{"schema_version":1,"research_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_external_evaluation_20260803","source_assessment_id":"bounded_rivalry_governance__religious_studies_theology:P1:v0","cell_id":"bounded_rivalry_governance__religious_studies_theology","search_queries":["site:aarweb.org teaching religious studies guidelines curriculum religious literacy learning outcomes","religious studies curriculum faculty politics course selection module curriculum committee study","curriculum committee course proposal conflict of interest appeal university policy official","religious studies introductory course curriculum representation traditions faculty study","American Academy of Religion Guidelines for Teaching About Religion in K-12 public schools PDF religious literacy","site:aarweb.org \"teaching\" \"religion\" guidelines higher education","faculty curriculum committee workload course proposal research study higher education","Goodhart law performance metrics education competition peer review 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proximity","portfolio selection diversity research funding multiple awards prior art official","teaching religion higher education representation caricature religious literacy guidelines college official","world religions paradigm textbook representation caricature religious studies teaching scholarly article","teaching introduction to religious studies curriculum world religions model critique article","religious studies introductory course pedagogy comparison emic etic learning outcomes article","American Academy Religion religious literacy internal diversity change embedded culture guidelines","site:bls.gov Occupational Employment Wage Statistics postsecondary teachers May 2025 median hourly wage","site:bls.gov college university administrators wages 2025 postsecondary education administrators","site:bls.gov employer costs employee compensation December 2025 higher education","\"Assessment of potential bias in research grant peer review in Canada\" journal","\"The world religions paradigm: Why context matters\" full text DOI"],"sources":[{"source_id":"S1","title":"AAR Religious Literacy Guidelines","publisher":"American Academy of Religion","url":"https://aarweb.org/resource/aar-religious-literacy-guidelines-2/","source_class":"OFFICIAL_GUIDANCE","publication_date":"2019","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["College-level religious literacy requires accurate knowledge, recognition of internal diversity, historical and cultural contextualization, and distinction between confessional and analytical claims.","Curricular design should avoid privileging a single representative or example of a tradition.","The professional association expresses a need for curricula that teach academically sound analysis of religion."]},{"source_id":"S2","title":"The world religions paradigm: Why context matters in religious studies","publisher":"SAGE Publications / Critical Research on Religion","url":"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/20503032241226966","source_class":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","publication_date":"2024-01-19","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["A first-year religious-studies module at the University of KwaZulu-Natal faced concerns about Eurocentric framing, uneven representation, and marginalization under the World Religions Paradigm.","Introductory-course organization can perpetuate monolithic representations and impair responsible comparison.","The article calls for context-sensitive curricular revision, but does not document the proposed slot contest, lobbying, collusion, or workload arms race."]},{"source_id":"S3","title":"Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities","publisher":"American Association of University Professors","url":"https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/statement-government-colleges-and","source_class":"OFFICIAL_GUIDANCE","publication_date":"1966","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Faculty have primary responsibility for curriculum, subject matter, and methods of instruction.","Curricular determinations should proceed through established faculty procedures, subject to institutional governance and resource limits.","A department curriculum committee is a credible authorizer, while an external selection panel cannot displace faculty authority."]},{"source_id":"S4","title":"Curriculum Implementation Committee: Timing and Process of Approval","publisher":"Bowdoin College","url":"https://www.bowdoin.edu/registrar/faculty/teaching/index.html","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["A functioning university already uses department discussion, a standard course-proposal form, chair approval, committee review, a second policy-committee review, and a faculty vote.","Published deadlines, supplemental-information requests, and advance planning are established curriculum-governance practices.","The process demonstrates an identifiable institutional adopter and authorizer class but does not express demand for competitive portfolio selection."]},{"source_id":"S5","title":"NEH's Application Review Process","publisher":"National Endowment for the Humanities","url":"https://www.neh.gov/grants/application-process","source_class":"GOVERNMENT_OR_REGULATOR","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Humanities peer review already uses independent experts, published criteria, conflict recusals, recorded ratings, staff synthesis, advisory review, and a legally authorized final decision-maker.","Published criteria include humanities significance, qualifications, clarity, feasibility, design, cost, and work plan.","This is close process-level prior art for bounded rivalry, although it allocates grants rather than introductory-course modules and lacks the proposed challenger and post-delivery mechanisms."]},{"source_id":"S6","title":"Peer Review of Grant Applications: Criteria Used and Qualitative Study of Reviewer Practices","publisher":"PLOS ONE","url":"https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0046054","source_class":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","publication_date":"2012-09-26","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Observed and interviewed reviewers varied in how they applied criteria and in time spent reviewing applications.","Review processes can be affected by conflicts, inconsistent weighting, and practical reviewer workload.","Structured criteria do not by themselves ensure consistent judgment, supporting the need for calibration and outcome validation."]