Managing Education Quality

Éva Balázs

National Institute of Public Education, Hungary

and

Fons van Wieringen

University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Approaches to Organizations and Quality

We start with an overview of approaches and concepts of quality: partly as a conceptual framework for the following chapters and partly as our own interpretation of the theme. Since quality of education is embedded in school issues and schools are organizations – let one considers their any aspects or agenst – the usable methods for determining quality in our view can be seen as rooted in the different approaches of organizational theories. These approaches to schools as organizations give rise to different concepts concerning quality in schools, and result in different approaches to managing (improving, assuring, developing etc.) quality, as is demonstrated in the papers below.

Classical and modern structural theory of organization

This approach focuses primarily on (formal) organizational structure and rational thinking as related to goal orientation. Organizations (and their structures) serve their respective goals. Moreover, structures can be adapted and improved to enable more efficient and effective fulfilment of goals by means of such measures as specialisation and task distribution. Schools serve particular social purposes as well as society at large.
Given the goals formulated in educational legislation and elsewhere, we should in principle be able to determine whether a particular educational sector and its sub-sectors function effectively. Using the goals in question, we can also evaluate alternative solutions for problems in policy implementation. The vocational education system, for instance, is designed – in keeping with the legacy – to advance the personal development of students in preparation for their social functioning as adults and to offer them theoretical and practical preparation for vocational practice. That preparation includes the general education and personal development training that only vocational education programmes can provide.
These goals are usually summed up in three categories of qualifications:

• professional (in the example: vocational) qualifications
• qualifications enabling further education/personal development
• social qualifications.

The goals must fulfil four criteria: to be formulated fairly specifically, to be consistent in terms of content (feasible at the individual and collective levels), to be flexible (allowing for adjustments to ever-changing conditions) and naturally attainable (feasibility should serve as a guiding principle) (Krijnen, 1993; van Wieringen and Vermeulen, 1995).
The formulation of goals should be specific as regarding:

• content (concrete, manageable, applicability to target groups)
• standards of measurement (unit of measurement, e.g. productivity per full-time employee)
• level (desired level of productivity)
• time span (the period in which goals are to be achieved).

Much progress has been made in the fields of teaching and educational psychology towards more precise and reliable establishment of educational goals. Creemer’s (1991) and Scheerens’ (1992) models of effectiveness focus on linking characteristics of education to goal fulfilment. Although these models are occasionally called models of institutional effectiveness, they are, in fact, models of instructional effectiveness while taking into account supportive and secondary processes which are important insofar as they are considered instrumental to goal fulfilment. As Scheerens (1995, p.107) observed, “… naturally, this view no longer applies where there is a causal relationship between an organization and a primary process structured so as to achieve optimal performance”.
Research on the fundamental knowledge that pupils need in order to learn at school offers little evidence of a significant relationship of this nature. In their outstanding 1993 article, Wang, Haertel and Walberg used a meta-analysis of studies on scholastic performance among school pupils to drew up six categories of theoretical factors that determine that performance: pupil characteristics; classroom characteristics; child-rearing background at home; the structure and implementation of the curriculum and instruction; the culture, climate and daily functioning of the school; and finally, state and district governance and organization¹. In essence, their findings indicate that variables at least one step removed from the daily experiences of pupils in policy and organization, have little impact on scholastic performance. In contrast, proximal variables are highly significant. These include psychological variables (especially cognition and meta-cognition) as well as classroom instruction, class management and the home environment. The model of objectives as developed in the model of effectiveness is very reliable – primarily because of its simplicity. It presents a clear criterion for quality and assigns importance only to factors that plainly contribute to goal fulfilment. Simple models such as this could serve to eliminate the unimportant issues in discussions on education, both at the academic and social levels.

System-based and contingency approach

This approach emphasizes contingencies. The contingency theory can be applied at two levels.
The contingency theory in the strict sense: situational factors influence organizational structure, which in turn determine effectiveness. This entails a practical, systematic approach. The contingency theory in the broad sense means that situational factors influence organizational structure. The main question here is how to explain the presence of organizational structure Y in situation X.
The situation factors include:

1. external situation factors
   • task environment (stable and dynamic environments in relation to internal structure)
   • external balance of power (adjustments made by the organization; environmental changes initiated by the organization; powerful external coalitions often resulting in intensive involvement in internal functioning: centralization)
   • national culture (organizations will adapt to their specific cultural environments; culture determines organizational solutions)
   • institutional culture
   • environmental context; and
2. internal situation factors
   • processing technology (tremendous leeway in organizing work processes; no deterministic relationship between technology and corresponding organizational structure)
   • size (the larger the size, the greater the bureaucratic engine: mechanical system)
   • age (old or new)
   • organizational strategy (as Chandler (1962) observes, structure follows strategy).
   • institutional goals (the problem in the field of education: standards for effectiveness and performance).

This approach views quality as the product of attuning an organization to certain contingencies. Is the structure suited to the environment? Thus the quality of organizations in a rapidly changing environment can be considered good where their internal structures are organic rather than mechanistic.

Population-based / neo-institutional approach

This perspective is not so much from within the organization, focusing upon its adjustments to the external conditions (the inside-out approach). Rather, the view is from the environment, focusing on organizations in terms of (the reasons for) their great diversity, competition, selection and survival (the outside-in-approach).
This outside-in perspective in the field of education is adhered to primarily by the government and such organizations as administrative bodies. DiMaggio and Powell (1991) distinguish between three mechanisms that generate institutional change:

1. Isomorphism imposed by political influences and the problem of legitimization. An organization avoids facing difficult questions by complying swiftly with institutional standards.
2. Adjustment-motivated imitation (mimetic isomorphism) as prompted by responses to uncertainty. Uncertainty stimulates imitation. Vague organizational technology, ambiguous goals and symbolic uncertainty created by the environment are factors that prompt organizations to base their structures on each other. In choosing their models, organizations tend to look to similar organizations in their fields with more standing or success.
3. Normative isomorphism is usually a product of professional development. Training and filtering serve to create groups of professionals who hold identical positions or share similar objectives. Professional development can be defined as the efforts of professionals to regulate the contents and conditions of their work themselves and to have that regulation validated by others. This process lends itself to homogenization in that every organization wants – at the very least – to match their competitors’ products or services. ‘Quality’ in this approach consists primarily of conforming to a school’s desired image – i.e. emulating ‘model’ schools.

According to Meyer (1994) educational sectors, such as secondary, vocational and higher education, can also be seen to comprise a stratification system. Prestigious and successful organizations are emulated. Organizational consultants play a key role in this process of diffusion. Under certain conditions, an organizational stratification system will have a major influence on organizations (op.cit, p.27). That influence is strong where central regulations are weak (due to the government or professional organizations). Regulations have probably been relaxed in the vocational and adult education sector. Central regulations, however, have remained firmly in place. The stratification system will also have a major impact where the organizations in it are supposed to have a uniform identity. In this respect, the mentality in the vocational and adult education sector has stumbled against a controversy connected primarily to the relationship between adult education and vocational education at the institutional level, as well as against a competence dispute between institutions and the national bodies governing vocational education. A number of schools in the sector view themselves as pioneers – or are encouraged to do so. The stratification system in the education sector appears to tend towards a single type of organization.

Power-based and interested parties approaches

In the types of theories outlined above, organizations share a common industry, content categories or line of work. In this category of approaches, the only common factor between organizations is their varying degrees of dependence on relations in their environment. The ‘power-based and interested parties’ approach focuses on the number of relations that organizations have in their environment and the nature of their dependence on those relations. Under this category we have grouped such approaches as the organization-set approach, the multiple-constituency or stakeholder approach and power-based approach.
The multiple-constituency or stakeholder approach (Conolly et al,1980; Mitroff, 1983) focuses attention on strategic relations in the environment. The quality of an organization is determined by numerous interested parties in the environment. More often than not, their interests differ. Consequently, an organization’s success depends on how it is valued by the stakeholders in question. That value, in turn, can be used to derive various evaluation criteria. Success or effectiveness is not, therefore, a quality of the organization in question, but a judgement on the part of interested parties.
Schools that hope to gear their policies towards the wishes and requirements of the environment must have a clear understanding of the configuration of interested parties and of their interests. This insight (according to Mitroff, 1983) is often lacking. In examining this issue, Mitroff discusses stakeholder assumptions, which can be classified with dimensions represening the importance stakeholders place on the institution in question and the degree of certainty regarding those stakeholders actions.
De Leeuw (1994, p122) defines stakeholders as parties who have an interest in an organization’s functioning: internal stakeholders, which are actors affiliated with an institution by virtue of employment contracts with the competent authorities, including the competent authorities themselves (as opposed to external stakeholders); and institutional stakeholders: organizations and institutions who represent third-party interests (as opposed to individual stakeholders).
Quality in schools is not a technical certainty easily measured by a few gauges. This is due primarily to the fact that schools are institutions with a fairly large range of interested institutions and groups. Unfortunately, not all of those institutions and groups concur in their views regarding school performance goals. From a school’s perspective it is important to know the views held by different groups and institutions regarding quality and to determine which set of quality definitions can actually be implemented. The four approaches to quality outlined above allow varying degrees of involvement on the part of different social groups in determining major criteria for effectiveness². Different groups will have different views on and interests in a school. Moreover, the methods and means they use to communicate – or occasionally to impose – those views and interests also vary. The questions below serve to identify requirements in four areas (see Krijnen, 1993):

1. Is the school acceptable to influential groups?
2. Is the school acceptable to teachers and students? Does it inspire loyalty and effort?
3. Is school performance satisfactory?
4. Is the school too dependent on the environment? Is it a toy for the environment? Is it flexible and capable of preventing and solving problems arising from unforeseen events?

Which institutions are involved in schools? Classifications for support groups can differ. We can use the following classifications (following Mintzberg, 1983):

• resource providers (central government, local government, employment stimulation provisions, employment agencies, businesses, private individuals)
• employees (organized as well as independent educational, administrative and support staff)
• clients (pupils, course participants, consumer companies and institutions)
• competitors (other schools, private-sector training programmes)
• affiliates (other schools, regional support groups, trade organizations)
• regulating authorities (Ministry of Education, other ministries, court decisions)
• supervisory bodies (inspectors, support groups, competent authorities).

All stakeholders will try to inform schools of their views regarding effectiveness and may even try to impose those views. In a certain sense, organizations such as schools can be considered to consist of an organized set of internal and external stakeholders. According to this view, also referred to as the multiple-constituency perspective, a school is like a system that generates differentiated views on effectiveness and applies those views for various constituents. In a certain respect, schools are systems comprised of an interchange between their constituents’ channels of influence. Organizations shift positions, so to speak, when their points of interchange shift.
According to this perspective, effectiveness is multi-faceted because there are many constituents. Effectiveness reflects the different areas of emphasis in evaluation among different constituents or support groups. Support groups are not disconnected in their functioning. The characteristics of a particular stakeholder are influenced by other stakeholders and support groups, as well as by stakeholders at large. Moreover, the qualities of a stakeholder are a function of other stakeholders and/or the entire system of stakeholders.
It is not necessary to serve all constituents equally at all times. The important thing is that coalitions develop between support groups and that the dominant coalition plays a key role in establishing the views on what constitutes effectiveness and the extent to which these criteria are being met. In these terms, educational quality is what the dominant coalition defines it to be.

