In accordance with the recommendation concerning the status of higher-education teaching personnel approved by the General Conference of UNESCO in November 1997, higher education institutions and their academic personnel have long been expected to exercise their intellectual capacity and their moral prestige to defend and actively disseminate…

As the sophistication of technology has increased, so has public demand for quality. This expectation of quality has occurred across a broad range of products and systems, including education. To meet the demand for quality, many products and systems (including educational ones) have become increasingly complex. Within education there are also…

Higher education institutions undertake a range of approaches to evaluating and making judgments about the quality of their e-learning provision. This paper begins by exploring benchmarking as one current strategy in common use in universities to identify and implement quality practices: from the use of checklists (for example, of best practices…

The arrival of the Total Quality Management (TQM) approach in higher education has brought both support and skepticism. Although consultants are busy selling tool-driven, seven-step workshops, it is not yet clear what the academic version of the approach will be or how it will evolve. (MSE)

This paper provides an introduction to a particular systems-theoretical approach to problem-solving in the management of education usually referred to as soft-systems methodology (SSM), developed by Peter Checkland in the 1970s. SSM should provide a powerful tool for managers in education at any level who have a strategic role because it can be…

This booklet presents information on how total quality management can be applied to school systems to create educational improvement. Total quality management offers education a systemic approach and a new set of assessment tools. Chapter 1 provides a definition and historical overview of total quality management. Chapter 2 views the school…

This paper discusses the increasing interest in quality assurance in British education including its measurement and management through the introduction of a quality assurance system. The reasons and benefits of beginning a quality assurance system are discussed, and questions of what constitutes quality, whether it is quality in fact…

Total Quality (TQ), is a customer-oriented philosophy of management that utilizes total employee involvement in the relentless, daily search for improvement of product and service quality, through the use of statistical methods, employee teams, and performance management. In the TQ framework, "internal" customers are individuals within the…

This book suggests alternative strategies and methods for construct validation, research, quality assessment of schools, and design and evaluation of new approaches to instruction. It is addressed to educational managers, educational researchers, and to faculty members and graduate students in education. The author deals with four problem areas in…