This Tool for Quality Assurance of education for democratic citizenship (EDC) in schools was prepared as a response to the compliance gap between policies and practices of EDC in various countries. While EDC policies are well developed, EDC practices in schools present significant weaknesses. The Tool was also prepared as part of the current interest and implementation of quality assurance in education.
Chapter 1 introduces the whole Toolkit. It presents the background, the objectives and the target groups of the Toolkti; introduces the Tool’s concepts and basic assumptions particularly concerning Education for democratic citizenship.
Chapter 2 provides the conceptual framework on EDC for the whole Tool. It provides a denifinition of what is EDC; considers where and how EDC happens in schools; discusses key aspects of capacity buiding for EDC in schools.
Chapter 3 provide an overview of quality assurance in education, its origin and its main components. The chapter also explains what makes quality assurance different from quality control; what are the processes of quality assurance; why quality assurance is a system.
Chapter 4 presents the main characteristics of school development planning which is the central component of quality assurance in education. It also describes school self-evaluation as the core within school development planning. It examines particularly the principles, the stages and the challenges of school development planning.
Chapter 5 prsents a framework to evaluate EDC. It first explains the main characteristics of indicators and then sets out the quality indicators of EDC.
Chapter 6 is a toolbox. Its objective is to assist schools in preparing and carrying out development planning of EDC. It focuses primarily on self-evaluation process as the basis of development planning of EDC and provides initial indications on how to use for this purpose the evaluative framework on EDC included in chapter 5. Chapter 6 follows the various steps of self-evaluation and development planning; gives basic information, guidelines and tools; includes examples from schools and from models from different countries.
Chapter 7 examines the needs and implications of quality assurance of EDC at the level of the education system, in two parallel ways: it reviews the system of quality assurance, and its components, fron an EDC perspective; it examines the requirements for a specific QA system of EDC. It also provides a checklist of policy measures which are necessary for setting up a quality assurance system of EDC.
- Tool for Quality Assurance of education for democratic citizenship (EDC) in schools
