Citation
Chatterji, J.D.M. (2014), "Special Issue Editorial", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 22 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/QAE-07-2014-0038
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Special Issue Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Quality Assurance in Education, Volume 22, Issue 4
The importance of universal education has long been recognised by citizens in most jurisdictions in the world. In our modern world, there is increasing recognition that education has multi-faceted benefits for individuals and societies in which they live. The provision of universal school education is now relatively uncontested in most parts of the world. This discourse has coincided with the flow on effects of the global financial crisis whereby governments have found themselves with significant debt burdens.
There is general agreement around the world that education at all levels contributes to the economic well-being of countries. In particular, we know that engagement in higher education and research and development activity facilitates both innovations and the performance of industry, commerce and public sector organisations. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that all jurisdictions will have an interest in improving the effectiveness of their education systems at all levels. QAE seeks to make a contribution to such improvement by providing policy-relevant discussions and disseminating knowledge on issues related to improvement at all levels of education.
In particular, in this Special Issue, we present three moderated discussions on the theme of assessment, a crucial element of quality in education. This is followed by three papers on the theme of quality in the supervision of research by students seeking higher degrees. Because research by students seeking higher degrees are the engines for generating new knowledge in many professions and formal disciplines, these students and their supervisors are major contributors to the innovation systems in those fields.
In the Assessment Policy section, each of the moderated discussions includes the contributions of multiple experts in the field. Although the discussion deals with assessment and accountability issues in primary and secondary schooling contexts in the USA, the problems and findings generalise across levels of education internationally. A common thread in these papers is the potential for measuring instruments designed for one purpose to be used for a purpose for which they were not intended.
The first moderated discussion paper considers the increasingly ubiquitous standardised testing movement being evidenced in many regions of the world. The discussion explores the utility of currently available versions of standardised achievement tests for evaluating teachers and schools. It also examines the link between standardised test scores and information derived from such scores that can contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning outcomes.
The second of the moderated discussion papers explores the area of international assessment that arose out of a desire of researchers to carry out international comparative research to identify examples of good educational practice. The intents of researchers over 50 years ago are today replaced by a tendency of public representatives and the media to make comparisons between countries and the construction of “league tables”. This mirrors the development in the Olympic movement where Chapter 1, Article 6 states: “The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries”. However, all Olympic Games of recent times have been characterised by the compilation of league tables that arrange countries by the number of gold medals won by that country’s competitors.
The final moderated discussion paper addresses the issue of formative classroom assessment. The need to carefully and systematically couple formative assessment to the curriculum and use formative assessment for improvement of the teaching and learning process is highlighted. Models, frameworks and findings of collaborative research to enhance this process are presented in the discussion.
In the first paper in the section on Quality Assurance in doctoral-level research supervision, John Bowden and Pamela Green report on a research project that involved interviews with doctoral research candidates who had completed or were close to completion of their theses. This project inspired the authors to reflect on their experience of the project and this reflection led to the development of a moral compass framework that could be used in guiding and informing decision-making in the arena of doctoral research. The authors consider the extent to which the framework that they have developed is likely to have applications beyond that of doctoral supervision.
The second paper in this section, by Gail Phillips, addresses the supervision of doctoral candidates in the particular case of doctoral research in the discipline of journalism, an example of doctoral research in the context of practice-based research. The author points out that journalism is a relatively young discipline and that doctoral research in the context of practice-based research is also relatively novel. The supervisor engagement with the candidate in the areas of project management, mentoring and thesis completion is the focus of the paper. The author advocates the action research process as a way to approach supervision of practice-based doctoral candidates.
The final paper in this issue, by Graham Badley, explores an approach to doctoral supervision that is informed by pragmatism. The author starts by introducing pragmatism and then systematically outlines how pragmatism can be applied to assisting doctoral candidates in improving their writing skills. This proceeds through the development of relationships, the ethics considerations in research involving humans, the choice of research questions and writing about research. All aspects of doctoral writing are presented in the context of an approach influenced by pragmatism.
This Special Issue covers a spectrum of topics in assessment, evaluation, accountability and quality in education, extending from primary/secondary school levels to higher education. Our objective is to inform improvements to various systems, processes and policies in the specific areas discussed.
John Dalrymple and Madhabi Chatterji
Co-editors, QAE