A Textual Poststructuralist Reading of Quality Assurance Policy in Iran’s Higher Education

Abstract

The aim of this investigation was twofold: to explore how policy texts are discursively involved in the formation of subject positions and to help lay bare the part dominant hegemonic discourses play in this process. To this end, a policy document on the Iranian higher education quality supervision, assessment, and assurance system was analyzed using the theoretical lens of poststructuralism and the analytical resources of critical discourse analysis to see how language is implicated in the asymmetrical representation of actors/actions in that domain of social life, and might channel our views of reality in specific ways. The findings revealed that whereas the assessees, i.e., Iranian university teachers, are depicted as faceless entities who are at the receiving end of the quality assurance process, the assessors are foregrounded and come to life through the workings of the policy text. In addition, being a mix of especially legal and technocratic genres, the document discursively legitimizes the closely intertwined processes of higher education quality supervision, assessment, and assurance in ways that seem to leave little room, if any, for the potential assessees to challenge them. Implications for policy and research are finally given.