“Everyone doing their best is not the answer; they must first know what to do.” W. Edwards Deming (1986) in Out of Crisis [higher education quality]

Quality should not be confused with quality assurance, whose purpose is to ensure that people continue to do what they believe they should do, as best they can, week in and week out. QA procedures apply equally well to poor teaching as to good teaching. Edwards Denning, the guru of quality assurance in industry summed up the situation with the words: “Everyone doing their best is not the answer; they must first know what to do.” Ensuring that everyone does their best is the business of quality assurance; everyone knowing, or better still understanding, what to do is the basis of good quality. The author argues that in order to understand what to do, it is essential that teachers distinguish between different kinds of learning, so that they can match their teaching and assessment methods to the specified learning goals. The point is that different kinds of learning require different teaching and assessment methods, and different kinds of students do best if the teaching styles used match their preferred learning styles