The Dimensional Aspects of the Quality Standardization

The Dimensional Aspects of the Quality Standardization

Of the Primary and Secondary Education in Mongolia

(Literature Review)

Introduction

Educational outcomes vary from society to society.  As for Mongolia, they are rather controversial.  Its controversy is that among some other countries, Mongolia is placed at the highest level in terms of quantitative indicators of educational performance, namely, an enrolment rate, the ratio of boys and girls in schools and a literacy rate whereas it is ranged at the lowest level in terms of qualitative indicators such as employment rate, life quality, a human development index.  As a matter of fact, the development index of Mongolia in terms of Educational for All is 0.916 whereby listing at the 67th place out of 127 countries (EFA report 2007). Moreover, a recent study indicates that there is no big difference between the poor peoples and the non-poor ones in terms of being satisfied with their life. In fact, a number of people bearing higher degrees in education constitute more 10 percent of the whole poor (National Statistics Office 2002).  Those figures proved that the quality of education is unsatisfactory and irrelevant to our society wherein we have practised the values of democracy and free economic market for the last two decades. The evidenced irrelevancy and dissatisfaction in schooling prompted stakeholders to extend public concerns about the poor quality of education to Mongolian authorities.

Recognized the social pressures and needs to advance schooling services, the government of Mongolia highlighted that our social progresses directly relied upon human capacities that were, in turn, contingent upon the quality of education (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science 2007). It also followed the government commitments to take comprehensive measures to improve education quality whereby challenging our educationalists  in order to set up an appropriate policy that can function as a tool to improve the educational quality from primary schools to universities. As a result of the nation-wide discussions, a conception underlying the quality standardization in educational services whereby assuring school excellences was produced and approved (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science 2006). However, it brought a big challenge that led us to penetrate into the nature of the quality of education and to examine its dimensionality.

The examination of the dimensionality of the nature of education quality with respect to the Mongolian contextual reality is becoming a challenging problem in order to standardize school education. In order to tackle this problem within our context, it is practically needed to examine the constituencies and dimensions of education quality.  In accordance with the need-based specific purpose, this literature review will be conducted with twofold focuses such as: (1) what constitutes the quality of education and (2) how to dimensionate it.  

This review is beneficiary for the Mongolian educationalists as well as policy-makers in terms of advancing their understandings about standardizing the quality of school education with regard to dimensional aspects in a broad sense. In a narrow sense, it is worthwhile in terms of bringing forth the research based-several questions directly addressed to set up the standards for the quality of school education in Mongolia. 

What Constitutes The Quality Of Education?

The quality of education is an underlying concept that embodies comprehensive characters of educational services. Its comprehensiveness is manifested itself in diverse definitions and understandings proposed by different scholars and agencies, each of which aims, to some extent, to recognize the constituencies of education quality.  Taken together the various ideas and perspectives about education quality appeared in recent papers, it is likely to propose that the quality of education embraces multiple constituencies bearing cultural contexts.

According to Cheng & Tam (1997), the quality of education comprises the characters of the set of elements in the inputs, process and outputs of education system that provide relevant users with complete satisfaction services.  As a matter of fact, the authors reached this definition by synthesizing general conceptions of quality in management  such as education quality as excellence (Peter & Waterman, cited in Chen &Tam 1997), value (Feigenbaum, cited in Chen &Tam 1997), fitness for use (Juran & Gryna, cited in Chen &Tam 1997), conformance to specifications (Gilmore, cited in Chen &Tam 1997) conformance to requirement (Crosb, cited in Chen &Tam 1997) defect avoidance (Crosby, cited in Chen &Tam 1997) meeting and/or exceeding consumers expectations (Parasuranman et al., cited in Chen &Tam 1997). In terms of this definition, the quality of school education, to large extent, comprises three broad constituencies, namely, input, process and output ones.  Therefore, this paper is worthwhile in terms of suggesting the broad extents to which the quality of education is mostly likely to be defined, measured and standardized.  However, it is again arguable what the constituencies of input, process and output in school education are in terms of assuring quality.

