Assessment Quality Assurance and the Regulation of Academic Discourse: Insights from Regional Education Governance in Namibia

Abstract

This article examines assessment quality assurance as a governance regime in higher education, with particular attention to how it operates within the Namibian context. Moving beyond procedural and technical understandings of quality assurance, the study investigates how official policy, regulatory, and institutional texts construct assessment quality assurance as a mechanism for governing institutional conduct, regulating academic practice, and shaping the conditions under which academic legitimacy is produced. The study is grounded in an interpretive qualitative design and draws on qualitative document analysis and critical discourse analysis, guided by Foucauldian governmentality as the main theoretical lens. The analysis focused on the language, assumptions, and regulatory logics embedded in assessment-related texts. Five interrelated themes emerged from the findings: assessment quality assurance as a technology of governance; standardisation and the normalisation of academic practice; regulation of academic discourse through evaluative language; knowledge legitimation and academic validity; and tensions within the quality assurance regime. The article argues that assessment quality assurance is not a neutral administrative exercise, but a multidimensional regulatory formation that shapes how institutions organise assessment, how academics and students perform within evaluative systems, and how valid knowledge is recognised in higher education. The study contributes to current scholarship by showing that assessment quality assurance has institutional, discursive, and epistemic effects. It concludes that quality assurance should be understood as both necessary and contestable, requiring approaches that protect academic standards while remaining sensitive to autonomy, diversity, and the broader educational purpose of higher education.