Audit cultures and quality assurance mechanisms in England: a study of their perceived impact on the work of academics

Abstract

Acceptance of the legitimacy of post‐modern theories on education implies a need to reconceptualise the professional development of graduates in the area of educational leadership. This paper reports on the first year of an innovative professional doctorate programme focusing on educational leadership at the Queensland University of Technology. A problem‐based learning approach was integrated with and underpinned by post‐modern imperatives such as the valuing of the self‐empowerment of students, the acceptance of multiple realities as reality, and a view of knowledge as arising out of interdependence and contextualised by discontinuous change. The focus of this paper is on students’ and teachers’ views of the development of individual empowerment, processual competencies and interdependence in the first cohort of students.