},{"source_id":"S7","title":"Review of peer review: June 2023","publisher":"UK Research and Innovation","url":"https://www.ukri.org/publications/review-of-peer-review/review-of-peer-review-june-2023/","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"2023-06","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Explicit criteria, reviewer training, feedback, rebuttal, workload controls, and stakeholder assessors are established or studied peer-review interventions.","Explicit criteria can reduce inconsistency, but panels have limited capacity for numerous complex criteria and reviewers may depart from guidance.","Metrics can be biased or abused; feedback and open review can add burden; evidence for several process reforms remains limited.","Training has evidence of improving reviewer agreement, while effects on portfolio diversity are often unmeasured."]},{"source_id":"S8","title":"Employer Costs for Employee Compensation — December 2025","publisher":"U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics","url":"https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ecec_03202026.htm","source_class":"GOVERNMENT_OR_REGULATOR","publication_date":"2026-03-20","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["December 2025 total employer compensation averaged $74.67 per hour in junior colleges, colleges, and universities.","State and local government management and professional compensation averaged $77.94 per hour, and teachers averaged $85.00 per hour.","These rates support resource-equivalent labor estimates but not institution-specific procurement, legal, software, or opportunity costs."]}],"problem_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"The domain-level harm is visible: S1 defines accuracy, internal diversity, contextualization, and analytical/confessional distinctions as important learning outcomes, while S2 documents contested and potentially marginalizing organization of an actual introductory religious-studies module. S6 and S7 show that expert selection processes can exhibit inconsistent criteria, bias, workload, and conflict problems. However, no direct source documents the candidate's specific conjunction of scarce module slots, lobbying, reciprocal support, sabotage, escalating preparation, and incumbent lock-in in a multi-tradition department. The proposed local problem therefore remains a plausible, consequential hypothesis rather than an externally established prevalence claim.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S6","S7"]},"stakeholder_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"AAR expressly calls for the proposed pedagogical qualities (S1), AAUP identifies faculty as the proper curricular authority (S3), and Bowdoin demonstrates real faculty committees exercising multi-stage course approval (S4). These establish a credible authorizer/adopter class and an expressed domain need. No named department, chair, committee, student body, or funder has requested this portfolio-contest intervention or committed records, staff time, or a pilot.","source_ids":["S1","S3","S4"]},"prior_art":{"proximity":"ADJACENT_PRIOR_ART","closest_analogues":[{"name":"Faculty curriculum proposal and approval workflow","similarity":"Department discussion, common proposal documentation, chair authorization, committee review, published deadlines, escalation to a policy committee, and final faculty vote already govern course approval.","remaining_difference":"The documented workflow reviews proposals serially for acceptability rather than allocating a fixed portfolio of scarce module slots; it does not include a preparation cap, anti-collusion screen, challenger slot, or post-delivery comparative review.","source_ids":["S3","S4"]},{"name":"NEH humanities application review","similarity":"Independent experts apply published criteria, recuse for conflicts, record ratings, and pass recommendations through separated advisory and final-authority stages.","remaining_difference":"It allocates grant funding across independent projects, not complementary components of a shared course, and does not test student artifacts, reopen an incumbent module slot, or regulate off-panel faculty advocacy.","source_ids":["S5"]},{"name":"Research-funder peer-review reform toolkit","similarity":"Explicit criteria, training, demand management, feedback, rebuttal, stakeholder assessors, and monitoring address many of the proposal's fairness, burden, and metric-validity concerns.","remaining_difference":"The toolkit is dispersed across funding schemes; evidence is mixed, and it does not instantiate the candidate's two-cycle religious-studies portfolio with a noncontestable boundary around theological truth and community worth.","source_ids":["S6","S7"]},{"name":"AAR religious-literacy curricular guidance","similarity":"It supplies domain-appropriate outcome criteria: accuracy, internal diversity, contextualization, and separation of confessional from analytical claims.","remaining_difference":"It guides curriculum content and pedagogy without creating or endorsing competitive module selection, portfolio scoring, sanctions, workload caps, or challenger windows.","source_ids":["S1"]}],"distinctive_claim_remaining":"Relative to ordinary committee bargaining or serial course approval, a two-cycle, faculty-authorized portfolio contest that combines a frozen domain-specific rubric, standardized workload cap, separated conflict review, complementary portfolio selection, one credible challenger slot, and post-delivery validation will reduce undocumented advocacy, unexplained preparation labor, and repeat-incumbency while increasing the out-of-sample correspondence between selection scores and student artifact quality/instructor feasibility—without increasing misrepresentation complaints, exclusion, or total administrative labor. Each outcome is measurable and the claim fails if the governed process does not outperform the baseline or a non-rival rotation/co-design comparator.","confidence":"MODERATE"},"implementation_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"The intervention is technically low-complexity and builds on