Internal Quality Assurance in Higher Education from Instructors Perspectives in Rwanda; a Mirage or Reality

While increasing access to higher education in Rwanda remains to be an important objective of national development, this paper shows that quality of teaching and learning in higher institutions needs improvement. The paper aims at informing instructors, policy developers and university management who want to reflect more deeply upon their practice or gain a greater understanding about how theory and practice can be mapped together. The findings revealed that instructors do not adequately understand what comprehensively constitutes the curriculum, that curriculum development does not follow due process and the quality of teaching and learning is wanting. It also emerged that the current assessment procedure are not effective in measuring competencies as expected. From the findings it is argued that reforming practice requires transformations of understanding of principles of curriculum, teaching and learning that are assumed or are sometimes implicitly in the practices. Higher education in Rwanda needs to move first to address these issues in a way that is comprehensible to society, rather than through technical solutions of channeling out graduates that can be appreciated only by those inside higher education