Enhancing the quality assurance processes of doctoral research proposals in Education: an exploration of public South African higher education institutions

Abstract

In the past decade, there has been significant pressure on higher education institutions to increase the number of next generation doctorates (South Africa, 2011; Temple, 2012). The National Development Plan: Vision for 2030 (South Africa, 2011), for instance, calls for a drastic increase in the production of the number of doctorates. Without robust quality assurance process to ensure the production of high level doctorates, such policy imperatives might be misconceived (Du Toit, 2012). Higher education institutions have to produce the people with high level skills needed to play a role in emerging economies such as South Africa (Cloete, Mouton & Sheppard, 2015). Those with doctorates are expected to have the skills that will enable them to be useful in overcoming both global and local economic, as well as social and political issues in South Africa. Higher education institutions are unlikely to meet the objectives set out by the National Development Plan: Vision for 2030. Beginning in the early 1990s, as part of the national transformation agenda in higher education, South Africa has engaged in various policy discourses regarding doctoral education. One of these discourses relates to quality (Simmonds & Du Preez, 2014, Cloete et al., 2015). According to the Academy of Science for South Africa (2010), examining the doctoral education process in terms of the research proposal, supervision, and examination would assure the desired quality of doctoral education. This study, which is centred on exploring this process at the level of doctoral research proposals in the Education discipline, responds to the inherent challenge in this assertion. To explore the nuances of quality assurance at the research proposal phase in doctoral education, the study looks at how notions of quality have been conceived and constructed in policy documents and how supervisors and students experience and understand quality at the level of doctoral research proposals. In doing so, the study aims to contribute to the quality discourse in South African higher education institutions. The study had the following objectives: 1. To investigate the notions of quality that are emphasised through doctoral education research proposal processes in the Education discipline; 2. To understand how higher education institutions policies convey meaning of the research proposal processes in assuring the quality of doctoral education; 3. To understand how supervisors and students make meaning of quality assurance in research proposal processes in doctoral education; 4. To arrive at a conceptual framework that could provide considerations for rethinking quality assurance processes for the enhancement of the quality of doctoral research proposals. These objectives were addressed through the use of phenomenology as the research methodology underpinned by an idealist interpretivist research paradigm. The purposive sampling method drew on university policy documents, the input of supervisors and students to understand the processes of quality assurance. Data were generated through policy documents, structured interviews and semi-structured interviews. The generated data were then analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis to arrive at the findings. Due attention was given to ethical considerations. Findings emerged from the analysis of the policy documents on the core business of universities, strategic future directions, access to doctoral education, conceptualisation of proposed research idea(s) and assessment of proposed research. The analysis also produced the following findings related to supervisors and students: influences prior to doctoral education, making sense of quality assurance procedures, research structure at the faculty and the envisaged importance of quality assurance beyond doctoral education. The findings accorded with the literature that informed the conceptual framework. Additional information also emerged when the findings were synthesised, which contributed to the identification of potential points of tensions in the process of quality assurance. These tensions were in the areas of: (1) the purpose of doctoral education, (2) internationalisation and context-specific relevance of quality; and (3) research within disciplines and across disciplines. These tensions necessitated a rethinking of quality considerations that could enhance the quality of doctoral research proposals. In doing so, account was taken of the conceptual framework. It is envisaged that the identified considerations will enhance the assurance of quality of doctoral research proposals beyond a mode 1 understanding of knowledge production. Stakeholders involved with the processes of quality assurance such as supervisors and students, critical readers and doctoral committee members stand to benefit from the framework conceptualised in this study. The thesis concludes by reaching main conclusions and providing recommendations and possible limitations.