Quality and assessment in context: a brief review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a general review for USA and international academic faculty and administrators of the dominant themes and history of quality and assessment in both industry and Higher Education, and how they relate to each other in order to stimulate and encourage debate as well as influence policy.Design/methodology/approach – A range of published works (1976‐2005) in both the fields of industrial quality and quality and assessment in higher education are reviewed and arranged contextually so as to tell a collective “story” about their origins, similarities, and differences. This general review provides the reader with a structured historical examination of these concepts with practical emphasis on potential lessons learned.Findings – Provides information on the major quality theorists and relates the types of quality (as defined in industrial terms) to the enterprise of higher education. Even more important, quality and assessment are defined within the context of US hi...

[1]  Susan M. Gates.  Ensuring quality and productivity in higher education : an analysis of assessment practices , 2002 .

[2]  Robert Birnbaum.  How Colleges Work: The Cybernetics of Academic Organization and Leadership , 1988 .

[3]  K. Cross.  Using Assessment to Improve Instruction. , 1986 .

[4]  Trudy W. Banta,et al.  Assessment Essentials: Planning, Implementing, and Improving Assessment in Higher Education. Higher and Adult Education Series. , 1999 .

[5]  L. Sherr,et al.  Total Quality Management in Higher Education. , 1991 .

[6]  D. Seymour.  On Q: Causing Quality In Higher Education , 1992 .

[7]  John Beckford.  Quality: A Critical Introduction , 1998 .

[8]  Robert G. Owens,et al.  Organizational Behavior in Education: Instructional Leadership and School Reform. Seventh Edition. , 2000 .

[9]  A. Astin,et al.  A Decade of Changes in Undergraduate Education: A National Study of System "Transformation" , 2002 .

[10]  Douglas H. Smith,et al.  Total Quality in Higher Education , 1994 .

[11]  Philip B. Crosby,et al.  Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain , 1979 .

[12]  Koslowski,et al.  Expectations, Challenges, and Frustrations: Faculty and Administrator Perceptions of Quality and Assessment , 2005 .

[13]  Robert F. Bruner.  The Portable MBA , 1997 .

[14]  G. Morgan,et al.  Images of organization, 2nd ed. , 1997 .

[15]  Jann E. Freed,et al.  Quality Principles and Practices in Higher Education: Different Questions for Different Times , 1997 .

[16]  Joseph Moses Juran.  Juran on Quality by Design: The New Steps for Planning Quality into Goods and Services , 1992 .

[17]  J. Alexander,et al.  Images of Organization , 1988 .

[18]  D. Doehlert.  Quality Improvement in Oat , 2002 .

[19]  Peter T. Ewell,et al.  Total Quality & Academic Practice: The Idea We've Been Waiting For?. , 1993 .

[20]  W. Edwards Deming,et al.  Out of the Crisis , 1982 .

[21]  Patricia Albjerg Graham,et al.  Accountability of Colleges and Universities: An Essay. , 1995 .

[22]  A. Astin,et al.  Assessment for Excellence: The Philosophy and Practice of Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. American Council on Education/Macmillan Series on Higher Education. , 1991 .

[23]  Philip B. Crosby.  Completeness: Quality for the 21st Century , 1992 .

[24]  John C. Smart,et al.  Do Institutional Characteristics Affect Student Gains from College? , 2001 .

[25]  P. Ewell.  Assessment and TQM: In Search of Convergence. , 1991 .