Language schools and teachers leave a lot
of money on the table, as long as they do not develop their own quality
management system.
If at all, most adults associate the term
quality management system with some sort of ISO (International Organization for
Standardization) certification, typically ISO 9001. It has something to do with
obtaining some internationally recognized accreditation, lots of preparation
work, headache for the managers and resistance from the whole organization.
Typically, language schools do not aspire
to obtain an ISO certification, the exception being multinational language
companies like Berlitz or standardized test providers.
Why should you as a language teacher or
school care?
Quality management means having systems in
place to provide customers consistently with quality services that comply with
certain standards. One needs not wait for an ISO accreditation to implement key
elements of quality management.
What are typical problems related to
language teaching that could be addressed by a QM system?
·
Having
diverse groups of students (by ways of age, educational and social background, personality,
learning styles and cognitive abilities) may make it difficult to maintain a
certain standard in your teaching;
·
How
to make it certain that all teachers at one school offer a common level of quality,
while taking into consideration their individual teaching styles?
·
How
to handle complaints – pronounced and hidden?
·
How
to take your teaching systematically to new levels?
·
How
to create systems and routines that allow your students to progress almost
automatically (e.g. getting them to talk, that is, produce their own sentences
flexibly and with ease), without solely relying on your textbook and the
curriculum?
In the next article, we start answering
some of those questions, by looking at the seven areas of focus for improvement
in a typical language school setting.
Out of the three main actors (administration,
students and teachers), we get seven areas in which we can let our QM system do
its work.
1.
Administration
2.
Administration/teachers
3.
Administration/students
4.
Teachers
5.
Teachers/students
6.
Students
7.
Students/teachers/administration
Language teaching differs radically from any
other production process in two major aspects.
While selected customers may be somehow
involved in developing a new smartphone or app, their participation is typically
limited to some kind of feedback to the company.
However, in language teaching all
customers are directly involved in producing the output: speech.
A second major difference is that in a
company all persons engaged directly in production are, in principle, controllable
by management. In language teaching the levels of possible control vary
considerably.
The most pressing problem is assuring that
students develop a learning routine at home. Apart from inference through
questions and homework checking, we do not have many other possibilities of monitoring,
how much effort they really make. And, it is much more difficult to enforce
certain routines outside of the classroom (should we tell them “you are fired”?)
From the teachers’ perspective, the
administration’s activities are not directly controllable. However, the
experience students get in interacting with office staff may greatly influence
their expectations, attitudes and effort during the course.
On the other hand, administrators of
language schools may not be informed about what goes on in the classroom, apart
from occasional visits and feedback questionnaires. That is, they may lack critical
information how to match individual students to the most compatible teacher, or
how to sell outstanding elements of individual teachers.
Stay tuned!
Gerhard
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