Hospitality and Collegial Community: An Essay

After discussion of the concept insistent individualism which is addressed as a major problem in the academy, the importance of the collegium—the covenantal community, is presented as a resource for addressing that problem. A collegial ethic of hospitality is explained as a cardinal academic virtue, and it offers us a way of building the collegium. Hospitality can inform our academic work, and we can seek to develop hospitable teaching, hospitable scholarship, and hospitable service.     

Faculty qualifications and collegiality: The role of influence in university decision-making

Data on 115 colleges and universities are used to examine the effect of the qualifications of the faculty and decentralization of authority on faculty influence over general educational policy and faculty appointments. The findings suggest that university administrators respond to the presence of highly qualified faculties by allowing them to have more influence which is exercised largely through the formally constituted decision-making bodies of the faculty.     

Educational leadership and change: structural challenges in the implementation of a shifting paradigm

A great deal of research has been conducted regarding leadership and change. The impact of this research has not been limited to academe, but rather, government policy in different jurisdictions has been directly impacted by developments into collegial forms of leadership. While the positive correlation between leadership and change has been widely acknowledged, this article argues that a disconnect has emerged between the theory and practice signifying that the efficacy of change remains hampered by structural constraints and subjective factors that result in unpredicted outcomes. To explore this thesis, the fundamentals of educational leadership theory, our ability (or inability) to manage change and an analysis of the difficulties faced by leaders as they move from theory to praxis are examined.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Richard Edwards and Robin Usher, Globalisation and Pedagogy: Space, place and identity
Jackie Brine, Educating Women: Globalizing Inequality
David Carr, Professionalism and Ethics
Andrew Pollard and Ann Filer, The Social World of Pupil Career: Strategic Biographies through Primary School
Bernard Crick, Essays on Citizenship
Mike Bottery and Nigel Wright, Teachers and the State: Towards a Directed Profession
Stephen Heathorn, For Home, Country and Race: Constructing Gender, Class and Englishness in the Elementary School 1880-1914
Jane M. Page, Reframing the Early Childhood Curriculum: Educational Imperatives for the Future
Leslie P. Steffe and Patrick W. Thompson (eds), Radical Constructivism in Action
Patricia Broadfoot, Marilyn Osborne, Clare Planel and Keith Sharpe, Promoting Quality in Learning – Does England have the Answer?
Claire Cameron, Peter Moss and Charlie Owen, Men in the Nursery: Gender and Caring Work
Mike Cole (ed), Education, Equality and Human Rights
R. Alexander, P. Broadfoot and D. Phillips, Learning from Comparing: New Directions in Comparative Educational Research , Volume 1 Contexts, Classrooms and Outcomes
OECD, Learning to Bridge the Digital Divide     

Global influences and local responses: The restructuring of the University of Botswana, 1990–2000

The University of Botswana has not escaped the reform fever currently gripping higher education institutions the world-over. In the late 1980s the University initiated an administrative/management restructuring exercise whose resultant structure was implemented between 1998 and 2000. The exercise, in many respects, was a response to globalization. The emergence, in the past two decades, of a global economy, the massification of higher education, and the globalization of neo-liberal economic thinking have compelled universities to recast their social and economic missions. Consequently, universities have had to restructure within the framework of a global ideology characterized by an emphasis on effectiveness, quality and efficiency. This paper explicates the restructuring exercise at the University of Botswana by locating the exercise within its global and local contexts. It argues that while the resultant structure reflected global influences and trends, it was as much a product of local concerns.     