Apart from the broad definition of education quality, the authors also put forward seven models of education quality, namely, a goal-specification model, a resource input model, a process model, a satisfaction model, a legitimacy model, an absence of problem model and an organizational learning model. In fact, those are produced through the interpretations of the models of organizational effectiveness and school effectiveness into educational service (Cameron & Whetten and Cheng, cited in Chen &Tam 1997).  Each model of education quality brings underlying characters whereby implicitly presenting its some constituent parts. For instance, a goal-specification model is likely to bring ‘achievement conformity with given goals’ as a constituent part in education quality.  Likewise, the rest of the models might suggest some specific particularities as education quality constituencies.  Thus, a concept, education quality tends to embrace many constituent parts in terms of defining, measuring and assuring quality.  

Referring to international education bodies such as UNESCO and UNICEF, their understandings of the quality of education has been more evolved rather than fixed or unchanged. In 1972, UNESCO recommended that  the fundamental goal of social change was to eradicate inequality and to establish the equitable democracy whereby prioritizing the notions such as lifelong learning and relevance as well as respecting the social and cultural context of learners (Faure et al, cited in EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2005).   Then, after two decades, this organization again reconsidered the nature of the quality of education in the light of four pillars of learning, known as learning to know, learning to do, learning to live and learning to be. Just as education is conceptualized in the holistic view of learning so is education quality (Delors, cited in EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2005). In this conceptualization, education quality ought to center on learning and its roles into their life in terms of generating skills to cogitate, create, co-operate and survive which tie all together in with cultural background.  In 2003, UNESCO also highlighted that accessibility to quality education was identified as a human right and support a human right-approach to all educational activities whereby acknowledging prior knowledge at learner’s level and recommending the best possible impacts for learning for all at system’s level (Pigozzi, cited in EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2005).

 Taken together afore-mentioned definitions recommended by UNESCO, it is highly likely to noted that notions such as lifelong learning, relevance, accessibility and respectfulness to learner’s right, might be weighted up in determining the constituent parts of education quality. Since the quality of education centers round such culturally-understood–notions, its constituencies might be culturally and contextually determined.

At the same time, UNICEF stresses the child-centered approach founded upon child rights to the quality of education that emphasizes equity and relevance to school education. In fact, this approach underpins the enforcement of stakeholders to governments whether they should take measures for progressive realization of the right to education and for aspects of its quality (Wilson, cited in EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2005). In turn, it implies that equity aspects underpinned by child rights is mostly likely to take part in the embodiment of the quality of education.

As a whole, it is remarkably noted that the quality of education centers round such culturally-contextually-understood–notions such as lifelong learning, relevance, accessibility and respectfulness of child rights and equity in terms of the sights of the international education bodies and the existing literature. Therefore, it might embrace multiple constituencies that are likely to be culturally and contextually determined. However, it is arguable whether all constituencies of education quality are regarded as dimensions in educational measurement. This question directly related to the dimensionality of the quality of education will be considered in the next part of this piece of writing.

How To Dimensionate  The  Quality Of Education?

The measurement of the quality of education emphasizes an importance of determining its dimensions. The reason why it plays crucial roles in the quality measurement of education is that any efforts to evaluate the quality of education in way of taking into account its all constituent parts is theoretically possible, yet  practically, almost impossible because of its complexity and complicatedness. Thus, it is needed to differentiate such characters or constituencies from the nature of education quality that form dimensions to measure education quality.  In turn, it is again questioned how to dimensionalize the quality of education and how many dimensions it has and which of them can embody the base of the dimensions by which the nature of the quality are measured.  Examining those questions in the recent literature, it has been known that there is not single definition and understanding regarding the dimensions of education quality. Instead, there are diverse propositions that might bring some contributions towards recognizing the dimensionality of education quality. Therefore, it is mostly likely to put forward that further research is importantly needed to verify the dimensionality of the quality of education and determine the base of its dimensions.

