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Abstract
Systems designed to ensure that teaching and student learning are of a suitable quality are a feature of universities globally. Quality assurance systems are central to attempts to internationalise higher education, motivated in part by a concern for greater global equality. Yet, if such systems incorporate comparisons, the tendency is to reflect and reproduce inequalities in higher education. Highlighting the European context, we argue that, if higher education is to play a part in tackling social inequalities, we must seek alternative methods to explore pedagogic quality in institutional settings. The sociologist Basil Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing provide an illustration of the potential of sociologically informed, qualitative approaches for exploring and improving higher education pedagogy and also for addressing social justice issues: these two concepts are used to analyse documentation about undergraduate sociology in two universities that have quite different reputations within the English and Northern Irish higher education system.
Notes
1. There are of course a plethora of economic problems in developing countries that cannot be addressed through higher education, as Ntshoe (Citation2003) argues in relation to South Africa.
2. Usually known as ‘assessment’ in the United Kingdom.
3. In the UK system, honours degree classifications, starting from the top award, are: first class (1st), upper second (2.1), lower second (2.2).
4. Source withheld to maintain confidentiality.
5. We have analysed the last two years because the structures of the two degrees differ considerably in the first year.