THE CONCEPT OF QUALITY IN EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF THE ...

[Pages:23]THE CONCEPT OF QUALITY IN EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF THE `INTERNATIONAL' LITERATURE ON THE CONCEPT OF QUALITY IN EDUCATION

EdQual Working Paper No. 3

Angeline M. Barrett1 Rita Chawla-Duggan2

John Lowe2 Jutta Nikel2 Eugenia Ukpo1 1University of Bristol, UK 2University of Bath, UK

2006

EdQual RPC is a Research Consortium led by the University of Bristol UK and sponsored by the Department for International Development, UK.

The Consortium comprises: The Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, UK The Department of Education, University of Bath, UK The Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, University of Cape Coast, Ghana The Faculty of Education, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania The Kigali Institute of Education, Rwanda The Education Policy Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

EdQual also collaborates with the Institute for Educational Development, The Aga Khan University, Pakistan and the Instituto de Inform?tica Educativa, Universidad de La Frontera, Chile. EdQual runs research projects mainly in Africa, aimed at improving the quality of formal basic education for disadvantaged groups. Our projects include:

Implementing Curriculum Change to Reduce Poverty and to Increase Gender Equity Leadership and Management of Change for Quality Improvement Literacy and Language Development through Primary Education School Effectiveness and Education Quality in Southern and Eastern Africa The Use of ICT to Support Basic Education in Disadvantaged Schools and Communities in Low Income Countries. For more information and other papers in this series, visit .

This Paper has been published by EdQual RPC and funded by the UK Department for International Development, although the views expressed are those of the Author[s]. Extracts from this Working Paper may only be reproduced with the permission of the Author[s]. ?EdQual 2006 ISBN: 978-1-906675-12-7

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ABSTRACT

This paper reviews key documents that have influenced understandings of educational quality in low income countries amongst international agencies concerned with and researchers based in Anglophone countries. There is a particular focus on quality as defined with reference to formal primary education. The paper identifies five dimensions of quality that are recurring themes of debate on quality. The literature review remains ,,work in progress that will take on board more of the literature and thus develop over a period of time, both feeding into our research programme and being informed by it. The paper starts by differentiating education from schools and argues that any framework to conceptualize educational quality is necessarily value-based. Two broad approaches to understanding quality are then outlined in Part 2 and a selection of key texts reviewed that falls into each approach. The humanist/progressive approach is characterised by a broad concern for the development of the whole child and human development or social change. The second broad approach, the economist approach, is largely concerned with efficiency and effectiveness, and the achievement of learning outcomes at reasonable cost. Learning outcomes tend to be narrowly defined in terms of cognitive achievement. This approach is identified with the World Bank and two key Bank publications are reviewed. Part 3 summarises the conceptualisation of quality implied in three Education for All documents: the World Declaration on Education for All, the Dakar Framework for Action and the Global Monitoring Report 2005: the Quality Imperative. These are found to take a broad approach to understanding quality that emphasises learning for social development, through the promotion of Life Skills. However, despite setting goals of quality education in terms that embrace a broad range of personal and social learning outcomes, assessment of progress in achieving quality is mainly restricted to those cognitive learning outcomes that are easy to measure using pen and paper tests. Part 4 complicates the dichotomous schema used to categorise understandings of educational quality by drawing on Chittys three concepts of schooling. These are schooling for human fulfilment, schooling as preparation for the world of work and schooling for social progress or change. In part 5, the authors present five key dimensions to education quality that have emerged from their reading of the literature. The conclusion poses questions raised by these five dimensions for the development of the EdQual programme of research.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: AIMS AND LIMITATIONS IN THIS REVIEW ................................... 1 1: EDUCATION AND SCHOOLING: AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION ............................ 2 2: TRADITIONS WITHIN `EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT' ..................................... 2 The Progressive/Humanist Tradition ? Quality of Classroom Processes ................................. 3 Constuctivist Quality ? Beeby (1966) .................................................................................. 3 C.E. Beeby (1966) ,,The Quality of Education in Developing Countries .................................. 3 Goals, Context and Agency ? Hawes & Stephens (1990)...................................................... 4 Equity and Quality ? Sayed (1997) ..................................................................................... 5 The Delors Report (1996) .................................................................................................. 6 The World Bank and the Economist Tradition...................................................................... 6 The World Bank Education Sector Strategy (1999) .............................................................. 7 3: THE EDUCATION FOR ALL MOVEMENT .................................................................... 8 The EFA Global Monitoring Report (2005) Education for All: The Quality Imperative............ 10 4: EXTENDING THE FRAMEWORKS ............................................................................ 11 5: COMPONENTS OF A QUALITY FRAMEWORK ......................................................... 13 6: CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 15 REFERENCES................................................................................................................ 16

