As higher education quality assurance in many countries in Europe has become a mature activity, some agencies carrying out external quality assurance are developing beyond their core tasks and missions. The current study identifies new tasks taken up within quality assurance agencies and analyses the drivers behind such development. Based on an…

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, it dismantled daily routines, the economy, and the health care system nearly overnight. The time could not be more crucial for a conversation about how to build and sustain career pathways that achieve these aims; such systems connect high-quality K-12 education with career training that leads to good jobs.…

Purpose: Higher education institutions (HEIs) should play a fundamental role in achieving the international 2030 sustainable development (SD) agenda. Quality education is the fourth of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and one of the targets related to this is to ensure that by 2030 all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to…

This article presents experiences and conclusions of an audit approach that focuses on the thesis that universities can gain most from external impulses when actively acquired and adapted by participants. This approach dubbed 'collegial audit' refers to the idea of autopoietic systems according to Luhmann and the consideration that systems do not…

Purpose: This study aims to reflect how German business schools respond to the diffusion of the triple accreditation: AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), and AMBA (Association of MBAs). Design/methodology/approach: This study applies a multiple case study to conduct a…

External consultancy in schools by those who do not belong to the teaching staff has always been an important factor in school development. Such consulting goes hand in hand with the idea that internal school development processes and their results can be influenced positively by external experts. This is even more so for "failing…

In this article, I discuss the status of teaching as a profession using Gardner and Shulman's framework emerging from their empirical examination of the professions in America and use Bernstein's sociology of knowledge to help explain how recontextualizing agents struggle to dominate the construction and interpretation of professionalism in…

This article calls for international comparative research on the professionalisation of Religious Education (RE). To this end, it provides a rationale for focusing upon the concept of professionalisation and a theoretical justification for international comparative research, particularly identifying its significance in terms of the development of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to use teaching and learning units specially devised for development of self-competencies and social competencies in the retail sector to explore how learners assess these units in relation to acceptance, quality and self-assessment of improvement in their own performance. Design/methodology/approach: The…

Transparency and comparability of higher education institutions especially in terms of their academic programmes and research activities are important issues for today's working environment. This paper is an overview of a recently completed PhD thesis which outlines examples of selected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development…

Despite government commitments to Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to improve access to education, more than 18 million primary-aged children remain out of school in the Asia-Pacific (UNESCO, 2014). Given the impact of education on individuals, societies, and economies, there is great urgency for governments to…

Quality assurance has been at the core of the construction of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) since the very beginning serving as a tool for trust, which enables comparability of degrees Europe-wide and will foster the societies by increasing mobility. The European Students Union (ESU) launched the "QUEST for quality for…

Background/Context: Two key uses of international assessments of achievement have been (a) comparing country performances for identifying the countries with the best education systems and (2) generating insights about effective policy and practice strategies that are associated with higher learning outcomes. Do country rankings really reflect the…

The European Students' Union (ESU), in partnership with the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS), the National Unions of Students Scotland--student participation in quality Scotland (NUS, Sparqs) and freier zussamenschluss von studentInnenschaften (fzs), and with support of the European Commission (DG EAC), launched…

Over the last two decades, considerable progress has been made in establishing and implementing robust, comparable quality assurance processes throughout much of the European higher education sector. However, concerns persist over degree portability and recognition as current systems are rooted in national contexts. In particular, specialised…