Original Research

Kgotla as a transformative paradigm for higher education: Rehumanising quality assurance

Gloria Castrillon, Kirti Menon

Received: 10 Mar. 2025; Accepted: 26 July 2025; Published: 31 Oct. 2025

Copyright: © 2025. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

Despite post-1994 legislative and policy efforts aimed at the transformation of South African higher education, it remains entrenched in colonial and neoliberal frameworks that perpetuate exclusion, inequality and dehumanisation. This article argues that the failure to achieve meaningful institutional transformation stems from top-down, bureaucratic approaches that have prioritised compliance over critical engagement, and indicators over inclusive praxis. In response, it proposes kgotla – a Southern African model of participatory governance – as a transformative alternative for internal quality assurance processes, using the example of programme reviews. The article demonstrates how a kgotla-inspired approach reconfigures traditionally inspectorial review practices into more dialogic, inclusive and developmental engagements. By foregrounding the values of shared responsibility and collective ownership of the programme review, the model disrupts hierarchical power dynamics and fosters meaningful participation. The process enhances academic agency, potentially contributing to broader institutional change. Aligning with Freirean notions of education as praxis and Barnett’s vision of the ecological university, the kgotla paradigm supports a shift from performativity to humanising practice. Kgotla-informed quality assurance offers a means to disrupt the commodification and managerial practices that hinder meaningful change in the sector.

Contribution: The article positions kgotla as a vehicle for authentic transformation that addresses structural and epistemic injustices. Despite the challenges of scaling such a participatory model, micro- and meso-level interventions can catalyse substantive change, advancing the transformation agenda in higher education.

Keywords: quality assurance; programme review; kgotla; higher education; transformation.

Introduction

All South African universities are required to transform and maintain academic excellence in teaching, learning, research and community engagement. A significant lever for transformation in South African universities was the introduction in 1999 of a national quality assurance (QA) statutory body, the Council on Higher Education (CHE). One mechanism of QA in higher education institutions (HEIs) is programme review. Programme reviews are central to internal QA in higher education (HE) and are intended to assess academic programme quality against its design and purpose. Programme reviews evaluate the curriculum, learning and teaching activities, student experiences, and overall programme performance. In many HE contexts, QA activities (including programme reviews) are inspectorial and judgemental and, bereft of collegiality, are viewed as imposed and unpleasant necessities by the academics involved. Foucault’s work informed the path taken in adapting the approach to programme reviews set out in this article. The intention was to ‘grasp the implicit systems which determine our most familiar behaviour without our knowing it’ and in so doing ‘trying to find their origin, to show their formation, the constraint they impose upon us’ (Foucault in Simon 1971:201, emphasis added). Only in this way would it be possible to be ‘at a distance from them and to show how one could escape’ (Simon 1971:201).

The move from apartheid oppression to democracy created the expectation that, as the democratic process unfolded, higher education would transform. However, the history of education and the ‘regulative regimes of the 1990s occasioned the university’s leap from a racialized “disciplinary reason” during apartheid into a dominant “instrumental reason” in the democratic era’ (Fataar et al. 2022:4). The underpinning instrumentalism remains evident in, for example, the intense focus on ‘employability’, notwithstanding high unemployment rates. Despite being couched in the rhetoric of democratic values, the regulatory framework and its concomitant instruments have elicited shifts to managerialism and corporatisation in higher education. Overall, universities focus on outcomes, indicators, and critical success factors, resulting in reports, improvement plans, conditions, recommendations, and the like. In their structures and systems, South African universities continue to embrace colonial tropes and, more recently, neoliberal values. Universities increasingly marginalise academic staff, rendering them invisible and excluding them from meaningful participation and real decision-making. The university in its current form, whether by design or by default, devalues the humanity of both staff and students (see CHE 2022).

The transformation of HE requires acknowledging universities as contested spaces where humanity is constantly under siege, especially in the current economic environment. People at the core of the university have been reduced to ‘human capital’, valued primarily for advancing institutional missions, which obscures their humanity. The transformation of the university to a corporate entity has replaced practices that affirm and heal with those that negate a shared humanity. The corporatisation of academic spaces in pursuit of instrumentalist goals, rather than the public good, has produced a managerial orientation that ironically undermines the very character of the university it claims to transform. The complexity of national and institutional accountability regimes means that all are dehumanised. The alienation and curtailment of academic agency, especially when academics fail to meet neoliberal ideals, permeates national regulatory and quality frameworks, rendering the promise of transformation increasingly illusory.

Given the degree of change required, the intention is not to pursue a romanticised version of a university. It is instead to point to the need for small-scale, intentional and collective actions directed at achieving change incrementally. As Kronenberg points out, being ‘human is not a given but a political potentiality which manifests on an oppression-liberation continuum of enacted harmful negations and salutogenic affirmations of our humanity’ (2018:viii). Traditional models of QA have been implemented as control mechanisms constraining and imposing on academics, contributing to their dehumanisation and objectification, which is contrary to the mission of universities and anathema to learning and teaching. When applied punitively, QA becomes an instrument of surveillance (Lund & Tienari 2019). Assertions that QA processes and their instruments are applied in the name of accountability and transparency may hide the subterfuge of the exclusion from decision-making of groups that matter, further objectifying and dehumanising them. Programme reviews should be conducted with academics, not imposed upon them. Just as Martin Luther King premised his political activism on the dignity of ‘somebodiness’, the view in which every human is seen not as ‘animated tool’ but as a person (Mason & Megoran 2021:53) is needed. In a speech made in October 1967, King said:

Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth and always feel that your life has ultimate significance. (n.p.)

