Using a student-focused learning perspective to align academic development with institutional quality assurance

Much has been written about quality assurance processes in teaching and learning in recent years (Harvey and Knight 1996; Woodhouse 1999). While there has been a great deal of debate as to the definition of quality and the evidence upon which to base decisions about the quality of higher education, there has been little written about the concept of learning which underpins quality processes. Nor has there been any consideration of how the variety of quality processes and indicators are aligned within themselves and how they are aligned with institutional policies and processes for academic development in teaching and learning. In this chapter we will suggest that such alignment is the key to effective quality improvement in higher education. In order to achieve such alignment, a clear theoretical underpinning of the policies and processes is required – it is this theoretical underpinning which can provide the coherence within and between policies and processes across an institution. In this chapter we outline the theoretical perspective from which we, and our university, have been working in developing its quality improvement policies and processes – the so-called student learning perspective (Prosser and Trigwell 1999; Ramsden 2003). We will then outline some of the institutional quality assurance processes that are being implemented consistent with this theoretical perspective, and describe some of the academic development activities designed to support these processes and further improve quality