Other topics
Launceston, Tasmania, AUSTRALIA
This site is currently under construction. And ideally this will remain true for the life of the site. Continuous Improvement is not just for the management of business and industrial enterprises. It is a very natural aspect all intelligent human endeavour.
Style
I have purposely kept the style
as simple as possible. There is little colour,
few graphics and I hope that people might print
out pages and act on them.
Aim
My aim is to keep the entire site to less than
1MB so that it will be highly portable
(e.g., on a floppy disk). My hope is that people
will take and edit it for their own
situation and use it to make their schools great
places for the people involved.
Privacy
The author does not collect any data from you as
you visit this site. This arrangement will
continue until the internet develops to the
stage that a person surfing the net achieves a
high level of control over what every site can
and cannot extract from the visitors.
Implications? The author is relying on visitors
to contact the author regarding their needs.
Content
The content is both right and wrong for
our time.
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People will tell you quality has had its day. It has been abandoned by economic rationalists who are rarely economic nor rational. They know seem to know little about systems,actual cost, benefits, ...
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It wrong for the policy makers who serve their superiors rather than the recipients of their policies.
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It is wrong for those removed from the valuable insights of first hand experience.
-
But is right for those who love what they do and want to serve those with whom they work.
Purpose
The purpose of this site is to introduce the
reader to some of the philosophy, theory and
practices associated with quality management as
developed by Deming and others during &
following WW2. Because it is scientific and
focuses simultaneously on people and tasks it is
far from being 'out of date'.
Invitation Learning Together
Learning together is ideal but not always easy. It all depends on our present paradigms, knowledge & preferences
- What is shared?
- What are the differences?
Differences give us some things to
learn from each other
Shared things give us starting points for
learning together
My understanding is that we are here to
- improve the way we make sense of our everyday experiences
- find the ways & means to improve things
- explore some frameworks that may help us make better sense of our day to day reality
Please bookmark this site and re-visit from time to time! Or be a collaborator in its development. Email your hopes, needs and contributions in relation the future of this site. Let's work together to make schools purposeful, well managed communities that serve their participants well.
I am hoping to learn from you (and with you).
Ivan Webb, previously Principal, Riverside Primary School
PS. Some qualifications:
The author of this website is an Australian and so the following material will reflect an Australian orientation.
It will not tell you exactly what to do. But there will be stories told and suggestions made.
Readers will have to make their own decisions.
The rationale for this is strengthened by the nature of the quality approach itself.
Quality is a management strategy based on reality and reality varies from place to place, time to time, and person to person.
Therefore the way the reader may apply the principles and practices of quality will be different from that of the author.