- Title
- Mechanisms conditioning the implementation of an integrated quality assurance and enhancement approach at a South African University of Technology
- Creator
- Mabote, Ntele Emily
- ThesisAdvisor
- Quinn, Lynn
- Subject
- Quality assurance
- Subject
- Tshwane University of Technology
- Subject
- Transformative learning
- Subject
- Critical realism
- Subject
- Social realism
- Subject
- Quality (Philosophy)
- Date
- 2023-10-13
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Doctoral theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/431576
- Identifier
- vital:72787
- Identifier
- DOI 10.21504/10962/431576
- Description
- Literature related to quality in higher education argues that achieving an integrated approach which balances improvement and accountability in a single quality assurance (QA) system, is not easy. In response to the literature, I decided to conduct a realist study to identify mechanisms that can enable or constrain the implementation of an integrated approach in a single quality assurance system at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). The scope of my study was limited to teaching and learning as one of the University’s core functions. An integrated approach encouraged a deliberate focus and attention on transformative learning and teaching. The main research question, “what mechanisms enable or constrain the implementation of an integrated approach to quality assurance and enhancement at the Tshwane University of Technology,” underpinned this study. I used Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy as an underlabourer for the study and Archer’s social realism as an analytical framework to enable me to seek answers to the research questions. The study took the form of a case study at TUT. Data was generated through document analysis and thirty-five semi-structured interviews with agents from across the various levels and campuses of TUT. In keeping with a social realist study, I used Archer’s concept of analytical dualism to analyse structure, culture, and agency separately, and their interplay. My findings indicated that compliance and accountability are related cultural mechanisms and were dominant in the University’s cultural system. This signalled a strong emphasis on quality assurance (QA) rather than quality enhancement (QE). In addition, the findings showed that the University has established sufficient structural and agential enablements to assure the quality of learning and teaching. However, there is a need to integrate transformative cultural mechanisms into the University’s QA system. Furthermore, there were limited structural, cultural, and agential enablements to encourage enhancement. In this regard, I recommended mechanisms that should be in place for an integrated QA and QE approach to be successful at TUT. My main argument is that an institutional context that encourages structural, cultural, and agential QA and QE mechanisms to work in tandem can enable an integrated QA and QE approach.
- Description
- Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning, 2023
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (269 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Mabote, Ntele Emily
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | MABOTE-PHD-TR23-221.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |