Managing for Student Academic Success: the Dialectic Relation of Structure and Agency

Student performance tracking and monitoring for curriculum

transformation

Valile Valindawo M. Dwayivdwayi@wsu.ac.za

Centre for Learning and Teaching Development

HERDSA: Sydney, Australia28 June 2017

Presentation Synopsis

• What curriculum is should serve as the basis for its possibletransformation;

• Curriculum as both the knowledge structure and also as how thestructure is actualised;

• HELM role in facilitating knowledge actualisation by means of studentperformance tracking and monitoring;

• Case study, 2015/15-2016/17• Insights from the study:

• student performance tracking and monitoring as the interplay of structureand agency; as “knowledge what” and “knowledge that

• reflexivity as sustainable HELM practices;

Challenges of student retention in RSA (NIEETS)

• In one case of HE, and per RSA policy, student success and graduation targets of 74 % & 16% respectively have been exceeded during the last three years, but…..

• In one case of the Engineering program in particular, • 7% of students did not qualify for semester examinations by June (1st year semester)

of 2015/16• 19% failed all their courses in June examinations,• 25% failed examinations and were also excluded from the engineering programs

• Discomforting case of enduring disadvantage, exclusion and marginalisation

• #FMF Crisis: “We don’t want to be the students you seem to want us to be!””

Student performance profiles, 2015/16

• Increase in formal access to HE, but limited opportunities forepistemological access (Morrow, 2002);

• Further complicated by constrained access to powerful knowledge;Muller, 2014);

• Question,• To what extent, curriculum programs can be transformed for the actual

students coming into HE? • how do we know about such a student? How the curriculum thereof might be

both relevant and responsive?

The Nexus of Equity of Access and the Quality of Success

“Student success does not arise by chance. Nor does substantial improvement in institutional rates of

student retention and graduation. It requires intentional, structured, and proactive action that is

systematic in nature and coordinated in application” Tinto, 2012.

Curriculum transformation: It is about, and for student (epistemological access), but it starts with staff (incl

HELM) as the critical elements of HE as the ecosystem

The contextualised notions about student learning

• Mis/framing student learning, Bozalek & Bhoughey (2012)• Notion of preparedness/under-preparedness, Dhunpath et al

(2014)• The de-contextualised notion of a learner, Boughey (2014)

• The technical/liberal view vs the critical/structured view;

• Thus, questioning HELM approaches in dealing with the underlying structures in what is currently managed and led in teaching and learning

Epistemological Access and Knowledge/Curriculum

• Epistemological access, Morrow (2002)• Affording access to what graduates should learn, know and be able to do• Know what knowledge, as the ‘bedrock’ knowledge to know that

knowledge (Mulller, 2014); • know that, as propositional knowledge; and know how, as procedural knowledge• Know that knowledge, about social justice (access to that which students had been

denied by systems of oppression)• Know how, the pedagogy of teaching and learning, and how it might be led and

managed for social justive• Research project: Who are our students; how do we know about them;

how might we have access to the knowledge about the conditions in whichtheir learning takes place? Whose responsibility is it, anyway?

Ontological Realism: Stratification, Emergence & Causation(Bhaskar, 199; Archer,

Domain of the Empirical

HELM perceptions & opinions about

student academic performance

Experiences

Domain of the Actual

HELM student performance tracking and monitoring for curriculum

transformationEvents & Processes

Domain of the Real: HELM “ultimate concerns” about social justice/socialinclusion as the emergent properties of structure, culture and agency,either dormant at this level or emergent at the two levels above

Mechanisms

Archer’s Theory of Morphogenesis

The morphogenetic sequence for structure, culture and agency(Source: Archer, 1995, pp. 193-4)

HELM Agency in Social Realist Lenses

• Expressed as reflexivity, or internal deliberations, which refers to theordinary mental capacity to consider oneself in relation to different socialcontexts. These internal deliberations, as the exercise of agency, takedifferent forms, namely,

• Autonomous reflexives are less likely to share their deliberations as they onlyformulate their own plans about the situation at hand, which then leads to action;

• Communicative reflexives refer to those who share their concerns, theirdeliberations with others in the organization before they can take action about thesituation;

