Effects of faculty psychological empowerment and autonomy on sustainable quality education in the didactics of accreditation and green pedagogy
Authors: Ashraf Mohammad Ali , Amir Tanzila , Ratan Sarker Rafij Ahmed 
Published: January 2025

Purpose

Both QS World university rankings and US higher education accreditation agencies provide external quality evaluation for institutions to deliver quality control and assurance, which causes ample criticism about the academic freedom of teaching staff. Moreover, Austria-based Green Pedagogy advocates outcome-based sustainable quality learning, which promotes teachers’ psychological empowerment and autonomy and the UNESCO model of education advances a transformative paradigm to sustain social, economic and environmental well-being. In this backdrop, this study aims to attain two objectives: the first is to conceptualize a research framework investigating psychological empowerment for predicting faculty academic autonomy, which, in turn, influences sustainable quality education in private higher education institutes (HEIs); and the second is to explore the expert opinion on the suitability of an approach to sustainable quality education between the movements of Green Pedagogy and the UNESCO model globally.

Design/methodology/approach

To attain the objectives, this study uses a model of psychological empowerment (MPE) as its theoretical basis. The data (n = 390) was electronically collected from the teachers of 21 private universities through a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed following the procedure of Smart-PLS-SEM. Respondents were selected based on a random sampling procedure.

Findings

Findings of this study indicate that psychological empowerment significantly influences teacher autonomy, which significantly influences sustainable quality education. The findings also highlight that the scholars vie for the Green Pedagogy in comparison to Education for Sustainable Development to ensure sustainable quality education in private HEIs. Furthermore, content analyses show that the US higher education accreditation process dilutes faculty academic freedom as well as quality education.

Research limitations/implications

From a research perspective, this study results demonstrate that the MPE appears to be a robust theoretical approach. It also implies that a psychologically empowered teacher is characterized by greater autonomy, responsibility, belief in their competences and application of them in work practice and ability to teach their students effectively. Future research needs further investigation to reconfirm the results.

Practical implications

From a practical standpoint, the results of this study have significant and pervasive lessons for the administrators and academic leaders in HEIs. First, the management of HEIs can capitalize to psychologically empower the faculty members and also allow adequate academic autonomy to ensure sustainable quality education. Second, this study highlights that the Green Pedagogy approach is practically more suitable to attain sustainability in HEIs. And third, with the advancement of new technology, faculty members have to prepare themselves with improved knowledge and pedagogy techniques for which they need to be empowered more by allowing significant level of faculty autonomy.

Social implications

Social implications of this study are that Green Pedagogy is observed to be superior to UNESCO model in terms of ensuring sustainable quality education by which the students and teachers can contribute more in social and community development.

Originality/value

This study has a significant empirical contribution in understanding the importance of faculty empowerment and freedom or autonomy to ensure sustainable quality learning embodying the Green Pedagogy approach in HEIs, when international HEIs are competing for accreditation and QS rankings.