Protecting academic freedom in changing times: the role of Heads of Departments

In changing times for higher education that are dominated by a neoliberal ideology, we set out to uncover how Heads of Departments (HoDs) perceive their role with respect to supporting their staff and their academic freedom. Freedom to pursue academic research is seen as key to the generation of new knowledge yet it is potentially constrained by funding regimes and university accountability systems. As HoDs operate at the interface between university systems and individual academic projects, how they perceive their role can have a profound influence on the working environment of their departmental staff. The research study is located in two successful departments in a research intensive university in England. The study shows that the HoDs were not captured by the neoliberal discourse and aimed to protect their staff so they could ‘get on with their work’. In so doing they interpreted university demands to the best advantage of their departments but were not active in challenging university driven changes, thus raising questions about the effects of accommodating to change, so risking incremental change, and of how less successful departments might be able to protect their staff and their academic freedom.     

Institutions,Individuals and Talk: The Construction of Identity in Fine Art

This paper is based on research in a university department of Fine Art. It is an exploration of the ways in which learning takes place - or fails to - in the spoken interchanges between tutors and students known as ‘cross-section crits’. The discussion draws on Harre's model of social and personal development and on a notion of argument to understand the place of shared knowledge and discourse, as well as conflict, in the construction of distinctive personal identity. Three examples of ‘crits’ are examined. These suggest insights into the culture of the fine art institution and offer implications for the role and conduct of talk and language in the teaching and learning process.     

Kant versus the Managers: Historical Reconstruction and the Modern University

This paper examines the role of normative ideals in contemporary critiques of the university. It begins by suggesting that the normative ideal of the university advanced by Immanuel Kant in The Conflict of the Faculties is particularly relevant to current critiques, as exemplified by a manifesto produced at the University of Aberdeen entitled ‘Reclaiming our University’. The second portion of the paper notes that such critiques cannot however encompass all aspects of the modern university. The paper thus concludes that a Kantian framework enables a narrower, but more powerful critique of New Public Management, which foregrounds issues of legitimate conflict within the university and its institutional reproduction over time instead of speaking to broader concerns about the university's civic/humanist origins     

Learning about Leading a Subject Department in Secondary Schools: some empirical evidence

This article attempts to shed some light on the preparation and training of subject heads of department (HoDs) in secondary schools, which is a neglected but vitally important issue. It reports the findings of interviews conducted with a sample of 36 HoDs in Wales. The major issue emerging from this work is the importance which HoDs attached to their learning about the HoD role, when working with previous HoDs at an earlier point in their career (professional socialisation) and the different kinds of learning experienced when they took up their post in school (organisational socialisation). Most of those interviewed also perceived themselves as being proactive in the training and professional development of their colleagues.     

Curriculum leadership in action: A tale of four community college heads of department leading a curriculum development project

College Heads of Department (HoDs) are increasingly expected to perform more curriculum-leadership tasks, maintaining and advancing the department curriculum, especially in developing countries. However, in practice, HoDs are reported to pay little attention to this aspect of their job due to several factors—one of which is a lack of professional support to play this role. This case study investigated how four HoDs of a community college perceived and enacted curriculum leadership during a curriculum-development project after receiving relevant training and assistance. The findings showed that the HoDs valued the relevance and usefulness of the professional support received, which made them realize the significance of their role as curriculum leaders. The findings also indicate that the ways the HoDs enacted the curriculum-leadership tasks and the challenges they encountered varied based on several factors. The conclusion drawn is that the support HoDs need and the challenges they encounter in assuming active curriculum leadership suggest their need for three professional competencies and the need for supportive organizational structures.     

Complexities of Vietnamese femininities: a resource for rethinking women's university leadership practices

This paper develops a dialogical encounter between northern-inspired theorisations of gender and Vietnam's historical and cultural differentiation identified through the presence of matriarchy in ancient societies and its popularity in folklore and contemporary politics. The article draws on interviews with 12 senior women from 8 universities in Northern and Southern Vietnam. Three main themes are explored: (1) the Vietnamese woman as ‘general of the interior’; (2) the ‘woman behind the throne’; and (3) ‘behind a woman is another woman’. These themes illustrate the distinctiveness of a historically produced Vietnamese gender order as reflected in current university women's experience. By providing insights into the complex dynamics of Vietnamese women's ‘informal power’, as evident in both spheres of home and university, the paper presents a discussion of forms of Vietnamese femininity that contributes to re-theorising Connell's concepts of ‘hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity’.     

‘They have different information about what is going on’: emotion in the transition to university

Most new students experience school to university transition as challenging. Students from backgrounds with little or no experience of higher education are most vulnerable in this transition, and most at risk of academic failure. Emotion appears implicated in the differential way in which first-generation students and students with family familiarity of university experience the transition. This article draws on the voices of first-year dental and oral hygiene students at a South African dental faculty regarding university transition experiences. It draws on the construct of capital and Archer's [(2002). Realism and the problem of agency. Journal of Critical Realism Alethia, 5(1), 11–20] understanding of ‘competing concerns’ to examine how emotion shapes students' experiences of university transition and how they position themselves with regard to these experiences. The article explicates the ways in which emotional commentary and classed locations intersect, exploring the extent to which this intersection shapes young people's framing of their concerns of ‘being a student’ and ‘becoming a dentist’. The article identifies aspects of the university's material and cultural environments which shape students' emotional responses and which consequently are implicated in the perpetuation of class-based differential life chances.     

Completing a PhD by publication: a review of Australian policy and implications for practice

There is increasing impetus for higher-degree-by-research students to publish during candidature. Research performance, including higher degree completions and publication output, commonly determines university funding, and doctorates with publishing experience are better positioned for a career in softening academic labour markets. The PhD by Publication provides a pathway for candidates to foster and demonstrate their publishing capabilities. It also provides existing academics a means of achieving doctoral status while managing the ‘publish or perish’ milieu endemic to their work. This paper clarifies the precise nature and significance of the PhD by Publication pathway in the Australian context and discusses the associated benefits and problems, enriched by personal experience. It summarises factors pertinent to assessing the pathway's suitability. The review of current policy suggests institutional guidelines in universities nationwide are inadequate for producing theses of comparable quality to conventional dissertations and capitalising on the pathway's significant benefits.     

Community and Collectivism: the role of parents’ organisations in the education system

This paper outlines the theoretical and empirical starting‐points for a research project addressing the role of parents’ organisations in the education system. It argues that a study of relationships conducted between homes, schools and parents’ groups and organisations has the potential to illuminate key concepts in education, considering as examples ‘citizenship’ and ‘community’. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first briefly describes the study's background, its scope and methodology. The second section considers the use of some of Antonio Gramsci's work in providing a theoretical starting‐point with which to explore the construction and maintenance of hegemonic discourses surrounding parenting. The concluding section of the paper widens the discussion to consider two key concepts, community and citizenship. It is argued that the discursive positioning of these concepts, in other words, how they are understood and defined, influences the ways in which relationships between parents and the education system are perceived and construed. This is illustrated with reference to readings of'citizenship’ and ‘community’ which emphasise, not consensus and homogeneity as in traditional definitions, but conflict, difference and multiplicity. The paper concludes that there is a continued need for empirical data focusing on everyday citizen and citizen‐state interactions which reveal how individuals live within, and understand and experience these relationships.     

The Role of Heads of Department in the Professional Development of Educators: A Distributed Leadership Perspective

The qualitative study reported on was, undertaken from a distributed leadership perspective, and was an attempt to provide understanding of how heads of department (HoDs) develop educators within the organisational context of different schools and subject departments. The findings are related to the current policy framework for professional development in South African schools. Two fee-paying and two non-fee-paying schools were selected and interviews were conducted with HoDs from single subject (unitary) and multi-subject (federal or confederate) departments in each school. The data was transcribed, coded, analysed and related to the research question. The findings confirmed that HoDs are a key link between principals and the educators in their classrooms. This supports the view that HoDs have formal responsibilities and accountabilities and they wield a horizontal and a vertical influence. Recommendations are made to improve professional development practice by HoDs in particular and in the education system in general.     

