HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY最新文献

This research examines the role of input and process-based approaches in enhancing faculty members' commitment to their research careers in the context of higher education. Specifically, we investigate the mediating effect of research self-efficacy on the relationship between professional research network and commitment to research career, as well as the moderating effect of career aspiration. Our findings reveal a direct positive link between professional research network and commitment to research career. Moreover, research self-efficacy is found to mediate the relationship between professional research network and commitment to research career. We also find that career aspiration did not moderate the relationship between research self-efficacy and commitment to research career. Our study contributes to the literature by providing a more comprehensive understanding of how professional research networks may enhance research self-efficacy, leading to greater commitment to research careers among faculty members in higher education institutions. Additionally, our research sheds light on the important role of career aspiration as a key factor in shaping the relationship between research self-efficacy and commitment to research career.

Collegiality and the contribution to the sustenance of the academy through academic citizenship are central to commonly held conceptions of what it is to be a university. This study investigates the articulation and recognition of academic citizenship through institutional promotion criteria, including both traditional research and teaching-focussed career pathways. The study adopts a qualitative research approach and examines promotion criteria from a sample of 55 mid-sized universities in the UK. Findings point to a progressive shift in formal recognition of service activities associated with citizenship as part of the core academic workload. Institutional service is pervasive across all academic roles and levels, student service is largely invisible, and activities associated with public service are most notably acknowledged in traditional academic roles at the professorial level. The evolving nature of expectations of citizenship necessitates a more nuanced consideration of the core dimensions of an academic role and citizenship activities to ensure equity and inclusivity in career progression.

The recent complexity of the university system, with diverse academic trajectories and varying socio-demographic characteristics of students, has led to increased access for historically underrepresented students. This has resulted in a rising number of adult learners, students with external responsibilities and individuals returning to education. However, despite this enhanced access, it remains unclear whether it has improved graduation. This uncertainty stems from the fact that students' social circumstances and external responsibilities differ significantly based on when they enter university. From a life course perspective, the aim of this paper is to explore the interactive effects of age at university entrance and employment status on the probability of graduating of an entire cohort of new students who entered the Catalan Higher Education System in 2012 (N = 29,463). The results show an interaction effect between age and employment status on the probability of graduation where working decreases the probability of graduation among students younger than 42 years old. Conversely, the negative impact of employment on university graduation diminishes among students entering university at an older age. This underscores the importance of adopting a life course perspective to comprehend students' educational experiences and outcomes within higher education.

Having survived the disruptive global pandemic, the higher education community is believed to grow to be more adaptive and resilient. As contributors to the new ‘normal’, yet evolving post-pandemic state, faculty have been painstakingly working to support students' learning and human needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research documents faculty have enacted a collection of measures to respond to students' adversities inside and outside the educational space when the pandemic gave rise to a global crisis in the past several years. Yet, few studies have offered an in-depth interpretation of how faculty conceived of, selected, and implemented those responses, approaches and strategies. Guided by a crisis response model, we conducted a qualitative inquiry in an effort to unveil this process. 14 faculty who were from the college of education in a national university in United States and varied in career stages and teaching experience participated in the study. Data were derived from one-on-one semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The study yielded three themes: Supporting from a place of humanization; turning downsides up; and adhering to the standard. The themes reflect that the faculty exuded the capabilities and attributes characterizing the crisis leadership. The findings hold for faculty and institutions the implications that promise to gear up the higher education community for contingencies, crises and uncertainty in the future.

This research explores the emerging position of teaching professionals in research universities through the framework of ‘third space professionals’. The third space is described as an overlapping space between the professional and academic domains in university and usually staff who are neither traditional academics nor traditional professionals work in this space and considered as the third space professionals. This research is achieved through three case studies, each in China, the United Kingdom and Canada. By investigating the role and positioning of teaching professionals in higher education, this research provides empirical evidence supporting the existence of the third space for professionals in higher education. The findings show that the responsibilities of the teaching professionals are relatively similar at each university, mainly including training academics and supporting curriculum development. However, their positioning in the university and value in supporting teaching and learning can be influenced by their relationship with academics. Universities’ expectations of teaching professionals play an important role in shaping their collective identities. By proposing a three-dimensional space model for higher education, this research builds on previous studies on the higher education space and offers an alternate framework for interpreting higher education space and analysing university staffing.

