The hiring of underrepresented individuals in academic administrative positions: 1972–1979

Universities were mandated in 1972 to expand their recruitment and hiring efforts with the intent of employing more individuals from underrepresented populations. This study presents data relating to the hiring of academic administrators over the period 1972–1979. While there appear to be substantial changes in the hiring process and in the costs of hiring, there is little evidence to support the intent of the legislation to involve more minorities in the academic leadership and management of higher education institutions.     

Our Language: (Re)Imagining Communities in Ukrainian Language Classrooms

Drawing upon video recordings from two fifth-grade Ukrainian classrooms and interviews with children four years later, this paper examines these classrooms as sites for socializing learners into an imagined community of Ukrainian speakers, the extent to which children took up identities as members of this community, and the potential effect of this identification on willingness to learn and use Ukrainian. Microanalysis of classroom interaction illustrates how teachers drew upon prevailing discourses of language and nation in ways that both presupposed and sought to create children’s membership in an imagined national community whose core practices included affiliation with Ukrainian as “our language.” However, interview data reveal that while children readily aligned with this imagined community and voiced its language ideologies, they positioned themselves as peripheral members or alternatively reimagined an alternative, multilingual Ukrainian community.     

Disciplinary cultures in an Australian college of advanced education

Recently scholars have called for more detailed historical study of the teaching lives of academics across countries, systems and institutions. This article contributes to the research on the professoriate in its widest sense. The article focuses on the disciplinary perspectives and cultures of academic staff employed in one of Australia’s oldest colleges of advanced education during the period 1965–1982. It examines official beliefs, slogans, and truisms, which formed part of these perspectives. Disciplinary perspectives include the academics’ views of the subject, the important problems for the subject, and the criteria of utility of the subject. Australia’s Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Advanced Education saw colleges of advanced education compared to universities enrolling students with different interests, stressing part‐time studies, concentrating on applied courses rather than humanities, being closely attuned to the labour market and workforce needs and being principally teaching institutions. They were to be equal but different to universities, but came to be viewed as equal but cheaper. A crucial issue is the extent to which the disciplinary perspectives of college of advanced education academics matched those that the legislators envisaged.     

The “Hand-off” as a Flawed Approach to Disseminating Innovation: Lessons from Chemistry

Drawing on studies of active learning methods in an undergraduate chemistry course at a research institution, we first present two case studies exploring the change processes and outcomes of the faculty member who designed the course and the one who adapted it. We then explore the nature of the problems experienced during the adaptation process. We conclude with recommendations for successfully diffusing innovations: adapting faculty members should choose innovations that genuinely interest them and are aligned with their goals, should experiment with innovations in a gradual way, and should receive support throughout the process.