Higher Education最新文献

The lack of highly-trained ocean science professionals constrains sustainable development and management of the oceans. In Kenya, the government is committed to improving access to education for all, regardless of gender, ethnicity, and social status. Increasing female student enrolment has been one of the top priorities, particularly in science-related courses, which have long been male-biased. Feminist political ecology is applied as an analytical framework to understand how gender and ethnicity influence student access to, participation in, and experience in ocean science-related programmes. Data was collected through a questionnaire survey with students undertaking ocean science courses in seven public universities in Kenya. The findings revealed an underrepresentation of women and minority ethnic groups. Fewer female respondents than males received financial support from their families, and more female respondents than males reported that they had experienced discrimination related to their ethnicity and gender. In addition, a higher percentage of female respondents reported having fewer opportunities in higher education and ocean science careers than males. These findings reveal the persistent inequalities among students and suggest that Kenyan public universities need to pay more attention to how intersectional identities, such as gender and ethnicity, influence and shape the distribution of resources and opportunities if equitable diversity and inclusion are to be achieved. Also, they need to strengthen their gender policies and actions to tackle these social inequalities to promote gender equality in ocean science education.

In this work, we sought to uncover the key strategies and challenges to the integration of Indigenous knowledge as knowledge management practices at a public university in The Gambia. It is often axiomatic in the literature that the incorporation of diverse epistemologies is a key resource for sustainable development; therefore, activities associated with the management of knowledge, particularly in higher education, are worthy of elucidation. We discovered that knowledge management activities at a university in The Gambia were often informal and required the invisible work of faculty. It was through the implicit use of tacit knowledge and epistemic disobedience that faculty were able to build upon a colonized curriculum that denied the presence of other knowledge. However, in the end, faculty were dependent on the power of referents within and without the institution to formalize their knowledge management practices. This work fills an essential gap in the extant literature on how the work of university faculty and managers, when situated within a knowledge management perspective, can contribute to decolonization and foster sustainable development.

Analysis of strategic planning practices can offer insight into how universities operate and are structured as organisations, both in terms of where importance is placed and what is elided, and through discursive consideration of how strategy texts legitimate certain ways of thinking and acting and seek to produce consent around managerial decisions. This paper applies a strategy-as-practice approach (Jarzabkowski and Whittington in Journal of Management Inquiry, 17, 282-286, 2008) to explore how the academic workforce in English universities is conceptualised and represented in institutional strategic planning, specifically in the genre of text referred to as a strategic plan or strategy document. Through qualitative content analysis of a sample of eight university strategic plans (following Brandtner et al., in Urban Studies, 54, 1075-1091, 2016; Hellström in Policy Futures in Education, 5, 478-490, 2007), we find the academic workforce occupying an uncertain position in the documents, especially in the case of staff with teaching responsibilities, whose position is particularly ambiguous.

Research on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) has indicated that course design is at least as important as teachers’ performance for student-rated perceived quality and student engagement. Our data analysis of more than 6000 SETs confirms this. Two hierarchical multiple regression models revealed that course design significantly predicts perceived quality more strongly than teachers, and that course design significantly predicts student engagement independent of teachers. While the variable teachers is a significant predictor of perceived quality, it is not a significant predictor of student engagement. In line with previous research, the results suggest it is important to highlight the vital impact of course design. The results are discussed particularly in relation to improved teaching practice and student learning, but also in terms of how student evaluations of teaching can be used in meaningful ways.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences have put a lot of strain on the world’s population, including academics. Universities were closed or went online worldwide due to lockdown regulations. In Malaysia, the first strict lockdown started on March 18th 2020 and was extended until May 12th 2020. The purpose of this four-month study is to examine the hypothesized change in affective states among academics during and after the initial lockdown in this country. To explore patterns of change in both positive and negative affective states, we employed multivariate latent growth curve (LGC) modeling and analyzed data from 214 academics at three distinct time points: at the onset of the COVID-19 lockdown, at its conclusion, and two months thereafter. While we did not observe a significant linear change in affective states, the considerable variability around the means of academics' positive and negative affective states prompted us to adopt an exploratory approach to further investigate whether four time-invariant covariates assumed to remain constant throughout the four-month study period (i.e., academic rank, disciplinary background, gender, and experience outside higher education) could account for these variations. Our results showed that academic rank significantly accounted for differences in academics’ affective states. From a practical perspective, our results suggest that policies should be revisited to increase the positive affect level as well as to minimize the negative affect level experienced by academics during any future pandemics. These policies, irrespective of academics’ disciplinary background, can be universally implemented for male and female academics or academics with and without previous work experience outside higher education. Nevertheless, the policies for high and low rank academics should be tailored to those groups.

