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ENSURING THE QUALITY OF LEARNING THROUGH EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT EDUCATIONAL PROCESSES
J. Anttila
Professional quality approach has proven beneficial in all types of business and organizations. The field of education is no exception. However, many cases demonstrate that quality measures have not lived up to promises or cannot be considered satisfactory, and have even led to strong criticism. The essential question is not what to do but how to do it. In order to avoid ambiguity, we need to look into the professional basics of quality, and how they can be realized in practice in a natural way. The scope of this paper broadly covers the life-long learning of citizens from pre-school level to university level and organization-internal training and education of organizations’ leaders and employees. The presented approach is applicable also for learning senior citizens, disabled people, and expatriates in order to prevent their social exclusion.
General professional quality concepts, principles, and practices1, which are well established in the most countries and millions of different organizations, are not necessarily very familiar within education experts although they can be beneficial also in all practical learning situations. The most central concepts1 2, quality and quality management (QM), provide the foundation of the professional quality approach. Quality of education is determined by the degree to which the needs and expectations of all interested parties are fulfilled. Education organizations have many different interested parties, but the learner or student is the most important one. Quality of learning is to fulfill learners’ needs and expectations. QM means coordinated activities to direct and control the education organization and processes with regard to quality. Confusions have occurred between the concepts quality and grade. Quality is subjective satisfaction based on person’s rational, non-rational (emotional), or irrational (spiritual) perception. Grade3 is conformity to the specific requirements and requires objective and rational evidence.
The key question for quality is, how can we identify the real needs and expectations of the students and other interested parties of education. The law of satisfaction4 is: “If you treat everyone the same, what varies is satisfaction; for equal satisfaction, you must vary treatment”. Needs and expectations cannot be standardized and not even easily recognized. Focus in the educational needs is shifting from learning to know and do to learning to be and live together5. Basic learning needs consist of the learning tools of literacy, oral expression, numeracy, problem solving, etc. and learning contents like knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, etc. that in the modern society may be demanding. The broad scope of learning
1 ISO (2005/8/9), ISO 9000 series of standards, Quality management systems, ISO, Geneva, Switzerland
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
4 Johnston, K. (1993), Busting bureaucracy, Business One, Irvin USA
5 UNESCO (1996), Learning: The treasure within, UNESCO, Paris France,
http://www.unesco.org/education/pdf/15_62.pdf
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needs include ethics and culture, science and technology, and economy and society. With the needs and expectations we have to overcome tensions / dilemmas that relate to global and local, universal and individual, tradition and modernity, long-term and short-term, competition and equality, expansion of knowledge and human capacity to assimilate it, and spiritual and material dimensions.
Rethinking education is a necessity for skills for better socio-economic outcomes. European Union1 has recently recognized that education systems do not meet the requirements of the labor market.
Learning is the result of interacting teaching and learning processes (figure 1). Quality of learning is co-created by the education provider and the learner. Process management1 2, i.e. coordinated activities to direct and control the processes, is a professional prerequisite for quality of education and learning. Learning takes place through teaching material, human interaction, and technological means3 of the processes (figure 2).
Figure 1. Learning is the result co-created by the teaching and learning processes
1 The European Parliament (2014), On rethinking education, EU, http://ec.europa.eu/languages/policy/strategic-framework/rethinking-education_en.htm
2 Anttila, J. and Jussila, K. (2013), An advanced insight into managing business processes in practice, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, Volume 24, Issue 7-8
3 Anttila, J. and Jussila, K. (2013), Aiming at competitive products and delighted customers in the time of recession, in Quality against recession proceedings of the Symposium in Rovinj, Croatia
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Provisioning learning in the education processes through:
- G: Teaching materials (e.g. text books)
- H: Human interactions (teachers, colleagues, mentors, etc.)
- A: Automatic means (e.g. internet, social media)
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Figure 2. Provisioning learning in the education processes
Traditionally learning has been formal but today the most learning takes place informally that is supported by social interactive means1. We should question old learning theories1 2 like cognitivism, behaviorism, objectivism, and
constructivism. Now interacting and collaborating are keys of learning that have already created new learning environments, including social learning, Angry Birds education3, schools in clouds and open learning resources like SOLE (Selforganized learning environment)4, mOoC (Massive open online course) and Udacity5, etc.
