The Establishment and Implementation of an Educational Quality ...

MASTER IN MANAGEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY – EXECUTIVE MBA – AALBORG UNIVERSITY – DENMARK 2013
2.2.2 Diskussion af begrebet ”KVALITET I UDDANNELSE”
I den udenlandske forskningslitteratur, som beskæftiger sig med den naturvidenskabelige TQMvinkel,
fremgår det også at kvalitetsbegrebet i forbindelse med uddannelse er subjektivt.
”What counts as quality can never be neutral: it reflects certain kinds of interests…
behind any idea of quality stands a tacit idea of higher education (Barnett 2003) 26
“…the appearance of neutrality in determining quality standards by consensus, bureaucratic rules or
external costumers effectively conceals that these standards reflect the preferences of an individual or
group with the authority or power to establish them as objective. (Bensimon 1995) 27
I processen hen imod at definere ”kvalitet i uddannelse”, giver Karapetrovic, følgende forslag til definitioner:
Karapetrovic 1997 28 :
“Quality” in general is defined as “the ability of a product to satisfy stated or implied requirements”.
Naturally, the requirements are set by the customer. What is, then, the product of universities, and who is
the customer? The answer seems obvious: the product is the student, or to be more precise, it is the
knowledge, experience, skills and overall competence the student gains in the course of his/her studies.
The requirements for a student’s engineering knowledge, for instance, are set by the companies he/she
will work for, as well as government and professional institutions, such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering
and Technology (ABET)
…
Therefore, we can define the quality of education, regardless of the discipline of study, as
“the ability of student’s knowledge to satisfy stated requirements”.
Karapetrovic fastholder således relationstanken – der er behov for at fastsætte nogle kvalitetskrav /
kvalitetsmål, som er mere konkrete og målbare. Ellers er det ikke muligt at konstatere om kravene er
opfyldt tilfredsstillende.
Uddannelsesinstitutionen må fastsætte relevante kvalitetskrav, som den studerende skal overholde
for at kunne bestå og det vil være forholdet imellem disse fastsatte krav og den studerendes kapabilitet,
der er afgørende for kvalitetsgraden.
Spørgsmålet er dog, om det vil være tilstrækkeligt at opstille en række kvalitetsmål/kapabilitetsmål
for de studerende. Karapetrovic fokuserer i realiteten alene på den studerendes eksamensresultat.
Men hvad med undervisningens og og alle de øvrige faktorer der spiller ind?
For at få et mere klart billede af ”kvalitet i uddannelse” er der behov for et mere nuanceret kvalitetsapparat.
To steder i litteraturen foreslås det, at der opereres med to typer af kvalitet. En teknisk kvalitet og en
funktionel kvalitet.
Gronroos (1982) 29 identified and separated two critical aspects of quality in service environments:
technical quality (what is provided) and functional quality (how it is provided).
In many service environments including universities, technical quality is invisible to the recipient of the
service and is assumed or taken for granted.
Recipient experience and perceptions predominantly relate to functional quality.
Anderson (1995) 30 defined “technical quality” as the actual quality of the service and
“functional quality” as the way that the service was delivered.
26 "Exploring quality in a University: a critical approach" D. J. Houston 2007.
27 "Exploring quality in a University: a critical approach" D. J. Houston 2007.
28 "Creating zero-defect students" af Stanislav Karapetrovic og Walter Willborn (1997),The TQM Magazine, Vol. 9
29 fra "Exploring quality in a University: a critical approach" Houston 2007.
30 fra “Service quality in higher education” af Quinn, Lemay, Larsen and Johnson. 2009
MICHAEL ABILDGAARD PEDERSEN | 3. SEMESTER | ETABLERING OG IMPLEMENTERING AF EN UDDANNELSESKVALITETSMODEL | DATE: 2013-01-07
SIDE 22