Achieving Quality Learning in Higher Education

Peggy Nightingale, Mike O'Neil, Nightingale, Peggy, O'Neil, Mike

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136352478
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This study argues that there is little hope of maintaining quality in higher and further education unless those in academia share common goals. It demonstrates how results can be achieved if the principles of high quality learning are applied along with total quality management-type strategies.

Chapter 1

Defining Quality

In London the Centre for Higher Education Studies and the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics sponsor a seminar titled ‘Implementing Total Quality Management in Higher Education’. In Canberra, the Higher Education Council publishes the final version of its advice to the Minister in a paper titled, The Quality of Higher Education’. In the United States publishers race to bring out the next definitive statement on managing quality in higher education. Quality is the word. And, unlike ‘standards’ with all its overtones of elitism, it is not a word people seem to find difficult – except when they are asked to define what they mean by it. Most resort in desperation to Pirsig and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Our concern is with the characteristics of quality and the processes that may contribute to it.

However, we accept the point eloquently developed by our colleague Ron Barnett (1992a) in his recent book Improving Higher Education that there is little to be gained in a discussion of quality if you have not clarified what you mean by the term. So let us do a quick run-through of the various versions and declare our position.

The Quality in Higher Education (QHE) Project, based in Birmingham, attempted to develop a methodology for assessing quality in higher education (Harvey et al., 1992). A first step is to clarify the criteria by which different ‘stakeholders’ would make their judgements. In their summary document, the project team’s marketplace orientation to quality emerges:

There are a number of ways of viewing quality. Traditionally, quality has been linked to the idea of exceptionally high standards. A second approach to quality sees it in terms of consistency.… Quality in this sense is summed up by the interrelated ideas of zero defects and getting things right the first time. A third approach to quality relates it to fitness for purpose.… quality is judged in terms of the extent to which a product or service meets its stated purpose. A fourth approach to quality equates it with value for money. … A fifth view of quality sees quality as transformative. Education is not a service for a customer but an ongoing process of transformation of the participant. This leads to two notions of transformative quality in education, enhancing the consumer and empowering the customer, (p.1)

The problem with this approach to quality is not the market orientation: It is the number of assumptions, judgements and ideologies hidden in these five apparently straightforward ways of viewing quality. Barnett (1992a) has unpacked these ideas at some length; drawing on his argument, we would like to explore some of the issues that are buried in this paragraph.

Quality equals high standards. Standards are a set of criteria against which an enterprise is judged, says Barnett (p.55). Whose standards? The QHE project has revealed some common ground in broad terms, but substantial differences arise (Harvey et al., 1992, p.3) between students, staff, managers in higher education, employers, government, validating bodies, assessment bodies and funding councils. But even more important, what can be meaningfully done with those standards? The common position of governments is that universities will have to be judged against their own identified mission and goals because diversity in the system is desirable. As Barnett points out (p.55), if one institution sets itself a task of achieving at a very high level and another is satisfied to perform at a different level, and both are judged to perform equally well in one aspect of their mission – say, teaching – the second might be said to be outperforming the first because it had exceeded its own goals. On another tack, let us take the question of standards of degrees when there is increasing diversity in the system. The notion of ‘value-added’ has been suggested as a way of levelling the playing field when participants have started from very different positions on the education ladder. So it seems very likely that degrees could be awarded in future to students to whom they would have been denied in the past, and that students who succeed at one university may not have reached a standard acceptable at another where the input standard was higher. Barnett’s point is that there can still be a bottom line, one that is dependent on the conception of higher education as, at the very least, fostering higher order intellectual capacities in students:

unless they were able to form and substantiate independent thought and action in a coherent and articulate fashion, we would have to say that we were not in the presence of ‘higher education’, (p.58)

We think this statement could help define a standard for higher education but, in the end, the concept of quality as standards proves to be unproductive in the sense that it says and does nothing about improvement. No matter how comprehensively an institution meets the set standards, it should be thinking about and working toward improvement.

Quality as consistency or zero defects. In that this orientation to quality emphasizes the process, it seems more likely to assist in conceiving what quality might be in higher education. Let’s say that we have agreed that getting things right means fostering those higher order intellectual capacities. We can look at the outcomes to reach some conclusions about the quality of an institution. What evidence do students present that they can actually think and act independently, coherently and articulately? There is one problem. As Barnett points out (Chapter 2), the aims of higher education are not achieved by the teachers or administrators. The aims of higher education are achieved by the students. At least in theory it would be possible to get the processes right, offer a programme of study with zero defects and for reasons purely outside the control of the institution – say, a crushing economic disaster affecting all students in the programme – none of them achieves the overarching aim of higher education. Can the institution be judged as of poor quality? The way out of this morass is to decide to judge the processes themselves. To what extent does the institution, or more accurately, its programmes of study, offer intellectual challenges to the students which are likely to result in autonomous, critical, reflective and articulate students? So if we disregard the manufacturing vocabulary of zero defects, and if we can agree about a characteristic that distinguishes and identifies all higher education, plus others perhaps which distinguish particular institutions and courses in a diverse system, and if we do not judge the process by the outcome, this second view of quality might be a bit more helpful than the first. But that asks for a great deal to be discarded and/or agreed.

