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ERIC Number: EJ1470590
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-May
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-1478-2103
Available Date: 0000-00-00
An Alternative Reading of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG): From Foucault's Panopticon to Freire's Humanizing Pedagogy
Policy Futures in Education, v23 n4 p783-808 2025
This paper critically examines the impact of neoliberalism on Quality Assurance (QA) in Higher Education (HE), employing an integrated approach that combines Foucauldian deconstruction and Freirean reconstruction. It explores the pervasive issues of accountability, standardization, and control that have increasingly dominated the field, particularly in the implementation of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) and the roles of national and European QA agencies. Foucault's concepts, as recorded in the relevant literature, are applied to critique the limitations of current QA practices, which often prioritize benchmarks and compliance at the expense of genuine educational quality. Moving beyond critique, the paper incorporates Freire's humanizing pedagogy to propose a reconstructive and transformative vision for QA. This integration of deconstruction and reconstruction enables an alternative reading of the ESG, reimagining QA as a process that transcends standardization to prioritize contextual responsiveness, inclusivity, and the unique needs of students and communities.
SAGE Publications. 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Tel: 800-818-7243; Tel: 805-499-9774; Fax: 800-583-2665; e-mail: journals@sagepub.com; Web site: https://sagepub-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Europe
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1The Cyprus Agency of Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education, Nicosia, Cyprus