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INTRODUCTION: AIMS AND LIMITATIONS IN THIS REVIEW

This literature review was undertaken with the aim of identifying interpretations of educational quality in the academic and development literature from a wide range of sources. The particular emphasis in our search for relevant material was on notions of quality in the context of low income countries and disadvantaged groups within those countries. It was quickly realised that the volume of literature addressing the concept of quality in education, either as its prime focus or as a component of a wider focus, is vast. Within the time and resources available it would be impossible to produce a comprehensive or exhaustive review at this stage. Instead, it became clear that a more realistic initial target would be to identify dominant definitions and uses of the concept of educational quality that appear in this literature and to place these within some analytical frameworks. These might usefully frame our discussions and the ongoing development of our understanding of the concept to inform our research over the next five years. It must be emphasised therefore, that this literature review remains ,,work in progress that will take on board more of the literature and thus develop over a period of time, both feeding into our research programme and being informed by it. The initial focus has been on what we might call the ,,mainstream literature in order to identify the dominant understandings of the concept. Given the powerful role of agencies such as the World Bank and UNESCO in setting educational agendas in the target countries, it was important that literature from these agencies was included in this initial search. What is not so well represented yet in this review are some of the more radical interpretations and critiques of mainstream usage of the concept of educational quality. The rest of this review is organised and presented in three parts. The first is brief but emphasises a distinction that is fundamental to any further consideration of the nature of quality in education: the distinction between education and schooling. The second follows from this and identifies traditions of analysis of the role of education in development that have different implications for the interpretation of quality in education. These traditions are then traced within literature emerging from some of the key agencies involved in educational development. The third part of the review analyses uses of the concept of quality in terms of five components that can commonly be identified in the literature.

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1: EDUCATION AND SCHOOLING: AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION

When discussing or defining quality, it is important to distinguish between ,,education and ,,schooling. Some of the literature does make this distinction but much of it conflates the two concepts, in some cases using them as though they are completely interchangeable. This is perhaps particularly true amongst those working within the ,,quality management paradigm, where ,,institutional effectiveness commonly becomes a synonym for educational quality.

Although rather dated, a broad definition of ,,education from Hirst and Peters (1970: 19) is a useful starting point for making the distinction. They describe education as "the development of desirable qualities in people" Of course, there is no agreement about the end of "desirable qualities" and what these are, and some of the positions commonly adopted on this will be the focus of the second part of this review. The point we are making is that an understanding of these educational purposes is a prerequisite to any detailed consideration of quality.

Schooling, on the other hand, is about providing the service of ,,education, i.e. of educating young people through institutionalised and universalised ,,organised learning. While the universal provision of "basic education" has been considered a major improvement for the individual and society in the early 20th century, both in todays context and in its interpretations it remains heavily contested. (See, for example, Illich, 1974; Postman & Richter, 1998; von Hentig, 1996; Harber, 2004.)

The importance of this distinction underpins a paper by Sayed (1997), who argues that ,,the concept ,,quality in education is elusive and ... frequently used but never defined and goes on to discuss how its multiple meanings reflect ,,different ideological, social and political values. By critiquing key approaches to education quality, Sayed highlights what he calls the valuebases of any framework for education quality. Drawing on Bunting (1993) he declares that, ,,Quality in education does have a bottom line and that line is defined by the goals and values which underpin the essentially human activity of education. The clear implication is that this bottom line must be the starting point for our understanding of the notion of quality in education so that we do not ,,reify the practice of education ... [and] reduce education to a technical activity that is static and unaffected by contextual and contingent circumstances. (For an extended discussion of this same point see also Holt, 2000.) The next section of this review therefore begins its analysis of quality by looking at various traditions in our understanding of the purposes of education in relation to development.

2: TRADITIONS WITHIN `EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT'

It is possible to identify two dominant traditions within quality discourse, which have grown up together and are to an extent interdependent. The ,,economist view of education uses quantitative measurable outputs as a measure of quality, for example enrolment ratios and retention rates, rates of return on investment in education in terms of earnings and cognitive achievement as measured in national or international tests. The progressive/humanist tradition tends to place more emphasis on educational processes. The word ,,indicators in itself implies a positivist approach to measuring quality and so, tends not to be used within this tradition. Judgements of quality are based on what happens in schools and in the classroom. Learning of basic cognitive skills, literacy and numeracy, as well as general knowledge are considered vital to quality. However, schools are also recognised as places where learners acquire attitudes and cultural values. Hence, characteristics such as learnercentred pedagogies (e.g. Prophet, 1995; Ackers and Hardman, 2001), democratic school governance (e.g. Harber, 1993; Karlsson, 2002; Suzuki, 2002) and inclusion (e.g. UNESCO, 2004) are included in notions of quality education. Each of these contrasting approaches is associated with a large international organisation in the field of development. The ,,economist

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view tends to dominate World Bank thinking on education. The World Bank, as Jones (1992) reminds us, is first and foremost a bank and as such justifies its loans for education development in terms of public financial returns. Since its inception, UNESCO has viewed education as essential although not sufficient for human development and as having cultural, even spiritual, benefits (UNESCO, 1947; Delors and et al., 1996). At the current time this emphasis is realised through its ,,themes of cultural and linguistic diversity in education, inclusive education, peace and human rights education and education for sustainable development. The United Nations has highlighted the first and last of these themes through the institution of an International Mother Tongue day and declaration of 2005-2014 as the ,,Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