Dealing with the nature of education quality in the light of human right-based approach wherein human right-based education is regarded as a conceptual basis of quality education, Pigozzi (2004) put forward that the quality of education has 10 dimensions. According his proposition, five out of them represent the dimensions at learners’ level whereas the rest of them indicate the dimensions at system’s level. The learners five dimensions comprise teachers, content, methodologies, curricula and examination systems while the system’s ones consist of managerial structure, policy, legislation framework, resource and measurement system (Pigozzi 2004, p.6). Respecting to his determination of education quality dimensions, education standards are likely to bear such sort of dimensions. 

As regards its validation, Pigozzi’s proposition is worthwhile in terms of giving a broad orientation to set up standards for education quality. However, the argumentation given for why education quality bears 10 dimensions was not succinctly and precisely reasoned.  At this critical point, it can not be regarded as a paper that brought theoretical contributions to tackle the dimensionality-related problems of education quality such as (1) whether education quality is dimensionalised and (2) what the base dimensions of education quality are.

Founded upon the philosophy of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF proposes that the quality of education contains 5 dimensions, namely, learners, environments, content, processes and outcomes (UNICEF 2000, cited in EFA Global Monitoring Report 2005).  Following on those dimensions, the quality of education is likely to be standardized with the five major categories of criteria or indicators.  However, it might be again asked how such 5 dimensions are broken down into such measurable indicators and criteria.

Synthesizing the ideas of general conceptions of quality in management into education, Cheng & Tam (1997.p.23) noted that the quality of education was multi-dimensional. In fact, this proposition was not clearly reasoned in his paper. Only one considerable argument is that since the quality of education contains the diverse characters of the set of the elements of input, process and output in education in terms of organization management, it might embrace multi-dimensions (Cheng & Tam, 1997). Indeed, such sort of the argumentations of the multi-dimensionality in education quality seem to be not strong because it is not founded upon the clear underpinnings that takes into the differences between its constituencies and dimensions. Thus, further clarification is needed to examine the linkage between multi-constituencies and multi-dimensions in education quality

Summary

The nature of the quality of education has still been debatable in terms of clarifying its constituencies and dimensions.  In accordance with recent papers, the quality of education tends to embody the multiple constituencies that are highly likely to be recognized culturally and contextually rather than internationally and globally. In addition, no single identification that can determine the number of the dimensions of education quality has been founded yet.  Referring to the existing literature, the number indicating dimensions of the quality of education vary from 3 through 5 to 10.  Thus, it is said that the quality of education might be also multi-dimensional. However, succinct argumentations reasoning the multi-dimensionality of education quality is needed.  

Further Research Questions Posed

Based on our current awarenesses about the nature of the quality of education and its dimensionality summarized, by and large, in this literature review, it is suggested that following questions will be needed to be researched in order to facilitate the quality standardization of the primary and secondary education in Mongolia:

To what extent will Mongolian cultural and contextual aspects be considered into the quality standardization of the primary and secondary education?

How many dimensions are sufficient to measure the quality of the primary and secondary education in Mongolia? 

To what extent are cultural values taken into consideration to dimensionalise the quality of education in Mongolia?

REFERENCES

Cheng, Y.C. & Tam, W.M 1997, Multi-models of quality in education, Quality Assurance in Education, vol.5, no.1, pp.22-31.

Ministry of Education,Culture and Science 2007, EFA Report (draft), Ulaanbaatar, p.6.

Ministry of Education,Culture and Science 2007, School curriculum policy, order no.236/2007 Ulaanbaatar.

Ministry of Education, Science 2007, The Proceedings of the Teacher Forum, Ulaanbaatar, p.7.

National Statistics Office of Mongolia, the World Bank, UNDP 2004, Household Income and Expenditure, Living Standards Measurement Survey: Main Report, 2002-2003, Ulaanbaatar, p.41.

Pigozzi, M 2004, The 10 dimensions of quality in education, research paper presented at the meeting of Resource pack of curriculum development, Tokyo, UNESCO.

UNESCO 2005, EFA Global Monitoring Report, Paris, pp.27-31.   htt://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID.