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Study On Quality Assurance System In Higher Vocational Curriculum

Posted on:2009-07-02Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Q M HuangFull Text:PDF
GTID:1117360245973268Subject:Comparative Education
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Quality and equality has become two key focus in reform and development of higher education in the world since 80'twentieth century. Many countries try to establish internal integrated external quality assurance system to confirm the successive improvement in higher education quality through augmenting investment in higher education, founding up all kinds of professional organizations, issuing a series of laws and acts in the name of government. Meanwhile, the higher vocational education, as one sort of higher education in the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED5B) is absorbing more attention from the mass. People eagerly expect the improvement of quality in higher vocational education.The development of higher vocational education in China took a roundabout way at the beginning of 80'twentieth century. Due to the doubt about necessity and nationality of higher vocational education as a new sort of higher education, it made little development during the following 20 years, until the end of 90', the higher vocational education met an accelerative developing opportunity. However, owing to the late starting, brittle basis and the feature of a new born baby, especially after the expanding enrollment from 1999, although the number of schools and students overlapped the half of higher education, the quality of higher vocational education is definitely waning. So, how to maintain and improve quality during the process of expanding enrollment is a practical and challenging problem. Particularly, in the near future, how to deal with the dilemma between limitation of financial investment in education from the government and high expectation of improvement in education from public through improving effectiveness and efficiency is becoming a real problem that each higher vocational school have to meet.The attentiveness about curriculum of higher vocational education launched recent years. From 2005, "The developing plan of national education from 2006 to 2010" issued by Ministry of Education clearly declared that higher vocational education must develop in quality, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Finance started together " The plan of establishing national benchmarking higher vocational school" focused on building of profession, the accentuation on practice and research of higher vocational curriculum has greatly changed , that is, from the discussion of development and mapping, sort and classification to the deep research on curriculum and instruction, the model of cultivation of students. Because people gradually realized that curriculum is the core to improve quality of higher vocational education and instruction, both professional building and students' cultivation model have to be implemented under the building block of curriculum.Under the influence of educational thoughts of N.A.Kaiipob, the concept of "big instruction and small curriculum" has gained an obstinate root. To speak sternly, our higher vocational school exert management of curriculum implementation in the name of management of instruction, lack total control of school curriculum activities, narrowed in management of "curriculum implementation" or so called "instruction management". What school pay attention to is the middle step of curriculum development that is curriculum implementation, which leads to the main factors or steps that greatly or indirectly effect curriculum quality such as settlement of curriculum, evaluation of curriculum and resource of curriculum, management of curriculum, ideas of curriculum are not included in the scope of quality assurance system. The whole process of curriculum activities is out of control and more or less problems arose. For example, because of the lack of curriculum inspection system, the aim of curriculum averts from the aim of student's cultivation, the settlement of curriculum tends to copy or simplify the settlement of undergraduate curriculum, the contents of the curriculum can hardly follow the steps of the times etc. Also, because of different apprehension about the function of educational research in improving teachers professional development, many faculties' ideas seems to be behind the requirement of steps of the times. Their value inclination "lay much importance upon science, theory, knowledge and look down upon technology, practice, ability" is exercising potential influence on students' value tendency in their study. Therefore, to establish and apply "curriculum quality assurance system in vocational education", not the normally "instruction quality assurance system in vocational education", try to overlap all the factors and steps that effect quality of curriculum into the scope of quality assurance system, will doubtlessly benefit schools from successive improvement of quality. The aim of this article is to build a complete quality assurance system in vocational education to solve the problem.The logic of the article is based on the scan of global quality assurance system in vocational education, discovery of the main problems that effected quality in vocational curriculum and analysis of the practical dilemma or conceptual resource. After that, the author attempts to establish perfect quality assurance system in vocational education. The whole article is composed of five parts. The first part is introduction. Explain the reason to do this study, made a brief introduction on the method and meanings of this research. A conclusive statement on the related reference is also made in this part. The second part presents a rough scan on the features of quality assurance system in vocational education in America, Australia, and Germany to cast enlightening on us .The third part is to investigate the current curriculum quality all over the country , to understand people's basic judgment, attitude and expectations towards future reform on higher vocational curriculum by means of the investigation on internet to all teachers and student in higher vocational schools around the country, face to face visit to several presidents of national benchmarking schools and the paper investigation on 137 enterprises in Shanghai. The 4th part is to discover the key problems that effected quality according to the investigation above, in this article, concluded by scarce of resource, rough control on quality, ideas behind the times, and unrooted its deep cause. The 5th part is to build a perfect quality assurance system in vocational education. Giving a definition on the quality assurance system in vocational education, taking an advantage of the thoughts of total quality control, the author founded a structural model of internal quality assurance system in vocational education by a brief "Deming cycle", made a definition on the procedure of application, the scope of overlapping, the structure of organization of the system and describe in detail on the eight classified items. An analysis and reflection on the practice of curriculum assurance system exerted by Shanghai Second Polytenical College as a case study is also attached.In our country, the practice or research on quality assurance system in vocational curriculum is just on the way. The unique aim of superficial study in this article is to arouse more accentuation on systematic research to the topic by those who are intellectually interested in reform and practice of vocational curriculum.
Keywords/Search Tags:Curriculum of Higher Vocational Education, Quality Assurance, Structural Model, Classified Items
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