• Those who operate in a fractured reflexive mode undertake internal conversationsthat are characterized by distress or anxiety, leading to an absence of purposiveaction and to making decisions in an essentialist way (Kahn, Everington, Kelm, Reid &Watkins, 2015); and

• Co/meta-reflexives focus on social ideals and formulate projects to improve the livesof others (Case, 2013)

AD Constraints as Socio-Cultural Conditioning of Individuals and Groups

AD Area“Know What

Procedures & Processes“Know that

Tracking and Monitoring of Student Performance

Unavailability of students for advice; Lack of communication and consultation; Political interference from the side of student organisations and SRC. (Head of Department)

Tracking and Monitoring of Student Performance

Incorrect HEMIS data especially on credits; Lack of a user-friendlydata management system that is aligned with other institutionaldata systems (Dean’s Office)

Tracking and Monitoring of Student Performance

There is no proper monitoring of the process; Assessment marksare not always submitted on time to allow for effective trackingand also I believe HEDA is not used as efficiently as it should be(Campus Rector/DVC Office)

HELM Standard Operating Procedures” for Student Academic Development

(5W+H Principle) What Why Who When Where HowStudent Profiling, Access and Placement Testing

High-risk courses & mitigation strategies

Tutorials, Peer Assisted Learning, Mentorship

Student Academic Advising (Dev modules; Reading and Writing Centres; Information

Literacy)

Student Tracking and Monitoring Strategy

Students for Excellence Awards

Tracer and Impact Studies

Overseeing all AD activities of the Department and taking ownership of the SOP

Framework for Academic Performance Tracking and Monitoring Ve

rtic

al, (

hier

arch

ical

) alig

nmen

t

Horizontal, (cross unit) alignment in a semester/Year ModuleOrientation Test 1 Test 2 Assignment Final Test

Term 4

HELM Board

Term 2HELM Board

Term 1HELM Board

Welcome

Term 3HELM Board

Student Profiling

MER: “Flagged students” &

Interventions

MER: “Flagged students” &

Interventions

Academic Performance

Targets & Metrics

Student Retention/

Success

Data Managem

ent Developm

ental Research

1st Stage Analysis: HELM Practices as the Reflexivity Modes

• Main narrative-student underprepared-ness, the student deficit model; • Constrained HELM practices as a reproducing system/morphostasis for disadvantage,

marginalisation and exclusion; the Dialectical Relation of Structure and Agency;• Reflexivity modes (Archer, 2005),

• Cases of autonomous reflexive deliberations, the plans are prepared only to serve the compliance culture but the action is not internalised as a form of engagement broadly. Ideal, at least, would be the communicative reflexive modes, extensive forms of engagement.

• Fractured reflexive mode, clear evidence about passivity about student learning. Anabsence of purposive action and to making decisions in an essentialist way, which couldbe understood as a distressful and anxious situation (Khan et al, 2015).

1st Stage Analysis: HEML Practices as the Reflexivity Modes

Co/meta-reflexivity,• Leadership practices that do not only carry out the implementation, monitoring

and improvement plans about the teaching and learning, but can also reflect onsuch actions in order to identify the academic development projects for studentsuccess.

• HE as the social emancipation and empowerment project.• Need for the provision for the potential to explain the transcendence between

the structure and agency by ensuring that the requisite culture is betteraccounted for.

• Creation of faculty conversations as spaces for engagement, for interrogating theimprovement plans by means of academic development data.

• Through such spaces, both faculty management and academic developmentpractioners, knowledge of and for transformation, a continous process ofengagement.

Dealing with the dilemmatic positions in transformation is about knowledge actualised• Focus for academic developers: to be more on access to the reality or knowledge of

reality (epistemic), not simply access to practices and their ‘grammar”’ (pedagogical);• Focus on the normative goods of the discipline being learnt or taught, Muller, 2014;• Professional practice as transcending both the objective and the subjective, the

individual and group, and thus as reflexive-dialectical , the embodiment/praxis (Kemmis, 2009);

• Knowledge as both processes/procedural and product: Knowledge of and fortransformation (Lange, 2014 );

• Transformational versus transformative leadership practices (Shields);• HELM transformation of LT in realist terms:

• Leadership of teaching (by explicitly including knowledge and evidence related to teaching and learning) for student learning ) Quinlan, 2014

Insights about TMS and HELM practices as the dialectical relation of Structure and Agency

• TMS provides conceptual tools to HELM for mediating the gap between thepolicy objectives and policy implementation, it takes the realistunderstanding thereof, of identification and recognition of what the lacksare for transformation to actually take place,.