Relationships Between Teaching and Research

Abstract

This paper reports a study conducted amongst heads of department at a British university into their perspectives of teaching and research. It explores the reasons why research is given higher status, even though academics believe that, in principle, both aspects of the lecturer's role are equally valuable and mutually supportive. The links between teaching and research are investigated, and the categories of ‘teaching’ and ‘research’ are found to be somewhat inadequate concepts for distinguishing between different aspects of the academic role. The article concludes that closer relationships between the two can provide the basis for a programme to improve the quality of university teaching. Such an approach is underpinned by the view that students’ understandings should be taken seriously. They can make a significant contribution to the lecturer's research, as well as to student learning.     

University teaching with a disability: student learnings beyond the curriculum

This research examines the learning experience of university students who were tutored by a teacher with quadriplegia mixed type cerebral palsy. It was inspired by Pritchard's [2010. “Disabled People as Culturally Relevant Teachers.” Journal of Social Inclusion 1 (1): 43–51] argument that the presence of people with a disability in the classroom is important as these teachers deliver both content and generate ‘other’ learnings. This study examines what was different about the learning experience and what additional learnings may have occurred because of the students' interaction with a tutor with a disability. It begins to explore what educational scaffolding may be needed to facilitate and maximise student learning in this scenario both in the classroom and online learning environment with a tutor with a disability affecting physical movement and verbal communication. It seeks to advocate for the potential role of people with a disability in academia.     

Student complainants – vexatious or vulnerable?

In December 2014, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) introduced the ‘Good practice framework for handling complaints and academic appeals’ which will inform external judgement on each university's approach to conflict management from the current academic year 2015–2016. The framework aims to improve the complaint process for higher education student complainants. However, based on the outcomes of one of the few empirical studies researching students’ complaints, the author argues that it is the wider experience for complainants that must be addressed and to do so effectively the sector must change the culture of concern surrounding complaints and recognise the vulnerability of a student body that expects guidance in all aspects of its engagement with the university. A positive institutional stance that seeks to learn from complaints and assumes a proactive approach to student communication will support both earlier conflict resolution and an improving experience for students in a scenario where academic failure now has lifetime ramifications in respect of future employment.     

Tertiary pedagogy encounters the technological imperative

In one of the most challenging periods to confront tertiary education, we examine the impact that technology is having on the experience of one open and distance education university: Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. This paper considers how the espoused pedagogical views that were expressed by the academics interviewed, individually and collectively impacted on their attitudes to information technologies and to their reactions to exposure to and experience with various technologies. The first part of the paper explicitly considers the interview as a research method and situates the interviews we undertook within current scholarship. The focus of the interviews was to seek perceptions of what constituted good teaching as well as the relevance of technology for teaching: as each academic defined it; the discipline concerned and the mode of delivery (i.e. on and/or off‐campus). The research did not provide definitive answers but suggested themes and implications which are considered in the Conclusion. Although restricted to the perceptions of five academics at one university, the extent to which each of the ‘case studies' resonates with the reader's experience takes it beyond the experience of the one tertiary institution.     

Preparing university educators for hot moments: theater for educational development about difference,power, and privilege

A ‘hot moment’ is an emotion-laden moment of conflict or tension that threatens to derail teaching and learning. In this study, an educational development workshop used interactive theater depicting a hot moment to prepare university instructors for diverse classrooms. Participants in three workshops wrote short reflections, both before and after the theater-based experience, about whether instructors should consider differences among students. After the workshop, many participants took new dimensions of difference into consideration. Surprisingly, after the interactive theater experience, almost all participants reflected exclusively on instrumental issues in teaching (e.g. classroom management strategies), but not structural issues of difference, power, and privilege that underlie hot moments. The empirical findings and the author's reflections on a personal hot moment are theorized in terms of concepts from and critiques of critical and feminist pedagogy.     

