An alternative reading of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG): From Foucault’s panopticon to Freire’s humanizing pedagogy

This paper critically examines the impact of neoliberalism on Quality Assurance (QA) in Higher Education (HE), employing an integrated approach that combines Foucauldian deconstruction and Freirean reconstruction. It explores the pervasive issues of accountability, standardization, and control that have increasingly dominated the field, particularly in the implementation of the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) and the roles of national and European QA agencies. Foucault’s concepts, as recorded in the relevant literature, are applied to critique the limitations of current QA practices, which often prioritize benchmarks and compliance at the expense of genuine educational quality. Moving beyond critique, the paper incorporates Freire’s humanizing pedagogy to propose a reconstructive and transformative vision for QA. This integration of deconstruction and reconstruction enables an alternative reading of the ESG, reimagining QA as a process that transcends standardization to prioritize contextual responsiveness, inclusivity, and the unique needs of students and communities.