What impact is implementing a quality system having on the vocational education and training classroom?

This study aimed to identify what constituted the quality journey in the vocational education and training (VET) sector, how quality was understood and put into practice within technical and further education (TAFE) institutes, and what impact the implementation of quality in the VET sector appeared to be having on the learning environment. The study also drew on the findings and the literature to investigate the quality movement's potential impact on the learning environment.

This report is based on two sources of information:

• qualitative research, in the form of case-study research with quality managers, head teachers and teachers in eight institutes of TAFE in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia
• non-empirical research, in the form of literature relating to quality in education, and current work by USA practitioners renowned for implementing quality in the classroom.

The national strategy for VET (ANTA 1994) highlighted quality and a commitment to ongoing improvement as integral features of training organisations throughout the VET sector, identifying this as a key objective. Subsequent reports expand on quality principles (ANTA 1997c) and assurance (ANTA 1997a), and define quality as it applies to the recognition framework (ANTA 1998b, 1999, 2001a, 2001b).

Since 1994, there has been a great deal of activity related to quality at all levels of the VET sector—national, state and institute. As this study reveals, the activity has not as yet permeated the classroom and learning environments. Applying quality principles to all aspects of commercial, educational and other activities is a relatively new phenomenon. To date, most of the quality activity has concentrated on management and administration of the VET sector and its training organisations.

The first part of this report is an overview of how quality in education has been defined, and a perspective on the approach to quality that has been adopted in the VET sector in Australia over 1995–99.

The second part, based on consultations in 1998 with over 100 TAFE teachers across eight TAFE institutes, resulted in findings related to:

• the central question of how quality is understood by teachers in the VET sector, including the range of quality initiatives known and their impact in the classroom
• changes in the VET sector, and to teachers' work, that have an impact on how teachers perceive quality.

Two-thirds of the teachers surveyed felt that implementing quality was having a positive impact on their work. However, as yet, it had not made an impact on the learning process or the classroom, because this had not been a focus of the quality systems being implemented in institutes. The consultations confirmed the following:

• Quality meant different things to different people.
• 'Quality' in VET had not had a focus on the learning process, except in superficial ways.
• Quality had been implemented as a way to improve business and the running of institutes, not as a means of improving learning.
• Many other VET initiatives were impacting on teachers' work, and teachers were still coming to terms with these.

The non-empirical part of the study assessed recent literature on how implementing quality can impact in the classroom. This component of the study included seminars and a workshop conducted by Myron Tribus and David Langford, American guests of the Australian Quality Council. It revealed that:

• Implementing quality need not apply only to management and administration of training organisations. It is applicable and practicable for the classroom. Thus far, the VET sector has not made the classroom or learning environment a specific focus of the quality system. This is a real gap in the implementation of quality.
• Practitioners like Tribus and Langford, who use the quality approach and tools in the classroom, define quality simply as: 'what makes learning a pleasure and a joy'. Too often, quality is interpreted and acted upon as if it is customer focus or strategic planning or data collection. These are the parts of what constitutes a quality approach, not the whole journey.
• Making learning the core of what happens in the VET sector is essential if the sector is to adopt lifelong learning as one of its goals.
• The quality framework for VET is a powerful tool and has already had an impact on the management and administration of training organisations. The potential of this tool in the classroom is even greater if we start to envision the class itself as the organisation, the teacher as the leader, the students as the people in the system and the product as learning.

In the time since the institute consultations, national quality implementation through staff development has continued, especially via work-based learning programs. However, against that, a recent major survey (Harris et al. 2001) also found evidence of a certain 'corporatisation' in the types of professional development being undertaken by VET teachers.

An essential point from the consultations stands; that is, continuing effort is required to bridge the gap between institute–state–national-level VET quality measures and programs, and quality measures that are understood, gathered and implemented directly by teachers and for learning. Learning, many theorists argue, is best construed as a co-operative and creative process with the responsibility for success shared between the teacher and the students in a classroom 'ecosystem'. That approach is not a salient feature of national quality implementation.

A related point, which came through clearly in the institute consultations, is the management improvement truism, that a broad-ranging quality initiative will have to work hard to succeed if it is introduced at a time of organisational and people stress. The stress on this occasion was that of TAFE institute restructuring or downsizing.