Quality Management in ESP Courses as a Part of Higher Education Institution's Culture

Author(s):

Ieva Rudzinska

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

11. Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance

Format:

Paper

Session Information

11 SES 02 A, Classroom Practice and Curricula Effectiveness

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-28

11:15-12:45

Room:

HG, HS 46

Chair:

Guenter L. Huber

Contribution

Topic:quality management in education as a real life necessity is borrowed from economics, where it's benefits are well-known: they are added value to product or service, continous improvement, satisfaction of client's needs, etc. In higher education quality assurance secures that minimal standards are met (by Program accreditation), as well promotes continous improvement of study product and process by ongoing innner quality management procedures, tries to balance interests of stakeholders, including students, graduates, employers and society in general. Self-evaluation of quality management is carried out by EFQM method, developed in Netherlands, which is meant for evaluation the performance of the whole institution or its Departments. Less elaborated is securing quality in each study course, the responsibility of each lecturer in quality management of definite courses. The article deals with the problems of securing quality in ESP (English for Specific Purposes) study courses, which from origin are created to satisfy the needs of stakeholders in developing profession specific foreign language skills and competencies. Despite of EU language policy, foreign language skills remain among the worst developed life skills developed in EU HEIs and diminish EU citizens prospects to enter EU labour market. Study process in each study course in higher education institution consists not only of real practice and actions, it is undermined by thoughts, beliefs and values of the participants of the process, which influence the outcomes of the course in present situation and in future. From the theoretical point of view the benefits of quality assurance are well-known, different is the introduction of quality assurance system into practice, and still more different is the perception of the introduced quality sysytem by students and lecturers, who often consider some of otys procedures useless and disturbing "real work". Research question: do the students and lecturers consider the introduced quality system and its procedures in ESP study course as adequate and and leading to improving the product and process of the course? Objective: compare product and process quality of ESP courses in Latvian higher education institutions (researched by the author in her Promotion Paper and reported in previous ECER conference in Gothenburg) with the evaluation of the importance and purposfulness of quality assurance procedures by lecturers and students. Theoretical framework: quality assurance theory, especially Total Quality Management (developed in economics), and its use in higher education (EFQM self-evaluation system, developed in Netherlands). The use of quality management system in 1(ESP) study course.

Method

Research base: 278 students and lecturers from LR HEIs. Research instruments: multi-response (4-point Likert scale) questionnaire, inquiring about students and lecturers' attitudes to the introduction of quality management procedures. The introduced quality system consists of 7 blocks (aims and resources; study activities; cognitive processes used by students; pedagogical and students learning management activities conducted by lecturers; students' wellbeing, assessment and other results); in this research are investigated attitudes in 4 blocks (aims, resources, lecturer's activities, results). Investigating the quality of ESP courses, were determined descriptive characteristics of each quality block, as well percentages per each indicator of the quality block. Attitude indicators were transformed to dichotomous ones (positive/negative) and compared with of quality indicators (in percentages). Thus the differences in quality securing actions and attitudes towards quality assurance procedures were obtained. Also the aims section of 11 ESP course study Progarms is researched with the help of content analysis.

Expected Outcomes

Lecturers and students in LR in general support quality assurance procedures. Most respondents consider that definite activities of quality assurance should be practised that they are in present, more stakeholders should be included in course management, including managers, as well as colleagues from other departments and HEIs. Still, main problem remain the same: studies are not sufficietly competence and skill dvelopment oriented, students are not enough intellectully challenged, activities are not sufficiently deep-learning oriented. Pritchard has investigated that in the UK and Germany only approximately half of the respondents consider that quality management procedures will improve quality management. In Latvia quality management is rather new, only recently it has become a part of institution's culture, we are not overburdened by quality assurance; and by sharing experience with colleagues from other EU countries we could avoid mistakes made by them and led to wide-spread rejection of some quality managament procedures.

References

1.Biggs, J. Teaching for quality learning at university, Maidenhead: Open University Press 2003, 309 pg. 2.Birzea, C. et.al., Tool for Quality Assurance of Education for Democratic Citizenship in Schools, UNESCO, Council of Europe, CEPS, 2005. 3.Investigating Students’ Learning in a Sport English Study Course: A Case Study, ATEE Spring University. 2007, Vol. 2, Klaipeda University, Lithuania, 2007, pg. 196-205. 4.Quality System in one ESP (English for Special Purposes) Study Course - Sport English, The New Educational Review, Vol. 11, No.1, 2007, ISSN 1732-6729, pp. 261-268. 5.Towards Self-Evaluation in Sports Lexis Course, Practical and Theoretical Aspects of Language Learning/Teaching, Šiauliai University Faculty of Humanities, 2004., pg91-97. 4.Problems of Preparedness for Taking Tests and Self-Assessment, Based on The Example of Sports English Study Course, Polish Journal of Applied Psychology, 2006, Vol. 5, PL ISSN 1642-1892. 5. Bloom B.S., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Cognitive Domain, Longman, 1984. 6.CLIL/EMILE – the European Dimension – Action, Trends and Foresight Potential, 2002. 7.Educational management. Strategy, quality, and resources, Ed. by M.Preedy, R.Glatter and R.Levačic, 1997. 8. Harvey, L. and Green, D., 1993, “Defining quality”, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 18(1), pg. 9-34. 9.Harvey, L. and Knight, P. Transforming higher education. Buckingham, Open University Press and Society for Research into Higher Education, 1996. 10. Hutchinson T., Waters A., English for Specific Purposes, Cambridge University Press, 1994. 11. Manual of quality assurance: procedures and practices: Quality Assurance in Education, Higher Education Training Foundation, 1998. 12. McCaffery, Peter. The higher education manager’s handbook: effective leadership and management in universities and colleges. London, New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004, 322 pg. 13. Pritchard R. The influence of market force culture on British and German academics, In: Comparative Education, Vol.41, N4, Nov 2005, lpp. 433-455. 14. The correspondence of professional higher education Programs to the demands of labor market (In Latvian: Profesionālās un augstākās izglītības programmu atbilstība darba tirgus prasībām), Latvijas Universitātes un GfK Baltic Baltkonsults pētījums, Rīga, Latvijas Universitāte, 2007, 231 pg. 15. Tuning Educational Structure in Europe Closing Conference Document, Tuning Project 2, http://let.rug.nl/ TuningProject/index.htm, 2004). 16.On EFQM model based method of improvement of the quality of hiogher education (In Latvian: Uz EFQM modeli balstīta augstākās izglītības kvalitātes pilnveides metode), 1999, www.aic.lv/eqfm/default.htm, acessed: 1.06.2007. 17.Omachochu V.K., J.E.Ross, Principles of Total Quality 3rd ed., CRC Press, 2004. 18.George S., Weimerskirch A. TQM Total Quality Management, translation into Russian, St Petersburg, 2002. 19. Austin D.M. Human services management: organizational leadership in social work practice, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002, 513 pg. 20.Quality management system. Parts 1-4. (In Latvian: Kvalitātes vadības sistēma. 1-4.daļa), apgāds “Biznesa partneri”, Rīgā, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. 21. Rudzinska I. Teacher contribution to educational quality in an ESP study course, (Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Goteborg, 10-12 September 2008), Pre-print URI: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/174978.doc; Pre-print URI: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/174978.pdf2008, 15p.

Author Information

Ieva Rudzinska

Latvian Academy of Sport Education

Department of Languages

Riga

128

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