Quality by Means of Multiple Approaches

The notion that quality depends on one selected approach does not appeal to everyone. There are professional individuals and organizations who prefer to combine different approaches. We will review briefly the views of Quinn and Rohrbaugh before going on to examine Kaplan and Norten’s multiple-approach perspective.
Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) launched a massive effort to develop a comprehensive overview of standards of effectiveness. They produced a four-theory model for effectiveness in organizations. In creating the model, they began by using three dimensions to arrange 17 criteria for effectiveness³. The first dimension formulated involves the orientation of the criteria: internal (e.g. cohesion, stability) versus external (e.g. growth, productivity). The second one bears on the structure of the organization. The relevant criteria here involve control and management (e.g. planning, efficiency) or flexibility and change (e.g. adaptation). The third dimension is relevant to the relationship between goals and means. Is effectiveness defined by the resources acquired or the results achieved? In combining the dimensions, they present four: the Human Relations; the Open System, the Internal Processes and the Internal Processes models.
These theories differ in their quality criteria, differences which go hand in hand with different orientations in schools. According to the internal bureaucracy model, schools are expected , first and foremost , to be aware of their own internal functioning. The availability and analysis of information is important to this orientation. Schools are also responsible to oversee their organizational structures and monitor accountability as regarding processes. Major activities include planning, scheduling and drawing up overviews. The open system model is oriented towards change. Schools based on this model focus primarily on changes and ideas worth implementing. Contact with external monitoring bodies and power-related aspects play a key role. These schools strive to increase external validation of the school. They are also politically alert, persuasive and influential. Orientation in the rational goals model focuses on planning processes, alternatives, activity distribution, performance evaluation and allocations. Task and work orientation, energy and personal effort are essential. Schools based on this model assume responsibility for envisioned performance and encourage teachers to work harder and improve their working methods. Orientation in the human relations model focuses on collective efforts, unity among teachers and efforts to find effective, common solutions to problems. Schools that apply this model are paternal in their dealings with staff and pupils/students. These schools support staff development and training.
An applied terminology of the theoretical framework used by van Wieringen (1996) the so called ABCD model, uses two axes: internal/external orientation and flexibility/managerial functions, consisting of four domains: adaptation (or responsiveness to the environment), commitment, co-ordination and goal orientation. Adaptation indicates the organization’s capacity to know, understand and adapt successfully to its environment (flexibility, external orientation; Open System model). The second domain involves the school’s capacity to create and maintain a structure of norms and values and also focuses on motivation and involvement. It obviously includes an orientation towards staff commitment (flexibility, internal orientation; Human Relations model). The co-ordination domain bears on the school’s capacity to organize and co-ordinate various tasks in school. It integrates organization, often by rules (managerial, internal orientation, Internal Process model). Goalorientation involves the question as to whether the school is capable of establishing and implementing goals and plans (managerial, external orientation, Rational Goal model).
Kaplan and Norten’s (1996) multiple-approach perspective was formed from an international research unit launched an attempt to produce a more extensive method of establishing performance than the standard financial formula used by accountants. This improved method was supposed to weigh a number factors against each other, including (a) short- and long-term goals; (b) financial and non-financial resources; (c) lagging and leading indicators; (d) internal (internal business processes) and external perspectives on performance (as held by share holders and customers) and (e) easily quantifiable performance measures and more subjective, evaluative performance measures. Kaplan and Norten’s so-called ‘weighted score card’ examines performance standards from the other three perspectives, focusing on a number of questions. How do clients perceive us? In what areas do we need to improve performance? How do share holders and other financiers perceive us? And how can we continue to improve and expand? (Kerklaan et al, 1996).
These four perspectives include the financial, the client, the internal organization and the innovation perspective. Examples of variations to these perspectives are provided below:

• the results perspective
• the client perspective
• the business processes perspective
• the learning capacity perspective.

The fourth perspective, learning capacity, focuses on innovation, quality improvement, training programmes, intellectual assets, implicit knowledge, etc. Incidentally, there are numerous, fairly different tools that function similarly to these perspectives in that they determine quality. These include critical success factors, performance-based adjustment, productivity measurements and a refinement system.
Every perspective focuses on different types of search fields where norms and indicators can be established. Let us now examine the other three perspectives in the light of the search fields, most of which appear in the papers below.

Client perspective: Maintaining client loyalty, client wishes, client satisfaction. Which aspects are really important to the client? Which business processes are most significant to client satisfaction? Which working methods help to improve performance? Efforts do not focus exclusively on managing ongoing operational procedures, but also on design processes aimed at long-term programme/service development. Operational and innovative processes are essential, as are maintenance processes. The preparatory and post-project stages in developing educational programmes are equally important.

Financial perspective: The standards already mentioned includes solvency, profitability and liquidity. Profits, growth and share prices are important to companies. The ‘score card’ has shown that establishing financial performance in terms of solvency, profitability and liquidity covers only one financial aspect. Companies are concerned with returns on invested capital and added economic value. Performance is measured not so much to acquire the most accurate possible picture of past results, but to determine the value of the criteria to predict future performance.

Innovation/ internal learning perspective: Is there any need for adaptation to new circumstances, new service provision requirements, new programmes to meet new demands? There are different ways to deploy an organization’s capacity for learning. One important distinction to be made is between reapplicable and discardable knowledge and experience in individuals. It goes without saying that when staff members leave a school, they take certain acquired knowledge with them, much like personal property. However, they also leave something behind in the organization, such as insight acquired with others, strategies, procedures, routines, contributions to discussions, databases, groups of relations, quality manuals, etc. A certain kind of exchange or model of conflict comes into play in these situations. It is in an organization’s interest to incorporate, insofar as possible, the knowledge acquired by an employee into internal and external systems of functioning and expertise. For the individuals in question, however, the prospect of having their contributions extracted and incorporated in a system in which they hold no stake is not always the most appealing. Often, replacement by an outside expert causes a temporary loss of productivity. What kind of infrastructure does it take to maintain quality in the long term? A good in-house training system can help organizations to advance the transfer of knowledge. After all, training systems can function as a kind of back-up, much as the educational system does for society at large.

It is not necessary to apply the score card to these four perspectives in particular. It can be applied to any number of perspectives , smaller or larger. We use the perspectives to examine a school as an entity. They can also be used to examine sectors, divisions, the base-level units of schools and the vocational and adult education system at large.

The balanced score card takes account of the importance of internal processes. Consideration of a school’s internal situation is, therefore, necessary in establishing a set of quality criteria to determine whether the school is realistically capable of fulfilling its function.

Educational Quality: Structure and Culture

The process of building structure entails shaping the structure of work distribution. Structure serves to unite different components (De Sitter, 1994). Structural parameters involve two systems relating to non-administrative and regulatory functions: the structure of production and the structure of administration. The first one consists of the architecture of the group and the links between non-administrative functions. The structure of administration consists of the architecture of the group and the links between regulatory bodies. The structure of production precedes and lays the boundaries for the structure of administration. Major changes can be introduced in the structure of administration without effecting changes in the structure of production. The opposite does not apply.
Structural parameters include centralization (central or delegated decision-making and authority), configuration (number of levels, number of units), formalization (written establishment of procedures and powers), standardization (activities and procedures based on a fixed pattern), specialization (differentiation in tasks, functions) and dependence (interdependence between segments of the organization) (Ax, 1993).
Schein (1985;1992) defines culture as a pattern of basic premises that a group devises, discovers or develops by learning how to adapt externally and to integrate proven solutions internally – a pattern presented to new members as the proper approach to problems of adaptation and integration. An effective solution recognised as such by the members of a group can undergo cognitive transformation, thereby resulting in a view or even a basic premise. Once the transformation is complete, the group members are likely to forget that the solution was ever at issue. However, not all solutions undergo such transformations, including:

• ineffective solutions based on certain values
• certain solutions, which, strictly speaking, are impossible to test. In these cases, a process of social validation is possible.

