Quality assurance of assessment and moderation discourses involving sessional staff

View/ Open
File version
Accepted Manuscript (AM)
Author(s)
Grainger, Peter
Adie, Lenore
Weir, Katie
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2015
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Quality assurance is a major agenda in tertiary education. The casualisation of academic work, especially in teaching, is also a quality assurance issue. Casual or sessional staff members teach and assess more than 50% of all university courses in Australia, and yet the research in relation to the role sessional staff play in quality assurance of student assessment outcomes is scarce. Moderation processes are a pivotal part of robust quality assurance measures. Drawing upon previous work surrounding four discourses of moderation, this pilot project reports the results of research into the role and impact of sessional staff ...
View more >Quality assurance is a major agenda in tertiary education. The casualisation of academic work, especially in teaching, is also a quality assurance issue. Casual or sessional staff members teach and assess more than 50% of all university courses in Australia, and yet the research in relation to the role sessional staff play in quality assurance of student assessment outcomes is scarce. Moderation processes are a pivotal part of robust quality assurance measures. Drawing upon previous work surrounding four discourses of moderation, this pilot project reports the results of research into the role and impact of sessional staff in moderation processes at tertiary level. Qualitative data were gathered through focus interviews. Results, in the form of various moderation discourses, indicate that sessional staff impact the formal quality assurance processes in numerous ways.
View less >
View more >Quality assurance is a major agenda in tertiary education. The casualisation of academic work, especially in teaching, is also a quality assurance issue. Casual or sessional staff members teach and assess more than 50% of all university courses in Australia, and yet the research in relation to the role sessional staff play in quality assurance of student assessment outcomes is scarce. Moderation processes are a pivotal part of robust quality assurance measures. Drawing upon previous work surrounding four discourses of moderation, this pilot project reports the results of research into the role and impact of sessional staff in moderation processes at tertiary level. Qualitative data were gathered through focus interviews. Results, in the form of various moderation discourses, indicate that sessional staff impact the formal quality assurance processes in numerous ways.
View less >
Journal Title
Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
Copyright Statement
© 2015 Taylor & Francis (Routledge). This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education on 23 Apr 2015, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1030333
Note
This publication has been entered into Griffith Research Online as an Advanced Online Version.
Subject
Curriculum and Pedagogy not elsewhere classified
Education