Ensuring the quality of college learning is, beyond doubt, the most important responsibility of higher education accreditation. Yet, almost no one currently thinks that accreditation, especially at the institutional level, is what it should be for twenty-first-century students and institutions of higher education. In this article, the author…

The UK government's Green Paper, "Fulfilling Our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice", presents both significant challenges and opportunities for universities. Whilst the quantitative element of the proposed Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), underpinned by Big Data, offers the tantalizing opportunity to…

This article uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to interrogate the discursive construction of Chilean university teacher educators' professionalism in government initial teacher education policy and institutional policy enactment documents. The study examines the network of discourses--new managerialist, quality assurance, performance,…

Early childhood services in Australia that receive a 'Working Towards' quality rating are expected to engage in continuous quality improvement. This qualitative study investigated this expectation by exploring the experiences of educators in Working Towards services. The study implemented a social constructivist research design and involved…

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "'Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures--EduArc,'" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or…

Although several studies have examined how quality teaching and learning is defined and operationalised in the global North, there is a paucity of such studies in developing country contexts. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, the research applies Sen's idea of deliberative democracy to a multi-stakeholder evaluation of policy formulation and…

The ways in which university quality assessments are developed reveal a great deal about value constructs surrounding higher education. Measures developed and consumed by external stakeholders, in particular, indicate which elements of academia are broadly perceived to be most reflective of quality. This paper examines the historical context of…

A framework was created at the University of the West Indies to guide the development of 18 e-learning programmes. The framework is based on three principles for sustainable e-learning design: (1) stakeholder-centredness; (2) cost-effectiveness and (3) high operational efficiency. These principles give rise to nine framework elements: (1) a labour…

Quality assurance processes have been applied to many aspects of higher education, including teaching, learning and assessment. At least in the latter domain, quality assurance needs its fundamental tenets critically scrutinised. A common but inadequate approach has been to identify and promote learning environment changes "likely to…

Interest in quality is well established within higher education. This paper will critically review the most commonly used definitions of quality: fitness for purpose and value for money. It will point out that these two definitions are important but they ignore the emancipatory power of higher education and the development needs of academics and…

This article first makes a case for the need to establish evaluation reporting standards, support for which is rooted in the growing demand for professionalization, in the growing meta evaluation literature, and in growing efforts to develop reporting standards for inquiry efforts. Then, a case is made for a particular set of such standards…

The paper proposes and describes a framework for academic library quality to be used by new and more experienced library practitioners and by others involved in considering the quality of academic libraries' services and provision. The framework consists of eight themes and a number of questions to examine within each theme. The framework was…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to delineate an approach to quality assurance in education called networked improvement communities (NICs) that focused on integrating the methodologies of improvement science with few of the networks. Quality improvement, the science and practice of continuously improving programs, practices, processes,…

Purpose: This paper aims to apply the system evaluation theory (SET) to analyze the institutional quality standards of Oman Academic Accreditation Authority using the results chain and value chain tools. Design/methodology/approach: In systems thinking, the institutional standards are connected as input, process, output and feedback and leads to…

Observational citizen science is an effective way to supplement the environmental datasets compiled by professional scientists. Involving volunteers in data collection has the added educational benefits of increased scientific awareness and local ownership of environmental concerns. This thesis provides an in-depth exploration of observational…