282 Greener by Degrees: Quality Assurance and Quality

At first sight, it might appear that institutional quality processes have little connection with the kinds of innovative approach to embedding sustainability in the curriculum which is exemplified by other chapters in this volume. While sustainability is seen as a vital area which engages staff and student attention, hence justifying the outlay of time and energy, quality assurance processes in particular are often perceived as bureaucratic box-ticking exercises, the only benefit of which is the receipt of a clean bill of health from what the media are fond of calling ‘the quality watchdogs’. Likewise the term ‘quality enhancement ’ can be viewed in a rather narrow sense as relating merely to innovation in teaching and learning methods. However, the approach to quality assurance and enhancement taken at the University of Gloucestershire represents a distinct departure from this stereotype. In the first place, quality assurance and quality enhancement are seen as indivisible twins – a point of view which corresponds to tha