Abstract
This article is Part 2 in a 2-part series discussing the new guidelines for Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) issued in April 2008 by the Council on Social Work Education. The 2008 EPAS shifted the focus of assessment for accreditation or reaffirmation from the evaluation of program objectives to assessment of educational outcomes and student achievement of practice competencies. Because major accreditation challenges for social work programs derive from the 2008 EPAS, this article continues the discussion of a model for sequencing accreditation tasks that began in Volume 30, Issue 2 of this journal. In this article, Part 2, the authors discuss the program's implicit curriculum and its assessment under the 2008 EPAS. The articles in this 2-part series are intended to be companion pieces.
INTRODUCTION
As reviewed in Part 1, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) currently has accredited 471 baccalaureate programs in social work and 201 master's social work programs; and these numbers continue to grow (CitationCSWE, 2010). The Council on Social Work Education is itself accredited by the Council for Higher Education and Accreditation. As a result of the Council for Higher Education and Accreditation's Statement on Good Practices and Shared Responsibility in the Creation and Application of Specialized Accreditation Standards, CSWE-accredited programs must now assess the extent to which their graduates demonstrate requisite skills and competencies for professional practice. The CitationCouncil for Higher Education and Accreditation (2001) stated:
Educational Outcomes: Standards should be designed to produce desired or needed educational outcomes for a profession and should refer to resources only to the extent required for graduates to emerge from programs intellectually prepared for their professional lives. (p. 1)
This principle emphasizes the need for all accredited programs in higher education to assess the extent to which graduates demonstrate requisite skills for competent professional practice. The CSWE Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) establish what social work programs must accomplish in order to achieve candidacy and then be accredited and reaffirmed, consistent with the Council for Higher Education and Accreditation's requirements (CitationCSWE, 2008b). Hence, the EPAS provide a social work program's threshold for professional social work competence. The EPAS do not model a process for successfully identifying and accomplishing the tasks necessary to design and assess an accredited program. Various means exist by which programs can assess the extent to which students are attaining competencies identified by our accrediting body as either core or as concentration competencies. This article is Part 2 in a two-part series. In Part 1 (in Volume 30, Issue 2), we summarized an approach to identifying and sequencing tasks for developing an educational program with assessment of the explicit curriculum requirements of 2008 EPAS for the classroom as well as field. We also presented instruments we believe will be useful in assessing program performance and the extent to which students are attaining practice behaviors consistent with EPAS professional competencies. Here, in Part 2, we focus on the requirements and assessment of the implicit curriculum.
As reviewed in detail in Part 1, the authors have been trained in the 2008 EPAS (as well as the 2001 EPAS) by the CSWE Commission on Accreditation. However, neither this article nor its predecessor have been endorsed by the CSWE. This article is not intended to replace accreditation or reaffirmation documents available at the CSWE Web site (http://www.cswe.org/CSWE) but rather to complement such materials. Given our interest and experience in administration of social work education, we seek to share our insight into the 2008 EPAS with a discussion of ideas and tools for programs to consider when approaching the new accreditation process.
CURRENT EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND ACCREDITATION STANDARDS (2008 EPAS)
The EPAS, advanced by the CSWE Commission on Accreditation in April 2008, include four features of integrated curriculum design: (a) “Program Mission & Goals” (including the program's professional purpose and context as well as professional values), (b) “Explicit Curriculum” (including field as signature pedagogy of the profession), (c) “Implicit Curriculum,” and (d) “Assessment.”
To review, the explicit curriculum can be thought of as being composed of the courses and instruction in a program's actual curriculum, while the implicit curriculum refers to the learning environment in which the explicit curriculum is delivered. In Part 1, we discussed a model for programs to use in developing or reaffirming their program mission and goals, as well as in designing and assessing their explicit curriculum. We also discussed in Part 1 the change in self-studies resulting from the 2008 EPAS. For example, in the past, combined programs have submitted one self-study document. However, under the 2008 EPAS combined programs must submit individual and self-contained self-studies for their baccalaureate and graduate programs. Here in Part 2 we discuss a program's implicit curriculum and its assessment.
Implicit Curriculum
Simply put, the 2008 EPAS defines implicit curriculum as the student's “learning environment” (compared with the explicit curriculum, which includes courses and field, and their delivery, flowing from the program's curriculum design). Consistent with the social work profession's perspective on the person-in-environment transaction, the 2008 EPAS gives equal emphasis to both the implicit and explicit curriculum. This assumption is based on the notion that a “heightened awareness of the importance of the implicit curriculum [will promote] an educational culture … congruent with the values of the [social work] profession.” (Educational Policy [EP] 3.0).
