Drawing on other disciplines to define quality in bioethics education

Abstract

In light of the lack of scholarly studies on the determination of quality in bioethics education, this paper aims to elaborate the concept of quality, focus on its understanding in education and explore a definition of quality in bioethics education. The findings of the literature-based research indicate that quality is a multidimensional concept and its definition is largely dependent on the needs, expectations and perceptions of customers. Furthermore, in regard to quality in education, the plethora of stakeholders and different goals of each stakeholder preclude producing a unanimous definition of quality. After examining certain definitions and approaches of quality in other disciplines, quality in bioethics education is described as ‘conformance to the goals’. These goals refer to increasing ethical knowledge; improving ethical skills to strengthen ethical sensitivity, awareness and judgement; developing ethical behaviour; and promoting cultural competence.

Keywords:

• Bioethics education
• quality
• higher education
• conformance to goals

Notes

1. Editor’s note: This is a perceptive analysis although the author could not have known that the paper ‘Defining quality’ was written by Lee Harvey with Alison Burrows. Burrows withdrew her name from it as she did not agree that ‘value for money’ was a definition of quality. Diana Green’s name was added after she suggested some editing changes (which did not change the original five concepts). Green’s (1994) contributions to the book What is Quality in Higher Education? was written about the same time as ‘Defining quality’ but entirely separately and was intended to show the links between industry and higher education over the quality issue, rather than as a systematic examination of the concept of quality itself.