The validation event: a critical appraisal?
Apart from the perennial concern with finance, questions of 'quality' and 'accountability' will be the principle themes in the higher education debate in the 1990s. The whole issue of 'quality' and 'accountability' has become critically important to the success or otherwise of colleges of nursing and midwifery in convincing their multiple stakeholders (clients, patients, students and purchasers) that they should have a place in the marketing of nursing and midwifery education. The validation process is an important component of the formalized quality assurance mechanism of a course. There have, however, been little or no empirical data relating to the effect of validation processes on quality of courses and, more important, in the long term, quality of care. The following issues are explored in the paper. How are 'quality' and 'accountability' defined within the context of a market orientated system? How is 'peer review' to be interpreted within a purchaser led system? Are practice outcomes prioritised within educationally led, practice-based courses? Is there a part to play for continuing external regulation? We suggest that recent developments in nursing and midwifery education have often been undermined, during validation events, by structural processes for conformity. Such a regression to the conventional has been strengthened by the absence of new conceptions of quality deliberately designed to match these innovatory courses. Conceptions, that is, framed in terms distinct from the traditional model in which quality in higher education tends to be regarded as largely an attribute of disciplinary knowledge. Finally, we suggest that the decisive determinant of professional skill, is the personal standards, the professionalism and the self-respect of the individual teacher.
Glen
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S
Jamieson
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D000068:Accreditation; D003479:Curriculum; D005161:Facility Regulation and Control; D010380:Peer Review; D012579:Schools, Nursing / Q000592:standards*