2022 Volume 44 Issue 2 Pages 62-72
The main focus of quality assurance (QA) has long shifted toward internal QA, the process in which each institution assesses learning outcomes to improve their education. However, the literature on QA has focused on official quality management (QM) processes, whereas little is known about how QM relates to each individual lecture. This is also the case with medical education whose QA system is nationally standardized with program accreditation, national curriculum, and assessment tests.
This article aims to reveal how to make the connection between QM and lectures while considering facultyʼs perceptions. In doing so, interviews with two faculty members who are responsible for lectures on medical communication in a Japanese medical school whose program is accredited by the Japan Accreditation Council for Medical Education (JACME) were conducted. Two main findings were attained. First, the facultyʼs interests and motivations for their own lectures were unrelated to official QM procedures in their affiliated institution, which sometimes led them to see QM as limiting their ideal education. Additionally, they could not gain satisfaction from the assessment results that are officially regarded as one of the most important indicators of learning outcomes. This is because they believed that these scores did not reflect the values they want to prioritize in their lectures. Second, however, they were partially in favor of QM because they can associate it with their original educational interests and motivations. Precisely, they thought QM positively affects their teaching practices in enhancing cooperation with other staff and ensuring communication with students, things that they hope to pursue in their lectures.
These findings suggest that the facultyʼs reinterpretation of the effect of QM would be essential for faculty to positively consider QM in their lecture improvement processes. This means that not only to prevail officially delineated QM procedures to faculty but also to respect each facultyʼs educational motivation in encouraging the reinterpretation of the effect of the official QM steps would be a solution for connecting QM to educational improvements. With these suggestions, possible ways to enrich the association between QM and lectures are discussed.
