Development and validation of a measure of the quality management practices in education

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to identify and confirm the most important dimensions in the quality management (QM) that can be applied in secondary schools, with the purpose of developing a measure instrument that can be used, with enough reliability and validity, for these educational institutions. This could help in knowing the school reality, pointing out the strong points and the areas of improvement. Our analysis emphasises QM practices (inputs), rather than quality performance (outputs). Starting from this diagnosis, proposals of improvement in coherence with the detected necessities could be elaborated, and a dynamic of continuous and sustainable improvement could be introduced. In the study that we present here, a panel of experts was constituted to carry out a type Delphi investigation with the intention of using their knowledge to discriminate among the different indicators of the scale and to specify which of them should be part of the measure instrument.

Keywords:

• quality management practices
• dimensions
• educational institutions
• indicators
• continuous improvement