Institutional Self-Evaluation

Institutions whose members are willing to describe their activities and actions to each other and to organizations that provide accreditation may be said to be engaged in institutional self-study. Such accounts may incidentally influence practices.

Institutional self-evaluation is more intrusive in that it entails explanation of activities and actions, thus making the members of the institution and the institution more vulnerable to those making decisions about the distribution of scarce resources. The politics of the institution are embodied in the preconditions for the evaluator and should, as far as possible, be taken into account when writing and negotiating the self-evaluation contract or agreement. Reputation, tenure, promotion, and the accountability relationships within an institution may become challenged, yet vulnerability is a condition in the quest to find more profound approaches to innovation and possible change for the better. The institution's members constantly test the sensitivity of the evaluator to these uncertainties. The evaluator is often based in the institution and has to be accessible to all members equitably. Institutional self-evaluation tests any claims of democratic procedures, trust, confidentiality, and authenticity.

Beginning in 1974, protocols for such institutional self-evaluation were devised during the process. In 1982, Adelman and Alexander independently tried out ideas from evaluation, action research, and organizational behavior in the two separate university colleges in which they were based. Before the endeavor could commence, an agreement on procedures, confidentiality, pseudonymity, and purposes was negotiated with members of both colleges, leading to an institutional agreement.

Adelman and Alexander experienced similar problems as their work proceeded, problems that related to those in the qualitative evaluation literature; for instance, those arising from attempts to voluntarily change curricula in schools. These problems included devising procedures for identifying issues without blame or praise; further exploration on disputed issues arising from discussion; extent of feedback of information; commenting on self-evaluation reports and refraining from comment on substantial points, persons, or other appraisals; and making any judgments, positive or negative.

Inevitably, institutional evaluators seek information and members' judgments about the worth of their activities and actions. In most evaluations, interim or terminal reports are required, even in the most politically fraught cases. During institutional self-evaluation, members' reports may be issued at any point. Their significance pertains to the impact on the work of the institution. Reports by the institutional evaluator may comment on the worth of particular activities and actions in the context of structural developments of the institution. Both sources of report usually have some impacts on internal politics, some anticipated but often unanticipated.

Internal resident evaluators may legitimately be requested by the institution's members to investigate particularities. On their own initiative, internal evaluators may seek potential sites for critical incidents, sites where converging streams of activity would reveal the gap between aspiration and practice. In this regard, the internal evaluator theorizes about the institution from the privileged position of being able to visit all its sites, at least by request. Members of the institutions may ask for evaluators' judgments. Although evaluators cannot answer one on one, the answers to these requests often becomes incorporated into subsequent reports. For example, I had been moved by a conversation with a faculty member to collect information from the student enrollments on courses that were taken to reach published standards and grades to teach initial literacy. A large group of staff was teaching these courses, and no one person was formally responsible for literacy. The report described the lack of guidance in combining courses leading to the standard in literacy. The problem was structural. The report was placed on the agenda of the representative committee for teacher preparation.

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