Benchmarking: a paradigm for change to quality education

Utilizes benchmarking as an effective and efficient way to manage the change process for quality transformation in schools. Originally conceptualized as competitive intelligence gathering, benchmarking can also be a vehicle for planned, orderly change. Discusses the practices of generic and strategic benchmarking with the importance of personalizing the change processes through matching teacher knowledge, skills and interests to their benchmarking assignments. Presents reasons as to why teachers resist change in general, and presents an adoption model which uses some of the TQM tools and techniques to facilitate whole-school implementation of the quality principles.