Critical friends: a tool for quality improvement in universities

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/09684880310462065
Pages31-36
Published date01 March 2003
Date01 March 2003
AuthorRosario Andreu,Lourdes Canós,Susana de Juana,Encarnación Manresa,Laura Rienda,Juan José Tarí
Subject MatterEducation
Critical friends:
a tool for quality
improvement in
universities
Rosario Andreu
Lourdes CanoÂs
Susana de Juana
EncarnacioÂn Manresa
Laura Rienda and
Juan Jose TarõÂ
Introduction
Spanish universities, following the trend set
by many firms, have developed quality
initiatives in order to improve quality (Club
Gestio n de Calidad, 1999; Masso and Tort-
Martorell, 2000). In this sense, the first
quality programmes at universities in Spain
were fostered by the Spanish University
Coordination Council (SPCC), which issued
self-assessment guides for university degrees,
departments and services, as a way to apply a
common assessment framework. This process
is similar to the one used when assessing a
firm under the European quality model
(EFQM).
Quality programmes in higher education
consist of a review to be conducted by a panel
made up of external and internal members.
The resulting report should be critical,
analytical and descriptive. It will provide
strengths and weaknesses and will include
clearly formulated plans for the future
(McElwee and Scott, 2000).
Therefore, the two assessment processes
supplement each other because, as provided
in the assessment stages contained in the
University Quality Scheme, there must be
both an internal and an external assessment.
The external assessment requires an internal
one, in order to draw conclusions, and in turn
the internal assessment is based on the results
from the external one, in an attempt to
determine the reason for the results obtained
and attempting to develop improvement
activities after the strengths and weaknesses
have been detected. Such an assessment
process may improve, for example, a
university service, a department or a whole
degree programme.
These activities may contribute towards an
improvement in teaching. In this case, the
motivation to improve is, for lecturers, an
ethical one, since there is no external audit
forcing them to do so. For this purpose, a
number of complementary methods can be
used.
We can evaluate teachers in order to
identify strengths and weaknesses and
develop actions to improve their work. As a
rule, universities use the student evaluation of
teaching; however, in practice it has been
shown that this student evaluation has been
continually debated in the academic
community (Crumbley et al., 2001). Hence, it
may be interesting to resort to several
The authors
Rosario Andreu, Lourdes CanoÂs, Susana de Juana,
Encarnacio n Manresa, Laura Rienda and
Juan Jose Tarõ are all based at the Department of
Business Management, University of Alicante, Alicante,
Spain.
Keywords
Quality, Management, Teachers, Universities, Spain
Abstract
Quality programmes in higher education in Spain consist
of a review to be conducted by a panel composed of
external and internal members. These activities may
contribute towards an improvement in teaching.
However, we can use a number of complementary
methods in order to evaluate teachers. The aim of this
paper is to discuss the aspects that must be considered in
order to succeed in the implementation of the critical
friends technique to improve teaching, based on the
experience of a group of six lecturers in a Spanish
university.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0968-4883.htm
31
Quality Assurance in Education
Volume 11 .Number 1 .2003 .pp. 31-36
#MCB UP Limited .ISSN 0968-4883
DOI 10.1108/09684880310462065

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