EDUCATION MANAGEMENT

The Big Picture: A Strategic Plan (Benchmark Assessment)

The Big Picture: A Strategic Plan (Benchmark Assessment)

Introduction

Education is moving into a period of unprecedented change. Changing demographics, economic transitions, the transformation of mainstream values and competition are having and will continue to have a profound effect on the entire educational system. Furthermore, the tendency over the last several decades to expand the mission of the schools with limited resources has resulted in poor goal clarity and an inability of schools to place adequate resources behind important priorities when needed. Competition for resources is a harsh reality since available inputs are never adequate for all desired ends. While the business world has been on the cutting edge of this transition for some 20 years, educators must now learn to identify the competition for resources and develop strategies for gaining greater resource levels for high priority activities.

School's Vision for Excellence and School Improvement

Education is an ethical and a moral activity that seek to liberate people mentally and physically and stimulate learning as active learners rather than to follow rules in codified slavish manner like passive learners.

To improve understanding requires learners to be actively involved in the pursuit of knowledge. Teacher cannot transform the knowledge as a product to learners. Instead, in education there should be a close collaboration between teacher and learner in improving the understanding and the meaning-making on the part of the learner. The curriculum becomes negotiated between teacher and learner and the former acts as a facilitator to enrich the learning and the meaning making of the learner so that learner starts taking control of his/her learning actively and engages in self-assessment (de Cossart & Fish, 2005, p.57).

Quality Assurance

Nurturing the understanding in learners is an important aim of education. Understanding can easily help learners to alter their actions and modify their practice according to the situation. Having knowledge or skills is one thing but lacking how and when to use them will merely lead to “parroting the performance”. Therefore, along with the training for new knowledge/skills, cultivating the understanding of how and when to use them is of paramount importance. Cultivating this understanding among learners is the corner stone of education. Active involvement of learners in education is vital in acquiring this important aim of education.

Education vs. Training

Training is concerned mainly to the skills essential for any professional practice. Training programme is then concerned mainly to the analysis of the actual skills practitioners need to use. But to further extend this learning, when learners start understanding when to employ these skills and how to vary them appropriately and wisely according to the circumstances in practice, are education (Golby & Parrott, 1998, p. 3-7).

In m-education, the important difference between education and training need to be appreciated in designing the curriculum. For doctors, learning new knowledge, skills and procedures are an important part of their training but knowing when, how and why to use these is education. Curriculum designers need to understand this significant ...