the same skills, the same values [e.g. the Old Testament is - among other things - the testimony to God's preparation for the coming of Jesus and therefore as sacred to us as the New Testament], the same ability to minister, and similar knowledge
2. The setting of standards - ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
The second task when we are setting standards spring from the question: How will we know if the learner has successfully completed the various outcomes? The answer is: We test their competence, through a range of assessments. Some assessments need not have a mark attached to them. One of the joys of this way of approaching the training process is that we can work with a range of assessments. We can use
• traditional quantitative assessment with percentages or grades, often with quite mechanical tasks ['Draw a timeline'];
• qualitative assessment [You did this well/badly/brilliantly or you need to do some further work on this];
• peer assessment;
• group assessment, in which the group completes a task and receives a common mark [This is excellent for challenging the Western idea of marks as a competition];
• simple tasks which just need to be completed as a measure of involvement in the educational process;
• ...and so on.
The main point, however, is that we need to have continuous assessment that measures progress through the process, and summative assessment that measures the integration of learning throughout the process.
Each outcome must have at least one clear assessment criterion linked to it, though an outcome may be assessed by more than one assessment criterion. In the case of the Old Testament course quoted above, there are two outcomes that could conceivably be measured by one piece of assessment. They are:
• inform others about the importance and value of the Old Testament to Christians today;
• value the Old Testament's link with the New Testament.
My inclination would be to assess the learners' understanding of the Messianic prophecies, and how they inform our understanding of who Jesus is for us.
3. The setting of standards - EMBEDDED KNOWLEDGE and RANGE
Approaching education from the end rather than from the beginning is a little scary, and one of the questions that people ask is: "How can we guarantee that our learners gain enough knowledge of the Bible and the Christian faith?" It is a legitimate question, which deserves a reasoned answer.
As far as is possible, our training should focus on skills. So for example, we want our learners to gain the skill of interpreting the Scriptures in their own context. As we have already noted, a learner who knows how to interpret 1 Corinthians in Ugandan context can be assumed to have the skill to interpret 2 Corinthians in the same context.
However, from time to time, we may feel that we want to specify a book of the Bible, or a period of history, or a particular doctrine, because it is too risky to leave it to chance. Then, there are two ways of presenting a course outline which include the specifics :
1. Embedded Knowledge : We may incorporate such specifics into the course
description as a separate item, and call it embedded knowledge. For example, we could say of a particular course that "the learner will work through at least three of the Minor Prophets, one of which shall be the Prophet Amos.
2. Range : Alternatively, we are at liberty to provide a range of options. If we don't mind which Minor Prophets are studied, we leave it up to the tutor, or class, or learner. We simply write a limiting factor into the course description which says : RANGE : Any 3 of the Minor Prophets.
If all this sounds terribly remote, then simply approach your teaching or writing of courses from the end of the question which asks : What do I want to achieve? Then design a course aimed at achieving it. Design assessment which can test whether it has been achieved. It may be that in the end, you come out with more sermons to be preached and less essays to be written. This might not be a bad thing, though it has implications for the assessment processes.
Which leads us straight into the issue of monitoring the work that is done, the process that we often call marking.
4. Standards through Marking
EXTERNAL MARKERS: We depend on the commitment and efficiency and competence of our markers to ensure academic standards once the courses are written. In many cases, we have large numbers of learners and multiple markers. So we are not sure whether the markers are consistent. The best way of checking consistency is to have an external examiner. In a formal setting, an external examiner may be required to look at all of the scripts from every marker. More commonly, we ask each marker to send a small sample of scripts to an external examiner, who does a comparison. If the external feels that one marker is severer or kinder than the others, we reserve the right to move all of the marks of that marker up or down by 5% or 10%. Then we communicate the discrepancy to the marker, so that in future years, s/he adjusts the marking.
MARKING MEMORANDA: But before we get to this stage, and to avoid getting there, we ask our markers to produce marking memoranda - a set of notes which indicate to them what is expected in a good answer. Where there is more than one marker, this is essential to ensure standardisation? Even where there is only one marker, we are trying to insist on the writing of a memorandum. That way, the marker has to show that s/he knows what the question means, what it needs to include, and so on. And if a question is ambiguous or meaningless or unanswerable within the word limits, the marker will discover that and correct that problem in a future year.
If a question is properly phrased, a memorandum is less important, so we do ask our markers to spend a lot of time on setting coherent assessments.
MARKING RULES: The training of markers is a costly task. If we don't communicate our rules to them, then every marker does 'what seems good in his own eyes.' Usually, that means marking as you were marked at school! How do we make sure that two markers don't mark at different levels, with different degrees of severity, with different deductions for different faults, and so on?