The Distinctiveness of the Subject Being Taught and the Work of Subject Heads of Department in Managing the Quality of Classroom Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools in Wales

This paper discusses the ways in which the distinctive nature of the subject being taught has important implications for the management of teaching and learning by Heads of Department (HoDs). The study reports the perceptions of HoDs working in four areas of the curriculum (English, Mathematics, Science and Technology) in secondary schools in Wales. The findings demonstrate a range of different themes, pertinent to each subject. Some of these themes illustrate a number of different subject paradigms (based on the content) while others are more concerned with how the subject is taught.     

Experience is Not The Whole Story: The Integral Role of the Situation in Dewey's Democracy and Education

The central objective of Dewey's Democracy and Education is to explain ‘what is needed to live a meaningful life and how can education contribute?’ While most acquainted with Dewey's educational philosophy know that ‘experience’ plays a central role, the role of ‘situations’ may be less familiar or understood. This essay explains why ‘situation’ is inseparable from ‘experience’ and deeply important to Democracy and Education’s educational methods and rationales. First, a prefatory section explores how experience is invoked and involved in pedagogical practice, especially experience insofar as it is (a) experimental, (b) direct, and (c) social‐moral in character. The second and main section on situations follows. After a brief introduction to Dewey's special philosophical use of ‘situation’, I examine how situations are implicated in (a) student interest and motivation; (b) ‘aims’ and ‘criteria’ in problem‐solving; and (c) moral education (habits, values, and judgements). What should become abundantly clear from these examinations is that there could be no such thing as meaningful education, as Dewey understood it, without educators’ conscious, intentional, and imaginative deployment of experience and situations.     

‘Science Is Truly a Male World.’ The Interconnectedness of Knowledge,Gender and Power within University Education

In the 1970s the vicissitudes of university education were an important impetus for female students and members of staff to formulate feminist criticism on science subjects. Women's studies came into being, aiming at transforming academic scholarship and women's experience in education. Now that women's studies themselves are becoming institutionalised, new problems have developed and we need to question if science is now less of a male dominated bastion. In this article a case study is presented on the ‘trials’ and ‘tribulations’ of female university students at Wageningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands. A theoretical framework is introduced and an analysis of empirical material offered. It is apparent that female students are rather critical of their studies, although generally they do not leave the university before graduating. The university teacher emerges as a gatekeeper, holding the key of the door to the academic community, and using knowledge as a key resource.     

The University as Microcosm

This paper puts forward the model of ‘microcosm‐macrocosm’ isomorphism encapsulated in certain philosophical views on the form of university education. The human being as a ‘microcosm’ should reflect internally the external ‘macrocosm’. Higher Education is a socially instituted attempt to guide human beings into forming themselves as microcosms of the whole world in its diversity. By getting to know the surrounding world, they re‐enact it intellectually. Such a re‐enacting is a guiding theme in certain philosophies of education studied here. It is with the Neo‐Humanist tradition culminating in Humboldt's reforms that an additional step was taken: the university should become itself the reflecting ‘microcosm’. This role is nowadays taken up by unconventional LLE, though with far‐reaching changes.

The paper is divided into four interconnected Sections each one developing a specific manifestation of the micro‐macro relationship.

The main thesis is that: (I) contemporary schemes of never‐ending higher education or of so‐called ‘transformative learning’ and of ‘universities‐multiversities’ have their intellectual underpinnings either in similarity or in direct contrast to specific predecessors. Inherent tensions found in these predecessors have left their mark on this micro‐macrocosmic model to the extent that it is present in them; (II) the proposed analysis in terms of this model enhances significantly our in‐depth understanding of some latent aspects in current trends in LLE and related innovative university schemes; at the same time this model helps us structure appropriately and without anachronisms our humanisticly‐inspired critical response to them for abandoning the ideal of the ‘wholeness’ of the human person.     

Reading: A Pastime of the Past?

It is somewhat of a truism to say that reading is not what it used to be. ‘Texts’for reading now include many other media than simply print on pages and this fact has occasioned some concern among those who fear that reading television or computer-based texts may reduce or impoverish children's overall reading experience. Chris Robertson and her students have been investigating these issues through interviews with children and have found that reading and technology are not actually in conflict but can be mutually supportive. This article suggests that teachers need to think more creatively about how to use alternative texts in developing children's reading.