The Role of Faculty Members in the Evaluation Process of Academic Curricula of Humanities in Top Universities of Iran and the World

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD in Curriculum Planning, Researcher and Teacher, Imam Hossein University, Tehran, Iran

2 Professor of Curriculum Planning, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran.

3 Associate Professor of Curriculum Planning, Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the status of faculty members in the evaluation of curricula of top universities in the country and the world in order to design a scale for evaluating the valid curriculum for faculty members. This research has a mixed method of exploratory-sequential type in the form of tool design. The statistical population consisted of four groups of curriculum development experts and faculty members from top universities, officials of study centers of top public universities, officials of the Ministry of Science and Documents of selected universities of the world. The sampling process was conducted through purposeful method and the data collection tools were a semi-organized interview, document analysis and a curriculum evaluation scale. The findings revealed that top universities around the world use the ideas from all internal and external stakeholders such as faculty members, students, alumni and employers in the curriculum evaluation process. in Iranian universities, internal and external stakeholders are limited in their ability to evaluate curricula, and faculty members are more likely to participate in the evaluation of academic curricula than other groups, depending on the context in which they are offered. Finally a scale of eight validated domains with 60 items and 6 open-ended questions is developed and presented for curriculum evaluation based on the perspectives of university faculty members.

Keywords


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