Do different organizational cultures exist within and between institutions? And do these cultures have any bearing on the effectiveness of the institutions in question? Are some cultural structures more beneficial to the functioning of an organization than are others?
Let us follow Smart and Hamm (1993) in assuming that the culture in institutions for vocational and adult education can take on four forms. The first of these, the clan culture, is characterized by close involvement on the part of all parties and intense participation in the decision-making process. A group-oriented culture of unity accentuates commonly endorsed views. Interaction with the outside world is reactive in nature. Internal processes are based on trust. The management serves primarily in a supervisory capacity.
The second culture, the task-oriented culture, is marked by intensive efforts towards renewal and contact with the outside environment. Enterprise is highly valued in this culture. Contacts with the outside world are initiated by the institution itself. Internal processes are strongly based on the importance of tasks and efforts to the change initiated. The management serves as an entrepreneur and an initiator of renewal.
The third culture can be described as a hierarchical culture characterized by clear lines of authority, a centralized structure and an emphasis on order and equal treatment. Dealings with the outside world are marked by defensiveness. Internal processes are based on formalization and regulation. The management acts as an administrator, an organizer.
Finally is the market culture, which often launches market-oriented initiatives and engages in activities aimed at responding to possible future developments on the market. Emphasis in the market culture focuses on competition and client service. Dealings with the outside world are open and internal processes are based on the assumption that the institution will reward good performance. The management functions like a manufacturer, an engineer.
Although none of the institutions for vocational and adult education would fit into any one of these four cultures, individual institutions are more closely matched to one particular category than to others. It is possible, therefore, to use – albeit in varying degrees – these four cultural categories to draw up profiles for individual institutions. In actual practice, however, that task is more complex. Institutions for vocational and adult education consist of a set of educational programmes for a fairly broad range of target groups in different locations and under different conditions. These institutions can combine say youth education with adult education, or training for middle managers with very elementary courses.
Thus, the question is not limited to determining the cultural category of an institution. More importantly, it involves establishing the cultural profiles for the organization’s different segments. How do these profiles differ from one another and from those of the average institution?
If these cultural differences exist, they have any bearing on the effectiveness of institutions? In examining this question, we will draw on a study by Cameron (1983) in the United States. His findings were later confirmed in adapted research by Lysons (1990) in Australia. Cameron established nine standards for effectiveness, which together span quite a broad spectrum of types of effectiveness. The standards, which cover three of the four criteria for the ‘weighted score card’, are listed here in consecutive order: student satisfaction with education; progress in the students’ scholastic performance; use of the career advancement opportunities available; personal development in students; satisfaction regarding teaching; administrative and support staff; the professional development and quality of teachers; the institution’s openness to the outside environment; the institution’s capacity for resource acquisition; and finally, the institution’s ‘health’ in its capacity for flexibility and dynamic functioning.
Do institutions with different cultural profiles also score differently on effectiveness? According to Smart and Hamm’s (op.cit.) findings, the task-oriented culture is the most effective. Institutions marked by this culture had the highest scores for dimensions of effectiveness. The group-oriented culture of unity and the market culture followed in second place. And finally, the hierarchical culture was found to be the least effective.
Culture contributes to effectiveness in that it contributes to adaptation to external conditions as well as to improving and maintaining internal integration. A culture cannot simply be chosen. It can, however, be steered. The question is in what direction. The relationship between culture and effectiveness suggests a certain course. Institutions with problematic external relations would probably be wise to steer their courses towards adopting task-oriented cultures. Moreover, institutions clearly troubled by internal integration problems would probably do well to shift towards a group-oriented culture of unity.
Does the same also apply to the different sectors, divisions and locations of institutions? In all probability, it does. It is vital, therefore, that institutional management takes note of the cultural profiles that characterize the different segments of the institution. It goes without saying that an institution stands to gain even more from a study of these differences aimed at determining whether they are conducive to the effectiveness of the division, sector or location and the institution at large. In examining this question, we should avoid a narrow view of effectiveness. Instead, we should take account of the broad spectrum of an organization’s dimensions as we have done throughout our discussion above.
The interaction between structure and culture is researched in different papers in this volume. From the point of view of Erculj from Slovenia there are three dilemmas to be considered. The first is whether the term ‘quality’ can be defined and understood regardless the context from which it emerges. Second, the nature of ‘culture’ creates difficulties in finding what can be measured and how. And though the strong positivist tradition is the only one where measurement is ‘not a problem’, this epistemological extreme does not necessarily appear in using terms and different methods in quality measurement. Measurability and measures obviously imply the construction of a model and if this construction is implicit, it can lead to confusion. A third dilemma is the width of the term ‘quality’⁴. Dealing with school effectiveness and improvement everyone sees that ‘schools make a difference’ and there are serious efforts to find factors and indicators seem to be contributive to reveal the differences. There are some added points of views to this dilemma in this paper, underlining the danger of any uncritical adoption of approaches and methodology to quality management on the basis of a specific national context. Accountability towards quality is also a dilemma, discussed by introducing three approaches on who can be judge, on distinguishing how they use of quality (as a relative or absolute concept) and, thirdly, on relating it to ‘specific professionalism’. The so called crossroad-situation of the writer’s country in quality management, outlined in the paper, gives a fair picture of the consequences of the dilemmas and on the ‘long development journey’ that quality improvement entails.