King’s use of ‘somebodiness’ encourages self-respect, resilience and the affirmation of personal and collective value, especially in the face of oppression and dehumanisation. King warned of the dangers that occur when people are ‘thingified’ and are treated as a means to an end.

In making the changes inspired by the principles of kgotla, the QA of programmes represents a deliberate and intentional move to humanise institutional processes and address entrenched dehumanisation. At the University of Johannesburg (UJ), a programme review process based on the principles of kgotla has been implemented since 2019. As the reviews took place, the programme review process itself was evaluated and adjusted by the participants to ensure fitness for purpose for the programmeand/ordiscipline in question. The approach built in mechanisms for continuous refinement, with the end goal being an inclusive and participatory process. Feedback is actively solicited from, and provided by, participants during each iteration of the review. Recalibrations of the process, parameters and methods ensure adherence to the principles on which the model is premised. For the QA and academic teams, the shift from imposing onerous reviews on unwilling participants to an approach in which their intrinsic value as academics was made apparent has meant that the outcomes of reviews are more speedily implemented by willing teams. Staff from the quality unit began presenting on the model of reviews adopted by the university at both internal and external academic and quality events. These presentations generated interest across the higher education sector, and institutions have recognised the value of this experimental and distinctive paradigm shift from traditional programme reviews to a more nuanced and rigorous approach. The model adopted for programme reviews was applied to the national review of doctoral studies and the institutional audit. In changing the programme review process, the authors sought to encourage boldness, being ‘prepared to mess with the world even more boldly’ (Shulman 2002:vii) and confronting the values and ethics underlying the process. The new process is complex and intense, perhaps even messy to outsiders, yet it has fostered a clear sense of ownership and belonging, which was acknowledged by the CHE’s audit panel in their feedback to the university’s leadership.

As several authors have argued, it is not clear whether transformation has or has not occurred (see Badat 2024; Menon et al. 2025; Soudien et al. 2008). The approach to programme review offered in this article provides insight into the need for transformation to be inclusive and participatory. The approach may be translated into multiple processes across the academic project, with the ability gradually to erode the unforgiving bureaucracies that run counter to the democratic ideals driving the desire to change HE. Much of the transformation discourse imbued in the national policies and frameworks is symbolic. What has been unleashed at the national level in terms of monitoring, evaluation and reporting requirements in the name of transformation and accountability has pushed universities into a corner in which their very existence is premised on their ability to meet the instrumentalist and performative requirements of the state.

Bernal (2021) points out that:

[W]hat must be done to decolonise, and what the future of such knowledge production will look like are ongoing questions. Perhaps rather than any blueprint, what is needed most is the opportunity for radical experimentation. (p. 43)

Underpinning this research is the argument that a model of programme review premised on kgotla constitutes a significant shift from conventional, compliance-driven academic management. The article draws on the literature on kgotla and the efficacy of its principles for programme review. The new approach to programme review, and the experimentation that produced it, has proven worthwhile, as requests for reviews during the pilot process far exceeded capacity. The inherent value of an African lexicon for university quality processes, including programme review, may be conceptualised. The selection of kgotla is not gratuitous. Kgotla is both a physical gathering space, ordinarily at the centre of a village, a space in which rituals take place, customary law trials are heard and judgements are passed. In kgotla, matters of communal importance are debated and resolved. Kgotla offers a consultative paradigm beyond the conventional structural and systemic arrangements in universities, which to a large extent map against the ‘uses’ of HE valued by the state. The paradigmatic value of kgotla enables a vision of ‘the university’ embedded in African history and tradition. However, employing the concept of kgotla must amount to more than a simplistic backdrop. It serves to represent the need to intertwine history, the present and the as-yet unknown future as an ongoing negotiation between what was and is expected. Kgotla is a way to seek fairness and validity for ‘the community’, in the space where ‘everyone’ can speak (Ngwenya & Kgathi 2011:254). In this view, the multiple narratives of university community members are imbued with the cultural knowledge (or ‘institutional knowledge’) which critically interrogate power, policy and transformation. In kgotla, individual narratives may be interwoven with communal necessities as matters are discussed without constraint. In Botswana, kgotla has survived alongside the formal state bureaucracy, navigating the space between it and African customary law (Ngwenya & Kgathi 2011). In this paradigm, South African universities face a similar set of crosscurrents, the nature of which depends on a raft of external quality assurance dictates; national legislation, policy, rules and regulations, in addition to national, global, social, economic and political factors. On the one hand, the national QA framework’s substantive goal is to drive the transformation of a previously racially stratified sector and embed quality in the university. On the other hand, for transformation to be achieved, each university should, through the application of the principles of fitness of and for purpose, be able to discover a quality system that is contextually relevant. The application of the spirit of kgotla to the example of programme review provides insights into how this could be achieved.

