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- Bäckström, Ingela, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Quality in preschools through systematic quality work – a principal’s perspective
- 2024
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Ingår i: Quality Assurance in Education. - : Emerald. - 0968-4883 .- 1758-7662. ; 32:2, s. 257-273
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore existing and desired methodologies for systematic quality work to promote quality in preschools from the principal’s perspective. Design/methodology/approach: A collaborative approach was used in this research project, and principals were asked to complete portfolio assignments. Their answers to those portfolio assignments were analysed by the research team and subsequently compared to total quality management values. Findings: Existing and desired methodologies for systematic quality work are presented and sorted into 13 and 17 groups, respectively. The principals desire four times more methodologies than they are presently using to promote systematic quality work, and the results show that they must extend their methodologies to support TQM values. Research limitations/implications: This research is based on answers collected from 18 principals in one municipality in Sweden. Practical implications: The use of the cornerstone model provides a framework to illustrate the application of TQM in preschools. Originality/value: Principals struggle to find time for systemic quality work. The presented results can be used to work systematically with quality in preschools and other organizations.
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| 2. |
- Färe, R., et al.
(författare)
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Measurement of productivity and quality in non-marketable services. With application to schools
- 2006
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Ingår i: Quality Assurance in Education. - : Emerald. - 0968-4883 .- 1758-7662. ; 14:1, s. 21-36
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose - This paper seeks to model and compute productivity, including a measure of quality, of a service which does not have marketable outputs - namely public education at the micro level. This application is a case study for Sweden public schools. Design/methodology/approach - A Malmquist productivity index is employed which allows for multiple outputs or outcomes such as test results and promotions without requiring price data with which to aggregate these outputs. It also allows one to account for inputs such as teachers and facilities as well as proxies for quality of the inputs (e.g. experience of teachers) and outputs. This model generalizes the basic data envelopment analysis (DEA) models - used successfully to measure performance in many educational applications - to the intertemporal case. A way of computing quality and quantity components of overall productivity is employed. Findings - The case study is an application to the Swedish primary and secondary school system over the 1992 to 1995 period. It was found that quality "matters", i.e. productivity growth changes when one accounts for quantity. Research limitations/implications - The data available implied that the specification is restricted to an intermediate production model, i.e. the output data only account for the intermediate outcomes of education like grades and promotions, but not the longer term outcomes related to success in the job market or higher education, which one proposed as a task for future research. Originality/value - The indices which are computed at the micro level are of value for policy purposes (does investment in quality matter?) and in an evaluation context. ©Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
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| 3. |
- Svensson, Magnus, et al.
(författare)
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TQM-based self-assessment in the education sector : experiences from a Swedish upper secondary school project
- 2006
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Ingår i: Quality Assurance in Education. - : Emerald. - 0968-4883 .- 1758-7662. ; 14:4, s. 299-323
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe a self-assessment project, the steps taken and the tools used, and above all, focus on the evaluation made after the decision to discontinue, learning and acquiring knowledge about self-assessment as a methodology in educational organizations. Design/methodology/approach - In order to investigate the experiences of the project, interviews were conducted with the Upper Secondary Education Officer and with ten School Principals and a questionnaire was administered to gather opinions among the other staff members. The analysis mainly consisted of searching for potential patterns among the respondents' answers studying their own words by use of three different criteria. Findings - It is important how an organization enters a self-assessment project, or even any quality project. Many people do not seem to have thought very much about what is considered to be quality in the environment in which they operate, and even less have a shared view within the organization. Too often organizations tend to start working with self-assessment without sufficiently thinking of "why" and "how" to accomplish the project. The work is performed without preparing all those who are to participate in the project and without discussing the core values that constitute the work. If the organization has not reached the necessary maturity level it is probably a waste of resources to start a comprehensive self-assessment project. Orginality/value - As a synthesis form the analysis, a model for how an organization should start self-assessment is presented, as well as a number of guiding points. Also, the new tool "Lärostegen" is described.
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