Kunderenko I. Educational Quality assurance principles in the ‘faith-based’ educational institutions of Ukraine (with emphasis on the educational institutions that belong to the All-Ukrainian Union of the churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists)

Dissertation focuses on studying the principles of quality assurance in the faith-based higher education institutions of Ukraine. ‘Faith-based’ education has been scaling lately and is now an integral part of the educational landscape of Ukraine. Protestants account for the largest part of this expansion. All together with this it is precisely their activity does not receive enough attention among the researchers. The latter along with other (mentioned in the thesis itself) factors contribute to the urgency of the study, which is well overdue. It has been established upon theoretical analysis of available data that Protestants of Ukraine, after Ukraine got her independency, were able to form a network of higher education institutions that became important contributors to the educational provision in Ukraine. Retrospective review of the faith-based education in Protestant owned institutions has been conducted. Original correlation between ecclesiological variations managerial decisions’ implementation has been established. Both educational institutions and educators became an integral part of the educational sphere in Ukraine, one can see that in the retrospective research of the faith-based institutions formation by the Protestants. Foundational principles of faith-based education development among the Protestants groups have been detected. The current state of providing educational services in faith-based educational institutions were assessed (with emphasis on NGO ‘EATA’ activity). It has been established that education can exist without state subsidy, and meet her stakeholders’ expectations at the same time. Praxis of some faith-based higher education institutions has been examined. Current models (used in religious studies) that describe interaction of Ukrainian Protestant communities with the greater society are analysed, along with implying irrelevancy of static typologies commonly adopted in the area of religion studies, with further suggestion to use dynamic typologies and tools. Quality assurance standards were examined as structures and definitions, in the result current interpretive trends of the essence of educational services were detected, along with further study of educational services in the realm of educational quality assurance in Ukraine in general. More specifically, further studies of contradictory definitions like ‘education’, ‘education services quality’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘student-centred education’ were conducted. Additional terminology commonly applied in academic literature concerning faith-based educational institutions have been researched (in the light of particular of the field of study) to determine signs of labelling trends; inconsistency between the scholars that study religion were detected in assessing phenomenon of ‘anti-intellectualism’ typically attributed to the Protestant communities of Ukraine; for the first time, differentiating of ‘confessional demands’ and ‘confessional aspirations’ has been suggested, applied to educational processes. Essential trends of the development of education-related management in the Protestant Educational institutions were derived. Thus, we can state that educational institutions have wide autonomy from one end, at the same time educational institutions vary in the chosen vectors of development, there is an explicit need to construct wholistic development strategy and establishing coordination. Furthermore, it has been discovered that the educational market is not segmented adequately. Some education institutions tend to duplicate identical educational tracks. NGO “EATA”’s perspective models were identified and introduced. Models of educational quality assurance systems management were established, along with transitional suggestions for constructing wholistic strategy and coordination of the All-Ukrainian Union of the churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (theological and ecclesiological distinctives are addressed).