The CHE places significant emphasis on programme reviews as a key mechanism for curriculum and institutional transformation (CHE 2021). Themes driving the transformation of curricula over the last 30 years have included human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), employability, internationalisation, Africanisation, entrepreneurship, and, more recently, technological developments including the rapid increases in artificial intelligence among others. The problem is, as the national student protests of 2015 and 2016 demonstrated, the assumption that change was happening was not shared by the students on the receiving end of university curricula (Le Grange 2016). The call for the decolonisation of the curriculum is linked directly to the students’ call for epistemological and physical access and to the (un)affordability of HE. The change to the programme review process was in part a response to the university’s drive to decolonise. Although the link between programme review and transformation may not be immediately apparent, the transformation of higher education in South Africa requires a paradigm shift grounded in inclusivity, participation, community, and the acknowledgement of multiple epistemologies. In this context, programme review, which connects directly to the daily work of academics, is particularly apposite. Kgotla is relevant precisely because it is where ‘everyone’ can speak (Ngwenya & Kgathi 2011:254).

Nonetheless, the role of the chief in kgotla is to lead, similar to the role of the vice chancellor or an executive officer in a university. Osei-Hwedie (2010) argues:

Chiefs, as traditional authorities, are expected to be responsible, accountable and transparent to ensure that people’s wishes are taken into account and their interests promoted. Hence, the saying that ‘khosi ke khosi ka batho’ (a chief is a chief by the grace of the people). (p. 120)

Decisions reached should be fair, enhance communalism, and be based on the recognition of competing rights and obligations. It is a non sequitur to say that weak or ineffectual leadership of kgotla will result in problematic decisions. Applied well, the principles of kgotla demonstrate the ability to transform university programme reviews from ‘inspectorial’ events to inclusive and participatory processes. The principles are inclusivity and participation; open dialogue and deliberation; transparency and accountability; consensus building and collective ownership; and a holistic perspective. The governance structures of universities conceptualised in the Higher Education Act, Act 101 of 1997 and universities’ individual statutes draw on these principles. The Preamble to the Act sets out 11 principles, the first three of which are the establishment of a single HE system which ‘promotes co-operative governance’; the restructure and transformation of programmes and institutions; and redress of past discrimination such that representativity and equal access are assured. However, how these values play out at the various levels in the university is critical.

Programme review processes have for some time been curated by QA practitioners, with reports serving on the various governance committees. However, when it comes to governance structures such as senate teaching and learning committees, only those with a vested interest will engage. When one considers the universities in the South African context that are considered dysfunctional, the clear markers of the failure of collective decision-making are evident. Research has shown that dysfunctional universities often have entrenched factions and conflict, lack of trust, politicisation of operational issues and a culture of impunity, among others (see, e.g., Jansen 2017, 2023; Mthethwa 2024). One way of countering neoliberal discourse is through the elevation of familiar, indigenous lexicons. Infusing universities with African practices and idioms disengages the imposition of neoliberal managerialism from the goals of transformation: justice and freedom, whose meanings must derive from the collective wisdom of academic communities. As has been pointed out, the ‘lack of institutional will to transform university cultures in some universities and the poor integration of the transformation projects at all levels of the institutional life’ (South African Human Rights Commission 2016) remains a concern.

University hierarchies mean that power is unequally distributed. In the programme review process at the UJ, ‘power’ is distributed equally to all those responsible for the academic programme. It is far simpler to apply principles of kgotla in relation to contained activities (e.g., a COVID-crisis committee or a programme review), and to leverage everyone’s commitment to the shared purpose. The pandemic prompted a response aligned to the principles of kgotla, which, in the face of the unknown, relied on the multiple voices in the university being heard and on decisions being made collectively (Motala & Menon 2020). In the current programme review process, power and decision-making are distributed, such that all participants have a voice and are able to exercise their agency. Previously, the voices of academics, students, and support staff were limited to responses to stock questions, and were structurally subordinated to those of industry representatives and academic ‘interrogators’. The panel interview establishes a tension between those posing questions and those providing answers, modelled on the dominant modalities of QA practice, and mirroring institutional experiences with external regulatory processes. In the new process, discussion replaces interrogating and the dialectic between all parties present aggregates the decisions and conclusions reached by the collective without the sense of one group judging the other. The process proceeds from the assumption that programme reviews must highlight the achievements and areas in need of development. The ‘panel’ (in quality-speak) is subsumed into a programme ‘collective’ comprising academics, students, industry players, graduates, support staff, and so on. It is the collective that considers the imperatives of, among others, curriculum, assessment, pedagogical practices, the essential elements of programme design, and the ‘raison d’être’ for a programme.

As the ‘enforcers’ or ‘practitioners’ of QA, the authors began to distil this notion as the reviews were rolled out. Over the preceding 6 years the programme review process has been continuously adjusted and developed. Relevant documents have served at university governance structures, and feedback on the process itself is part of the programme review. Primary responsibility for programme review is in the hands of the academics who teach on the programme. It has become clear that in adopting a fuller approach to programme reviews, the inclusivity of the community involved in learning and teaching (directly and indirectly) has subverted the reliance on inspectorial methods, the default approach which so often results in misunderstandings and inaccuracies. The inclusion of meta-evaluation during the review renders the process organic and provides rich qualitative data which informs the refinement and recalibration of processes.

