The Quality Assurance, Accreditation and Standardisation Conference (QUASS) 2025
Andrew Bosson
The Quality Assurance, Accreditation and Standardisation Conference (QUASS) 2025 was held at Istanbul Kent University on Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th May. Friday’s program consisted of four presentations. Prof Dr Hatice Camgöz Akdağ, Head of the Department of Management Engineering at Istanbul Technical University, provided an overview of ‘Quality Management & Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions’. She shared a variety of QA models and described her ongoing work in QA systems at ITU. Prof Dr Hayal Köksal from Istanbul Kent University gave a very personal presentation of her experiences in ‘Total Quality in Language Education: A Human-Centred Perspective: Integrating personal experience with educational practice since 1990’. In her engaging and practical presentation ‘Raising the Bar: What Makes a Language Program ‘Quality’?’, Didem Mutçalıoğlu, chair of DEDAK, encouraged participants to see accreditation as a starting point for sustainable, evidence-based and ongoing development to raise standards in teaching and consequently learning. Ayşen Güven, Director of Education for the British Council in Türkiye, shared her experiences of the work carried out by the British Council and the Sabancı Foundation to provide PD support to teachers who otherwise have no or limited access to any PD activities. She described how the ‘English Together’ program has helped form Professional Development Communities of practice for around 30,000 teachers of English in Turkey.
Saturday’s program focused on hands-on workshops in the morning delivered by SL’s very own İlkay Demirkol Bülbül (Curriculum & Syllabus Design); our ex-colleague Zeynep Ürkün (Testing & Assessment); Beril Ayman Yücel (Professional Development); and Ian S. Collins (Quality Culture & Continuous Improvement). The afternoon saw participants participate in a QA audit simulation.
The conference contained a lot of extremely useful, interesting and thought-provoking information. Instead of trying to cover all the areas raised, I wish to develop a key theme that seemed to be at the heart of the conference. The focus was on ‘finding purpose’ in Quality Assurance and accreditation to, at minimum, maintain or, ideally, improve standards of teaching and learning. This seemed particularly relevant to the SL context given the recent EAQUALS reaccreditation visit.
Hatice Akdağ noted that accreditation should be a minimum expectation of quality, and that Total Quality Management (TQM) offers the model and opportunity for continual and sustainable post accreditation improvement. Didem Mutçalıoğlu took this further by observing that sometimes ‘quality does not stick’; that is, accreditation is not a shortcut to quality that once achieved can be left alone until the time comes around again for re-accreditation. Rather, accreditation can act as tool to help generate a genuine culture of quality built on values and evidence-based decision making. In our contexts increasing quality refers to the provision of learning and learning opportunities. She also noted that teacher resistance should be recognised as a part of the quality process. Reframing statements such as “The accreditation body says we should…” to “Addressing this issue provides us with the opportunity to develop…” may help ease the resistance once accreditation is seen as an ongoing process focussed on improving teaching and learning and not just an outcome to be achieved.
Similarly, it was suggested that PD activities should form part of a sustainable QA process. This does not necessarily mean a PD unit is essential, but it does suggest that PD activities should be evidence-based and focussed on benefiting learning. The PD process should focus on identifying the best or most appropriate type of activity to support specific developmental needs.
A final point to note is the suggestion that in educational settings effective TQM arises from bottom-up engagement of teachers, engaging their knowledge and skills of teachers within a robust quality assurance framework.
