This article investigates quality assurance in pre-service teacher
education at the Higher Teacher Training College of the University of Maroua,
Cameroon, drawing on a qualitative corpus of interview sheets compiled in 2015
and covering twenty student teachers coded from A to T. The empirical material
rests on a semi-structured guide adapted from the quality framework of the
African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education, built around seven
dimensions: environment, pedagogical strategies, assessment, pedagogical
relationship, supervision, content and organization. Regrouped into six
analytic axes during coding, these dimensions serve to understand how student
teachers perceive the quality of their training in an institutional context
shaped by material, climatic and organizational constraints specific to the
Sahelian area of Far North Cameroon.
The thematic analysis yields four main findings. Students first link
quality to tangible learning conditions: physical accessibility of the campus,
electricity, documentary resources, digital connectivity and laboratory
equipment. They then describe a recurring gap between the professional
ambitions of the curriculum and the weakness of practical mediation, especially
in science and language tracks. Assessment practices and the late publication
of results further emerge as a central source of dissatisfaction, because of
stress, perceived opacity and negative effects on academic preparation.
Pedagogical relationships finally appear ambivalent, some lecturers being
perceived as available and supportive while others are described as inattentive
to students’ difficulties.
The article argues that, in a teacher-training institution located in a
Sahelian environment, quality assurance cannot be reduced to procedural
compliance: it must be approached as an institution’s ability to adjust to
context, combining regional standards, local resources, territorial equity and
effective professionalization. Two caveats bound these findings: the study is a
secondary analysis of interview sheets compiled in 2015, with no possibility of
follow-up or triangulation with lecturers and administrative staff, and the
recurrences identified were not quantified. The paper concludes by advocating a
more situated form of quality assurance grounded in student voice, stronger
pedagogical infrastructure and more stable administrative routines.
Keywords: Quality assurance, Higher education, Student evaluation of teaching, ENS Maroua, CAMES, Sahelian context, Teacher education.
