Improving Educational Quality

The challenge facing the education system in many countries of meeting demands for higher quality public education within increasingly severe national economic and fiscal constraints is the subject of this collection of essays by eleven outstanding educational practitioners. The book examines national level strategy for improving the quality of education. It identifies and analyzes key interventions to improve educational quality. Strategies for selecting among these interventions are discussed and the major issues encountered in implementing the interventions are analyzed. A major argument of the book is that a systems approach offers the most effective and efficient intervention for improving education quality but only when sufficient attention is paid to the motivation, knowledge, and behavior of the individuals within those systems on whose actions success of any intervention ultimately depends.

Part I, Improving Educational Quality, contains five chapters and provides a general framework for formulating interventions to improve educational quality. Included here are discussions of investments that lead to student achievement, the use of efficiency as a criterion to judge the effects of education investments, ways instructional systems models enhance efficiency and educational quality, and the role played by donors. The nine chapters that compose Part II, Issues in Implementing Quality Improvement Programs, discuss a series of issues more specifically concerned with program implementation. These are organized in three categories: (1) the teacher's role in quality improvement; (2) monitoring, evaluation, and data management; and (3) instructional delivery. While the volume is written to assist instructional designers, program planners, administrators, evaluators, and supervisory personnel, it has wide application as a text for graduate students preparing for these types of positions.

DAVID W. CHAPMAN is Associate Professor of Education at the State University of New York at Albany where he teaches program evaluation in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice. He is coauthor of The Evaluation of Educational Efficiency: Constraints, Issues, and Policies (forthcoming) and his research on educational improvement has appeared in numerous journals. In addition to his research and work in educational improvement in the United States, he has worked in technical assistance activities in over thirteen developing countries.

CAROL A. CARRIER is Professor of Instructional Design in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Minnesota. She is coauthor of Teacher Development and her research has appeared in many educational journals. In addition, she has delivered technical assistance technology training in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.