• Epistemological access is therefore HELM access to powerful knowledge(about student access and success; the enablers thereof) and then howthat knowledge is actualised (b.m.o data management and institutionalresearch, for quality management information systems and effectivedecision making);

• HELM access to knowledge to be about the knowledge of and for transformation (Lange, 2014); to be about professional practice including acceptable modes of reflexivity (social realist lens).

Preliminary Conclusion

• Paper, the account of student tracking and monitoring might allow for socially inclusive educationby focussing on HELM practices. Demonstration that the current structural arrangements in theform of HELM practices and per the selected cases are constrained in achieving the social justiceobjectives and therefore student disadvantage, marginalisation and exclusion continues to beperpetuated.

• HELM practices as agency are not providing the acceptable forms of reflexivity about how studentlearning might be better tracked and monitored, hence the current and enduring culture ofstudent under performance. This then also poses a huge risk in the annually reported institutionalperformance data, albeit being aggregated at macro level.

• Integrated academic development, and its advocacy for co/meta-reflexivity, provides alternativeopportunity for a turn around situation as it has a direct bearing to student performance,especially in the event that there are clear academic monitoring and support systems. Analysis ofstudent performance data and on regular basis should be the main feature of academicmonitoring which leads to credible learner support.

References……..1/2• Archer, MS (2005). Making our way through the world: the morphogenetic approach. Cambridge, Cambridge

University press

• Bhaskar, R, (1989). The possibility of naturalism. Brighton, Harvester Wheatsheaf.

• Boughey, C, (2014). The significance of structure, culture and agency in supporting and developing student learning at South African universities. In Dhunpath, R & Vithal R (Eds): Alternative Access to Higher Education. Underprepared Students or Underprepared Institutions? Pearson.

• Dhunpath, R and V, (2014). Alternative access to university: Past, present and future. In Dhunpath, R & Vithal R (Eds): Alternative Access to Higher Education. Underprepared Students or Underprepared Institutions?Pearson.

• Tinto, V, (2012). Completing College: Rethinking Institutional Action. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.

• Kahn, P; Everington, L; Kelm, K.; Reid, I; Watkins, F, (2015). Understanding student engagement in online learning environments: the role of reflexivity. Education Tech Research Dev DOI 10.1007/s11423-016-9484.

References………2/2

• Kemmis, S. (2009). “Understanding Professional Practice: A Synoptic Framework”. Green, B (Ed), Professional Learning: Understanding and Researching Professional Practice. Sense Publishers. Rotterdam

• Lange, L. (2014). ‘Rethinking Transformation and Its Knowledge(s): The Case of South African Higher Education’. Critical Studies in Teaching & Learning. 2(1), pp 1-24.

• Quinn, L. (2012). ‘Enabling and constraining conditions for academic staff development’. In Quinn, L. (ed.). Reimagining Academic Staff Development: Spaces for Disruption. Stellenbosch: Sun Press, 27 – 50.

• Quinlan, KM. (2014). Leadership of teaching for student learning in higher education: what is needed? Higher Education Research & Development. 33:1, 32-45, 10.1080/07294360.2013.864609

• Scott, I. (2009). “Academic development in South African Higher Education.” Bitzer, E. (ed) Higher Education in South Africa. A Scholarly Look Behind the Scenes. SUN Media, Stellenbosch.

• UN (United Nations), (2016). Report of the Secretary-General, “Progress towards the Sustainable Developmental Goals”, E/2016/75

• Volbrecht, T. and Boughey, C. (2005) “Curriculum responsiveness from the margins? A reappraisal of Academic Development in South Africa.” Griesel, H. (ed) Curriculum Responsiveness: Case studies in higher education. SAUVCA, Pretoria.

• www.npconline.co.za (accessed 9 September 2014)

• WSU (Walter Sisulu University), (2014). Teaching and Learning Strategy 2014-2016, Mthatha.

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