Evaluating Learning for the Multiple Constituencies of Higher Education: A Call for Action, A Call for Research

This paper explores the rapidly changing world of higher education and the need for different ways to identify learner outcomes and evaluate student learning. In recent years, higher education has experienced significant demographic shifts in student populations. These shifts were the result of numerous variables including the increasing cost of higher education, the demand from business and industry to get people into high-demand occupations faster, and the decreasing number of individuals choosing post-secondary education immediately following high school. The year 2020 brought unprecedented challenges to the world with the pandemic caused by the coronavirus known as COVID-19. The pandemic accelerated the change that was already taking place in higher education. From how education was delivered to where it was delivered, higher education was forced to rapidly change a centuries-old model. This paper explores a tier one research university’s response to the changes in higher education by employing a proven process of mapping learning outcomes, assessing both new and prior learning using innovative technology, issuing microcredentials, and working with policymakers and employers to meet workforce demands. Keywords: Higher education1; Microcredentials2; Learning outcomes3 Mapping4; Assessment5.

Promoting a musical lifecourse towards sustainable ageing: A call for policy congruence

Today, individually perceived quality of life for a growing ageing population could be said to be significantly dependent on meaningful life experiences, social connectedness and a sense of purpose. In this article, we argue for a wider theorization of policy and the politics of ageing. The central aim is to reflect on understandings of ageing within music education and musical participation, and, in particular, shift the focus from active ageing ‐ and the ways it might support the narrow agenda of music for older adults ‐ to the potentials of holistic and sustainable learning and participation in music. To do so, we draw from the concept of policy congruence, presenting a vision of policy as a critical catalyst that may amplify parameters for concerted initiatives among multiple constituencies within music education. We argue these amplified parameters may afford renewed efforts towards transdisciplinary action that can support the actions of community musicians and strengthen their role as networked actors labouring in consonance with others in the growingly significant areas of lifelong learning and ageing populations. Our stance is that, if we can assume that music education and musical participation have a serious contribution to make in the lives and well being of individuals across the lifespan, including older adults, then we ought to consider how systematic policy engagement may actively contribute to appropriate allocation of resources and renewed pedagogical and organizational framings, which more directly use lifelong learning to support sustainable ageing.

Sunni ‘Alī and the Reinvention of Songhay

This chapter studies the onset of Songhay, which was in fact a reemergence, in that it recentered the ancient town of Gao, capital of the novel experiment. Inheriting the mantle of Mali, Songhay would undertake important innovations in meeting the demands of international commerce, ethnic diversity, and Islam's expansion. By way of serial effort, experimentation, and even regime change, Songhay boldly attempted the realization of a pluralist society fully reflective of its multiple constituencies—an approach premised on a new theory of governance in which spheres of influence were distributed to shareholders as self-organized groupings or communities. Informed by both local practice and international engagement, Songhay would eventually achieve a remarkable social compact by which new levels of mutual respect and tolerance were reached, and through which Songhay came to be characterized. In this way, it distinguished itself from its Malian predecessor, for the Malian empire was first and foremost a Mande operation, in which the Mande sought to control all levers of political, social, and cultural power. In contrast, Songhay would evolve differently, becoming a much more ethnically heterogeneous society in which allegiance to the state transcended loyalties to clan and culture, with its leadership becoming much more diverse.

Toward a Contingency Model for the Relationship Between Capacity and Effectiveness in Nonprofit Organizations

This article synthesizes the literature on organizational capacity in an effort to improve our understanding of the relationship between capacity and various measures of nonprofit effectiveness. I define capacity as the means by which organizations achieve effectiveness, and propose a contingency model to explain how different measures of nonprofit effectiveness (via goal attainment, system resources, and the multiple constituencies models) suggest distinct ways of conceptualizing and assessing nonprofit capacity. Drawing from organizational theory, I consider capacity in terms of resource streams and operational activities. The article proposes a contingency model that will assist researchers in examining the extent to which particular organization capacity variables relate to different measures of organizational effectiveness. It also provides practitioners a useful tool for understanding and assessing nonprofit capacity and effectiveness in different scenarios, in light of various internal and external factors.

