Innovative Higher Education最新文献

While the role of teams in leading transformations within academia is increasingly recognized, few studies have analyzed how teams form. Understanding the processes of interdisciplinary team formation within higher education will allow leaders to intentionally bring together individuals and form teams with higher likelihoods of success. In this study, we examine the early stages of change team formation within higher education, specifically looking at the two interconnected processes of search and selection, and we explore how a community of practice influences these processes through situated learning. Our longitudinal qualitative analysis demonstrates how teams form and transform over time, from the initial search process for team members to the factors that informed the initial and ongoing selection of team members. We find that a community of practice influenced these processes by shaping how teams understood their instrumental needs and how members understood their role within interdisciplinary teams. Finally, we examine a correlation between leadership structure and team member turnover, finding that a centralized leadership structure that lacks a vision for change shared among team members may drive turnover. The results provide insights into the dynamic nature of change team formation within academia.

There is a dearth of social justice or critical mixed methods research approaches, particularly in higher education. Critical Race Mixed Methodology (CRMM) is a type of critical mixed methods research that combines Critical Race Theory (CRT) and mixed methods research (DeCuir-Gunby in Educational Psychologist 55, 244-255, 2020). However, there are limited examples of CRMM within higher education research (Johnson & Strayhorn in Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 16, 539-553, 2023). Our study further operationalizes CRMM through the explication of an explanatory sequential mixed methods exploration of African American college students’ experiences with racial microaggressions, where the qualitative findings are used to expand upon the quantitative findings (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017). The study uses Critical Race Theory (Bell, 1992; Ladson-Billings & Tate in Teachers College Record 97, 47-68, 1995; Solórzano & Huber, 2020) to focus on how African American college students’ experiencing of racial microaggressions influences their racial identity and feelings of belonging in historically white institutions (HWIs). The quantitative findings (n = 97) indicated that private regard (racial identity) protected students’ sense of belonging when experiencing racial microaggressions. The qualitative findings (n = 15) explored students’ stories regarding their experiences with racial microaggressions, focusing on their feelings of belonging. Through our discussion, we advance the use of mixed methods in higher education research to better understand the racialized experiences of African American college students and demonstrate how CRMM can be used to integrate quantitative and qualitative findings.

Hate crimes and racist incidents are occurring with alarming and increasing frequency on college and university campuses. As colleges work to reduce racist incidents on campus, there is still a need to prepare students to respond to racism when it occurs. When students are prepared to respond to racist incidents, they tend to have better mental health. We draw on prior literature to examine whether learning about critical race theory (CRT) and receiving CRT-informed mentoring—as embedded in an undergraduate research experience program—related to four-year college students’ self-assessed ability to respond to racism. Specifically, we propose and test a conceptual model to examine the benefits of participating in an undergraduate research experience program that required students to learn about CRT and receiving CRT-informed mentorship. Consistent with prior literature on undergraduate research experience programs, we found that the intervention positively related to students’ sense of self-efficacy and science identity, but it did not have an independent, direct relationship with self-assessed ability to respond to racism. However, the intervention indirectly supports students’ preparedness to respond to racism through its positive relationship with self-efficacy. As state legislatures around the country work to ban CRT, this paper offers empirical evidence that embedding CRT in university programs can support student development in multiple related ways.

As more colleges and universities are designated as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), examining the pathways of HSI presidents is critical as their leadership sets an example of what it means to support the success of students from Latinx/Hispanic backgrounds. Given that these students have traditionally been underserved – not just due to race and ethnicity, but also because many are first-generation, low-income, immigrants, and/or English Language Learners (ELLs) – HSI presidents are in a position to change the landscape of equity in higher education. Building upon Greenleaf’s (1971) concept of servant leadership as a guiding framework, this paper examines why Latinx aspiring leaders want to lead an HSI and their experiences as they work to secure leadership at an HSI. Our findings include that aspiring HSI leaders come with an intention to serve and “give back” to their communities; that they require specific and tailored support that addresses the need for representation and respect as a person of color to prepare for the role of the presidency; and that, in the process, they have access to the experiences and mentorship of previous leaders, as they are following the path of others who came before them.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, igniting the 2023 War in Israel and Palestine. As human rights atrocities unfold, the war has sparked contentious political debate and civil discourse. Given their positions of authority, university presidents and chancellors have weighed in on the conflict through their public statements, while seeking to support their campus community members in the process. This research employs thematic discourse analysis to evaluate presidential statements to (1) understand how leaders position their institutions amidst strife and (2) identify who university leaders support in the process. By reviewing the attributes and deficits embedded within presidential statements, this research attempts to provide strategies and recommendations for university leaders to exercise inclusive practices during crises.

Academic research and knowledge production are frequently pervaded by elitism (Torres-Olave et al., 2019), epistemic exclusion (Dotson, 2014; Settles et al., 2020), and racialization (Ray, 2019; Thelin, 2019; Wilder, 2013). These discriminatory, exclusionary, and biased systems delegitimize the work of minoritized scholars, stifle innovation, and deter progress toward less violent processes to engage in knowledge production. Literature documenting innovative efforts to advance these commitments is scarce (Creamer, 2004), further underscoring the need and urgency for additional research examining how scholars incorporate and center equitable approaches in knowledge production in the Academy. As such, the central purpose of this qualitative autoethnographic study is to examine our experiences as minoritized scholars who center equity in the U.S. South; a secondary purpose of this work is to document the confluence of place, counterspace creation, and linkages between humanization and scholarly knowledge production. This research revealed our different yet shared negative socialization experiences in the Academy and, centrally, how our research collective diverges from traditionalist and power-imbalanced collaborative research. We foreground how we purposefully elect to humanize our fellow co-researchers, support each other’s learning and growth, and prioritize healing for ourselves as scholars with minoritized identities and transformation of the social inequities that permeate higher education. Based on our findings, we present a conceptual model of our research collective as a counterspace (Ong et al., 2018) to de facto scholarly socialization and dehumanization within the Academy.

Emerging research suggests that first-generation queer and trans (QT) students experience disproportionate discrimination in schooling leading to disengagement early on in their educational trajectories. Although labeled as “at risk”, first-generation QT students are actually more cognitively engaged in academics than their cisgender and heterosexual peers. Administrators, teachers, counselors, and guardians (validating agents) have an ethical responsibility to foster inclusive schooling contexts for first-generation QT students. This study examines how validating agents impact first-generation QT students’ school engagement, high school GPA, and postsecondary enrollment. We posit a queer theorizing of the ecological validation model of student success and through principles of QuantCrit, we examine the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 through a path analysis. Our results reveal that both talking to parents about college and high school GPA had a positive association with college enrollment for first-generation QT students. We provide recommendations for future research and practice that demand further exploration of first-generation QT students.