Abstract:

Quality assurance in higher education has been the focus of debate during the last decade. The philosophy of quality assurance that draws practices in universities is underpinned by two opposing approaches. On the one hand, there is an externally driven retrospective concept of quality assurance (QA) which is generally more about accountability. Procedures are top-down and bureaucratic with a climate thus is adversarial rather than collegial. On the other hand, there is an emerging concept of internally driven prospective quality enhancement (QE) in which procedures are bottom-up and supportive. The emphasis is on collaboration, inclusion and engagement. There is, however, no clear cut distinction between QA and QE. They form two ends of a continuum along with a wide range of quality assurance processes lie. All universities fit along the QA – QE continuum. This paper examines the quality assurance practices in Universitas 21 (U21) institutions and their tendency towards any specific approach i.e., QA or QE. The analysis was guided by the work of Biggs (2003) and by the conditions for quality enhancement as discussed by Raban (2007).
Template Analysis was employed to analyze 212 policy and practice documents concerning quality assurance of teaching from 15 sample U21 universities with two major objectives. Firstly, to identify and classify processes for assuring and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. Data analysis revealed nine broad categories for assuring the quality of teaching in sample universities. These categories are “Development and Implementation of Teaching and Learning Plans, Policies, and Guidelines”; “Integrated QA and QE Systems based on Monitoring, Reviewing, and Enhancing the Quality of Teaching & Learning”; “Teaching Quality Appraisal Processes for Departments, Faculties, and for Academic Staff”; “Institutional Reviews/Audits”; “Curriculum Design, Development and Approval Processes”; “Professional Development Opportunities for Academic Staff”; “Review and Evaluation of Teaching by Students and Peers for Monitoring, Improvement, and Recognition purposes”; “Recognition, Rewards, and Incentives for Scholarly Teaching”; and “Teaching-Research Nexus”. Each of the categories also revealed several subcategories. The second objective of the analysis was to examine each category of the quality assurance processes with a particular focus on whether the processes lead more towards the QA or QE end of the continuum. The aspects of each process, depending upon purpose, varied along the continuum from accountability at the judgemental end of the scale to pure developmental and enhancement-led end. On balance, however, the findings suggest U21 institutions base their quality assurance processes for teaching towards QE end of the continuum. It is argued that most of the processes are characterized by collaboration, engagement, inclusion, sense of ownership, recognition, rewards, incentives, support, reflective practices, professional development opportunities, and the dissemination of good practices in teaching and learning. It is evident, however, that monitoring aspects of the processes have not been ignored in U21 institutions. For the most part, the processes are aligned with and guide each other with strong relationships between them.

Keywords:

quality assurance, enhancement, teaching, universitas 21 (u21), template analysis.