According to the 2008 EPAS,
[the implicit curriculum refers to] … the program's commitment to diversity; admissions policies and procedures; advisement, retention, and termination policies; student participation in governance; faculty; administrative structure; and resources. The implicit curriculum [manifests itself] through policies that are fair and transparent in substance and implementation, the qualifications of the faculty, and the adequacy of resources. The culture of human interchange; the spirit of inquiry; the support for difference and diversity; and the values and priorities in the educational environment, including the field setting, inform the student's learning and development. (EP 3.0)
Consistent with the assessment plan for the explicit curriculum, assessment of the implicit curriculum also should be systematic and ongoing, using benchmarks, multiple measurement instruments, and procedures. Programs need to have a plan in place to provide these implicit assessment results to stakeholders (Accreditation Standard [AS] 4.0.4). As with the explicit curriculum, when the results of assessment of the implicit curriculum do not meet faculty-determined benchmarks, the assessment plan should include stakeholders in a discussion of the improvements in the learning environment that will be made in order to meet these thresholds.
The 2008 EPAS provides an expanded definition of diversity, which includes age, class, color, culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, immigration status, political ideology, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation (EP 3.1). Faculty members are asked to determine how diversity is reflected in their learning environment (defined as “institutional setting; selection of field education settings and their clientele; composition of program advisory or field committees; educational and social resources; resource allocation; program leadership; speaker series, seminars, and special programs; support groups; research and other initiatives; and the demographic make-up of its faculty, staff and student body,” EP 3.1). Specifically, each program must be able to articulate its continuous efforts to provide respect and understanding of diversity in the learning environment, as well as how the learning environment itself models affirmation and respect for diversity and difference (AS 3.1.1 & AS 3.1.2).
“Student development” is viewed in the 2008 EPAS as part of a professional educational continuum (EP 3.2 & AS 3.2.2). At both the baccalaureate and graduate level, programs must articulate specific admission criteria (AS B3.2.1 & AS M3.2.1), including articulated policies for transfer credits (AS 3.2.4) and written policies expressly prohibiting the granting of course credit for life experience. Moreover, programs must specify how program applicants are informed of said polices (e.g., a program might choose to include these policies on their application forms, asking applicants to sign when they have read and understood them; AS 3.2.5). However, graduate programs must go further and articulate in policy the “pathway to a concentration” with specific and unambiguous policies for granting advanced standing, including the 2008 EPAS requirement that advanced standing be granted exclusively to those prospective students for admission who have graduated from CSWE-accredited baccalaureate programs (AS M3.2.3). Given the absence of prescribed curriculum content in the new 2008 EPAS, a Master of Social Work (MSW) program's admissions policies will need to articulate clearly how advanced standing will be awarded, particularly if existing program policies for advanced standing depended on a prospective student's successful completion of a particular series of required course (possibly with a particular grade received for each course) at the accredited Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) program from which they have graduated.
Both baccalaureate and graduate programs also need to identify and articulate their policies and procedures for advising, retaining, and terminating students from their programs (AS 3.2.6, AS 3.2.7, & AS 3.2.8). In the self-study narrative, programs should describe how they ensure students are made aware of these policies (AS 3.2.10). For example, a student handbook with all relevant policies may be available on the program's Web page. Review of the Web page (including where the student handbook is located), as well as opportunities for students to participate in school governance, should be discussed with students at matriculation (perhaps at a formal student orientation provided by the program) to ensure timely and successful understanding by each student.
The 2008 EPAS considers the participation of students in formulating and modifying program policies affecting academic and student affairs as important for students' professional development. Faculty members also need to demonstrate how their students are encouraged (and provided with opportunities) to organize on their own behalf and these procedures need be codified in policy (AS 3.2.9 & AS 3.2.10).
Requisite to the implicit learning environment outlined in the 2008 EPAS is the continued emphasis on sufficient faculty members for the “educational environment that promotes, emulates, and teaches students the knowledge, values, and skills expected of professional social workers” (EP 3.3). In the current economic environment, with many schools facing budget constraints and hiring freezes, there may be an increased use of part-time adjunct faculty members in order to deliver the program's curriculum. Rather than viewing this as a liability, the assets accrued by this approach might be addressed in a self-study with a narrative similar to the following:
Faculty culture and norms create an environment that models the behavior and values of the profession. Our faculty work to maintain a culture that addresses student needs. In this effort, our faculty carries an advising load that is small enough to permit regular meetings with students, and students evaluate their advising experiences and their advisors annually and anonymously. The program provides all full- time faculty and part-time adjunct faculty with personal space for private work and advising meetings with students. Faculty also make themselves available to students by posting office hours in their syllabi and on their office doors. When our faculty mentors one another, we demonstrate professional collegiality. In our promotion and tenure decisions, scholarship may be a consideration but so are teaching evaluations and the anonymous evaluations of faculty advising referred to above.