We have a set of marking rules.
For instance, we specify [at Diploma level only] how much is deducted for the absence of a bibliography. And now, in every institution in Southern Africa offering the Joint Board Diploma in Theology, the deductible percentage is the same: 5%.
We also ask our marker to mark out of 100%, not out of 70%. Those of you who have had anything to do with the British University system probably know that 72% is a first class degree and 80% a starred first. But that means that between 80% and 100% there is a redundant 20%, which is really nonsense. So we don't want one marker giving 70% for an outstanding piece of work and another giving 90%. It would be unfair and non-standard.
Another case is that of language: spelling and grammar. Most of our learners are third or fourth language English speakers. Do we penalise them for bad spelling or bad grammar? It depends on two things. The first is whether the marker can understand what is written. If the English is almost unintelligible, the learner is penalised automatically, because he has not communicated what he intended to. The second is whether one of the outcomes of the course is 'the ability to communicate in a presentable way.' If, for example, the learner is writing a newspaper article, it matters much more if the spelling is messy and the grammar confused. The point here, however, is that the markers must be agreed - and the learner informed - about what is expected. [In parenthesis, I am always clear that I am training people to communicate the gospel and promote the Kingdom of God, not literary giants.]
One could write a long list of such rules, but again there is an underlying principle: The marker must be required to define what is expected in an answer on the basis of the question that has been asked, and with reference to the course outcomes and course material.
5. Cheating
We know that Christian students cheat, though we would like to pretend that it doesn't happen. The maintenance of academic standards depends on trust in the institution awarding the credits. Once that trust is undermined, it is very difficult to rebuild. So we need to be seen to have integrity, fairness and rigour in our approach. A clear set of procedural rules is needed in this modern world of litigation, lest you be prosecuted for expelling a student who has cheated.
Threats need to be followed up by action, otherwise you will be like the parent who runs aimlessly after a child who can run faster, while you shout: "Just wait till I catch you."
For Distance Education, this raises the question of 'the learner's own work.' How do we know that the piece of work that comes through the post has not been written by the learner's teenage son, or wife, or pastor? For us, the only solution is to have a small number of closed conditions exams in the course of the whole programme, preferably early on in the course. Those students who flourish in the written assignments but get 10% in the exam both receive justice and a warning!
An alternative to the exam system [and exams are bad tests by and large] is a tutorial system in which a tutor is able to discuss the written piece of work with the learner.
We also need to become increasingly aware of internet plagiarism, which is a huge difficulty for all academic institutions. For many of us, this is not yet the problem that it is in countries
with high rates of internet access. It is also less of a temptation where students write by hand. But it will come to your desk sooner or later, and the question is how you will recognise it when it does.
One of the ways in which cheating can be addressed is through appropriate assessment, which requires a student to contextualise his or her learning in the particular situation. Let me give you an simple example:
If a weak student is faced with the question: "Who are the Pharisees?" it will be easy for him or her to copy the answer from last year's student, or from a Bible dictionary. But faced with "Explain who the Pharisees are, and compare their approach to religion with your church today." it will be more difficult for them to copy and cheat.
IN CONCLUSION
Behind everything that I have said is a set of beliefs about the purpose of education which I hold very dear, as a Christian minister and as an educationalist. Perhaps I should have started with them. I end with them in the hope that we will see our political task within the church as being one of persuasion. Both the authorities and those who are referred to us for training need to hold to the same values. If they do not, the training process becomes little more than a series of hoops to be jumped through, with a paper reward [or the reward of ordination] at the end.
They are:
1. Education is for liberation, not for control. We train people to think for themselves, to stand on their own two feet, to make decisions based on wisdom rather than on tradition, hierarchy or fear. In particular, we train people to challenge us, because we are not infallible.
2. Education is for service, not for authority. We train people to be the kind of leaders that Jesus was.
3. Education does not make me better than someone else. It gives me the tools to be more useful - to my family, to civil society, or to the Kingdom of God.
4. Education is not the primary test of Christian vocation. God's call is.
5. Education is not an intellectual game. It is being equipped for action. I have spent so long in education-Jbat I can usually defeat myself in an intellectual argument, which is frustrating. I can end up so confused that I don't know which side I am on! This is not the reason for which I have been schooled. I have been schooled to 'change the world.'
6. Education is for all. If I make my education an excuse for withholding it from anyone else, whether a member of my congregation, or a colleague in the hierarchy of the church, because they 'don't need it', then I truly become worse than the scribes and Pharisees whom I love to condemn.
7. Education is, therefore, a gift from God, and must be treated with the respect, the care and the appreciation that any gift from God deserves.
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