Leseprobe zu "Learning among Regional Governments (eBook)"
3. Quality management during learning and transfer (p. 65-66)
Ekkehard Nuissl von Rein
Learning and transfer are also becoming ever more important factors in the control and design of political systems as well. The first chapter cited the political context in which these two forms of achievement of political system development exist, while practical examples from Prevalet practice were described in Chapter 2. In the European context in particular, in which twenty seven countries with the most varied history, structure, size, language and economy co-exist, such shared, but also weak political design strategies (compared with hard laws and power structures) are gaining in importance. Among other things, the different sizes and structure of European national states have actually meant that the focus has become directed at political action by manageable units (Regions). A regional view not only means a stronger orientation towards action, but also greater comparability (size, political structures). On the other hand, regional competencies are often regulated very differently, and Regions act in varied national contexts with different degrees of leeway.
Despite all the divergence of competencies, training issues are either directly embedded at regional level or at least anchored there, as closeness to people and institutions, an important factor for training, is only available at regional level (cfr. European Commission, Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, Message 6): Regional governments are responsible for defining and implementing part of the policies that drive the operation of education and training systems throughout the whole course of life. This involves creating a circular flow of information that allows the individual regional governments and the operators of the system they manage to take advantage of the positive and negative results achieved in the different European regional context before the experiences are finalised.
In this sense regional cooperation is a prerequisite for learning about political problems and the transfer of measures, which should contribute to control and improvement in the educational system. A political process of this type can only occur in reciprocal cooperation or, as has been defined since Lisbon, in an open coordination method. The open method of coordination may be applied where the Union has no legislative powers, or where the Union has powers to establish minimum requirements through European framework laws. This is why this method has to coordinate national policies and otherwise to achieve union objectives. To do so it is necessary to have quality management, which makes sure that the process is effective and efficient and the outcome is sufficient, applicable and sustainable.
This chapter therefore involves designing the contours of a quality management model for learning and the transfer of political measures between Regions. The elements from a concept of this type of quality management were obtained from the analysis of the consultation process in the Prevalet project. The individual activities before, during and after the reciprocal visits were tested for common ground and results, and generalised conclusions were drawn from these. This means that the quality management indicators system presented here was obtained inductively from the projects experiences.
As the regional cooperation in Prevalet and finally also in Earlall involves network construction, quality management in network configurations is also dealt with here in general.
