AESOP Expert Pool: Mission and Organization
The AESOP Expert Pool (AESOP EP) is a new instrument supporting implementation of the quality policy in AESOP. The AESOP Expert Pool will be key in achieving excellence in AESOP together with member institutions.
General Aims ‘Promoting excellence in planning education and research’ is the general guideline for the AESOP Expert Pool. This can be further differentiated into: (1) academic issues, related to the further establishment of discipline in terms of research; (2) educational issues, related to curriculum development and teaching programs; (3) professional issues, related to the practice field of planning; (4) management issues, related to the professional organization of the school. In all these fields, AESOP continuously discusses issues of quality assurance and establishes orientation guidelines for quality improvement. The AESOP Expert Pool does both, develop such guidelines continuously and apply them in various fields of activities. The activities of the AESOP Expert Pool can at best be captured as missions, either addressing AESOP policies as such (internal function), or addressing external functions in relation to member schools and third parties. A prominent internal mission of the AESOP Expert Pool is to support and further develop the quality agenda of AESOP. A prominent external mission of the AESOP Expert Pool is to provide advice on quality issues; undertake validations and advisory consultation; provide general and specific transfer of experiences. The main facility to fulfil this ambition is the advisory local visit by an AESOP Expert Pool Mission Team. Here, the AESOP Expert Pool specifically responds to requests and specified problem statements formulated by AESOP member institutes or other interested parties and elaborates the specific orientations and intentions of a mission in cooperation with the calling AESOP member institute or other interested parties. As a general attitude, the AESOP Expert Pool is a ‘critical friend’, i.e. the
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