Cultural elements in issues about quality in education are inevitable on the school level. The interrelation between head and staff, has a direct effect on the evolution of the quality of the institution, as it is revealed from an empirical research on micropolitics by Berg⁵. The research investigated the social phenomena of school life, aiming at the relation between the school head’s strategy and the teachers’ occupational ethos, called esprit de corps. The paper draws attention to the cultural and value aspects of change. The challenge of “extended teacher professionalism” (Hoyle, 1980) splits teachers who conceive new challenges towards schools and their broadening tasks not as problem solving but in their relation to their boss. This framing can lead to a situation where the problem solving serves not a ‘qualitative’ change: in the investigated institution the result of the positively-judged changes had become counterproductive. The downfall of the innovative but personally and managerially problematic school head has returned the school to the former daily routine that – owing to the strong traditional core of teachers – is resistant to any response to real needs. The paper is interesting also methodologically: the school culture analysis aims at many qualitative aspects of the key agents of school quality. The teacher interviews were based on three dimensions of the school culture: co-operation, planning and relation to change. These horizontal determinants of the school culture were combined with some vertical ones: individual position of the interviewee, openness and activity level of school and role/position of school head. Fine details of the interviews involve readers in the real situation and assist in the understanding of school organization culture as expressed through the three investigated dimensions. It is also revealed that this kind of ‘dysfunction’ of school culture is not independent of the wider historical, sociological and cultural context of the education system.
Cultural aspects and values are also considered in other papers in this book. Thus Sundström argues for the reconstruction of teachers’ way of thinking and working together through a systematic approach to pedagogical discussion for quality assurance. The future is a general concern of other papers and here it is emphasized in a touching way. The developments in Swedish education during the last decades have influenced physical and intellectual infrastructure and the culture of schools and of teachers’ work. Identifying future needs, in terms of paradigm shifts and the consequences for teachers, is not easy. The key approach of the paper is to a kind of re-professionalization through a collaborative work culture. Using Fullan’s (1991, 1995) guidelines, the school represented in the paper started to form a professionally supported programme to be beyond the ‘Taylorian school system’. The so-called Research Circle offers an arena for teachers to understand and accept each other, to reach continuity and to involve participation in school life. This pedagogical talks start – naturally – with discussion of everyday problems, but achieving more reflexivity level and background knowledge can give the chance to have consensus and to deal with more complex and general issues that – the writer is convinced – can lead to meeting future social requirements and assure a higher quality of school. To assure quality in education, there needs also consensus among different agents of education from administrative level through municipal to individuals. The group, having a common platform of commitment to quality and continuous improvement (what, how and why to act), has constructed a structural flow chart incorporating a vision of the future, which can contribute to the ways in which teachers influence this future through their natural effort to produce ‘quality’ in their work. The school head is a key person in the process.
The same aim can be detected in the paper by Verbiest, dealing with quality-oriented culture in schools. The starting point here is that one should have a clear view on quality assurance and what is meant by the term, which is based on the distinction between two philosophical determinants. External philosophy focuses on accountability (whether the targets are met) though the internal one focuses on development (including establishment of new targets and their realisation). Quality assurance of the school should include both focuses but it requires also the ability to distinguish between the two positions. Considerations on this for a school head and staff are described by examples of recent processes and present trends within the Dutch education system. The main consequences of the considerations school heads and teachers are significant: school heads’ position is to be shifted from a leading professional to a chief executive and teachers’ autonomy has become controversial; autonomy, the key factor for their professional work is under pressure of innovation and accountability. Both trends have created a paradoxical situation for quality assurance in needing to maintain a balance between the autonomy-demanding internal and the innovation- and accountability-generated external philosophies. Restricted and extended professionalism complicate the picture. In the Swedish research above dangerous effects could be recognised in school policy making, owing to a strong opposition group of traditionalist, restricted teachers within the school. The problem here is also attached to the school policy and arguments are made for the need for gaining teachers’ willingness to accept and work for a common base of policy at their school-level work. This is also argued for by Sundström. Consequences are similar in emphasising: collective learning, involving, digesting, absorbing, interpreting, storing and using information. The development of organizational culture seems to be a process of permanent forming and re-forming different meanings by discussion and seeking for a common base, and this statement is described in a vivid way in the paper. Accountability means not only meeting legitimate external requirements but new forms of co-operation between school heads and teachers. The likelihood of success in this depends much on creating a common vision of the desired future, which should take account of the dual pressures of autonomy and innovation/accountability – the process is reported in the paper – in order to ensure a quality-oriented school culture.

