Student feedback apparatuses in higher education: an agential realist analysis

Abstract

This paper shows how Karen Barad's agential realism provides a powerful analytical framework for assessing higher education accountability. It takes the example of the UK 'National Student Survey' (NSS), a questionnaire, which purports to ascertain student course satisfaction in universities. The paper demonstrates how agential realism offers the opportunity to make visible (and theorise) three suggested effects of the NSS: (i) affective dimensions of lecturer experience; (ii) boundary creations between lecturers and students; and (iii) the marginalisation of experimental conceptualisations of practice. Analysing narrative data from six university lecturers, it will be shown how agential realism has a capacity to theorise the sociological realms of classroom encounters, institutional practices and national policy in their very entanglement. That is, university lecturers' practice is analysed as 'apparatuses of bodily production' that are enfolded into larger institutional and national apparatuses.

The UK National Student Survey: An amalgam of discipline and neo‐liberal governmentality

“…The NSS has had a powerful impact on higher education institutions (HEIs) (Agnew et al, 2016) and their lecturers (Jones et al, 2014;Thiel, 2018). This impact has been exacerbated by the 2016 introduction of the UK Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), which partially utilises NSS data to then allocate a 'gold, silver or bronze award' to universities.…”

Ethics are Not on the Test: Diffraction and Affect in Education Policy

“…Policy, too, can be understood in this light. Agential realism has been used as an analytical framework to understand policy implementation, allowing for consideration of affective forces at play, in assessment, in higher education (Thiel, 2020) and how universities themselves can be reconfigured by the socio-technical entanglements of policy (Brøgger & Madsen, 2021). This perspective can be applied to policy at multiple levels.…”

La mercantilización de la Educación Superior a través del modelo universitario inglés: elementos clave, críticas y posibilidades

“…Los resultados son públicos y buscan proporcionar información sobre la calidad educativa de las distintas universidades, para, de esta forma, ayudar a posibles estudiantes en la elección de universidad. No obstante, el NSS no está exento de críticas que cuestionan la capacidad para evaluar la satisfacción y calidad (Brown, et al, 2015;Pickford, 2013), así como el uso de los resultados para la toma de decisiones (Gibbons, Neumayer y Perkins, 2015;Thiel, 2018). En 2015, el gobierno empezó a desarrollar el Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) que ha sido implementado de forma creciente, y que se encuentra en su última fase de adaptación (DfE, 2017).…”

“…3. Aceptación de una cultura de la competición y de la rendición de cuentas basada en técnicas de control, medición y diagnóstico, tanto en el ámbito de la docencia, como en el de la investigación (Feldman y Sandoval, 2018;Thiel, 2018;Olssen, 2016;Biesta, 2016).…”