Analysing the accreditation of engineering education in South Africa through Foucault’s panopticon and governmentality lenses     

Sybert Mutereko 《Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education》2018,43(2):235-247

Using Foucault’s power concepts of the panopticon and governmentality as analytic and heuristic tools, this study reveals insights into how accreditation creates power networks in the quality assurance of higher education graduates in South Africa. The study draws on 11 in-depth interviews with academics from the Faculty of Engineering at a university of technology, and comprehensive documentary analysis, as the main sources of data to demonstrate that quality assurance is not neutral or apolitical, but legitimises the positions of those with power through accreditation. This study establishes that the Engineering Council of South Africa epitomises the centred power of a panopticon surveillance system through its various supervisory mechanisms, such as site visits. On the other hand, there is clear evidence of governmentality notions in which the locus of power has been decentralised and internalised in the governed by giving them autonomy and responsibilities in certain aspects of the engineering curriculum. This study has important theoretical and practical implications for the field of higher education and the circulation of professional qualifications. Caution must be taken to ensure that the curriculum is not narrowly centred on the interests of the powerful labour market but responsive to other societal and student needs.  相似文献   

Work integrated learning for engineering qualifications: a spanner in the works?     

Sybert Mutereko  Volker Wedekind 《Journal of Education & Work》2016,29(8):902-921

Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been identified as a way of equipping graduates with attributes that make them work-ready. Many higher education institutions (HEIs) require their students to go through a compulsory work place learning form (WPL) of WIL. The complications of WPL can affect HEIs’ student throughput. To address this challenge, a university of technology (UoT) in South Africa is curriculating engineering diplomas and degrees which do not make WPL a compulsory module. This is in line with the new Higher Education Qualifications Sub-framework and Engineering Council of South Africa requirements. We employed in-depth interviews to gain an insight into the new programmes without WPL. Our findings indicate that WPL, in its current form, does not make graduates work-ready. Employers use it either to get extra cheap labour or as a recruitment process. It is envisaged that the new programme will increase the UoT’s throughput without adverse effects on the graduates’ attributes. These findings have important implications for HEIs, students and employers. It implies that HEIs will greatly improve throughput, which is desirable for both the HEIs and the students. For employers, this means they will have qualified people who might need higher wages, in comparison with students on WPL and they will need to plan for more in-house induction.  相似文献