Promoting a willingness to wonder: moving from congenial to collegial conversations that encourage deep and critical reflection for teacher educators

There is an inherent expectation that educators will work towards continuously improving their practice and quality of teaching. Underpinning this expectation is an assumption that educators also engage in the process of reflection. In this article, we begin by outlining the current tensions in the field of education that relate to managerialist concerns of the measurement and monitoring of quality teaching and effectiveness. We then contextualise our particular circumstances and provide an account of a collaborative action research project we initiated to examine our team-teaching practices in a graduate entry pre-service teacher education programme. In the project, we initially focused on how we might provide for pre-service teachers’ learning while they were undertaking an internship in the final semester of their programme. Factors that required consideration included the use of face-to-face and synchronous online forms of interaction. Having experienced the powerful influence of using protocols to structure professional learning conversations with the pre-service teachers with whom we were working, we also decided to extend the conversations we were having with each other to conversations with our colleagues. Taken together, the action research framework and the processes afforded by protocols provided a structured approach for our inquiry. Conversing with the pre-service teachers involved in the programme, with each other and with our peers at a faculty-level seminar and an international conference were the main sources of data gathered during the research project. The collegial conversations that occurred when using protocols also provided a way to move to the level of critical reflection. Rather than discuss the outcomes of our project in the remainder of the article, we elected to scrutinise and theorise the significant elements that were germane to our project – the three Cs: collegiality, conversation and critical reflection. We conclude by realising that to learn about ourselves as teachers and as learners, we need to move beyond routine and technical aspects of reflection, to a level that is critical and transformative, and that this can be achieved through the use of protocols in purposeful and collaborative conversations with others.     

The Changing Shape of University Decision-Making Processes and the Consequences for Faculty Participation in Ireland

Abstract

Research shows that formative assessment can exert a powerful effect on student learning, yet the complexity of formative assessment is not well understood and some curricular structures and practices do not fully exploit its potential. This article outlines the background to the political promotion of employability and shows that institutional responses are influenced by multiple considerations. It discusses formative assessment and models it as a complex signalling system before considering the implications, for students’ employability, of accentuating the attention given to formative assessment. The potential for action is discussed with reference to three levels: those of the institution, the department, and the individual academic.     

Collegiality in the Workplace

ABSTRACT

Libraries are considered safe spaces to explore different topics facilitating the sharing of knowledge so it would appear that colle giality and civility are cornerstones of our service. But within our organizations, collegiality is not always stressed as an important value within the workplace. Civility and collegiality are important for libraries as they are the foundation of our public services and support diversity of ideas and open communication within the workplace. Collegiality standards are set by the leaders and managers within an organization and this column will explore the need for civility standards to successfully achieve library goals.

Column Editor’s NoteLeadership skills are essential to creating libraries that are effective and relevant to their communities. While some individuals seem to possess inherent leadership capabilities, it is possible to develop and strengthen skills to effectively lead a department, unit, or organization. This column explores ways for librarians and library workers to improve their knowledge and abilities as they lead their units, libraries, communities, and the library profession. Interested authors are invited to submit articles for this column to the editor at maggie4@clemson.edu.     

Cooperative Reference Desk Scheduling and Its Effects on Professional Collegiality

SUMMARY

Since 1995, reference staff at Oregon State University's Valley Library have engaged in a process of cooperative reference desk scheduling. The system was originally adopted to allow staff to have more influence in tailoring desk hours to their individual work schedules, but the department discovered that it also encourages and reinforces a climate of cooperation and collegiality among the reference staff. This paper describes the creation of the system and examines the reasoning behind it, the steps taken to implement it, and how it continues to evolve in an ever-changing library environment. Also examined is how this system has influenced other work done in the Reference and Instruction Department beyond the reference desk, and how it might be adapted and applied for use in other tasks in the future.     

Language and academic leadership: exploring and evaluating the narratives

This paper draws on a study of academic chairpersons’ experiences in one research‐intensive university in New Zealand. The research goal was see if there were recurring threads in chairpersons’ narratives about their experience and management of conflict and challenge. The research revealed that one of the most pervasive stories concerned a set of beliefs about the nature of academia. This tale that was interpreted in a variety of different even contradictory ways was the notion that academia was or should be based on collegiality. This idea was often presented in conjunction with other stories about academia such as autonomy and professionalism and in opposition to the concept of managerialism. A second significant thread was a range of perspectives about the expectation that chairpersons should be managers of resources. This paper discusses these findings in relation to the literature and argues that we need to find new ways of expressing and enacting the values that the term collegiality attempts to capture and a means of integrating them into the current demand for performance, stringent resource management and accountability.