Professionalisation and quality management: struggles, boundaries and bridges between two approaches

The quality of adult educators is on the agenda of European educational policy and thescientific community in Europe. In these contexts, professionalisation and qualitymanagement are often conflated. This paper is based on the hypothesis that qualitymanagement and professionalisation follow two different approaches. The paperoutlines the two approaches with a focus on their two different logics. After a briefcomparison of the two approaches, the paper examines the conflation of these twoapproaches in the expertise Key competences for adult learning professionals(Research voor Beleid, 2010). The paper ends with a plea for acknowledging theboundaries between professionalisation and quality management, and shows ways ofbuilding bridges between them without neglecting their essential differences