Abstract:

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an advanced method to manage production and organizations. In recent decades, schools have also adapted theories of TQM to operate in order to get educational goals. TQM principle requires all members and departments not only try their best but also work together in a long period of time to improve quality of the products or quality of their tasks. Consequently, customers’ needs is satisfied, which helps to maintain and develop the organizations. This article aimed at investigating how high schools in Lam Dong province of Vietnam operated using TQM elements. Surveys were done to measure how school managers, teachers and students managed their teaching and learning process from TQM perspective. 161 school managers, 633 teachers and 1976 students were asked to answer the questionnaires and 28 people including principals, department managers and teachers at high school responded to semi – structured interview questions. The quantitative data were processed by SPSS in terms of descriptive statistics and content analysis was used for analyzing the qualitative data. The findings show that many TQM elements have been used by most of high school’s managers and teachers to conduct educational missions at schools such as paying attentions to “customers”, continuously finding new methods to improve educational activities or programs. However, the result indicated that it is rather difficult for students to improve their studying process. Besides, schools should organize many activities so that students have change to improve necessary skills for future life and work

Keywords:

TQM, education management, improvement, school development.