Date of Award

1995

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Bachelor of Education Honours

School

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Education

First Supervisor

Richard Berlach

Abstract

This study investigated a recent development in the quality management area, namely, quality function deployment (QFD) and its relevance to education. QFD has shown itself to be very useful as a tool for understanding, prioritising and planning the way in which organisations perform their functions; however, its application has, to date, been very limited in education. This study concerned itself with the use of the QFD process in a high school to review a behaviour management policy. The literature is extensively examined to review the development of quality management leading up to the advent of QFD. The study explored QFD’s benefits in industry and the complementary trends in education in an attempt to establish a link between the two. A detailed explanation of the concepts associated with QFD is provided along with the placement of QFD among curriculum planning models to orientate educators to this new development. Action research was used with a case study approach to clarify what could be expected if QFD was implemented in mainstream schools. Part One of the study comprised of the steps followed in the application of the QFD process to review a school's Managing Student Behaviour (MSB) policy and includes a diagram of the procedure, a House of Quality matrix and a table of results. In Part Two the perceptions of the members of the QFD team about the QFD process were gathered and summarised. This study was the first time that Western Australian teachers had experienced the QFD process and their verbatim comments about the process arc evaluated. The study found that QFD was a useful tool by which a school's behaviour management policy could be reviewed. According to the teachers who were in the QFD team, the QFD process was thorough and gave a good validation for the decisions which were made during the process. In addition to this, the QFD team thought that the QFD process provided for the input of all parts of the school community as well as showing the team what to do with the data which were gathered from this community.

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