The transformation of higher education is currently assessed through numerous indicators, often accompanied by rhetoric and surrogate ‘achievements’, and managed through a top-down national approach. The indicators denoting transformation are largely quantitative and may not signify whether transformation is happening in learning and teaching spaces. Badat asserts that transformation in South African universities ‘will not come into being through epistemological and theoretical work alone, only through political action and struggle’ (Badat 2024:6). In considering dimensions of transformation, the CHE (2022) points out that it should:

[B]e understood as a dual process: first as a process of the dissolution of an existing set of social relations and social, economic, political, ideological and cultural institutions, policies and practices; and second, as a process of the re-creation and consolidation of an alternate set of social relations and social, economic, political, ideological and cultural institutions, policies and practices. (p. 2)

Universities are grappling not only with the need to meet these substantial reforms, but also with ever-emerging constraints, including new managerialism, corporatism, neoliberalism, the ‘McDonaldisation’ of education, entrepreneurialism, massification and decolonisation, all of which have significantly influenced the fundamental nature of the university (see also Vally 2007). Neoliberal thought in higher education has led to increased marketisation and financialisation, resulting in the commodification of education. In this paradigm, knowledge is a consumable product, and students are the university’s customers. The question of how universities can avoid creating corporate bureaucracies that concentrate decision-making in the hands of a privileged few and focus narrowly on ‘the bottom line’ remains unaddressed.

Similarly, Soudien (in CHE 2022:2) argues that university governance must be imbued with democratic principles and work to address South Africa’s historical inequities. He identifies that a specific paradigm shift is required, which is ideological and involves a direct interrogation of issues of privilege and power. There is evidence that HE has shifted from collegial decision-making to a reliance on prescribed committee structures (Luescher & Holtzhausen 2023). What is often referred to as collegiality is a form of governance, and also a “core academic principle” and a “tradition” in a participatory decision-making system (Crace, Gehman & Lounsbury 2024:85). Although the purpose of Crace et al.’s exploration of governance in an American university is sociologically contextual, there are elements which ring true for South African universities: a reduction in government funding, subsequent austerity measures, a focus on increasing efficiency, the appointment of ‘expert’ consultants, and academic restructuring (2024:87). Collegiality ‘cannot be reduced to a certain organizational structure or specific behaviors’ (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist 2023:9) with the result that the academic (the collegial) runs in parallel to the managerial and, to varying degrees, may even be subservient to it. The form this takes in a university is familiar to many; it is one in which: ‘strategic management personnel increasingly control the recruitment of leaders and academic staff, educational programs, assessment criteria, etc., rather than faculty’ (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist 2023:13). University decision-making becomes more centralised and increasingly ‘top-down’. In an increasingly vicious cycle, Sahlin and Eriksson-Zetterquist argue, the authority of faculty is eroded, which in turn exacerbates the imposition of central control (2023:13). Such a process is not, of course, unique to South Africa, as academics across the world face becoming ‘subordinated employees’ (Sahlin & Eriksson-Zetterquist 2023:13).

Embracing kgotla

The vexed question facing universities in responding to Badat’s counsel (2024) is how, in contemporary South Africa, the ‘received’ (and imposed) wisdom of what a university ‘should’ be and how it must ‘perform’ can be deconstructed. In countering liberal Western ideologies, Oruka asserts that ‘the problem in traditional Africa is not lack of logic, reason, or scientific curiosity’, and that ‘communal consensus … should not be seen as a hindrance for individual critical reflection’ (Oruka 1991:50). Communal consensus also does not stand in opposition to the individual, or to effective decision-making. In proposing kgotla as an African political and social framework, the authors acknowledge the dangers of oversimplification. However, kgotla has a deep history and a layered and nuanced symbolic value. The Setswana proverb, Ntwa kgolo ke ya molomo, tells us that speaking from the mouth solves even impossible problems. The lessons of kgotla are in part predicated on ubuntu, an isiZulu word for a concept common at least across sub-Saharan Africa (Metz 2014). Ubuntu expresses the view that one’s personhood is drawn from the web of one’s relationships and is captured in the commonly cited: ‘I am because you are; we are because you are’ (Ogude 2018:1, emphasis in original). In kgotla, although everyone speaks, it is the guidance of the elders, as respected members of the community, that is most valued. In kgotla, the wisdom of the community is brought to bear on decision-making, or on judgements regarding compensation, redress or the application of customary law. Kgotla gathers the community together and makes a space for everyone to speak. The counsel of the elders is essential, as their experiences of inherited economic and social precariousness continue to resonate with the challenges faced by South Africa’s students (Pongweni, Calitz & Ellis 2025) and university scholars.

Beyond its physical structures, ‘being human’ is a central principle embedded in the concept of university transformation, however it is defined. As indicated above, the alienation resulting from the apartheid system and the post-1994 tensions that culminated in the #FeesMustFall protests of 2015 demonstrate the deeply entrenched dehumanisation within higher education. It is not only students who have been dehumanised, as the experiences of alienation of especially black and women academics have been written about extensively (see Hlatshwayo & Majozi 2024; Khunou et al. 2019; Maseti 2018). There is no reason why the care embodied in the pedagogy of care for students should not be extended to university staff, whether academics or administrators. The spirit of kgotla, with its inherent emphasis on community, respect and the interconnectedness of its members, provides a powerful framework for embedding the pedagogy of care and humanising pedagogy across the university.

