QUALITY ENHANCEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH SELF-EVALUATION AND TARGETED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Considering the strategic importance of quality assurance and enhancement in higher education, this paper aims to address questions such as: How can we improve the quality of educational processes and outcomes? How can we involve the grassroots level both teachers and students? Which is the role of reflective practice and self-evaluation in this endeavour? Reference will be made to the “QualiTraining” projects and materials developed within the framework of the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML), the Council of Europe (accessible on-line on the ECML website: www.ecml.at) [1]. To illustrate the value of selfevaluation and targeted teacher development for the consolidation of a quality culture, examples from practice have been selected from the interdisciplinary Masters programme “English Language Education and Research Communication in Economics” (the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies). Special features of this Masters programme include innovative methodological approaches, characterised through reflective practice, ‘out of the box’ thinking, project work in interdisciplinary teams, a.s.o. Self-assessment of communication competencies is based on the European Language Portfolio [2] and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages [3], as English language proficiency and improving communication skills for academic and specialised professional purposes are key-priorities for the participants in this Masters programme. Even if several examples reflect developments in the field of quality assurance in language education, most of the concepts and processes discussed are relevant and applicable to other educational domains as well.