The article interrogates the ‘mobility imperative’ and its impact on precarious academics. Drawing on 40 biographic interviews with academics with experience of long-term precarity in Irish higher education, and using a Bourdieusian framework, we identify the specific conditions, uses and impacts of international mobility for these workers. This method offers a unique retrospective advantage for an analysis of the utility of international capital for a cohort of workers typically excluded from studies of international mobility. Among the specific obstacles we identify which are faced by precarious academics in the accumulation and conversion of international capital are the lack of or compromised initial social capital; the dubious value of international capital in Irish academia, especially when associated with precarity; and the difficulty for workers to construct acceptable career scripts when both precarity and mobility have led them off-script. We suggest that the ability to accumulate and convert usable forms of international capital while working abroad is in part predetermined by prior struggles in the national field.

Despite challenging and uncertain circumstances and the perception of being tokenized symbols in Japanese universities, the majority of international academics are more inclined to remain in their affiliations. The study intends to elucidate how international academics make sense of their decision to remain in Japanese universities. The data are from a qualitative dataset examining the integration experiences of international academics in Japan. Following the philosophical foundations of purposive sampling in interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), which was applied as a methodological framework, the study recruited a total of 30 participants. The study reveals varied sensemaking strategies among the interviewees, characterized as survivors, pragmatists, and ambitionists. Survivors refer to those who were compelled to remain in their current affiliations often due to constraints related to their academic roles or age restrictions. Pragmatists prioritize the practical benefits of their positions or affiliations, deriving from professional aspects, sociocultural dimensions, and personal considerations. Ambitionist academics generally view experiences in their current affiliations as a stepping stone toward future professional opportunities elsewhere. The study suggests that insufficient dedication to recruiting and retaining international academics may pose potential long-term risks for Japanese higher education institutions (HEIs) in the global academic sphere, affecting their internationally competitive standing and resilience in an evolving academic landscape. The study provides theoretical and practical implications to researchers, university administrators, and policymakers.

Abstract

In Indian society, caste is assigned to us before birth. Caste positions individuals in a social, economic, and political hierarchy. This study explores the meaning of caste discrimination from the perspectives of individuals who experience it in their everyday lives. Many studies have focused on the causes and consequences of caste discrimination and the nature of caste discrimination in different settings. Still, very few have dealt with the “meaning” of caste discrimination and how that meaning-making occurs in the context of present-day academia.

This paper adopts an ecological systems approach to explore individuals’ interactions with different social settings. Grounded in the epistemological standpoint of social constructionism, the study explored the meaning of caste discrimination through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions conducted with 22 students who belonged to reserved categories. Constructivist grounded theory was used for analysis to understand the process of meaning formation along with the meaning of caste discrimination. We found that students conceive caste discrimination as the maintenance of the social hierarchy, imposition of rigid identity, and invalidation of caste discriminatory practices. This conception of the meaning was influenced by multiple factors, such as interactions with peers, local cultural ideologies, and treatment received in the academia by teaching and non-teaching staff. The study’s findings indicate the need for an integrative indigenous theory of caste discrimination to ensure equitable higher education.

Pursuing education overseas is a high impact practice in higher education. Students who identify as LGBTQIA + —commonly referred to as “queer,” an umbrella term—may be more likely to participate yet face additional unique challenges. Using a systematic review of literature across multiple disciplines, this paper explores LGBTQIA + students’ motivations, identity development, and university experiences while participating in education overseas. It also aims to define the term queer international student and examines the theoretical frames used to understand this population in the literature. Findings show that literature carves out a composite of students who view, and sometimes actively seek, overseas education to develop themselves, express their identities, and live in communities that are more welcoming and safer than those at home. However, they also face conflict in English language classrooms, on campuses, and with their families as they navigate expectations, with some switching between cisheteronormative and queer identities in different communities. On university campuses, scholars noted, queer international students can be viewed singularly as international students, with their sexual orientations and other intersectional identities going unrecognized or being erased. Moreover, higher education scholars and practitioners often do not designate—or perhaps exclude—international students in studies and programming for LGBTQIA + students. As a result, queer international students may not feel like they belong in any group and risk being double-marginalized in higher education. This paper concludes with five recommendations for additional research in this emerging subfield of higher education literature.