QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Due to an expanding global market and increased customer expectations, many businesses, organizations, and institutions have begun to utilize quality management systems (QMSs). Quality management systems provide many advantages to educational institutions. In this day and age, universities and vocational schools must compete in order to attract as well as keep students. In a way, the students of an institution are the end users or beneficiaries being served. Thus, QMSs are necessary to be able to measure the effectiveness of the institution, especially in the processes of teaching and learning. Educational institutions must be able to ensure a certain amount of quality in the learning outcome of their students to keep up in the now extremely competitive global environment. Currently, there is a large gap in the literature when it comes to the topic of both vocational and secondary education as institutions of higher education (HE) have been the central focus of many studies previously conducted. In Chile, vocational education can be found as an option not only for higher education, but also for high school. It is essential to the growth and maintaining of the Chilean economy as the country finds itself in need of more technical workers to support its growing GDP. We hope to contribute to the current lack of literature evaluating quality management systems and their application in both vocational and secondary education, specifically in the Chilean context. This should be seen as something vital in the current day and age as Chile is experiencing a saturated market for many university careers and a lack of qualified workers to enter into technical positions. To be able to create a constant supply for these technical positions, a quality management system is fundamental to ensure that student learning is at par with general market expectations.