Protecting Long-term Commitment

Growing attention is being paid to the benefits of considering the long-term interests of multiple constituencies in corporate governance. A theory of the corporation where fiduciary duties of directors point to the legal entity and not to its shareholders goes beyond a pure prioritization of shareholders’ interests. However, the notion that board members mediate the interests of all constituencies fails to account for a ‘positive’ conception of corporate purpose and underlying asymmetries in allocations of rights between stakeholders. Addressing corporate governance as a fundamentally ‘open’ model for organizational structuring, we engage with a variety of legal mechanisms that can be used to implement and protect a positive purpose for the modern corporation and to protect the conditions of credible commitment to manage the company for the interest of corporate constituencies, to commit the corporation to a social or environmental purpose and to take into account multiple time-horizons.

A Theory of Customer Valuation: Concepts, Metrics, Strategy, and Implementation

Customer value refers to the economic value of the customer's relationship with the firm. This study approaches the topic of customer value for measuring, managing, and maximizing customer contributions by proposing a customer valuation theory (CVT) based on economic principles that conceptualizes the generation of value from customers to firms. The author reviews the established economic theories for valuing investor assets (e.g., stocks) and draws a comparison to valuing customer contributions. Furthermore, the author recognizes the differences in the guiding principles between valuing stocks and valuing customers in proposing CVT. Using CVT, the author discusses the concept of customer lifetime value (CLV) as the metric that can provide a reliable, forward-looking estimate of direct customer value. In addition, economic models to estimate CLV, ways to manage CLV using portfolio management principles, and strategies to maximize CLV are discussed in detail. The author extends the customer value concept by discussing ways that a customer can add value to the firm indirectly through incentivized referrals, social media influence, and feedback. Finally, the benefits of CVT to multiple constituencies are offered.

Crafting Legitimacy in District–Community Partnerships

Background/Context Partnering across districts, schools, and other community organizations has become ubiquitous as a policy for promoting change. Despite growing attention to and scholarship on district–community partnerships, there is little examination of the organizational mechanisms involved in sustaining them. Purpose/Objectives This study examines the ways in which district–community partnerships establish and sustain legitimacy with multiple constituencies over time. Drawing on institutional theory, these analyses extend current theories of legitimation by describing the legitimacy-building events of districts and their community partners as they craft partnerships over time. Research Design I used a qualitative multi-case-study design to build grounded theory based on three district–community partnerships. Interviews with partnership leaders, focus groups with governance team members, and observations were collected between 2012 and 2014. Thematic analysis was conducted within and across the three cases to identify legitimacy-building activities. Findings/Results Five mechanisms for building legitimacy emerged across the three district–community partnerships: funder endorsement, attention to reciprocity, service provision, dedicated formal staff roles, and a systems-building approach. Each mechanism was deployed across the stages of partnership (e.g., identity formation, recruitment, sustainability). These mechanisms were used to leverage legitimacy with one stakeholder group to build new legitimacy with other stakeholder groups, creating complex chains of legitimacy across partners over time. Conclusions/Recommendations The findings extend current research on both legitimacy frameworks and the use of community partnerships in education reform. Themes across cases highlight the recursive nature of legitimacy during the recruitment of new partners, how partnerships can build legitimacy across cultural divides, and the role of external funders in supporting legitimacy building across multiple sets of stakeholders.

Introduction: Walking the Zen-Scape

The Introduction points to the term Zen’s remarkable lexical adaptability and the striking, and sometimes unruly, social, political, and even etheogenic dimensions of Zen’s spread in the modern-contemporary world. It points to recurring categories of Zen art that draw attention (while obscuring others), including “Zen circles,” Zen gardens, and the “Splashed ink” landscapes of the premodern painter Sesshū. It explores efforts undertaken by Japanese lay Zen Buddhists and other Zen authorities to define Zen and categorize Zen practitioners, and it sets out for examination modern notions of “Zen art” and “Zen artists.” The postwar “Zen-scape,” it turns out, could be a rather rough space to venture into, with competing discourses on Zen’s promise or peril for the modern world. The Introduction maps some of these discourses and situates the author among the multiple constituencies drawn to Zen’s diverse modern-contemporary forms.