Kgotla offers a consultative paradigm beyond the conventional structural and system arrangements in universities. In kgotla, matters of communal importance are debated and resolved. Using kgotla for its paradigmatic value enables a vision of ‘the university’ embedded in African history and tradition. Rather than treating kgotla as a simplistic backdrop, one can argue that the history, present, and future of a university should be intertwined, enabling less tension and greater ongoing negotiation between what was, what is, and what will be expected. Premised on kgotla, to be achieved, change must be fair and valid for ‘the community’. The polyphonic stories of university community members contain the cultural knowledge (institutional knowledge) which critically interrogates power, policy and transformation. In kgotla, individual narratives intertwine with communal necessities as matters are discussed without constraint. It is instructive that in Botswana, kgotla has survived alongside the formal state bureaucracy, navigating the space between it and African customary law (Ngwenya & Kgathi 2011).

The concept of the ecological university, proposed by Barnett (2018, 2024), is similar to that of kgotla as it offers a compelling vision for the future of HEIs in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. Barnett argues that universities fail to realise their potential and consequently are unable to shoulder their responsibilities in the fast-changing world (Barnett 2018). The features of an ecological university derive from its interconnectedness with the world, recognising its relationships with multiple ecosystems and its responsibility towards them (Barnett 2024). Evidence that South Africa’s universities failed to recognise the need for change and deeper institutional connectivity can be seen in the 2015 student protests (Booysen 2016; Ndaweni & Ngcaweni 2018; Luescher, Webbstock & Bhengu 2020:2834) and in the experiences of black academics, as noted above. Barnett’s conceptualisation of the university makes clear that the deeply fractured South African histories must be acknowledged, and that the governance of universities based on conventional colonial models requires transformation. All universities are part of complex ecosystems, intertwined with others: knowledge, learning, persons, social institutions, culture, the economy, the polity and nature (Barnett 2024). The ecological university seeks actively to enhance the well-being of these ecosystems, supporting their development and repairing them where they are impaired (Barnett 2018). Similarly, kgotla provides critical spaces for discussion on the ecosystem/s and their interconnectedness, which in turn recognises the agency of all participants (Ngwenya & Kgathi 2011). The 2020 pandemic illustrated the value of collaboration (Menon & Castrillón 2022) as each university, beleaguered by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), became a ‘kgotla’, aggregating frequently into one, larger kgotla across the sector. In this way, support during the crisis was provided to students and staff. The university as an ecological system is particularly relevant in the context of global challenges such as climate change, the rise of ‘post-truth’ discourse (Kondratyuk-Antonova et al. 2025), and the need to serve the public good amid increasing competition and marketisation (Barnett 2021). In a significant departure from existing conceptions of the university, Barnett traces its evolution from medieval times through the scientific, corporate and entrepreneurial models (Barnett 2011).

Barnett argues that many of the challenges facing the world are not primarily technological, but are rather matters of being, living and possibilities for the future (Barnett 2021). Kgotla presents an alternate form for decision-making, collegiality and inclusion. Implementing the concept of the ecological university poses significant challenges to current HE policy and practice. It requires a fundamental rethinking of how teaching and learning are constructed, as well as how universities engage with their surrounding communities and ecosystems. The challenge to universities is to consider the development of new forms of engagement that acknowledge the deep connectedness that exists in the HE system.

Initiating change

Moving to a kgotla-informed model requires transformational leadership, which focuses on improving organisational effectiveness and, in education, begins by challenging the misuse of power and privilege that perpetuate inequity and injustice (Shields 2010:564). An Ubuntu ethics is proposed by Luescher and Holtzhausen (2023) in a critical discussion of university governance and engagement. Ubuntu, an African philosophy which emphasises interconnectedness and communal values, is the ideal guiding ethical framework for African HE institutions. Barnett’s assertion of the need for interconnectedness reads as a reiteration of the power of ubuntu. Drawing from the Luescher and Holtzhausen (2023) study, critical dimensions of ubuntu-based governance include engagement, shared responsibility, centring education on communal values, and a deeper holistic approach that shifts beyond narrow indicators of success to a conscious alignment with the broader goals of society:

Respect, responsiveness and relational engagement are qualities that are fundamental to ubuntu ethics, which emphasise the interconnectedness of all human beings within the human community, as implied in the assertion that umuntu ngumntu ngabantu – ‘a person is a person through people’. Ubuntu fundamentally involves an ethic that one’s humanity is inextricably bound to the humanity and well-being of others, thus promoting a sense of shared responsibility and cooperation. It also translates into a holistic understanding of education that goes beyond individual achievement. (p. viii)

Transformation requires critical self-reflexivity of the micro-practices within universities and a radical reorientation towards an Africa-relevant model. In the ‘Journey to the Ants’ (Hölldobler & Wilson 1998), readers are given insights into ant societies, and particularly into the decentralised governance structures, which have relevance to broader discussions on forms of governance. Ant colonies operate without centralised control, relying instead on collective intelligence and decentralised decision-making processes. Ant systems offer lessons for human governance models, emphasising efficiency, adaptability and collaboration. The case study below demonstrates how university processes may be leveraged to address complex challenges facing society, and the benefits to be derived from using kgotla as a model of participation.

