The Role of Monitoring in Enhancing the Quality of Education
“Nobody is against quality, so of course everyone is in favour of assuring quality”, a remark made in the opening chapter of her book Monitoring the Quality of Education by Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon (1996, p. 3).
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1. THE ROLE OF MONITORING IN ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
“Nobody is against quality, so of course everyone is in favour of assuring quality”, a remark made in the opening chapter of her book Monitoring the Quality of Education by Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon (1996, p. 3). The observation is to the point and more than two decades later of course still valid. As is the idea, that in order to assure quality, one has to monitor it (Willms, 1992). Nevertheless, teachers, educators, school leaders, policy makers, and scholars have different views on what quality actually is, and which standards consequently should be used to firmly assess that quality is assured. And the same goes for the monitoring practices for either maintaining or enhancing the quality of education. In this opening chapter we therefor will first of all discuss these issues, before we continue with discussing a basic typology of quality assurance models derived from the different perspectives that one can take. Thereafter we will give a concise overview of the contents of this book and the way it is structured. QUALITY, QUALITY ASSURANCE AND MONITORING
The term quality assurance was first used in the context of business and industry. These had clearly identifiable products or artefacts, for which it was not too difficult to assess and assure their quality (Kistan, 1999). Quality assurance started when the industry became mechanised and humans only played a small role in the assembly line. The workers did not have an influence on the final product and as a result, had less interest in the products (Gray, 1987). In order for owners of businesses to ensure the quality of their products, inspectors were introduced, whose main goal was to identify mistakes and then put mechanisms in place to ensure quality. This process, referred to as quality control mechanisms (Allais, 2009), led to assuring that quality products were being produced resulting in the term quality assurance. In the context of education Kistan (1999) came up with an amalgamated definition of quality assurance, which seeks to combine four distinct relevant dimensions (see Figure 1). The nice feature of the amalgamated definition is, that it combines all the intuitive notions about quality assurance as well as the way people talk about this in every day practice. The verbs (ensure, assure, etc.) all more or less have the same meaning or V. Scherman et al. (Eds.), Monitoring the Quality of Education in Schools, 1–7. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
V. Scherman & R. J. Bosker
Figure 1. Amalgamated definition of quality assurance (Kistan, 1999)
at least the same connotation. Notice, however, that the list of possible subjects of the sentence is very broad, from attention and attitudes to a system and procedures. The objects in the definition are consistent with the levels that one can distinguish in the educational hierarchy (learner, teacher, system). Of course “enhanced” is put next to “maintained”, since it stands to reason to improve quality when it does n
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