This next one is a monster, so I may do it in stages. It’s the Proceedings of the Association for Educational and Training Technology’s International Conference in 1992 in London. The editors are Malcolm Shaw and Eric Roper and they have amassed 38 conference papers as examples of different definitions of, and approaches to, quality, as “applied in a wide range of educational and training contexts” (from the abstract in the Document Resume). I will go through the papers one at a time as they are relevant to this study. While the chronology is rather distant, this collection gives a historical perspective from multiple viewpoints, rather than just one author.
Shaw, M. & Roper, E. Editorial.
The general topic of the conference, Quality in education and training, was chosen based on three motivators: 1) the growing government initiated climate of accountability; 2) performance indicators and monitoring of quality; and 3) the developing activities of sector-specific agencies through quality audit activities and quality assessment initiatives. They acknowledge Deming’s legacy in the quality movement without specifically naming him; instead, they merely allude to the rebuilding of Japanese industry after World War II as one of the origins of the quality ‘movement’ (p. x). They refer to the British Standard 5750, the precursor of ISO 9000, as being one of many perspectives presented in the papers. The authors do comment on the wide variety (they use “eclecticism”) of perspectives in the paper with the following explanation: “They have been written by practitioners wrestling with the problems of identifying and delivering quality in specific contexts, sometimes drawing explicitly on theoretical perspectives or attempting to adapt industrial applications of quality to educational settings, but often developing pragmatic solutions in response to institutional and external demands for quality assurance or in addressing day-to-day problems” (p. x). Apparently, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
1. Dicks, D.J. Designing organizations that learn.
Dicks questions the wisdom of trying to import what to him is an oriental concept of quality into an occidental culture. He views total quality management practices in Japan as foreign to Western practices. Apparently, he is not very well read or he would know that W. Edwards Deming, the man who took total quality management to the Japanese, was from the United States. His methods were based on statistics, an element of the universal language of mathematics (Walton, 1986). However, the issue does not seem so much one of ethnic culture, nor even quality culture, but rather of management culture. He notes the break from the ‘Fordist’ model of mass production to “work teams, job rotation and innovation replacing centralized control, task fragmentation, and regimentation or small-firm networks replacing large corporations,” citing Piore and Sabel (1984) (p. 3). He also notes five key elements in the Japanese model that contribute to the development of human and organizational capital: formal education, recruitment, deployment, remuneration, and information transfer. Are these concepts that foreign to Western management? At the time they may have been. He contrasts this to what he calls “The Anglo-Saxon Employment Model” as he calls the Fordist model which dominated English-speaking cultures at the time. Dicks seems to do a lot of hand-wringing about why the “Japanese” model cannot be implemented in a Western paradigm, including competitors, labor unions, and government oversight. However, since this conference dealt with quality in education and training, the remonstrations seem so much bovine manure.
2. Alexander, D. & Morgan, J. Quality assurance in a European context.
This section is titled “Perspectives on Quality in Organisations”; yet the first two papers deal with the culture of quality. Yes, there is such a thing as organizational culture. Every organization has one, some more outstanding than others. However, the author here is looking at how different cultures perceive quality, as exemplified in the variety of grading structures among the members of an English-French-German consortium of training leading to a BA in finance and accounting. In this case, not only are the grading scales different, the student must also pass the test in the cross-culture country as well as their own native one. And then the grading scales changed from year to year. Then the authors ask the real question: “What are we trying to measure?” Obviously, quality must begin with a common basis of comparison, which ultimately is the authors’ point. Therefore, the authors are really talking about the flip-side of the quality coin. They are really talking about the characteristics of the learning environment that can be described as having or being perceived as “quality,” i.e., “good.” They are not discussing the process of production, called “quality assurance” or “quality management” that leads to this characteristic. This is a common problem in this arena. Which “quality” is the writer talking about? The “quality” of the product, or the “quality” that is a part of the process? The assumption is that the latter will lead to the former and that the presence of the former proves the existence of the latter. It is an assumption that this study will neither verify nor dispel.
3. Hart, C. and Shoolbred, M. “What’s in it for me?” Organisational culture, rewards and quality
Again with the culture! Is there really a quality culture? These authors seem to think so. While many try to establish what they call a culture of quality, what they really are referring to is habits that, if practiced rigorously, will lead to consistency, which is sometimes equated with quality. The problem, it seems, is in getting people to turn in their old habits in exchange for the new ones, especially lower and middle managers who are used to getting results from the way they do things (p. 16). Change is, perhaps, the greatest challenge to implementing a quality program. These authors first define culture as the acquired patterns of behavior (habits) mentioned before. The authors see quality practices as being built from quality values. They cite seven core values from Linkow (1989): 1) customer focus; 2) employee focus; 3) teamwork; 4) safety: for employees, communities, and users of products and services; 5) candor; 6) total involvement; and 7) process focus: emphasizing the continuous improvement of all processes.
4. Payne, C.D. Quality and the academic administrator.
Payne calls “self-evident” the relationship between product or service and the process in which they are contrived. Her focus is on the branch of quality management known as TQM, or Total Quality Management (the Deming method) and three questions it engenders: 1) How are the internal customer/supplier relationships established? 2) How are performance indicators used? And 3) How are TQM principles applied in a non-TQ environment? (p. 22) With regard to question one, external customers in an educational environment are the students; internal customers include staff members, such as managers, teachers, and administrative/clerical staff. In terms of an educational setting, question two performance indicators for educational administrators include turnaround time; 24-hour response time for standard information; accuracy; sensitivity to different perspectives, value as an information source; use of secretaries. Question 3, applying TQM principles to a non-TQ environment requires several key features, including leadership and commitment, resources, communication, participation, and team building.
References:
Linkow P. (1989). Is your culture ready for total quality? In Quality Progress, 22(11), 69-71.
Piore, M. & Sabel, C. (1984). The second industrial divide. New York: Basic.
Shaw, M. & Roper, E., eds. (1993). Quality in education and training. Aspects of educational and training technology. Vol. XXVI. London: Kogan Page, Ltd.
Walton, M. (1986). The Deming management method. New York: The Putnam Publishing Group.
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