The Role of Quality Assurance Mechanism in Pedagogical Aspects of Higher Education

Abstract

Quality Assurance (QA) mechanism in the Higher Education facilitates graduates to achieve necessary knowledge, skills and attitude. In Bangladesh, Higher Education has been experiencing phenomenal quantitative growth within the last few decades and facing significant challenges to achieve expected quality. However, despite being late, Bangladesh has undertaken QA initiatives which have completed its phase-1 run in 2018. This study was initiated to understand the role of QA mechanism in pedagogical aspects of Higher Education Institutions. From the predetermined standards, four aspects (curriculum, teaching-learning, assessment, and research) were defined as the pedagogical aspects in this study. Two different sets of questionnaires were used to collect data from faculty members and students at the Institute of Education & Research, Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data. Analyzed data unveils despite several strengths the institute requires attention to address emerged weaknesses in all four aspects. Such findings also indicate that QA mechanism can directly involve stakeholders to examine pedagogical practices and identify areas for improvement. Although this study involved only a subset of participants and generalization neither was the intention nor was in scope, findings have yielded several considerable implications to open up space for critical debate.