A case in point: Programme review at the University of Johannesburg

Stake asserts that the intentions of a case study are for ‘researchers (to) seek out both what is common and what is particular about the case, but the end result regularly presents something unique’ (Stake 1994:238). The case study offered in this article is predicated on the principles of kgotla and provides insights into a more nuanced and innovative approach to programme review, an essential component of QA at universities. Both researchers are located at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), with functional responsibility for QA. Arising from their position that ‘traditional’ QA mechanisms and processes ‘alienate’ and disenfranchise academics, a new approach was sought. In developing this approach, the researchers, as practitioners, focused less on the procedural aspects and more on the human dimensions, consistent with the qualitative paradigm in which human action is studied from the insider’s perspective (Babbie & Mouton 2001:646). In this case study, the researchers are both observer and participant. To initiate this disruptive QA process, a new QA policy was adopted in 2019 with standard operating procedures that drew directly from a communal view of responsibility for quality. Whereas the common expression that ‘quality is everyone’s responsibility’ has long dominated the discourse, the researchers sought to change this to ‘quality is our responsibility’, in a manner that mirrors kgotla, as discussed in more detail below. In designing and piloting the new process, it was essential to the quality team that the assessment of the quality of a programme involved a broader community. The review process emanated from the researchers’ experiences in facilitating discussions on curriculum transformation, programme development workshops, and preparations and participation in national audit processes. In a series of sessions premised on kgotla, programmes were reviewed by teams comprising academics teaching on the programme, members of the QA team, students, graduates, external academics and industry representatives, and others. The circle was broadened, and the inclusion of adjacent programmes enriched the observations and reflections. In addition, the 2020 pandemic and the shift to emergency remote teaching required both researchers to engage in new ways across the university, forging connections to support students, staff, and the broader teaching–learning process. In critically reviewing emergency remote teaching (ERT) and the researchers’ roles, the inherent value of kgotla-like contemplation was honed. Five years later, feedback from programme review participants (academic managers, academics, faculty support staff, students and graduates) has informed the recalibrations of the process and indicates a positive result for programme quality.

The University of Johannesburg context

The UJ is a merged institution, the result of the legislative process concluded in 2005, which saw the offerings of Technikon Witwatersrand, Vista University, and Rand Afrikaans University merge into a single new entity. In 2009, the CHE conducted an Institutional Audit after which the university undertook programme reviews across all its faculties and programmes. By 2018, 13 years after the merger and amid the challenges of aligning with the Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework (HEQSF), there was widespread fatigue with programme reviews. There were several reasons for this, including:

• the high cost of reviews;
• the sheer volume of work required by the UJ process which, in addition to the CHE’s 19 accreditation criteria, required responses to an additional eight internally determined criteria (creating in the order of 200 ‘standards’ which required responses and evidence);
• limitations in the self-evaluation reports, which were often the task of a single person;
• the need for qualitative and interpretive data;
• delays in compiling final reports impacting negatively on improvement plans and the implementation of improvements;
• the unpleasantness and sheer stress associated with inspectorial reviews;
• the potential co-option of programme quality reviews for punitive purposes (Menon and Castrillon 2019a).

The researchers approached quality from the perspective of its transformative capacity and potential (Harvey & Green 1992) and acknowledged the importance of fitness of purpose, fitness for purpose, transformation and value for money, the cornerstones of the South African higher education quality system (CHE 2001). However, from 25 years of experience, the researchers sought an approach in which the quality journey, marked by collective learning and knowledge sharing in safe spaces, took precedence over the inherent teleology of quality decisions underpinning the national quality processes. The researchers’ approach was premised on the view that curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment, academics, and students form a complex ecosystem in a broader framework of policies, systems and structures. The process implemented by the researchers allowed for a focus on the ‘lived’ experience of the staff, students and academic administrators in a programme of learning. Quality assurance processes should be dynamic, inclusive and holistic in approach, enacted through policy and practice, and valued at every level. Freire (1993) argues that education’s key function is to humanise and expand the realm of the possible, which requires the transformation and dismantling of structures that produce exclusion and dehumanisation. In Freire’s work, the emphasis is on care, hope and justice as important principles from which to construct a praxis for education as freedom. As researchers and quality practitioners, praxis is reflexive (not only reflective) – and at once contextually and historically-embedded, and future-oriented, committed to ongoing learning (Freire 1993). If the work of the academic is to be transformed into a space of praxis, then a programme review process as a component of quality assurance which encompasses the subversive has the potential to promote critical thinking and nourish change. Similarly, in the programme review ‘kgotla’, an ubuntu-led leadership style applies (Laloo 2022). The team is empowered, and the emphasis shifts from comply, command, control, to contribute, collaborate, support (Ayiotis n.d.). The sense of reviewing the programme together drives belonging and involvement and both draws on and results in mutual respect, giving meaning to programme review as an ongoing conversation rather than an event which terminates in a finding, and an improvement plan. Education is deeply political, and the context calls on the entire university community to be ethical warriors (Hutchinson et al. 2023). Hoppers (2021), Zembylas (2021), and Keet, Zinn and Porteus (2009) highlight the importance of ‘humanising pedagogies’ in this process.