Additional challenges and aspects are necessary for considering organizational learning and learning in networks society6, e.g. the whole society.
Education involved persons, like students, teachers, school managers, family members, authorities, etc. have their roles in education and their own individual characters to act in personal ways and influence the learning results.
1 Cross, J. (2003), Informal learning - the other 80 %, http://www.americalearningmedia.net/edicion-000/3-analysis/3231-informal-learning-the-other-80
2 Siemens, G. (2005), Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age,
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism. htm
3 Rovio (2013), Rovio exports a Finnish learning concept to the world, http://www.rovio.com/en/news/press-releases/364/rovio-exports-a-...1
4 Mitra, S. (2013), Build a School in the Cloud, http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html
5 Schuman, R. (2013), The king of MOOCs abdicates, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/11/sebastian_thrun_and_udacity_distance_learning_is _unsuccessful_for_most_students.html
6 Anttila, J. (2010), Integrated quality approach in business networks, in proceedings of the 54th EOQ Congress, Izmir, Turkey
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They should be taken and understood as holistic persons12 in teaching and learning processes (figure 3).
Figure 3. A person holistically in teaching and learning processes
Performance evaluations are key issues of established QM. Many evaluating models have been developed by different organizations for educational systems and learning results3 4 5 6 7 for different education levels and to be used at national or international level. These approaches are not consistently compatible and may be confusing. Evaluating effectiveness and efficiency of educational systems and processes differs basically from the evaluation of educational results.
Organizations’ self-made performance assessments are in general essential QM tasks but not widely established in the field of education. Strategic selfassessments aim at strategic decisions and enhancing the performance of the whole educational organization, and may use either (a) excellence models with focus on organizational learning, process refining and integration or (b) maturity models with focus on fulfilling prescribed performance criteria. We prefer the approach (a). Operational evaluation and auditing of the individual processes are for performance monitoring, control and diagnostics, and for performance improvement. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 Shusterman, R. (2011), Body consciousness, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY
2 Kort, B. (2008), The role of emotions in learning, http://www.globalnet21.org/cognition-affect-and-learning/#Insightful_Leaming
3 UNESCO (2012),General education system quality analysis/diagnosis framework (GEQAF), http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ED/pdf/GEQAF-_English.pdf
4 OECD (2013),The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/
5 The Economist Intelligence Unit (2014),The Learning Curve, http://thelearningcurve.pearson.com
6 NIST (2013), Baldrige education criteria for performance excellence, http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/publications/education_criteria.cfm
7 EQAVET (2014), The European Quality Assurance in vocational education and training, http://www.eqavet.eu/gns/about-eqavet/welcome.aspx
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National policy and targets for the Finnish general basic education have been defined in the official national education plans (“OPS”). The learning emphasis has changed in more than 100 years from ethics to psychology through transition from ethical objectivism (values forwarded by the teacher) to ethical relativism (values selected by the student)1.
Recently we have been exploring new approaches in education practices, e.g. based on positive psychology and character strength pedagogy2. This may open new possibilities to the application of quality methodologies. Now we also discuss a lot about the use of information technology3 in education and measures against school bullying4. 1 2 3 4
1 Launonen, L. (2000), Ethical thinking in Finnish school's pedagogical texts from the 1860s to the 1990s, University of Jyvaskyla, Jyvaskyla, https://www.jyu.fi/ajankohtaista/arkisto/2000/10/tiedote-2007-09-18-14-42-00-658059
2 Seligman, M., Ernst, R., Gillham, J., Reivich, K. and Linkins, M. (2009), Positive education: positive psychology and classroom interventions, Oxford Review of Education Vol. 35, No. 3, http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/positiveeducationarticle2009.pdf
3 Kashmanian, K. (2000), The impact of computers on schools: Two authors, two perspectives, http://technologysource.org/article/impact_of_computers_on_schools/
4 KiVa Program and University of Turku (2012), KiVa school - Let's make it together!, http://www.kivaprogram.net/program
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