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In this chapter, Turkish educational system and institutional quality assessment initiatives of education are explained. And also, the relationship between educational quality assurance (QA) in Turkey and issues of effective schooling is summarised in terms of Turkish literature.

Education is widely accepted as a lifelong process. The school is an institution established in order to provide qualified education which contains complex and more abstract knowledge and ideas as well as literacy and simple numerical skills to the students. Each country has basically established education systems and educational institutions to ensure social integration, continuity and stability, and to sustain the social and cultural heritage of a society. Education in Turkey is one of the state’s basic functions according to the constitution and performed under the supervision and control of the state with the declaration of the Republic of Turkey. Ministry of National Education is responsible for the implementation of all education activities centrally managed in the Republic of Turkey. Higher Education Council (YÖK) is responsible for the management and thus the quality processes of the higher education institutions in Turkey. Two major attempts in this perspective are YÖK, which assesses the institutions with standards which are coherent with international accreditation institutions, and Higher Education Quality Council (YÖKAK), an independent and specific council which is established by YÖK. YÖK and YÖKAK are governmental-based quality-assessment institutions. Association for Evaluation and Accreditation of Teacher Colleges’ Educational Programs (EPDAD) is also an independent institution for quality assessment of education faculties which focusses on teacher training and education. The purpose of EPDAD is to strengthen the student learning in formal training and to ensure the quality standards for candidate teachers. Any undergraduate programme which meets the standards of EPDAD is accredited for three years. Standards of EPDAD are detailed in this chapter.

Nowadays, the higher education institutions (HEIs) of Thailand are affiliated by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation and other relevant Ministries which connects the state-of-the-art technology/facilities to all academic programmes at HEIs. Thailand has been successful in the growth in access to higher education across the country, but there are many specific requirements to improve the accountability of higher education system in the nation across many decades. This paper provides an introduction of holistic information about Thailand’s higher education system. It then describes an overall picture of developing and managing the quality assurance (QA) of Thai higher education. It also points to the details of criteria, processes, and systems which were adopted into the model of QA such as higher education standards, accreditation process of curriculum, Thailand Qualifications Framework, as well as provides the linkage between national education act, policy and standards, QA, feedback for continuous improvement as the key component of QA in the educational system. Finally, the paper presents the challenges and opportunities in the rapid change of the twenty-first century and globalisation as the main points and crucial factors requiring Thai HEIs to continue improving their quality effectively.

Globally, higher education institutions have become reliant on a quality assurance (QA) system over the past four decades. QA is considered to be one of the most important drivers of continuous improvement and an essential tool for promoting excellence in teaching, learning, and research. It provides a framework for establishing and maintaining standards, and for assuring stakeholders that programs and services meet or exceed these standards. Despite the wide range of quality assurance models available to higher education institutions, there remains considerable debate over which model is the most effective, as well as what criteria should be used for evaluating the effectiveness of these models. Universities in the Middle East have tried to adopt different models of QA that can meet their needs and expectations and provide a framework for continuous improvement. A major objective of this book is to provide an overview account of the QA process as implemented in the higher education systems of a number of Middle East countries, including Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This book lays out essential theoretical and practical insights into the role of QA policies and practices in higher education in the Middle East countries and builds upon this idea to provide a blueprint for future academic leaders in these countries and other Middle Eastern countries to enhance their QA policies and practices and drive higher education in those countries forward.

Introduction: In the context of globalisation processes, the necessity to create appropriate information support for management decisions at various levels becomes increasingly important: at the international, national and enterprise levels. The source of such data is financial reporting. The last leads to increase attention from key users (investors, lenders, other users) to the reliability and quality of financial reporting data. The study of scientific literature and best foreign practices made it possible to identify problems of the theoretical, organisational and methodological background of preparing high-quality financial statements and their assessment, particularly the lack of a unified interpretation of the financial reporting quality concept. The necessity to identify a theoretical basis for assessing financial reporting quality has led to the relevance of this study.

Aim: Scientific substantiation and improvement of theoretical provisions of methodology development for financial reporting quality assessment.

Methods used within the study are the following: Analysis, synthesis, operational approach, bibliographic analysis, generalisation.

Findings: The application of an operational approach to the formulation of the definition of financial reporting quality has made it possible to create the basis for its assessment. This approach involves descriptions of the principles of clarity and uniformity. The authors define the concept of ‘financial reporting quality’, formulating the theoretical principles for financial reporting assessment as the process of establishing compliance of financial statements with a specific list of qualitative characteristics.

Performance management (PM) has been developed to a central part of health care reforms. However, ideas of performance are traditionally contested in the health care sector and split up between a professional and a bureaucratic understanding of effective service delivery. With the rise of New Public Management, an additional layer of PM instruments has been put on the already existing structures. As a result, different PM regimes can be distinguished, which vary in the way they define performance, blame underperformance and design accountability instruments to ensure appropriate behaviour. The paper investigates the institutional design of PM schemes of three different cases – Denmark, Germany and England – which are representative for different PM regimes.

This chapter explores issues of quality teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education courses from the perspective of teaching fully online (polysynchronous) courses in undergraduate and graduate programs in education at a technology university in Ontario, Canada. Online courses offer unique opportunities to capitalize on students’ and professors’ digital capabilities gained in out-of-school learning and apply them to an in-school, technology-enabled learning environment. The critical and reflective arguments in this paper are informed by theories of online learning and research on active learning pedagogies.

Digital technologies have opened new spaces for higher education which should be dedicated to creating high-quality learning environments and high-quality assessment. Moving a course online does not guarantee that students will be able to meet the course outcomes more readily, however, or that they will necessarily understand key concepts more easily than previously in the physically copresent course environments. All students in higher education need opportunities to seek, critique, and construct knowledge together and then transfer newly-acquired skills from their coursework to the worlds of work, service, and life. The emergence of new online learning spaces helps us to reexamine present higher education pedagogies in very deliberate ways to continue to maintain or to improve the quality of student learning in higher education.

In this chapter, active learning in fully online learning spaces is the broad theme through which teaching, learning, and assessment strategies are reconsidered. The key elements of our theoretical framework for active learning include (1) deliberate pedagogies to establish the online classroom environment; (2) student ownership of learning activities; and (3) high-quality assessment strategies.

Purpose: Different approaches have been applied to define and measure service quality as both a process and a performance-intensive presentation. The literature agreed that service quality assessments are essential in measuring performance, however they could only reach a partial consensus. Although the Servqual scale is the most widely known and used tool in measuring service quality, it has received various criticisms. This study presents the difficulties encountered in measuring service quality and an evaluation of the Servqual scale.

Methodology: The study provides a conceptual framework, examining the research on the subject in the literature and the criticisms of the Servqual scale. It is designed as a compilation/assessment to improve the perspectives of the interested parties by bringing together evaluations about the pros and cons of the most well-known service quality scale.

Findings: Measurement of service quality is a complex business. Although it has received various criticisms, the Servqual scale which enables the measurement of quality in the services sector is still the most frequently used measurement tool.

Practical Implications: The difficulty of defining the service and its quality, which arises from the characteristics of the services, does not eliminate the necessity of measuring the quality of the service. With this study, a conceptual framework has been provided on the subject, a collective evaluation has been made for the most widely used scale, and the ground has been prepared for improvement and development in the criticisms of the scale.