As mentioned, in further addressing resources, programs may also chose to emphasize the contributions made by part-time adjunct faculty as demonstrated in the continued narrative: “The use of part-time adjunct faculty further strengthens our program with the expertise brought into our classrooms by social work practitioners whose primary work occurs day-to-day in the field.”
Under the 2008 EPAS, programs are required to think about their administrative faculty members from a slightly different perspective. That is, once faculty members are identified in the self-study narrative, their experience as it flows from the program's previously articulated competencies needs to be articulated. It should be noted that although Accreditation Standard 3.4 is similar in the 2008 EPAS to that which preceded it in the 2001 version of the EPAS, there is an inconsistency regarding the requirements of an autonomous administrative structure with faculty governance sufficient to define program curriculum (AS 3.4.2). However, the inconsistency arises in the difference between what is written in the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards document (CitationCSWE, 2008b) and what is found in the Compliance, Concern, and Noncompliance Statements for the 2008 EPAS (CitationCSWE, 2008a). The 2008 EPAS (AS B3.3.4a) states the following:
The program describes the BSW program director's leadership ability through teaching, scholarship, curriculum development, administrative experience, and other academic and professional activities in social work. The program documents that the director has a master's degree in social work from a CSWE-accredited program with a doctoral degree preferred or a baccalaureate degree in social work from a CSWE accredited program and a doctoral degree, preferably in social work (CitationCSWE, 2008b, p. 14).
However, in the Compliance, Concern, and Noncompliance Statements for the 2008 EPAS, compliance is defined as “narrative documented that the director has a CSWE accredited MSW or BSW with doctoral degree” (CitationCSWE, 2008a, p. 21). The same holds true for the MSW program director. The 2008 EPAS (AS M3.4.4a) states the following:
The program describes the MSW program director's leadership ability through teaching, scholarship, curriculum development, administrative experience, and other academic and professional activities in social work. The program documents that the director has a master's degree in social work from a CSWE-accredited program. In addition, it is preferred that the MSW program director have a doctoral degree, preferably in social work. (CitationCSWE, 2008b, p. 14).
Yet again, compliance is defined as “narrative documented that the director has an accredited MSW with a doctoral degree, preferably in social work.” (CitationCSWE, 2008a, p. 22). Programs with directors who may have adequate professional experience related to a program's competencies and requisite full-time appointments to social work (AS B3.4.4a & AS M3.4.4b), as well as the appropriate assigned time to carry out the educational and administrative leadership of the program (AS B3.4.4c, AS M3.4.4.c, AS B3.4.5c, & AS M3.4.5c), but, as currently written, noncompliance may result if the BSW or MSW program director does not possess a doctoral degree (Compliance, Concern, and Noncompliance Statements for 2008 EPAS, pp. 21–22). This inconsistency was brought to the attention of CSWE staff. However, as of this writing, the documents have not been altered, placing program directors who do not possess a doctoral degree in an ambiguous position.
In Part 1, we discussed another more controversial administrative change emanating from the 2008 EPAS involving field directors. At the annual program meeting of CSWE (CitationCSWE, 2009), the Commission on Accreditation stated, in programs offering both the BSW and MSW degrees, there must be a separate individual assigned as field director for the BSW program and the MSW program. Given the outcry from programs offering both degrees but lacking separate field directors (or the resources to commit to new hires), this was placed on the Commission on Accreditation agenda for their June, 2010, meeting. At that meeting, the Commission on Accreditation determined that a single individual may be appointed as field director for both the BSW and MSW programs as long as his or her background and time allocated for administrative leadership meet standards (AS 3.4.5a–d).
Last, the 2008 EPAS requires programs to identify in their implicit curriculum the resources adequate “… to creating, maintaining and improving the educational environment that supports the development of competent social work practitioners” (EP 3.5). This includes the program's need to identify the policies and procedures in place for budget development and administration (AS 3.5.1), a discussion of specific ways in which resources are used for continuous improvement and to meet everyday challenges faced by programs (AS 3.5.2), identification of the staff, other personnel and technological resources needed to support the program (AS 3.5.3), including, technology (and assistive technology), library resources, and sufficient office and classroom space (AS 3.5.4, AS 3.5.5, & AS 3.5.6).
