Editorial

This issue of Quality in Higher Education contains articles on a variety of subjects that are of continuing and current concern. The articles highlight the continuing importance of quality processes and the need for collecting and using data on all aspects of stakeholders’ experience of higher education. The articles draw attention to the value of historical analyses of quality assurance in a comparative framework. They evaluate current, focused activity within national sectors and they explore the relationships between quality assurance and the key stakeholders: students and staff.

Surprisingly little attention has been given to the impact of political and socio-economic contexts on approaches to quality management. Lee Harvey’s seminal article of 2005 is one of the few that has sought to place quality assurance in its proper historical context but few have followed his example (Harvey, 2005). In this issue, Keiko Yokoyama’s comparative study of institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom argues that uncertainty, anxiety and distrust following the 2008 financial crisis did not in fact reshape the risk management mechanisms. Yokoyama suggests that institutions were responding to immediate fiscal shortage rather than reforming their processes of internal control. Whilst an uncertain environment may have thrust the universities into reflexive mode, it was not this that brought about substantial, structural changes. Interestingly, this provides a good example of Harvey and Stensaker’s ‘weak’ quality culture (Harvey and Stensaker, 2008).

The pace of change and development in quality assurance in higher education can vary enormously. In their article, Hilary Winchester and Darryl O’Brien identify three modes of development and change in different case study countries. The first, in Oman, is gradual change, sometimes referred to as ‘logical incrementalism’ or ‘adding bells and whistles’. The second, from Australia, is discontinuous change known as ‘emergent strategy’ or ‘code by catastrophe’. A third ‘co-participative’ model incorporating stakeholder and community input alongside technical knowledge is becoming more frequent. The authors propose an ‘ideal model’ that draws from the best aspects of logical incrementalism and co-participative development.

Internationally, there has been a trend for many years for higher education to establish more rigorous external quality assurance (Martin & Stella, 2007; Altbach et al., 2010). However, in Ontario, there has been a shift to focus on internal quality assurance. In their comparative study of three institutions in Ontario, Qin Liu and Li Liu explore the extent to which there has been organisational learning. They argue that institutional change and organisational learning are inextricably linked and that organisational learning is occurring as a result of the interactions between the organisational domain of action and the individual domain of learning.

Quality in Higher Education continues to provide a venue for discussing focused implementation of quality systems and their impact. In this issue, Nienke Buwalda, Jozé Braspenning, Nynke van Dijk and Mechteld Visser evaluate a quality system (named GEAR; acronym for Combined Evaluation Audit Round in English) that has been introduced in several Dutch medical training institutions. The authors found that, despite some initial scepticism, the GEAR system has generally been well-received and helped to enhance the quality of medical education in those institutions.

In the last twenty years, there has been a challenge to traditional teaching in higher education which has led to a greater focus on learning and this has, at least coincided with the ‘quality revolution’ (Newton, 2002, p. 39; Williams & Harvey, 2015). In their article, which focuses on the Argentinian experience, Ariana de Vincenzi, Andrea Garau and Ariadna Guaglianone explore the impact that quality assurance processes have had on teaching and learning processes from the perspectives of their main stakeholders: students, teachers and academic authorities. They argue that quality assurance has stimulated important change and even empowered some institutions. However, the authors warn that there is, as yet, too little evidence of the longer-term impact on learning outcomes.

The debate about academics’ perceptions of quality assurance continues to attract attention, indicating that that question ‘Whose quality?’ is still a pertinent one (Williams & Harvey, 2015, p. 508). In this issue, Sonia Cardoso, Maria Joao Rosa and Pedro Videira report on the results of a national survey of Portuguese academics’ perceptions on quality assurance. The authors found that the survey indicates an unwillingness to participate in quality assurance processes amongst Portuguese academics especially regarding external assessment. The survey also indicates that they are not particularly critical of quality assurance, suggesting perhaps a certain lack of ownership. This represents a challenge for both institutions and quality assurance agencies.

James Williams
Email: [email protected]