Quality as fitness for purpose. Barnett argues that fitness for purpose ‘can be an ideological term, wearing an apparent democratic concern on its sleeve, but all the while acting as a mask for a hierarchical view of higher education’ (p.48). So institutions are encouraged to find their own niche in the system, but in this diversity, some purposes attract more esteem than others and, hence, are judged to be of higher quality (and may be resourced in accordance with that judgement). All institutions are equal, but some are more equal than others. The other interpretation of fitness for purpose is of a parallel approach to quality assessment – institutions are equal but different, and no comparisons may be drawn. Carried to its extreme, this would mean that anything goes. A university may describe itself in any terms at all, set any mission, be fit for any purpose. It is not just that we keep stumbling over questions of whose purposes when we talk about fitness for purpose, it is that there is a basic logical incoherence in the approaches to quality that this view requires. But if we could agree on a unifying purpose, perhaps quality judgements could be made.

Quality as value for money. Once again we have to ask what is valuable to whom. The arguments are like those applying to standards and fitness for purpose. In addition, this view of quality forces us into input-output measures when what we really should be looking at are the processes if we seek improvement. If our conception of higher education is that it develops higher order intellectual capacities, and that this is its essence, the one purpose which is identical in all institutions and without which they cannot claim to be institutions of higher education, we cannot let quality be judged on grounds such as how many students can be pushed through the system at how low a unit cost. Barnett characterizes this as the black box view of higher education: ‘it does not matter what goes on in the black box as long as the quantity of desired inputs and outputs is achieved’ (p.20).

The demand for more and more evaluation and the application of performance indicators is an example of this black box approach. Many assumptions lie behind the notion that if there are data revealing some deviation from the norm, knowing the deviation will cause change for the better. Some of those assumptions may be valid – at least in a way – but others are dangerous. We are not going to have high quality learning just because there is a favourable staff/student ratio and a low rate of attrition in a department of a university, or any other combination of simplistic input-output measures. Perhaps the biggest danger is diverting attention and resources from the important and complex question of how can we achieve the conditions in which high quality learning is likely to take place to much less important questions of how can we collect the masses of data required for purposes of accountability. The universities already provide a great deal of information to government statisticians. The important question is whether the institutions or the government make effective use of what they already know. It was a wise person who said, ‘Weighing the pig doesn’t make it fat’. The corollary is ‘If you interrupt its feeding to take it to the scale, it is going to get thin’.

Quality as transformative. Now here we seem to have something because Barnett’s and our notion of what is the essence of higher education is exactly this, transforming the student, empowering her and enhancing her by developing higher order intellectual capacities which allow her to critique her experience and herself. We have a few problems with the shift in the language in the QHE report from ‘participant’ to ‘consumer’. The paradigm shift involved in accepting the notion that achievement of the goals of higher education is in the hands of the students requires something much more like participant than consumer. Also the view of quality in higher education as transformative requires a vision of the teacher as facilitator (Biggs, 1989) not as salesperson, and the student as active and committed participant.

What we have done so far is contrast two notions of quality – perhaps a bit unfairly because we have opposed one paragraph from a summary document with a fully developed philosophical and sociological argument. We have said that our concern is with the characteristics of quality and the processes that contribute to it. It is important for us to lay our cards on the table and say we agree with Ron Barnett. The essence of higher education lies in the intellectual challenge presented to students. Some institutions will also be concerned with basic research; some with applied research. Some institutions will emphasize their service role within their community; some will emphasize the education of traditional residential undergraduates. Some will contribute professional education and/or vocationally oriented courses; others will stress a liberal or general education. Regardless of the many variations possible within the diverse systems of higher education developing throughout the world, there is one overarching purpose that all share – fostering higher order intellectual capabilities in their students no matter who they are and at what stage of their studies. That is what we must all be concerned with in the long run. We will characterize high quality learning later, but our view is in tune with Barnett’s – we simply elaborate it in different terms.

Thus, we wish to move away from what we believe to be increasingly pointless arguments about whether students are inputs or outputs, or what the product of higher education might be. We could not agree with Ellis (1993b) that teaching materials or teachers’ behaviours are the products of higher education to which BS5750 standards ought to be applied, but to argue at length about the teacher-centred, student-as-irresponsible-sponge images of education this notion suggests to us would be diverting attention from the real issue which we believe is whether graduates are ‘able to form and substantiate independent thought and action in a coherent and articulate fashion’. If someone finds that referring to students as inputs or as customers and teaching materials as products helps them plan a strategy which leads to high quality learning which they can demonstrate by reviewing outcomes, well, we might not find the approach congenial, but if it works for them, fine. For us, thinking of our students as participants in the learning process or as partners who share their learning with us or as members of the university community helps us maintain focus on creating the conditions we believe necessary to foster high quality learning, but we aren’t going to argue about it. We prefer to expend energy on concern about demands from others for quality assurance requirements which undermine the possibility that high quality learning will be achieved. For instance, as Elton (1993, p.141) points out in his discussion of English and Scottish Funding Council quality audits, This direct coupling of quality assessment to funding decisions has serious dangers, in that it removes any real ownership of the assessment from the HEIs [higher education institutions]’.

