ABSTRACT

This research investigated the implementation of accreditation at public teaching and research universities in Afghanistan. A qualitative multi-case study design was used to interview 46 individuals from five universities. The findings revealed that participants conceptualise quality assurance and accreditation as organisational sensemaking that emphasises contextual circumstances in exploring meaning construction. Accreditation is a community effort at research universities while engagement with accreditation seemed partial at teaching universities given that only the leadership and quality assurance units were involved in the process. The implications are that (a) a serious involvement of senior leadership in the process maximises employees’ engagement with accreditation and (b) factors such as limited budget and autonomy, scarce resources, lack of awareness and resistance of academic staff challenge accreditation in Afghanistan universities. The study recommends an increased budget and autonomy for universities, management training for university leaders and revision of the accreditation framework to be flexible to teaching and research universities.

摘要

这项研究调查了阿富汗公立教学和研究型大学的认证实施情况。定性的多案例研究设计被用来采访来自五所大学的46个人。调查结果表明，参与者将质量保证和认证概念化为组织意义上的制定，强调在探索意义建构时的情境。认证是研究型大学的一项社区工作，而由于只有领导和质量保证部门参与了这一过程，所以在大学教学中参与认证似乎只是一部分。其含义是：（a）高级领导层在此过程中的认真参与会最大程度地提高员工对认证的参与度；（b）诸如预算和自主权有限，资源稀缺，缺乏认识和对学术人员的抵制对阿富汗大学的认证提出了挑战。该研究建议增加大学的预算和自主权，对大学领导者进行管理培训，并修订认证框架，以灵活地适用于教学和研究型大学。