Educational Quality: Improvement and Professional Development of the Staff

Others of the papers of this volume show that schools can be compared to a compromise between autonomy and co-ordination. This compromise is difficult to achieve given the tendency to want more of the advantages of autonomy and co-ordination, such as more freedom for teachers to exercise professional judgement and more freedom for the management to require accountability and responsibility (Shedd and Bacharach, 1991, p.5). The recent tendencies towards the shared responsibility-system in the delivery of educational services, investigated in five East-Central European countries (Fiszbein, 2000) also show the difficulties of this compromise at different levels.
At present, teachers are claiming greater autonomy. At the same time, requirements regarding accountability and co-ordination are becoming more stringent. The more goals a school has or is forced to undertake, and the more diverse or heterogeneous the pupil population, the greater the obstacles to increasing teacher autonomy as well as to co-ordination in the school. Schools are subjected to very different requirements by a vast range of groups. All these groups differ where it concerns school interests in registering students, acquiring resources, support, etc. In other words, schools never serve any one particular goal. Rather, their goals are always numerous. Scale expansion usually entails meeting a broader range of expectations. More goals give rise to more complex functioning. Fewer goals make it easier to oversee the different aspects of organizational functioning.
In establishing plans, schools devote attention to improving the qualifications of staff members. Such improvements are achieved through fairly formal channels of training for teachers. The working models and methods applied also serve to improve qualifications and may even be more effective in doing so. Learning and work are also easier to combine within a school context. By applying certain working methods, teachers can become more skilled in their jobs. Teachers can also learn from one another. That learning process can be reinforced by co-ordination, good colleague relations and coaching. Our vision is to forge links between (a) basic training and in-service training for organization members (i.e. teachers, school managers and support staff) and (b) basic training and in-service training for components of the organization as well as the organization at large. Learning processes can be geared strongly towards individuals (updating professional skills). They can also be structured on colleague relations (learning from colleagues). These learning processes can be linked in varying degrees, weak or strong, to an organization’s development. All professionals are personally responsible for self-study in order to update their professional knowledge. Colleagues consult each other regarding problems. Regular discussions of various practices and new insights also contribute to the learning process. Employee evaluation, staff training and development programmes are a few of the instruments used to expand capacity. In this respect, sufficient resources are available for developing indicators.
These issues appear in Brzdak and Oldroyd’s case study of an attempt at school improvement. The partner countries of the project (Poland and UK) illustrate the integrating Europe by professional co-operation. The project, supported by an EU PHARE programme, presents an example of successful school improvement in an upper secondary school in Poland. The development work was productive in a previously weak school within a short period, meeting the expectations of education administrators, school maintainer, parents, pupils, managerial and teaching. Forming and implementing a change strategy have played an important role in the result. The strategy was based on choosing the most important indicators of an effective school, which were taken into consideration by questionnaires, filled in by different agents of the school life: teachers, parents and students. The partly quantitative and partly qualitative indicators were then analysed by mixed groups of the respondents, to discover and to establish the main areas of future school improvement. And though the meaning of an ‘effective school’ were judged differently in many cases, the process succeeded in coming up with common preferences. A fair system of student assessment, for example, was identified by both parents and pupils as being a necessary step forward. Teachers, whose interest was based more on their working conditions, had to realise that this indicator of effectiveness is inevitable and teaching-learning standards have to be raised by also creating a school-based assessment system, “statistically valid and readily understood”⁶ at least at the school level.
On the basis of the accepted priorities the management team elaborated a detailed action plan. It came to light that changing the organization structure was a precondition for the needed change and it was soon done. Changing the school culture seemed to be harder, therefore a school-based staff development programme was established and conducted by external professional support. Reader can find in amazing details how school climate can be improved within a very short period in a school, working among not outstanding working conditions and lack of economic welfare. Caring for the socio-emotional state of pupils and of teaching staff, expressed in an acronym, BASIS (belonging, aspirations, security, identity, success), ensured that responsibility for success was raised. Besides the colourful description of the project and analyses of the process of change, the teaching staff, participating in the project, sends a message by publishing their reflections on the experience they had in the improvement period.
Using theoretical knowledge and implementing research findings in school improvement in a project of Iceland, Hansen also demonstrates that the > How school effectiveness and quality is conceived by teachers and school heads is investigated by Baráth’s comparative research which shows the main findings of the Hungarian section of the research project. Using the Competing Values Framework (CVF) (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983), Baráth gives an overview how people, working in educational sector, think about success and effectiveness of education; what kind of characteristics of these conceptions, which indicators of success and what tools, influencing it, are there in their mind. The context of the research is a phenomena of recent and present processes throughout Europe, discussed in many different points of views in this volume even before and after, the growing competitive characteristic of educational sector. That is why that dimensions of the used framework seemed to be relevant for Hungarian education, too⁷ . As well-known, the CVF model uses quality as central criteria of its sub-models and this explains its popularity for organization theories and for quality issues of education. Data and methodology of the research is fairly introduced in the paper, which reveals the most interesting findings on that how the current model is applicable for a so called transition country in Europe. It is shown that school heads consider both indicators of effectiveness and tools of gathering/evaluating that similarly to teachers but as to their managerial approaches are concerned, there are differences between the two groups. What is common: professional development of teaching staff, motivation of pupils, differentiation of teaching-learning and regular student assessment are seemed inevitable. These mirror that heads and teachers are also convinced that quality of school is brought to be an issue on school level. But it came to light from the research that those complex and qualitative indicators like the long term effect of education cannot be handled within the school in an efficient way because of the lack of indicators of these kinds and methodological culture in using them. It is also piled on a kind of mistrust towards ‘high level’, ‘outer’ national-wide assessments and new examination system to be introduced these years. Tools serving school effectiveness like pupils’ development follow up or active learning/teaching methods are rarely present in school life to highlight the need of future organizational developments. Using the CVF model in a questionnaire of having 85 statements on its four models, the research explores significant differences in school heads’ and teachers’ mind, expressed by fitting to different types of the model. The changing paradigms in Hungarian schools appear in the diversity among values, expressed in the chosen statements. It appears also in the significant choices of heads and teachers, showing their different openness towards new challenges in schools, e.g. the relation to the surroundings, adaptation to their requirements, support for individual ambitions within and outward of school. The findings of the research are to give help to school- and different policy-level quality-agents in their self-reflexivity on their opinions and the consequences of them for effectiveness and for future developments.
Value-dependence of quality is also emphasised by the Roncelli-Vaupot paper, which puts its conceptual basis and approaches of scientific literature into the Slovenian context from the point of view of a school head. This stand-point is explained by the fact that in all recent initiatives and activities of educational quality assurance in the country school heads are perceived as being the essential people. As it was shown also in the former paper, perceptions of these agents of education are – or can be – relevant indicator in auditing the present state and the possible future in quality management. This consideration here was used by preparing a small investigation, in which the author illustrates what quality improvement is meant by Slovenian school heads. Since the result proves for the researcher that there is a lack of having systematic approaches to quality, the study makes a trial to make clear this ‘elusive term’. Dilemmas concerning Sallis’ (1993) concepts on quality are serious for school heads: while quality as an absolute concept pushes quality comprehension into an elitist direction, the relative concept, ‘fitness for purpose’, can lead a demonstrative or even illusory direction of quality improvement processes. This concept raises two other problems. Complexity and specificity of educational quality, as it was emphasised also in several former papers, are mentioned here as those can endanger standardization efforts of professionals for school level agents, among them school heads. Customer needs mean another problem in considering quality for a school level quality manager. Well known approaches to quality: quality control, quality assurance, quality management systems and Total Quality Management (TQM) are analysed in the paper from this point of view, giving arguments for school heads’ specific considerations and determinants on the issue. The consequences of these considerations for the role of school heads are expressed in a term ‘appropriate leadership’, which expresses the need for leadership to fit the approach used for quality improvement. There are lively examples showing what a certain approach allows and what makes for difficulty in the school head’s relations with maintainer, local bodies and teaching staff in the complexity of the entire system of quality management. TQM here is seen as a philosophy of continuous improvement where management and leadership aspects of school head’s roles overlap each other constantly. The latter involves both transactional and transformational leadership but there is a danger concerning unreal connotation of ‘totalness’ of TQM for school heads. That is why they should be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of different quality concepts. As will be familiar to the reader by now, the main point to be considered here is that this long-term process needs the building of a common culture of continuous improvement, initiated and managed by school heads within and out of school.

