The Systematic Process for Improvement through Research on Learning (SPIROL) as a means to professional accountability and quality improvement

This paper analyses SPIROL from the position that it is a process entailing the essence of what Kogan and Darling-Hammond described as professional accountability. I describe my participation in SPIROL in the context of the global and local concerns for quality education. The strengths of SPIROL, which are embedded in its structure and processes, are highlighted in the paper. How SPIROL improves teaching and learning at the classroom, departmental and institutional levels is illustrated with my experiences as an action researcher in the project. While maintatining that SPIROL can be recommended as an accountability-based and improvement-oriented evaluation, the limitations of the structure and processes of SPIROL are also examined. Copyright © 1999 Reprographic Unit of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.