A shift in focus

Perhaps the most significant shift in developing the new review process was that of communal engagement. Critiques of the QA system (Lange & Kriel 2017; Luckett 2006; Materu 2007; Menon & Castrillon 2019a, 2019b) point out that it has become the domain of the QA ‘expert’ with no room for academics, support staff, students and graduates among others to engage in meaningful conversation about learning and teaching broadly and in the programme and disciplines specifically. At the same time, the CHE (2021) began to articulate its dissatisfaction with the delegation of ‘quality’ to ‘quality practitioners’, as an entire machinery developed to feed the compliance monster behind several, if not all, of the CHE’s processes. From discussions across the university, it had become clear that programme reviews were perceived as a burden, diverting attention from academics’ core teaching and research responsibilities. The inspectorial and punitive approach fails to engage with the richness of academic rigour, disciplinary depth, and the nuanced complexities of a programme of learning. If programme reviews are to mean anything, they must not be a superficial papering over to meet a set of pre-defined characteristics which negate the intellectual complexities of learning and teaching in favour of compliance with an unspoken ideal. The new process was deeply inclusive and holistic, able to solicit the contributions of all involved in a programme.

As Desierto and De Maio (2020) argue, Freirean and socio-constructivist humanistic philosophies are critical to resisting a reduction of universities to professional training centres in the service of the market economy. Education must not only prepare learners to be economic actors, but it must also develop critical, empathetic human beings who move society forward (Desierto & De Maio 2020). Humanising philosophies conceptualise the relationship between teacher and learner, and the teaching and learning experience as one that refuses to see people as units, ‘human capital’ or other reductive expressions of their value. Current external QA processes fall into this trap, reducing the scope of the academic project (Venter & Bezuidenhout 2008, as an example). The authors’ experiences of programme review demonstrate that by incorporating multiple perspectives and points of view in the process of shared inquiry, and by enabling shared problem solving and discursive strategies, the quality process is greatly enhanced, in its recognition of the complex process of education at university level.

Laubscher (2019:41) examines the criticality of space and place at universities. Using photographs of the 2015 #feesmustfall protests at the University of the Witwatersrand, Laubscher critiques the picture of Vice Chancellor Professor Adam Habib sitting on the floor among students. He argues that the photograph of Habib ‘portrays the removal of several barriers and fences’ including ‘authority, age, economic status, social and legal standing, amongst others’. However, the researchers note that this act did not constitute a paradigm shift. Its demonstrative value was that the Vice Chancellor was willing to hear students’ grievances; the fundamental skewed structures and power relations in the university remain unchanged.

In the new programme review process, the entire team responsible for the programme is brought together across two to three workshop sessions facilitated by a quality unit staff member. There is a substantial shift from the dynamics normally present in quality reviews, which are at worst adversarial and at least inspectorial. The new programme review process is communal, collaborative, collegial, engaging and developmental. Furthermore, while it acknowledges the necessity for compliance with internal and external programme requirements, these are located in the correct space. Compliance does not drive programme quality nor the actions needed for improvements. The development of the self-evaluation report is a collaborative process that draws directly from the workshop sessions. At the same time, current students and graduates are engaged, and their input is obtained.

The programme review culminates in a site visit, which is neither an interrogation nor a staged exercise. Drawing the participants together in a programme-kgotla, it is a rigorous and thorough engagement with the strengths and concerns identified by the academic team, the students and graduates, and the external parties. Additionally, a series of reports addressing the standard questions of access, success, syllabi and assessment are distributed to all. Just prior to the site visit, a desktop evaluation is undertaken by the quality unit staff member, the programme manager, the relevant academic manager and the academic selected to facilitate the site visit process. Rather than act as chairperson, the programme review facilitator is a senior academic who has previously been part of a review process for a programme for which they are responsible. This process obviates the need for intense discussion based on (mis)perceptions of the university, its staff, students, resources or facilities. From the outset, there is agreement on the rules of engagement and on the principles informing the review. The importance of valuing all voices equally is emphasised. Changes to the programme which may be made quickly and which do not require Senate approval are speedily integrated into departmental or faculty teaching and learning committees. The review report, ordinarily produced around 3 weeks after the site visit, is focused on those improvements which require institutional approval. Concerns that arise across programmes and which are institutional in nature are escalated by the QA team to the relevant domains.

The benefits of the approach are significant. Spin-offs include requests by departments for a variety of interventions extending beyond the QA team and into other domains. Academic and capacity building are integrated into the process and are non-threatening. Quality in its different manifestations becomes more embedded as the overlapping circles of participants from various programme reviews converge and reinforce one another. The facilitator’s key task is akin to that of a chief: to ensure a fair and representative process in which there is equitable participation. The process provides concrete opportunities to develop shared understandings of the programme’s purposes, delivery and quality, and familiarity with the national QA framework is built. The kgotla model provides excellent opportunities for academics to engage with others and to shift their module-based perspectives to a curriculum-based and learning and teaching-based approach. The importance of this cannot be overstated: the process of kgotla-based review elicits deeper conversations about the academic project. Programme review becomes a space in which the university community is able collectively to engage with the rapid changes of the 21st century, to broaden or redefine disciplines in programmes, to make space for trans-, multi- and inter-disciplinary developments, and new pedagogical approaches, all of which are necessary.