Assessment
Discussion of assessment of the implicit curriculum is viewed as critical. The 2008 EPAS stresses that “(a)ssessment is an integral component of competency-based education … Data from assessment continuously inform(s) and promote(s) change in the explicit and implicit curriculum to enhance attainment of program competencies.” (EP 4.0). Hence, assessment needs to be systematic, ongoing, based on a plan that uses appropriate benchmarks, multiple measurements, and procedures (AS B2.0.3 & AS M2.0.4). As discussed in Part 1, the assessment plan should evaluate both the explicit and implicit curriculum (AS 4.0.3), although here in Part 2, we focus our discussion on the latter. The assessment plan also must include discussion of how the program provides assessment results to stakeholders (AS 4.0.4) as well as how the program addresses areas where assessment outcomes of the implicit curriculum do not meet pre-determined benchmarks for success.
provides a visual illustration of a potential implicit curriculum assessment plan and examples of measures that might be incorporated. For example, students could be asked (using Likert-type scale items) to assess the experiences they had in the preceding year with their faculty advisors. The same Likert-type scale instruments also could be used with respect to field. For example, students could assess their experiences with their field liaisons as well as with their field instructors and field agencies in light of the opportunities for learning practice behaviors. Field instructors themselves could provide an assessment of their overall experiences with students from the program, as well as their experiences with the program faculty and administration during their recruitment, and training. Last, administering an exit survey to graduating students, asking them to assess their experiences with their learning environment (i.e., attention to diversity [EP 3.1], student development [EP 3.2], faculty [EP 3.3], and resources [EP 3.4]) and the extent to which they value the practice behaviors they have learned, provides an assessment of the implicit (and explicit) contributions to their achievement of the core competencies. The exit survey should also assess the importance of diversity in the program's learning environment. Graduating students could assess the program's attention to diversity and difference, and the extent to which the program provides a learning environment in which this is practiced; models affirmation and respect; and, advances a plan to affirm and support people with diverse identities. Again, should self-assessment suggest the learning environment falls short of these goals, in the self-study, faculty members should detail specific plans for improving the learning environment in order to affirm as well as support people with diverse identities (AS 3.1.3).
TABLE 1 Potential Implicit Curriculum Assessment Plan
With 10 core competencies required by EPAS 2008, 40 practice behaviors that serve as indices of these competencies, the additional practice behaviors that faculty members will determine for advanced practice related to each competency, and evaluation of the implicit curriculum, assessment under the 2008 EPAS may be critical but it may also feel overwhelming. However, nowhere in the 2008 EPAS does it say that every student must be assessed. Although smaller programs may have an easier time assessing each of their students, we wonder whether larger programs might consider using proportionate stratified sampling of students that would accurately reflect diversity of the student body. If carried out correctly, assessment results should be representative of the student population from which the sample was drawn.
SUMMARY
This article is Part 2 in a two-part series that discusses adaptation of the new accreditation standards (2008 EPAS) to new or existing social work curriculums, at both the generalist and advanced level. Part 2 has included a discussion of implicit curriculum requirements as well as a potential assessment plan that individual programs may use. As with all assessment, it is recommended that the social work faculty members meet regularly to review their curriculum and learning environment, and continuously implement changes designed to improve outcomes which they may deem below benchmark range (AS 4.0.2, AS 4.0.3, AS 4.0.4, & AS 4.0.5).
We hope that this discussion will be particularly useful to those programs that are in candidacy under the new 2008 EPAS, as well as those programs in the process of preparing their own self-study documents for reaffirmation of accreditation. Key documents readers may find useful are located at http://www.cswe.org/CSWE/accreditation/Reaffirmation. Footnote 1
Notes
1. These include the 2008 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (http://www.cswe.org/NR/rdonlyres/2A81732E-776-v4175-AC42-65974E96BE66/0/2008EducationalPolicyandAccreditationStandards.pdf); Compliance, Concern, and Noncompliance Statements—2008EPAS (http://www.cswe.org/NR/rdonlyres/E35AE036-E09C-46F8-A29E-54E2085864E0/0/CCNCStatements2008EPAS06262009LAW.pdf); the Field Education in the 2008 EPAS (http://www.cswe.org/NR/rdonlyres/B83FAE8B-ECDE-47B5-884E-BA9AF61E3A0B/0/2008EPASFieldEducation.pdf), and other resources referred to throughout these two companion articles.
Related Research Data
REFERENCES
- Council for Higher Education and Accreditation . 2001 . Statement on good practices and shared responsibility in the creation and application of specialized accreditation standards , Washington, DC : Author .
- Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) . 2008a . Compliance, concern, and noncompliance for the 2008 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards , Washington, DC : Author .
- Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) . 2008b . Educational policy and accreditation standards , Washington, DC : Author .
- Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) . November 2009 . Annual program meeting , November , San Antonio, TX : Author .
- Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). (2010, June). June 2010 Commission on Accreditation (COA) decisions. http://www.cswe.org/Accreditation.aspx (http://www.cswe.org/Accreditation.aspx) (Accessed: 24 June 2010 ).