Educational accountability

Thus there arises the fundamental dilemma of education. To define in advance an end result and then to seek by all possible means to achieve it is to be held too narrowing, too repressive, too authoritarian. But if, on the other hand, there is no end in view, educational activity is confused and incoherent. Its various parts and successive phases do not add up to anything. Without a definition of the end there is no test by which means can be selected, and no standard by which practice can be criticized and improved.I should like to acknowledge, with thanks, the criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper by my colleagues Hardy Jones, Jon Moline, and John Rich.     

Moral accountability and debriefing

What is the ethical significance of debriefing in deceptive research? The standard view of debriefing is that it serves to disclose the deception to the participant and is a means of evaluating and mitigating potential harms that may have resulted from involvement in the research. However, as the article by Miller, Gluck, and Wendler in this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal points out, there has been little systematic attention to the ethics of debriefing, particularly with regard to the role of debriefing in addressing the prima facie moral wrong of deception itself. They argue that in addition to mitigating the harms of deception, debriefing should include an apology to participants for being deceived. In the current paper, I argue that an apology is not morally obligatory in most research contexts. Debriefing should be considered an opportunity to further define the researcher-participant relationship without the need to be remorseful about the research practice.     

Debriefing and accountability in deceptive research

Debriefing is a standard ethical requirement for human research involving the use of deception. Little systematic attention, however, has been devoted to explaining the ethical significance of debriefing and the specific ethical functions that it serves. In this article, we develop an account of debriefing as a tool of moral accountability for the prima facie wrong of deception. Specifically, we contend that debriefing should include a responsibility to promote transparency by explaining the deception and its rationale, to provide an apology to subjects for infringing the principle of respect for persons, and to offer subjects an opportunity to withdraw their data. We also present recommendations concerning the discussion of deception in scientific articles reporting the results of research using deception.     

Counseling centers and the issue of accountability

The authors discuss responses that college and university counseling centers have made to the budgetary attacks now occurring. They stress the importance of accountability and suggest types of data that counseling center personnel might use in developing effective justifications for the expenditure of funds on the services that they provide.     

Intervention-based school psychology services: Training for child-level accountability; preparing for program-level accountability

This research evaluated the outcomes of a school psychology training practicum by replicating intervention-based service delivery procedures established in prior research. The key components include describing a service delivery model, teaching the model, deriving practice guidelines that fit the model, supporting trainees in carrying out the steps, and evaluating the outcomes. Procedures to determine outcomes were based on single-case design facets including accountability design (A-B), visual analysis of graphic data, and social validity ratings. Meta-analysis techniques included calculation of effect sizes and percent of nonoverlapping data (PND). Goal attainment scaling (GAS) also was used to summarize outcomes. The analyses indicated that the interventions led to positive changes for most children. For example, the median effect size was 1.42 across cases. Social validity evidence showed that consumers judged the outcomes positively. Achieving ideal baseline and technical adequacy checks (e.g., observer agreement, intervention adherence) represented challenges for many consultations. The contributions of the study include describing methods for child- and program-level accountability in training and areas for improvement including further supporting the completion of technical checks for intervention services.     

School psychologist accountability via PPBS

Accountability for school psychology is presented through the Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems (PPBS) approach. The nature of goals and objectives in this model are explored in detail. The actual goals and objectives as developed in the Greenwich (Conn.) Public Schools are used as an illustration.     

Supervision-competence, confidence, accountability

The need for a shared understanding of the tasks and purposes of supervision for the emerging professions of counselling and psychotherapy is presented Progress to date is reviewed, including a brief account of the initiatives taken by the British Association for Counselling. Taking one definition of the supervision task, its implications are explored and contrasted to other possible definitions. It is suggested that working with trainee counsellors calls for some agreed skills which may not be within the accustomed repertoire of all 'schools of counselling', and a plea is made for group supervision which actively engages all participants. The implications of the ideas in the article for supervisor development and counsellor training are examined.     

An accountability model for counselors

A sound counselor accountability system would collate counselor accomplishments with costs. Better decisions could then be made about effective methods, staffing, student needs, and training. The system would define the domain of counselor responsibilities, use student behavior changes as evidence of counselor accomplishments, state counselor activities as costs, promote self-improvement, permit reports of failures and unknown outcomes, be designed by users, and be subject to revision. An illustrative accountability report shows how the cost, but not the value, of an outcome can be estimated. Experimentation is needed in order to answer the practical implementation problems of the system.     

The accountability of hand-drawn maps and rendering practices

This paper presents an ethnomethodological analysis of the representation of space in hand-drawn maps. The rendering practice of hand drawn maps includes some systematic devices by which real space is transformed into two-dimensional space on paper and a map is recognized as the map representing a certain space. In other words, members use these devices not only to trace real space but also to enable the recognition of space in a specific mode. The paper deals with three distinctive patterns affording accountability of geographical features: retention of the three-dimensionality of real space; formal resemblance with intertextuality; and identification of space by means of words. Retention of the 3D of space on map is the device that assigns 3D effect to maps and contributes to the perception of the figure as being similar to real space. Intertextuality bestows formal resemblance on various maps to secure the intersubjectivity and scientific objectivity of maps. Words entered on hand-drawn maps enable a reading of a correspondence of maps with real space. The representation of space makes sense by virtue of these devices that accomplish the recognizability of space between the drawers and readers of hand-drawn maps.     

Effects of sex on raters' accountability

The effects of sex (rater and ratee) on raters' accountability in the context of performance appraisal were investigated. The 130 participating undergraduates (men and women) rated a fictitious male or female's performance on a clerical task subsequent to receiving self-assessment information. As expected, raters' knowledge of a high self-assessment was followed by significantly higher performance ratings than after knowledge of a low self-assessment. Contrary to expectations, no differences were found for either raters' or ratees' sex. The results suggest that the sex of the rater or ratee is not associated with raters' accountability.     

Accounting for the effects of accountability

This article reviews the now extensive research literature addressing the impact of accountability on a wide range of social judgments and choices. It focuses on 4 issues: (a) What impact do various accountability ground rules have on thoughts, feelings, and action? (b) Under what conditions will accountability attenuate, have no effect on, or amplify cognitive biases? (c) Does accountability alter how people think or merely what people say they think? and (d) What goals do accountable decision makers seek to achieve? In addition, this review explores the broader implications of accountability research. It highlights the utility of treating thought as a process of internalized dialogue; the importance of documenting social and institutional boundary conditions on putative cognitive biases; and the potential to craft empirical answers to such applied problems as how to structure accountability relationships in organizations.