By 2021 and 2022, the quality unit was having to decline requests to facilitate programme reviews as programme coordinators and heads of department sought the opportunities it provided. Programme reviews are valued at the university for providing non-threatening, engaging and equal opportunities for critical self-reflection. The four principles set out below align with those of kgotla:

• Developmental and inclusive: The focus is on curriculum, teaching, assessment, learning resources, student enrolment management, academic student support and development, and non-academic support and development. In modelling the approach on kgotla, the process moves beyond compliance into a purposeful and participatory mode of monitoring and modifying its priorities and practices.
• Adaptive capacity in complex external environment: Universities are understood to have an obligation to society. The university’s programme review process focuses on the broader external environment as key priorities. Notably, these include the need for alignment to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, decolonisation of the curriculum and pedagogy, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
• Build on the positive while against programme weaknesses: The collective voices provide critical insights into quality broadly and the programme specifically.
• Community-building: Recognition of all the constituent parts that are critical in the teaching and learning spaces.

In alignment with Shulman’s (2002) views, the review process encourages boldness:

Scholars of teaching and learning are prepared to mess with the world even more boldly than their colleagues who are satisfied to teach well and leave it at that. They mess with their students’ minds and hearts as they instruct, and then they mess again as they examine the quality of those practices and ask how they could have been even more effective. Scholars of teaching and learning are prepared to confront the ethical as well as the intellectual and pedagogical challenges of their work. They are not prepared to be drive-by educators. They insist on stopping at the scene to see what more they can do. (p. vii)

The new programme review process intentionally ‘messes’ with conventional, inquisitorial approaches and challenges complacency in quality assurance. Reviews are ordinarily premised on ‘meeting’ specified outcomes or criteria at the outset, failing to challenge the academic project with the required criticality. The ‘messy’ programme review practices at UJ subvert the ‘drive-by’ approach of quality assurance.

Conclusion

Although national documents reference the spirit of kgotla and the value of the collective, in practice the frameworks and policies governing higher education are hierarchical, formulaic, and rigid, driven by data and performance rather than by and for the humans who give the university its animus. The elements of the programme review process mirror the principles of a humanising praxis (Kronenburg 2018) with the objective being to go beyond colonial, managerial and technocratic approaches and towards an approach which foregrounds human dignity, collective wisdom and inclusivity. The process acknowledges fully the power that inheres in the university community to facilitate change. The changes to the manner in which programme reviews take place have provoked deep conversations centred on teaching and learning more broadly. In the university, as elsewhere, transformation demands a revolt against the imposition of oppressive managerialism.

The article has illustrated the inherent value of the new quality review process by showing how it challenges conventional approaches to programmes and demonstrates how the principles implicit in kgotla can imbue governance and management. Universities are founded on the principles of shared governance and inherently espouse the foundational values of participatory decision-making akin to kgotla. However, practices at universities do the opposite of the approach Shulman (2002) advocates. Reminiscent of Fanon’s (1961) assertion that the harshest colonisation is of the mind, the article uses the UJ programme review process as a case study. It has been proposed that to move beyond the morass of meaningless data accumulation and formulaic findings about programmes, and address the substantive issues beleaguering the academy, an approach in which institutional cultures and sub-cultures are given voice, influence, and agency is needed. As Lange (2020:46) points out, ‘complex, critical and analytical knowledge of the institutional self is a necessary condition to start thinking about transformation’. The case study demonstrates at the micro- and meso-levels of the university how change can be achieved, acknowledging that all the participants in the process come to the programme kgotla with their own identities, values, fears and biases. Part of the process is frequently cathartic, as wrestling with ideas and different perspectives and opinions is critical to the success of the process.

While the foundational principles of inclusivity, participation and collective decision-making inherent in the kgotla resonate deeply with the aspirations articulated within the Higher Education Act, Act 101 of 1997 and the espoused values of universities, the true measure of their efficacy lies in consistent and meaningful implementation. To move beyond performative inclusivity, universities must actively revisit and re-entrench these core tenets in governance. This requires a conscious effort to dismantle bureaucratic barriers, empower diverse stakeholders and foster a culture of genuine dialogue.

Kgotla models may not be fit for purpose for the overall governance of higher education, with the stress points being performance indicators, efficiency measures and accountability measures. The proposals advanced here are explorative and indicate how, in small ways, substantive steps can be taken to draw on the experiences of the university community to trigger deeper conversations on models of governance at universities. Micro- and meso- changes have the inherent power to effect real change in academic contexts integral to the function of the university. Ideally, kgotla-informed decision-making is driven by the communal ‘good’, by fairness and by consensus. Efficiency serves the community’s needs; accountability is essential if decisions reached are to be meaningfully integrated into the university’s management approach. Although this discussion has centred on the authors’ own university, several universities have adopted innovative and collaborative models to address specific issues including curriculum, learning and teaching, or the sustainable development goals. Ultimately, an approach premised on kgotla addresses Badat’s (2024) injunction to build a truly South African university, bringing collegiality into the contemporary context of South Africa, and transforming the agenda by including the many voices in the university community.

Acknowledgements

The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

G.C. was involved in conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing - original draft, project administration, writing - review and editing. K.M. was involved in conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing - original draft, project administration, writing - review and editing.

This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency, or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings, and content.

References