Role of students in quality assurance
Klemenčič has examined the role of students in quality assurance in European context and theoretical underpinnings of such involvement.
In the 2018 chapter The student voice in quality assessment and improvement, Klemenčič argues that the trend in liberal higher education has been to afford students enhanced capabilities to intervene in their higher education environments, especially in quality assessment, accountability and performance. According to liberal values of modern Western societies, agentic individuals – their choices and capabilities - are central to political democracy, open market economy and cultural freedom and such liberal values have gradually diffused into domains of education. Consequently, the role of students in higher education (HE) practice and research has been revised. For liberal educational approaches, students are central in three ways. First, HE is expected to prepare students to become agentic individuals. To this end, progressive pedagogical practices, which entail active learning activities, have been put in use. Furthermore, students’ extracurricular engagements have become integrated into the expanded notions of HEIs’ responsibility over student experiences. Second, understanding students - their attitudes, preferences, capabilities, and behaviours - is becoming a vital task for HE professionals. Data on students feeds into multiple decision processes at different levels of HE governance. Third, as more countries are adapting liberal education, students are constructing new roles, and new types of authority in HE governance. The relationships at the heart of HE are being redefined: between students and HE teachers, students and HE administrators, as well as between students and the state. Klemenčič analyzes the areas and pathways for student involvement in promoting quality investigating both the rationales and student motivations for such involvement. She also addresses contraversies related to student involvement in quality: acceptance of students as “peers”, tokenistic involvement of students in decision processes, and the “domestication” of students.
In the 2015 chapter The student voice in quality assessment and improvement, Klemenčič explores the institutional conditions and organizational culture that shape student agency in structures and processes towards quality enhancement. The framework Klemenčič develops present a shift from the traditional focus on how colleges and universities can assure educational quality to how students are co-responsible for and contribute to the wellbeing and advancement of their colleges and universities.
Institutional research - quality assurance practices in Europe/Central and Eastern Europe
Klemenčič also researched the characteristics of the institutional research/quality assurance in European contexts and especially in Central European countries. Especially she explored the difussion of European policies to national and institutional contexts as well as institutional path dependencies and national systemic legacies that have impaired such difussion.
Relevant publications:
2018 The student voice in quality assessment and improvement. In Ellen Hazelkorn, Hamish Coates and Alex McCormick (eds.) Research Handbook on Quality, Performance and Accountability in Higher Education, pp. 332-343 (Edward Elgar Publishing
2017 EERA Keynote 2017 “Shifting authority in transnational governance of higher education policies", at the European Educational Research Association (EERA) ECER 2017: Reforming Education and the Imperative of Constant Change: Ambivalent roles of policy and educational research, 22 – 25 August 2017 at University College Copenhagen.http://www.eera-ecer.de/ecer-2017-copenhagen/
2016 THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH IN POSITIONING UNIVERSITIES: Practices in Central and Eastern European countries. In Prichard, R., Taylor, J. and Pausits, A. (eds.) Positioning universities, pp. 3-18 (Chapter 1) (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers)
2015 Student involvement in quality enhancement. In Jeroen Huisman, Harry de Boer, David Dill and Manuel Souto-Otero (eds.) The Handbook of Higher Education Policy and Governance, pp. 526-543 (Palgrave Macmillian)
2015 Decision Support Issues in Central and Eastern Europe. In Karen Webber and Angel Calderon (eds.) Institutional Research and Planning in Higher Education in a Global Context (pp. 71-85). Routledge Press/Taylor & Francis (co-authored with ŠĆUKANEC, N., KOMLJENOVIČ, J.)
2015 On the use of student surveys. In Remus Pricopie, Peter Scott, Jamil Salmi and Adrian Curaj (eds.) Future of Higher Education. Volume I and Volume II. Dordrecht: Springer (co-authored with I. Chirikov)
2013 Institutional research in a European context: a forward look. In Special Issue on The Past, Present and Future of Higher Education Research: Between Scholarship and Policy Making. European Journal of Higher Education 3 (3) 2013: 265-279 (co-authored with J. Brennan)