Exploring processes of teaching and learning in African university contexts

Abstract

This review examines recent literature about processes of teaching and learning in African higher education, focusing specifically on studies of teaching ‘for critical thinking’ in Kenya, Ghana, and Botswana. The review findings suggest that practices supporting critical thinking in African universities share a number of similarities to those highlighted in the literature published elsewhere in the world. For example, reviewed studies highlight the importance of curricular alignment, academic development, and varied assessment formats, while also acknowledging important limitations related to infrastructure, workload, and faculty and student attitudes. However, the review also exposes a crucial theoretical gap in the existing literature: the continued reliance on theories of teaching and learning that were initially developed based on studies of Western university contexts. As both teaching and learning are cultural processes, this limitation may be preventing this emerging body of literature from fully supporting universities to develop new ways of teaching that may best benefit their student populations.

Assessing Internal Quality Assurance Mechanisms at Selected Private Universities in Ghana

“…Despite the growing concern, there is a paucity of research on evaluating how quality is assured and implemented in the private higher education sector. Recent studies (Ayam 2020, Pon & Schendel 2020 have focused on the impact of governance and regulatory framework and explored the process of teaching and learning in higher education. Although governance, teaching and learning are parts of quality dimensions, these studies did not focus on how these dimensions were quality assured.…”