The Progressive/Humanist Tradition ? Quality of Classroom Processes

Constuctivist Quality ? Beeby (1966) C.E. Beeby (1966) `The Quality of Education in Developing Countries'

In his landmark text, ,,The Quality of Education in Developing Countries, C.E. Beeby made the first attempt to generate a model for understanding educational theory. He conceptualised quality as having three levels. First, classroom quality, which is concerned with the acquisition of measurable knowledge and learning skills as well as harder to measure behaviours and attitudes, including "habits of industry ... attitudes of respect for authority and love of country" (Beeby, 1966:11). At the second level, quality education must serve the economic goals of the community in which learners and live. Related to this, at the third level, quality is judged by broader social criteria. These last two criteria for quality education are now defined as relevance (Hawes and Stephens, 1990) or "external quality" (UNESCO, 2005). Beebys "stages of development" only concerned the first criteria of quality, i.e. the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom. He was writing at a time when human capital theorists had started developing quantitative techniques to measure the economic benefits of investments in education and hence, was motivated to propose a theory of quality of education to match the sophistication of their statistical analysis. It was also a time when the rapid expansion of particularly primary education provision in low income countries was perceived as a threat to quality.

Beebys ,,stages of development model is limited to a description of primary schooling. Teacher education and preparation are seen as being the key to educational quality. However, each stage is described in terms of systemic as well as curriculum and classroom characteristics (see table 1), foreshadowing the place given to context, as a determinant of quality, in later key texts (Hawes and Stephens, 1990; Heneveld, 1994; UNESCO, 2005).

Table 1: Beeby's stages of development (based on Beeby, 1966:72)

STAGE

I. Dame School

TEACHERS

Ill-educated Untrained

II. Formalism

Ill-educated Trained

III. Transition

Better-educated Trained

CHARACTERISTICS

Unorganized, relatively meaningless symbols; very narrow subject content ? 3Rs; very low standards; memorizing allimportant. Highly organized; symbols with limited meaning; rigid methods ? "one best way"; one textbook; external examinations; inspection stressed, discipline tight and external memorizing heavily stressed; emotional life largely ignored. Roughly same goals as stage II, but more efficiently achieved; more emphasis on meaning, but it is still rather "thin" and formal; syllabus and textbooks less restrictive, but teachers hesitate to use

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Meaning

Well-educated Well-trained

greater freedom; final leaving examination often restricts experimentation; little in classroom to cater for emotional and creative life of child. Meaning and understanding stressed; somewhat wider curriculum, variety of content and methods; individual differences catered for; activity methods, problem solving and creativity; internal tests; relaxed and positive discipline; emotional and aesthetic life, as well as intellectual; closer relations with community; better buildings and equipment essential.

Beeby drew upon his experience as an educational administrator in a number of high and low income countries, almost all within the British Commonwealth. This has made his stages of development vulnerable to the criticism of containing "a teleological purpose of westernization disguised as ,,better teaching" (Guthrie, 1980:421). In other words, Beebys fourth and final stage of meaning represents the notions of quality education and characteristics of education system that predominated during the sixties in high income Commonwealth countries. More accurately, they represent a certain view that was popular amongst educationalists in English-speaking Western countries and, as Beeby himself makes clear, had influenced his own personal educational values. In this respect, there is little to distinguish Beebys approach to later texts on educational quality. As stated in Part 1 of this paper, notions of education quality necessarily imply educational values, which may be more or less explicit. Beebys educational values were informed by the humanist progressive tradition in education, an international tradition which includes amongst its most significant influences Pestalozzi, Froebel and Dewey. Although it has evolved to embrace contemporary preoccupations with human rights, democracy and environmental sustainability, and is cast in a new set of terms (learner-centred, participative, democratic), it is an enduring tradition within education. On the other hand, the cultural basis of Guthries (see also, Guthrie, 2003) and other researchers assessment of the viability of learner-centred pedagogies (e.g. Tabulawa, 1997; Harley et al., 2000), that notions of education quality are restricted by a Western-bias, demands attention be given to other possibilities. For example, some researchers adopting postcolonial perspectives incorporate communalist values into their notions of quality (e.g. Dei, 2002; Hickling-Hudson and Ahlquist, 2004) that are often missing or only thinly treated in mainstream literature.

Goals, Context and Agency ? Hawes & Stephens (1990)

H. Hawes & D. Stephens (1990) `Questions of quality: Primary education and development'

Hawes & Stephens (1990) key text also restricts itself to primary education in low income countries and takes an essentially humanist stance on education and development. It proposes that quality can be interpreted as having three strands:

? Efficiency in meeting set goals ? Relevance to human and environmental needs and conditions ? ,,Something more in relation to the pursuit of excellence and human betterment.

(Hawes and Stephens, 1990:11)

,,Efficiency is interpreted as making the most of inputs, or the tools that are available, in order to reach and improve different kinds of standards, including standards of attainment in knowledge and learning skills; standards of creativity and critical thinking and standards of behaviour. Relevance includes relevance to context, relevance to the present and future needs of learners and relevance to humanity. The latter covers the notion that education has

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