Quality assurance in higher education as a political process

Abstract

The procedures commonly employed for quality assurance in higher education are designed as if the endeavour were a technical process, whereas it may be more useful to view it as a political process. For example, quality assurance requires making choices among competing conceptions of quality, and in so doing privileges some interests over others. Moreover, some stakeholders tend to be given a greater voice than others in the design and implementation of quality assurance. The author concludes that rather than denying the political nature of quality assurance, it would be better to accept Morley’s claim that quality assurance is “a socially constructed domain of power”, and design procedures for it in a way that is appropriate for a political process. It is suggested that employing the “responsive model” of evaluation could make quality assurance more effective in improving educational quality. In the responsive model, evaluation is deemed to be a collaborative process that starts with the claims, concerns and issues put forth by all stakeholders.

Concepciones sobre calidad educativa en el profesorado del Sistema de Educación Media Superior de la Universidad de Guadalajara

“…Sostienen esta opinión autores como Skolnik (2010), Becher (1999) o Astin (1980. De acuerdo con esta postura, las nociones de calidad "son como las nociones de 'derecha' e 'izquierda' en el campo de las actitudes políticas y pueden tener la misma utilidad que se atribuye a dichas nociones en la politología" (Olaskoaga et al, 2015b.…”

“…En algunas ocasiones un eventual consenso alrededor de estos símbolos puede dar lugar a modas que más tarde desaparecen (Birnbaum, 2000); en otras, los símbolos empleados son el objeto de un debate en torno a la idea de educación que debe predominar o al signo de las políticas que deben aplicarse. Parte de la literatura sobre la calidad en la educación ha proclamado el contenido programático (Wittek & Kvernbekk, 2011) y político (Skolnik, 2010) de las nociones de calidad. Esta "tesis del contenido político" propone, entre otras cosas, que las nociones de calidad que defienden los agentes prefiguran sus demandas en materia de política educativa o condicionan sus reacciones ante las reformas impulsadas por las autoridades educativas locales o nacionales (González Laskibar, 2015).…”

Conceptualising External and Internal Quality Assurance in Higher Education: A Pragmatist Perspective

“…It is meant to guarantee standards of higher education by providing frameworks within which higher education institutions should function (Sanyal & Martin, 2007). External quality assurance is always the responsibility of organisations external to the higher educational institutions (Skolnik, 2010). These external quality assurance agencies could be governmental or autonomous professional bodies.…”

“…The different approaches to conceptualising quality and quality assurance in higher education have resulted in external and internal quality assurance traditionally regarded as regulatory and developmental respectively (Skolnik, 2010;Sanyal & Martin, 2007). The transcendental approaches to quality make external quality assurance regulatory, because quality is regarded as an ideal which cannot be compromised (Sallis and Kingly cited in Harvey & Green, 1993).…”

“…The call to address social expectations beyond what is internal to higher education institutions, has resulted in a differentiation between external and internal quality assurance. Some authors (Skolnik, 2010;Vroeijenstijn, 1995) have alluded to tensions between external and internal quality assurance implementation in higher education. This tension, purported to have negative effects on the implementation of the two concepts in higher education, has been predicated on the clash of expectations between external and internal stakeholders of higher education (Leisyte & Westerheijden, 2014).…”