Educational Quality: Instrumentation

As can be seen, quality is an issue which relates to, and sometimes reinterprets, the traditional basic questions of education management: organization development, culture, school improvement, leadership, effectiveness and so on. This peculiarity sharply appears in a paper by De Meester and Mahieu which deals with the ‘opposite’ of quality and investigates complaints. It is also a type of cultural analysis, based on a case study of the application of the non-discrimination declaration in Flemish schools. It deals with the school clients’ reactions on their negative feelings, being discontented with the quality of the school. The framework of the paper is that education is a public service where thinking about quality cannot reject consideration of the customer-driven quality concept (Murgatroyd and Morgan, 1993) and where complaints should be accepted as legitimate. Managing this kind of problem in school seems to be an issue of managing school in a ‘wild environment’ (Carlson, 1975), but parents are in many respects defenceless towards schools. Being at teachers’ and/or school head’s mercy, complaints are critical incidents that define the client’s trust in and relation to the school. Knowing this and creating a situation of mutual confidence between the affected agents, teachers and school, heads can gain from this negative phenomenon by being able to recognise problems and make adequate corrections. The study describes possible processes for expressing and accepting complaints and explores arguments to convince schools not only to accept but to use explicit dissatisfaction for quality improvement as an integral part of institutional policy-making. The term ‘complaint-sensitive school’ can contribute to quality management since, as is shown, sensitive educational organizations do not try to avoid or prevent complaints but avoid making the same mistakes again. This is just the management of a learning organization.
The paper demonstrates that the issue of complaint management is especially relevant in cases of having immigrants in school, where families do not have the national culture and tradition of behaviour in either society or in school. The issue can be even more relevant for a widening Europe where different subcultures meet in the affiliation process at the turning point of the century, growing a more open society. As is evident, the so-called ‘European unification’ is more than a goal for Europe having a better world market (in its narrow sense), it is also important to have societal achievements in improving the common society and incorporating schools within that. The principles of complaint reception and the setting up of a ‘complaint service’ in schools are shown in the paper to contribute to both school improvement and to ‘piecemeal social engineering’⁸.
Organizational learning is focused on the future. It extends beyond the professional development of teaching and other staff because it involves other aspects of the organization. Although it appears to be a very promising field and our book add to it, it is under-developed and marred by a great deal of ambiguity and numerous flimsy ideas.
An organization can devote attention to its own organizational learning process. The processes of learning and change can run in succession or take place simultaneously. A change in an organization can prompt a learning process aimed at facilitating that change. Conversely, the processes can take place in the opposite order, in which case the change in the organization is a by-product of the learning process. These two types of processes can also occur simultaneously. Efforts towards improving the qualifications of teaching staff through basic or in-service training can be structured in plans for basic or in-service training programmes. Those plans, in turn, could comprise part of a broader process of collective learning⁹.
The task of inducting new staff is an important aspect of staff management and requires instruction, integration and modelling behaviour. The purpose is to improve the interplay between the individual and organizational learning. After all, organizations not only teach, but also learn from their members. The question is how a school can retain a broad base of experience gained by individuals. How can experiences be selected and incorporated without limiting the scope and variety of experiences (Sitkin, 1995)? The more diverse a school’s internal resources in terms of systems, procedures and staff capacity, the better able it will be to adapt to unforeseen problems. The task of making intelligent choices requires effective development of available options. How do schools develop these options and how do they maintain variety? Finding indicators here is no easy task. Nonetheless, it appears to be potentially significant in that it links teachers and schools.
That is why one of the trends in dealing with quality in education is connected to its measurement. It means dealing with the problems of measurability, possible indicators, methodological issues and ethical considerations of judgements and of actors in quality measurement. A striking representative of this trend is the paper by Fitz-Gibbon. For her it is very important to emphasize that the market-based value judgement cannot be an adequate gauge for educational quality. She quotes George Soros: “… as a market participant, I try to maximise my profits. As a citizen, I am concerned about social values: peace, justice, freedom or whatever”. But the generally-used measures of educational quality – concerning pupils’ achievements, teachers’ work, the schools’ efficiency or the quality of the system – tend not be pay much attention to social concerns. Nevertheless society and education itself also need feedback which is served in the market economy by profit, a simple but adequate measurement of outcome of the activity. It is evident that such a social sector as education does need measures that can be sensitive to a wide range of social requirements. That is why there is a scepticism in societies and among educational professionals towards ‘hard measures’. But another kind of tool, serving a so-called qualitative feedback in education, inspection – the British example is cited – has its serious limitations and neither can provide statistically valid data nor systematic analysis¹⁰. The system described is based on value added indicators, used in many British schools. The paper illustrates a delicate combination of serious mathematical-statistical instruments, a thoroughly prepared and adequately used methodology based on a faith in science and on the awareness of professionals’ ethical responsibility in identifying and using data for quality management in education.

