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Using an anonymised online survey completed by 136 adult educators in early 2017, it reports findings and reviews related literature, policy, and legislation.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/rhetoric-and-reality-the-irish-experience-of-quality-assurance/588733/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/rhetoric-and-reality-the-irish-experience-of-quality-assurance/588733.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Rizky","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-31","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",6,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"How do Irish adult educators generally view Quality Assurance (QA)?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"They are largely supportive of QA, but the paper highlights contradictions that arise in practice.","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"What contradictions does the paper identify in the QA experience?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"It points to philosophical tensions, inconsistent moderation, and an incongruence between QA’s stated values and a government-led employability agenda.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"What research method and survey details does the paper use?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"It reports survey findings from an anonymised online survey completed by 136 adult educators in early 2017, alongside a review of literature, policy, and legislation.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},588733,1792170946,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",[84,88,92,96,101,105,110,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":85,"show_sort_weight":86,"slug":87},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":89,"show_sort_weight":90,"slug":91},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":97,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":55,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},8,30,"research-report",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":131},{"doc_id":79,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":111,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},962085564807,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_6f874abed73319feea01a86fa6f0fab8","Rhetoric and reality: The Irish experience of Quality Assurance  \ncamilla fitzsimons  \nAbstract  \nThis paper shares the Irish adult educator’s experiences of Quality Assurance (QA) . Educators are found to be largely supportive of QA but contradictions emerge. These include philosophical tensions, inconsistent moderation and incongruence between the stated values of QA and a more powerful government-led employability discourse.  \nKeywords: Quality, quality assurance (QA), accreditation, government policy, evaluation, retrospective and prospective QA, managerialism, neoliberalism.  \nIntroduction  \nUnless I am mistaken, most adult educators are spending more and more time talking about quality. This hasn’t happened in isolation as, since the 1990s, there has been momentous political interest in quality in education. Many countries have created state agencies, each of which are legally responsible for guaranteeing quality or, to use dominant terminology, for ‘Quality Assurance’(QA). Across Europe, the Irish regulatory authority, Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI), link with the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, and the European Quality Assurance in Vocational Education and Training (EQAVET) network. These relationships form part of wider policy convergence through the Bologna (1999) and the lesser known Copenhagen (2002) Declarations. Both agreements commit participants to transferable, comparable and measurable programmes throughout and to QA cooperation (European Higher Education Area, 1999; European Commission, 2002) . To comply with these agreements, many nations have implemented national QA policies, each of which conform to European Standards and Guidelines (ESGs) that were first published in 2005 (EGS, 2015) . State involvement in quality in education has become so taken-for-granted, it is often rarely questioned.  \nMost adult educators also care about quality. One could argue adult education’s rootedness in a critique of traditional education (Dewey, 1997; Freire 1972) and its emphasis on practitioner self-reflection (Brookfield, 1987; McCormack; 2015) ensure the pursuit of quality forms a cornerstone of practice. Over the years, a number of practitioner-conceived guidance tools have emerged such as the National Adult Learning Agency (NALA) Guidelines for Adult Literacy Work, first published in 1985 and the Women’s Community Education Quality Assurance Framework published by AONTAS in 2005. These guidelines support democratically-oriented principles of practice and help documenta longstanding tradition of collaborative evaluation between educators and participants/learners. It isn’t only adult educators who care about quality. Self-conceived peer-evaluations in universities have an equally long history as academics sought fresh perspectives to enhance their teaching practice (Harvey, 2004) . Although less documented, developments in Irish Further Education (FE) usually follow British practice (Geaney, 2008) where practitioner guides have long advocated collaborative evaluation to enhance quality (for example in Walkin, 1990) .  \nGiven this longstanding interest in quality, one would be forgiven for assuming educators would welcome the recent, top-down, flood of legislative and policy developments. International literature suggests this isn’t the case revealing at best indifference, at worst hostility, towards top-down imposed QA frameworks (Newton; 2000; Anderson, 2006; Cartwright, 2007; Coffield and Edward, 2009; Seema etal., 2016) .  \nThis contribution addresses agapin Irish literature by uncovering both benefitsand frustrations gathered via an anonymised on-line survey about QA which was completed by 136 adult educators in early 2017. As well as reporting on survey findings, this paper reviews some literature, policy and legislation. Working as a critical researcher (Kincheloe and McLaren, 2005), the hypothesis I bring is that, instead of being politically neutral, QA cannot be separated from","cbCaie9L5TiUdupH","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaie9L5TiUdupH","pdf",103376,18,"English","# Introduction\n## The elusive nature of quality\n## An enhanced model of QA","[{\"question\":\"How do Irish adult educators generally view Quality Assurance (QA)?\",\"answer\":\"They are largely supportive of QA, but the paper highlights contradictions that arise in practice.\"},{\"question\":\"What contradictions does the paper identify in the QA experience?\",\"answer\":\"It points to philosophical tensions, inconsistent moderation, and an incongruence between QA’s stated values and a government-led employability agenda.\"},{\"question\":\"What research method and survey details does the paper use?\",\"answer\":\"It reports survey findings from an anonymised online survey completed by 136 adult educators in early 2017, alongside a review of literature, policy, and legislation.\"}]","Rhetoric and reality - The Irish experience of Quality Assurance | PDF",1792065831,45]