Publication Details
Abstract
Objective: The global massification of higher education has required strong quality assurance (QA) systems; however, the micro-sociological effects of these QA systems on academic staff remain under-theorized, particularly in Global South countries. Situated at the intersection of Foucault's Panopticism and Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory, this work investigates how academic staff view teaching monitoring systems at the University of Buea, Cameroon. Method: A convergent parallel mixed-methods study: Through the analysis of 235 quantitative surveys and 18 in-depth qualitative interviews, this observation discovers a fundamental institutional conflict. Results: Another 78.3% of faculty believe that current QA mechanisms like unannounced observations and Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) function more as a means for administrative surveillance than professional development. Crucially, ANOVA results show that this panoptic anxiety is hierarchically stratified, with non-trivial increases for untenured junior and senior lecturers (p < .001). The research highlights another form of “pedagogical conservatism”: when teachers are placed under punitive surveillance, autonomy and competence needs are not met, and 74% of educators retreat into safe, compliant, metric-based "teaching to the metric" pedagogies. Novelty: This study concludes that academic quality cannot be audited into existence and envisions an institutional model supporting self-determination theory-based approaches to student learning that disengages formative evaluation from summative punishment and supports peer-mentoring (top-down mentoring) as a means to restore academic autonomy and freedom in ad hoc recourse.