This book will be about quality in higher education, in particular quality of teaching and learning, and about enhancing quality. Quality is already present in higher education in all of the systems with which the authors of this book are familiar. That is not, however, to say that those systems cannot be improved. Indeed, demands for improvement have been coming thick and fast for the past decade; unfortunately, those demands are rarely accompanied by acknowledgement of the existing quality and as one might expect, they are greeted with defensiveness and counter-attack. Just as we do not want to buy into attempts to define quality in higher education past that overarching conception of the ultimate mission of all higher education, neither do we want to become entrapped in charge and counter-charge about whose fault it might be that perfection has not yet been achieved.

Our concern is to try to discover how the various elements which interact to produce higher education as we currently know it may be encouraged to interact to produce higher education as we would like it to be, meeting the challenges of a changing world without sacrificing the achievements of the past. For many reasons, the interaction of a host of agents seems increasingly important in any discussion of higher education and quality. Those interactions will figure largely in this volume.

The approach of this book

To give an overview of this book: we begin by summarizing some of the statements, policies and recommendations of stakeholders (governments, employers, students, universities and their staff) in higher education on the question of quality and comment generally on some of the assumptions about teaching and learning and higher education that are revealed in those materials. Next, we try to step back from the detail which seems to dominate discussions of quality and ask, what are the characteristics of high quality learning and what are the conditions which are necessary to foster it?

We proceed to argue that if high quality learning is to be encouraged, all stakeholders in higher education need to understand learning better than they apparently do at this time. If learning about learning is necessary and we have a pretty good idea about how to encourage high quality learning, what is the logical design of a programme of quality improvement which will simultaneously foster high quality learning about learning by all concerned so that a continuous process of improvement begins? We look at action research and total quality management as strategies and suggest that either or both can provide a model in which both individual and organizational learning may occur. Finally, we return to the question of accountability and quality assurance and suggest that once again, trying to focus on the important issue of encouraging high quality learning may help to reduce wasted effort and direct energy where it will be usefully expended.

We offer a framework for reconsidering what has become a tortuous and convoluted argument among the various stakeholders about the nature of quality, how to measure it and how to promote it, and we offer a strategy for promoting continuous improvement and judging whether the main purpose of all institutions of higher education is being achieved. We offer a strategy but not tactics, which must be determined within the context of specific institutions and systems. The strategy involves promoting change and addressing the causes of resistance to change, but we do not suggest who the change agent(s) should be. We expect that staff developers will be involved but they may not be the driving force; too often simplistic assumptions are made that with some good will, some coercion and a lot of staff development, major change will take place. Just as the responsibility for high quality learning cannot be borne by academic staff alone, neither can the responsibility for promoting change be passed on to staff developers alone. There is a very large community of people involved in, concerned for, and mutually responsible for the quality of higher education; it is time they started acting like a community in the interests of quality.

In addition, we offer case studies of attempts, most of them continuing, to promote quality in institutions of higher education. These case studies are incorporated into the chapters where they are most relevant to the argument as it develops. Tactics, and assessments of their efficacy, are in these cases. We have collected material from institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom and have sought to present different approaches. As always we have learned from writing; we have also learned from our collaborators on this project and we are grateful to them for their contributions.

We have written informally and often in the first person in the hope that readers will join in the dialogue and learn with us. Preparing this book has convinced us that the learning must be as continuous as the improvement.

Chapter 2

Demands for Quality Assurance

Late in 1993 Australian universities were visited for one day by small subcommittees (four people) representing the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (CQAHE) which was given the task of recommending to the Minister of Employment, Education and Training how A$75 million of ‘reward money’ for quality should be distributed among the nearly 40 universities in Australia. It was known that the Committee was required to discover rewardable quality in no more than 50 per cent of the institutions. The reasoning was that institutions do not deserve a reward for simply ‘doing their job’; that is what they are funded to do. This money was to be an incentive to excel.

Each institution had been ‘invited’ to prepare and submit a document no more than 20 pages long making its case for claiming ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Chapter 1: Defining Quality
• Chapter 2: Demands for Quality Assurance
• Chapter 3: Challenges to Higher Education
• Chapter 4: Characteristics of Quality Learning
• Chapter 5: Encouraging Quality Learning
• Chapter 6: Learning and Action Research
• Chapter 7: Organizational Change and TQM
• Chapter 8: Judging Quality Outcomes
• Chapter 9: Towards a Community of Quality
• References
• Index