This paper explores the impact of external accountability on four mechanisms of network-internal quality control and the properties of (mandated) inter-organizational networks. An explorative case study approach examines the external accountability of a newly established educational network (MAT) and how schools and the Trust are held accountable…

This paper assesses attitudes of principals from one German federal state toward school inspections. The discussion about school inspections and their acceptance can be imbedded into theoretical reflections on the design of and approach to feedback in social psychology. In our study, 50 school principals were interviewed about their attitudes…

Proponents of the concept of the audit culture in UK higher education argue that from the late 1990s onward audit functioned as a form of power control and had a profound effect on academics and their work. Such arguments continued to be made into the early 2000s. Since then, however, the level of external scrutiny surrounding UK academics'…

Authorizers are as varied as the schools they oversee. Some are responsible for just one charter, while others monitor hundreds of charters serving tens of thousands of students. Some are school districts, while others are independent statewide boards, universities, not-for-profits, or state education agencies. Regardless of their size and type,…

Purpose: This paper aims to develop and empirically test the performance-based higher education service quality model. Design/methodology/approach: The study develops 67-item instrument for measuring performance-based service quality with a particular focus on the higher education sector. Scale reliability is confirmed using the Cronbach's alpha.…

This study highlights the problems facing the inspectors of education as quality assurance agents and discusses ways of solving them in order to improve the quality of education in Nigerian schools. The study adopted a qualitative method to collect data from both federal and state inspectors of education in Edo State. Data was collected from the…

The purpose of the study is to describe the evaluation and quality assurance practices employed in the basic units of Finnish and Italian universities and analyse the impact of the Bologna process on quality assessment. The data consist of interviews (n=30) conducted in Finland and Italy. The results suggest that: (1) evaluation and quality…

This paper deals with the potential failure of evaluation in Italian universities and shows how it risks slipping towards ritual behaviour. The study uses empirical data collected with a closed answer questionnaire and a series of open interviews with top-level university representatives and evaluators to examine the real and potential influence…

The five Nordic countries and their respective quality assurance agencies have convened annually for over a decade to exchange experiences and discuss issues concerning quality assurance in higher education. In recent years this has resulted in a regional network for the quality assurance agencies (NOQA). During this period, methodological issues…

This article reports findings from 39 interviews from two Hong Kong universities and offers a critique of the RAE system. Respondents stated that the main emphasis in counting research productivity was on articles in prestigious international journals. There were many negative comments about this as the main quality indicator. Some respondents…

This article outlines a methodology for characterising features of programme-level assessment environments so that the relationship between features of the assessment environment and students' learning response can be studied. The methodology was developed through the detailed case study of nine undergraduate degree programmes: one in each of…

Quality assurance in medical education is a complex matter. Institutions and external critics of accreditation processes often question the objectivity of peer judgements. Members of accreditation panels similarly often feel at a loss for a lack of mechanisms to help them arrive at a collective assessment of the performance of an institution. In…

This study sought to discover if staff in a university department believed the 1998 Subject Review to be a valid Quality Assurance process and if its findings could benefit the department. Fifteen academic staff members took part in semi-structured interviews and the content of their responses was analysed qualitatively. Respondents described how…

This paper reports on results of three years (1988-1991) of state mandated external reviews of basic credential programs (elementary and secondary) at 33 California institutions of higher education. The review used teams of teacher educators, school administrators, classroom teachers, and other stakeholders to identify common strengths and…

Presents an interview with Richard Kunkel, Executive Director of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) from 1984-90 (a time when NCATE was undergoing a major change). Kunkel discusses the impact of accreditation and the NCATE redesign on the improvement of the teaching profession. (SM)