A Perception Study on Teacher Engagement and Administrative Workload during NAAC Accreditation

Abstract

Background: Accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is now a defining feature of Indian higher education governance. Although its stated purpose is quality enhancement, the process generates a dense layer of documentation, committee work, data entry and evidence-gathering that falls largely on teachers. Whether this administrative load strengthens or erodes teacher engagement remains insufficiently examined.

Objective: To synthesise and critically appraise perception-based evidence on the relationship between administrative workload during NAAC accreditation and teacher engagement, and to expose the gap between the policy ideal of accreditation and the lived reality reported by academics.

Methods: A PRISMA-guided structured scoping synthesis was conducted. A curated corpus of 117 bibliographic records was screened against pre-specified criteria, with priority given to 2023–2024 publications, and was supplemented by purposively selected external theoretical, empirical and policy sources. Evidence was analysed thematically and compared across four vantage points: teachers, administrators, accrediting bodies and students.

Results: Eighteen of the 117 records were published in 2023–2024; eight addressed NAAC or accreditation quality assurance directly and formed the core evidence set. Four convergent themes emerged: (i) documentation intensity displaces pedagogic and scholarly time; (ii) compliance is frequently ceremonial rather than developmental; (iii) workload is unevenly distributed and poorly recognised; and (iv) engagement is shaped by perceived autonomy, fairness and meaningfulness rather than by workload volume alone. A comparative matrix shows systematic divergence between institutional and teacher perceptions.

Conclusions: The available evidence supports a conditional rather than a uniform conclusion: accreditation workload is most damaging to engagement when it is opaque, duplicative, unrecognised and disconnected from teaching and learning. Five testable propositions and a measurement framework are proposed to enable primary empirical verification.