operational committee, form, panel, recusal, scoring, and review workflows demonstrated by S4 and S5. Faculty authority is credible under S3, and S1 provides defensible pedagogical criteria. S6 and S7 caution that criterion proliferation, calibration, bias, reviewer behavior, feedback, and monitoring remain substantive workflow risks. Internal records access, employment implications, privacy review, panel independence, classification choices, and the validity of student-work measures are institution-specific and unverified. A pattern screen cannot establish collusion and must remain a referral trigger only.","source_ids":["S1","S3","S4","S5","S6","S7"]},"scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Improved introductory-course representation and comparison could benefit every enrolled student and reduce faculty distrust, but the prevalence and magnitude of the alleged selection pathology are not established.","source_ids":["S1","S2"]},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"Professional guidance expresses the pedagogical need and faculty committees clearly possess relevant authority, but no adopter has requested or committed to this intervention.","source_ids":["S1","S3","S4"]},"incremental_advantage":{"score":2,"rationale":"Most components already exist in curriculum approval or competitive peer review. The benefit of combining them, compared with a lighter transparent rubric, rotation, or co-design process, has not been demonstrated.","source_ids":["S4","S5","S7"]},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The combination of portfolio complementarity, a noncontestable truth boundary, workload cap, challenger slot, and post-delivery validation is meaningfully contrastive, although its components are established adjacent practices.","source_ids":["S1","S4","S5","S7"]},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"Forms, rubrics, conflict disclosures, panels, recorded reasons, appeals, and outcome reviews require ordinary institutional systems rather than new technology. Calibration and protected-data handling remain nontrivial.","source_ids":["S4","S5","S6","S7"]},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"Faculty curricular authority and multi-stage approval structures are externally credible, but an independent panel must remain subordinate to faculty governance and local employment, accessibility, privacy, and academic-freedom rules.","source_ids":["S3","S4"]},"evidence_readiness":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate specifies observable events and falsifiers, but the decisive evidence is proprietary internal records followed by prospective comparative cycles; open web evidence cannot supply it.","source_ids":["S4","S6","S7"]},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":3,"rationale":"Recusals, reasons, appeals, workload caps, and post-delivery review may protect challengers, students, and contingent instructors, but formal scoring and complaint channels can themselves reinforce classifications or be weaponized.","source_ids":["S1","S5","S7"]},"scalability":{"score":2,"rationale":"The workflow is replicable, but criteria, religious classifications, authority, staffing, and privacy rules require local redesign; panel and review burden is material for a single-course decision.","source_ids":["S1","S3","S7","S8"]}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Read-only audit of up to three completed cycles, including protocol design, access/privacy review, de-identification, two-coder calibration on a subset, coding, reconciliation, process tracing, and a go/no-go report.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Approximately 160–320 faculty/professional hours plus 40–100 administrative or privacy-review hours.","Resource-equivalent labor is valued near the $74.67 college/university employer-cost benchmark, with higher-cost specialist time bounded within the same band.","Existing records are sufficiently organized; no interviews, new student-data linkage, litigation review, or misconduct investigation is included."],"source_ids":["S4","S6","S8"]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"One-time governance design: faculty consultation, legal/privacy/accessibility review, rubric and classification testing, workload-cap rules, conflict and complaint protocols, panel recruitment and training, records workflow, simulation, and approval through normal governance.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 500–1,500 internal professional hours plus limited external facilitation, accessibility, or legal review.","No custom enterprise software, collective-bargaining change, course release, or compensation settlement is required.","The department adapts existing proposal and committee infrastructure."],"source_ids":["S3","S4","S7","S8"]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"First live portfolio cycle: entrant preparation within the cap, eligibility checks, panel review and calibration, portfolio selection, debriefs and appeals, module handoff, delivery monitoring, and post-delivery evidence collection.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 800–1,800 aggregate hours across entrants, reviewers, administrators, instructors, accessibility staff, and evaluators.","Four to eight proposals compete for one shared course portfolio; ordinary module teaching costs are excluded.","One appeal and limited external consultation are budgeted; contested personnel proceedings are excluded."],"source_ids":["S4","S5","S6","S7","S8"]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Maintenance, one challenger-window review, conflict updates, limited outcome monitoring, debriefs, records retention, and rulebook revision in a non-full-selection year.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 200–600 professional and administrative hours per year.","A full portfolio reselection is not run annually; a full cycle would return to the operational-launch band.","No paid custom platform or continuing external adjudicator is required."],"source_ids":["S4","S7","S8"]}},"verified_pipeline_gates":{"externally_supported_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"External evidence supports consequential representation and comparison problems in introductory religious studies and generic vulnerabilities in peer selection, but not the claimed local pattern of scarce-slot lobbying, collusion, sabotage, overproduction, and lock-in.