Professionalisation and quality management

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