Synopsis
Studies (Alkhawaldeh, 2017; Kazemi et al., 2021) confirm that effective school-based quality assurance systems contribute to the continuous improvement of educational processes. Quality assurance of the instructional process represents an individual, collective, and institutional responsibility (Canbolat, 2025; Improving Instructional Leadership, 2025).
While Georgian general education policy documents emphasize the importance of multi-level accountability for establishing an effective quality development system, school practices remain largely aligned with centralized processes (Kirvalidze, 2023).
With the support of Ilia State University and Publishing House “Diogene”, a study was conducted in three general education schools with different profiles (a large urban school, a small rural school, and a medium-sized district school), where the development of shared responsibility and institutional accountability remains a crucial challenge.
The study aimed to examine the current state of school-based management of instructional process quality and to design and implement mechanisms that strengthen individual, collective, and institutional responsibility.
The following research questions were formulated:
● How do schools and teachers perceive and internalize their responsibility within school-based quality assurance systems?
● How can context-adapted mechanisms strengthen shared responsibility among members of the school community?
● How can the sustainability of results and dissemination of experience be supported?
To address the research aim, the following theoretical framework was selected:
a) The Deming Cycle (Moen, 2009), emphasizing cyclical improvement processes;
b) The concept of Professional Capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012), highlighting the role of collaborative professionalism in accountability.
The study, across all its stages-including the analysis of findings and the design of the intervention- is grounded in the Deming Cycle and the concept of Professional Capital, which together inform both the structure of the intervention and the interpretation of the results, explicitly linking iterative improvement processes with the development of individual and social capital, as well as institutional accountability.
The study adopted an action research design (Cohen et al., 2017).
Data collection included interviews with school leadership, focus group discussions with teachers and members of quality development teams, document analysis, and process-focused observation.
The research was carried out by master’s students in educational administration, mentored by academic staff, in collaboration with school-based research teams.
During the diagnostic phase, the following trends were identified:
Respondents demonstrated heterogeneous and often inaccurate understandings of school-based instructional quality management. This was linked not only to gaps in professional knowledge but also to a limited perception of quality assurance as both a professional and institutional responsibility.
Quality assurance was frequently perceived as fragmented and episodic rather than as a continuous system-level process, weakening institutional accountability, responsibility and the integrity of instructional decision-making.
Professional development was often seen as a one-time, rather than continuous, responsibility.
Process management was largely concentrated in the hands of school principals, limiting teachers’ involvement and weakening the perception of shared responsibility.
Although various improvement-oriented activities were implemented, they remained fragmented, indicating that quality development is not sufficiently conceptualized as a sustainable institutional process.
Contextual differences were also observed. In the small rural school, teachers demonstrated a stronger need for social capital and were more proactive in initiating quality development activities, likely due to limited access to external professional development opportunities.
Teachers in large schools had more developed professional capital and awareness of quality assurance, but less recognition of collaborative support.
Following the intervention:
A context-adapted quality assurance strategy was implemented, enabling schools to conceptualize instructional quality development as a long-term institutional process.
Aligned with the Deming Cycle, schools introduced iterative planning, implementation, reflection, and revision practices, supporting continuous improvement and evidence-informed decision-making.
Follow-up observations indicate that school representatives engaged in all stages of the cycle, demonstrating the process’s iterative nature and outcome sustainability.
Teachers and school leaders improved in identifying professional needs, engaging in formative feedback, and assessing instructional quality, strengthening individual professional capital.
The delegation of responsibility significantly strengthened social capital and fostered shared responsibility, particularly in large schools where collaboration had previously been limited.
School representatives developed a clearer understanding of professional capital. Practical collaboration enabled teachers to recognize how individuals and schools can assume agency over continuous professional development and institutional accountability.
These changes contributed to strengthening integrity within the instructional process, as practices became more transparent, collaborative, and evidence-based.
The results led to the following findings:
Collaboration among the university, schools, and a publisher enabled the development of a sustainable model for educational improvement in Georgia.
The active involvement of school research teams at all stages emerged as a key factor in sustainability and ownership. When school communities act as co-creators rather than recipients, they are more likely to embed quality assurance mechanisms in practice.
This approach reinforces shared and decentralized responsibility, a key prerequisite for sustaining and further developing outcomes.
The findings demonstrate that ensuring the quality of the instructional process at the school level is inseparable from responsibility, integrity and institutional accountability, which cannot be reduced to compliance mechanisms, but must be cultivated through participatory, context-sensitive, and sustainability-oriented quality assurance systems.
References
Alkhawaldeh, A. (2017). School-based teacher training in Jordan: Towards on-school sustainable professional development. Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability, 19(2), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.1515/jtes-2017-0014
Canbolat, Y. (2025). Organizational structure, instructional quality, and student achievement: The case of public and private schools. Educational Policy, 39(1), 3–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/08959048231204810
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2017). Research methods in education (8th ed.). Routledge.
Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school. Teachers College Press.
Improving instructional leadership for goal attainment of secondary schools education. (2025). International Journal of Educational Management, 1(1), 495–507. https://ijedm.com/index.php/ijedm/article/view/74
Kazemi, E., Ghousseini, H., Cordero-Siy, E., Prough, S., McVicar, E., & Resnick, A. F. (2021). Supporting teacher learning about argumentation through adaptive, school-based professional development. ZDM – Mathematics Education, 53(2), 435–448. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-021-01242-5
Kirvalidze, M. (2023). Factors influencing teacher collaboration in general education schools of Georgia [Doctoral dissertation, Ilia State University]. https://bte.iliauni.edu.ge/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/danarthi-1-marika-kirvalidze-sadisertatsio-nashrom-1.pdf
Moen, R. (2009). Foundation and history of the PDSA cycle. Deming Institute. https://deming.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PDSA_History_Ron_Moen.pdf
Keywords: quality assurance; individual and collective responsibility; institutional accountibility