Educational Quality: National Issues

The following two papers, coming from so-called transition countries, deal with macro level issues of quality management in education. The first country example, by Zelvys, has similarities to the later Slovenian paper, aiming at changes in the quality assurance systems of a country, in this case Lithuania, embedding the change processes through different approaches. Bush’s (1995) formal, uncertainty and political approaches are seen as relevant for analysing the specific national context. The formal model, being typical in the Soviet times, has been significantly reduced because of various changes taking place in recent years, but some new elements of this approach have also appeared. They – such as examinations, setting standards for secondary education and for the teaching profession, establishing bodies and/or commissions, councils of quality assurance at different level of education – have a limited role and their implementation is weak, following a narrow range of responsibilities they or their representatives have. The uncertainty model can be traced within educational processes and even in quality assurance systems, but it was often connected not to events in education but within other social sectors such as public administration. That is why these changes cannot be considered as organic ones for education and their unpredictability makes the lack of implementation even more serious. The so-called political model seems to be dominant in Lithuania. It can easily be understood by a reader who is sensitive to political characteristics of countries in the region but it may be surprising that in this case a certain group of educationists plays an outstanding role in politics, especially in relation to quality assurance. The academic community could have won perceptible dominance in macro politics and through this in higher education policy. Universities as the most traditional, often conservative institutions of education, have also a dominant role in stating and assuring quality in all education sectors. Other agents of public education involved in quality issues – secondary heads’ associations and administrators – are weak compared to universities. The result is that quality of public education is not an important issue for Lithuania at this time. This kind of ‘stability’ is told in the paper with sorrow, giving by illustration the lagging students’ achievements as based on international measurements.
The other country paper, by Balkansky, gives a general overview of school pupils’ achievements and places it within the changing Bulgarian educational system. Here the reader can meet an interesting feature of this book, the authors’ differing ways of embedding their messages. Though as editors we do not intend to make any distinction between ‘Westerners’ and ‘Easterners’ in introducing their papers, we think that this specific feature should be noted. As it could be seen in different analyses of other regions, macro level social (including cultural) aspects of education have a strong role in education. A difference is that in the elaboration of macro contexts, within countries of political transition there is a significant shift in educational processes. The old language that provided a common basis for understanding education was withdrawn and the new is yet to be born. That is why educational professionals of the so-called ‘transitional countries’ are keen to make their readers and colleagues acquainted with the new ‘starting point’ of what they have to say. Within this one can witness similarities to and differences from general European trends. Supporting the authors in this follows from the editors’ wish to contribute to the formation of a new and common understanding of educational quality issues within the European educational community.
The paper of a strategically important country, not yet in a pre-accession process, mirrors what has been outlined before. The context of the quality issue here is focussed around students’ achievements. There are two approaches in defining quality of education in Bulgaria. The first one, called the normative approach, is based on ‘fitness for purpose’ in the special sense of fitting to administrative requirements. On that there is central regulation which has established a new system, its institutions and tools. This law and its issuing date, compared to the transition’s start, makes clear that – in spite of the Lithuanian example – Bulgarian public education is considered by politicians as “one of the greatest value”. Besides country level regulation schools can have their own quality requirements, which appear in the second approach of the introduced system, based on a liberal philosophy. It requires internal quality management and external process of accreditation¹¹. On this contextual base the reader can have some understanding of the national strategy for quality management and with the system of student evaluation. How the population estimates the quality of secondary education is shown by an empirical study of nearly 1200 people. The author, being a member of the institute responsible for setting up a nation-wide quality management strategy, ends by giving a description of the general considerations and main ideas underlying this strategy.
Like the last-described paper, the last but one chapter by Karstanje, also aims at external quality management, bringing two themes into its focus: the shift of external quality care of changing school systems and – not independently from this – related problems in school management training programmes. Teachers’ and school heads’ qualifications, controlled by the states, higher education institutes or bodies of experts, are joint issues of these themes. And though educational processes of the recent decades or couple of years (depending on the region where they were taking place) have resulted in some external quality control being transferred to internal control while external controls have started to have new forms and tools. Some of these tools show the elements of the traditional external quality control. Tendencies towards and implication of processes towards institutional autonomy of European schools are described in Karstanje’s paper, followed by their consequences for school-based quality care. It cannot rely just on internal quality care but requires also a kind of external control. Since traditional inspection (also criticized in Fitz-Gibbon’s paper) hardly can be a legitimate tool in autonomous schools of a decentralised system, it is demonstrated that other external quality care instruments can also be used for this purpose.
The same idea appears concerning quality assurance of school management training programmes. Management training institutes work in real or quasi-market situations in many European countries and this characteristic includes the use of quality control, based on customers’ (participants’) needs and satisfaction. But both customers, wishing to be assured in advance that the programme is ‘qualified’ and authorities in licensing training programmes, advance the need for external involvement in quality control. The author, being experienced in professional co-operation with a number of East-Central European countries, gives possible reasons why (mainly international) accreditation seems to be the most preferable instrument for external quality control. Karstanje’s approach considers relevant instruments which external quality assurance should have. Present trends towards growing autonomy of educational institutions (Kells, 1992), their self-regulatory activity and less direct governmental influence on them, indicate this direction. As it is argued, it does not mean the giving up of norms and control mechanisms but takes into account clients’ needs, using a broad framework for the making of judgements. In a ‘multiply accreditation process’ all interested actors have the right to take part in the process, and management training institutes have also the right to choose their judgement mechanism and tools.
Like the previous one, the final paper by Gold approaches issues arising from the author’s school management trainer practice, in this case based on experiences in the United Kingdom. From this point of view, that involves a special responsibility on the author. Two probably provocative questions are asked and answered in an exciting way. Since schools are learning organizations, this feature has special consequences for leadership and leadership training. Schools are dependant on educative leadership (Duignan and Macpherson, 1992) and school heads’ responsibilities are to bring about and ensure an ethos in school to be engaged in and committed to not only teaching but also learning attitudes. These even consensual statements are followed by non-standard issues, suggested by the author. She examines two dimensions of school heads’ responsibilities in quality management: managing and achieving school-based continuous professional development in school, they need to understand how professionals learn on the one hand (adult learning is a specific characteristic) and need also cognitive and ethical considerations in planning for professional development on the other. Explanation and arguments are made on the basis of the author’s management training and school teaching practice, reinforced by theoretical. A further consensual statement concerning school heads’ key position in organizational development is also questioned, raising its micro-political and social psychological aspects (such as group-dynamics or manipulation) and also ethical issues such as the ‘ownership’ of the school. These aspects have much in common with other papers in the book, dealing with cultural aspects of quality management. Gold’s work underpins or places these in new directions and provides also the possibility for readers to reconsider their views on responsibility for quality management in education.

The papers in this volume show a general trend to deal with quality issues through a management approach, indicating the relevance of ‘quality’ for education management research and development. Albeit the issue nowadays appears as dominantly an educational policy one, there can be no doubt that it has deep relevance for practice-oriented education management. Its results not only contribute added knowledge but usability. As with the discipline of education management, the quality issue has come from industry into education. Since education management might be significantly different from that in industry, dealing with quality – managing and assuring it – in education needs basically different approaches and procedures. That is why it is important to gather and display visions and insights coming from the experience of researchers and developers in the field, to be transmitted for to meet the needs of different education agencies.
The theoretical and practical knowledge of education management can also play a role towards the unifying of Europe. How may one advance the integration process by means of education management? How might one promote the ongoing processes in education throughout Europe? What kinds of knowledge is needed and what tools can be developed for ‘managing European education’? We think the quality issue is one which is taken seriously in most countries and also by the Union. It is dealt with by national governments, local authorities, professional organizations, schools, parents – by all of society. Though quality is a ‘fashion issue’ nowadays, we are convinced that under the surface it is really an outstanding ‘instrument’ for achieving common goals within a common culture. We hope that our book contributes to this.

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