Discursive production of teaching quality assessment report: A Critical Discourse Analysis

To produce a teaching quality assessment (TQA) report in the TQA practice launched by the Chinese Ministry of Education the assessing group is naturally in an authoritative position, but the assessed university does not remain absolutely passive and dominated. To investigate this struggle of power over each other in producing the TQA report, the present research examines the discourse aspect of the TQA practice by observing the discursive strategies each party deployed. It is found that both parties resort to institutional power in their discourse practice, and that the assessed university incorporates promotional genres into its self-assessment discourse while the assessing group recontextualises the promotional statement in its authoritative TQA report. It is concluded, based on this case study, that the assessing group’s authoritative TQA report is largely influenced by the self-assessment of the assessed university.