Innovative Higher Education最新文献

University leaders play crucial roles in steering and fostering change within higher education institutions (HEIs). Drawing upon the complexity leadership theory (CLT) and organizational trust, we investigate how university leaders trusting staff with responsibilities tied to digital change contributed to an institutional culture of innovation. Through 68 interviews with staff members working in 8 European study programs, we found that leaders exhibited trust by creating flat hierarchies, sharing decision-making, and ensuring a safe space for experimentation with educational technologies (EdTech). This led to staff being intrinsically motivated to engage with technology and innovate with new formats. We also found that university leaders sometimes used ‘trust’ to justify allocating the responsibilities of digital change to the shoulders of staff without providing support such as infrastructure, funding, and guidance. This contributed to demotivation and stifled innovation. This study highlights the importance of university leaders trusting and empowering their staff members' creative processes with technology and supporting innovation within higher education.

While researchers have used qualitative and quantitative methods to study postsecondary education access opportunity for rural Black youth, the use of critical mixed methods approaches to examine postsecondary education inequities for rural Black youth is unrealized. The purpose of this paper is to highlight lessons learned in using equity-centered, participatory approaches to study postsecondary education access and opportunity for rural Black youth and to develop a critical, asset-based scale to quantitatively investigate postsecondary education opportunity and access for rural Black youth. This study is informative for researchers seeking to develop critical, asset-based measures and instruments, and for educators and policymakers seeking to attend to place-based and racial educational inequities.

Transnational education (TNE) occurs when higher education institutions traverse borders to provide educational experiences outside their home countries. Such mobility creates several research challenges, as such institutions exist between worlds. They must balance home and host country legal requirements, navigate home and branch administrative norms, adjust to differing cultural and learning expectations, and even serve different student populations. To understand this complexity, researchers must employ mixed-method approaches, which are currently limited in higher education studies. In this paper, we explore TNE as a unique setting for conducting research. We outline our design choices and the challenges we faced in conducting research on TNE institutions. For the paper’s central focus, we unpack a cross-cultural case study, which employs multi- and mixed-methods research, to assess the role of labor market outcomes at critical junctures of the student lifecycle at a binational university. By incorporating perspectives from the institution, alumni, and current and prospective students, we present a holistic view of perceived and actual graduate outcomes. This case vividly illustrates the limitations of mono-method studies. Furthermore, it demonstrates how mixed-method studies are useful for generating more meaningful outcomes in TNE research.

This study investigates the evolving landscape of green universities by analyzing and comparing rankings from 2018 to 2022. It expands beyond the single score offered by the UI GreenMetric, employing Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques to evaluate universities from diverse perspectives. Focusing on the top 50 universities from 2022, the study assesses their performance across six key criteria: setting and infrastructure, energy and climate change, waste, water, transportation, and education and research. Various MCDM methods (LOPCOW MEREC, CoCoSo, CRADIS, EDAS, MABAC, MAIRCA, and MARCOS) are implemented, revealing how they prioritize different aspects of sustainability. Furthermore, the study examines the correlation between rankings and employs the COPELAND aggregation approach to derive a unified ranking. This investigation not only contrasts MCDM outcomes with the UI GreenMetric’s total score-based rankings but also illuminates the relative significance of each criterion and its variation across weighting techniques. Additionally, the study delves into the temporal dynamics of university rankings, offering insights into institutional performance across different years.

As community colleges continue to face challenges in serving an ever-changing student population and a wave of presidential retirements, the next generation of senior community college leaders is surfacing. To prepare these top-level administrators, doctoral-level community college leadership (CCL) programs often serve as a viable mechanism for supporting leaders in their professional practice. Nonetheless, minimal knowledge exists about what benefits and skills alumni - current community college leaders - gain from doctoral CCL programs and how such programs and their directors build and evolve programming to meet their students’ needs. This qualitative case study employs the theory of planning practice to account for how directors shape CCL programming, ultimately uncovering how doctoral CCL programs’ processes contribute to programmatic priorities, curriculum, and evolution. Through interviews with seven doctoral CCL program directors and 16 alumni, our findings show the value of thoughtful program design, intentional curriculum, and evolution of programming to support students. Study implications call for further exploration across many directions, such as the role of an increasing shift to online programming and how alumni play crucial roles in recruiting and mentoring incoming doctoral students to CCL programs.

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.