Customer Reviews

Continuous Quality Improvement in the Classroom: A Collaborative Approach

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I must admit being a skeptic about TQM as I have seen it applied in several organizations: much hot air, little actual work, no results. However, this little book has given me some hope that CQI can actually be implemented in one of the most difficults fields to manage, education.

This book is a no-nonsense guide to implementing CQI techniques in the classroom. It will be helpful to teachers with a practical bias.

This is not a general TQM book: it focuses on the very specific and difficult learning environment. Every example and activity will be found relevant to teaching. It is not either a book for teaching the tools and techniques of CQI to students; nevertheless, no student could possibly go through a course designed and taught with the tools the book describes, and leave unaware of CQI techniques.

The book is divided in two main sections. The first describes "eleven steps" to achieve a functioning CQI classroom environment. The CQI environment is modeled as four separate systems: facilitator, learning, improvement and payment. Most of the chapters include self-evaluation instruments for the teacher, and training activities for the students.

On the downside, I found some of the chapters a little naive. I would also have liked to see more examples related to higher education, my own field.

The second section, the Appendix, is a beautifully summarized guide to several tools of quality management, presented in the context of education. One of the tools is actually a self-evaluation guide, that produces a "CQI teaching index".

As a higher education teacher I find this book an easy to follow, concise guide to CQI in the classroom. The Appendix alone is worth the book; nowhere else have I found such a good summary of CQI techniques as applied to education.

Some of the techniques described have really forced me to think about what I teach and why I teach it. I find very interesting the emphasis throughout the book about relevancy of course content, and the student's role as "workers".

This is a book by someone who seems to have actually used the techniques and to believe in CQI. I would recommend it to individual teachers and to those who must manage them.

(A previous version of this review was provided directly to the author before publishing)