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S6","S7"]},"externally_credible_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Faculty curriculum committees are a credible authorizer class: AAUP assigns faculty primary curricular responsibility, and Bowdoin documents an operating multi-stage faculty approval process. This verifies authority plausibility, not willingness to adopt.","source_ids":["S3","S4"]},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal can compare advocacy contacts, preparation hours, repeat incumbency, disputes, administrative labor, and predictive correspondence between selection scores and downstream student/instructor evidence against ordinary approval and non-rival alternatives.","source_ids":["S1","S4","S7"]},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A preregistered, de-identified audit of no more than three completed cycles with two coders, explicit alternative explanations, and no curricular or personnel action is finite and produces a go/no-go output.","source_ids":["S4","S6"]},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The proposed audit is safety-bounded, but no institution-specific determination verifies access to student/personnel records, deductive-identification risk, research-versus-governance status, employment implications, or the handling of allegations. These must be resolved before records inspection.","source_ids":["S3","S4","S6"]},"credible_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"All four scopes exclude ordinary teaching and misconduct proceedings, state labor-hour assumptions, and use a current official college/university employer-cost benchmark. Broad bands remain uncertain but are resource-equivalent and auditable.","source_ids":["S4","S6","S8"]}},"next_evidence_step":"With a named department and written records authorization, preregister a coding guide and audit up to three completed introductory-module selection cycles. Two coders should independently code a de-identified subset for slot scarcity, proposal hours or page burden, selector contacts, unsupported comparative claims, endorsements, recusals, criterion changes, written reasons, appeals, repeat selection, and available student-work and delivery indicators; report agreement and reconcile before full coding. Compare (a) ordinary tacit committee bargaining, (b) any cycle with preannounced criteria or scheduled rotation, and, if records permit, (c) a non-rival co-design/rotation counterfactual assessed from contemporaneous documents. Explicitly test staffing, accreditation, expertise, and scheduled rotation as alternative explanations. Stop with no pilot recommendation if slots were not scarce, strategic interdependence was absent, adverse events were not more than isolated, transparent criteria already explain outcomes, downstream evidence already aligns with selections, coding reliability is inadequate, or de-identification fails. The output is only a go/no-go decision for a prospective tabletop simulation; it is not a misconduct finding or authorization for a live contest.","blocking_evidence":["No external prevalence estimate or documented case establishes the full claimed pattern in a multi-tradition religious-studies department.","No named department has committed as partner, adopter, data custodian, or authorizer.","Access, privacy, records-retention, research-ethics, employment, accessibility, and academic-freedom determinations are institution-specific and unresolved.","The reliability and construct validity of proposed student-artifact, misrepresentation, portfolio-coverage, and instructor-burden measures are unknown.","No comparative evidence shows that the integrated contest beats a transparent ordinary committee, guaranteed rotation, representation floor, or consensus co-design.","No prospective evidence shows that workload caps, monitoring, sanctions, or a challenger window avoid burden shifting, strategic complaints, classification lock-in, or churn."],"research_disposition":"PROBLEM_PREVALENCE_STUDY","world_novelty_boundary":"The search found established religious-literacy outcomes, critiques of introductory-course representation, faculty curriculum-approval systems, humanities peer review, and a broad peer-review reform toolkit. It did not establish an implemented two-cycle religious-studies module portfolio combining all proposed controls. This bounded search does not measure world novelty, patentability, freedom to operate, market size, or realized impact, and absence from these eight sources is not evidence of global novelty.","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_version":0,"controller_recommendation":{"action":"STOP_EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_NEEDED","repairable":false,"material_progress_observed":true,"progress_targets":["Secure a named department partner and written authority for de-identified access to up to three completed selection cycles.","Establish whether scarce, strategically interdependent module selection and the alleged advocacy, burden, reciprocity, or incumbency patterns occur with nontrivial frequency.","Validate coding reliability and the construct validity of downstream learning, representation, feasibility, and workload measures.","Resolve local privacy, research-ethics, employment, accessibility, records-retention, and complaint-handling requirements before inspection or simulation.","Specify and preregister ordinary committee, transparent-rubric, rotation, and co-design comparators plus quantitative and qualitative falsification thresholds.","Only if the retrospective audit passes, run a nonbinding tabletop simulation before seeking authorization for any prospective live cycle."],"reason":"Open-web research establishes domain importance, credible faculty authority, implementable adjacent mechanisms, and a falsifiable contrast, but it cannot determine whether the proposed local rivalry pathology exists or whether the integrated governance package improves outcomes. Those questions require proprietary departmental records and later live comparative testing. Under the controller rule, that evidence dependency requires STOP_EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_NEEDED; all STOP recommendations are nonrepairable in this evaluation."},"proposal_index":1}