Research is about an individual's intellectual acumen and rationality, and inter-researcher collaboration capability magnifies the outcomes. Despite common belief, there exist fundamental asymmetries in the goals, orientations and expectations among the research collaborators. Seldom studied in-depth and empirically validated, the challenges and barriers faced by early-career researchers (ECRs) in social sciences are crucial to understand. In this study, we aim to identify, categorize and rank the order of priority of the research collaboration barriers and their sub-barriers. This analysis highlights which barrier is likely to impact the research collaboration outcome more as compared to other barriers, as seen through the pairwise comparison. We contribute to the literature on research collaborations by providing a much-needed assessment of the barriers faced by ECRs in social sciences to develop a nuanced understanding of the dynamics within collaboration research. Key barriers identified and explored in this research relate to research design, interpersonal and interprofessional relationships, team-level dynamics, spatial and temporal factors, cultural differences and institutional variables. The fuzzy AHP tool was used to prioritize and rank the barriers, check the consistency ratio and then perform the sensitivity analysis. Research design barriers emerged as the most challenging barrier to research collaborations, implying researchers place huge emphasis on the compatibility of research goals, objectives, paradigms and perspectives. The study provides insights for individuals/institutions leading and managing research collaborations into improving the collaborative dynamics in social sciences.

In this study, an early warning system predicting first-year undergraduate student academic performance is developed for higher education institutions. The significant factors that affect first-year student success are derived and discussed such that they can be used for policy developments by related bodies. The dataset used in experimental analyses includes 11,698 freshman students' data. The problem is constructed as classification models predicting whether a student will be successful or unsuccessful at the end of the first year. A total of 69 input variables are utilized in the models. Naive Bayes, decision tree and random forest algorithms are compared over model prediction performances. Random forest models outperformed others and reached 90.2% accuracy. Findings show that the models including the fall semester CGPA variable performed dramatically better. Moreover, the student's programme name and university placement exam score are identified as the other most significant variables. A critical discussion based on the findings is provided. The developed model may be used as an early warning system, such that necessary actions can be taken after the second week of the spring semester for students predicted to be unsuccessful to increase their success and prevent attrition.

To date, student issues with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have only been explored in context-specific environments. Mainstream problems such as declining student motivation during a course, massive student dropout rates, accountability, user experience, etc., persist due to the permutations and combinations of these issues. Literature is replete with a deep understanding of such problems, but the causal relationships among these issues are less focused upon. We delve into these problems by studying the interrelations among student issues that cause such problems. Garnering insights from students (N = 149) and using Total Interpretive Structural Modelling with Polarity (TISM-P), the study has established direct and transitive relations among nine detrimental MOOC-related student issues. The results of the study depict clear positive, negative and transitive relationships between the student issues. Matrice d'Impacts croises-multipication applique' an classment (MICMAC) analysis was also used to assess the driving and dependence power of all issues that further allowed the model to trace out negative and positive pathways of influence. The model constructed in the study will provide a platform for future research to test these interconnections as independent factors affecting problems such as dropout rates, motivation, etc. Therefore, the TISM-P model could further be explored to understand the behaviour of such issues, which might have far-reaching consequences on major existing problems with MOOCs.

Despite the fact that organisational values play a pivotal role within organisations and allow for a broad differentiation between universities, little is known about the organisational values universities select to pursue, and the factors impacting the selection of specific values. Therefore, we aim in this study to explore what type of organisational values universities express in their identity claims, and whether the institutional control (public vs private) affects value selection. We analysed the mission statements (i.e., identity narratives) of 169 Turkish universities using an a priori coding approach. The results indicate that public and private universities express similar value profiles and address different pressures from stakeholders by communicating a hybrid set of values.

This paper seeks to illuminate new perspectives on the concept of crisis in globalised higher education (HE) by focusing on knowledge generated by doctoral research. Doctoral research is a significant part of research and knowledge building in HE, particularly in science, and doctoral students contribute to the research capacity and knowledge building of institutions. This source of knowledge offers alternative perspectives on crisis in HE, providing a rich source of research which is often under-consulted. Using the British Library's digital repository EThOS, a collection of around 637,000 doctoral studies carried out in British universities, the research harnesses Generative Artificial Intelligence approaches in order to analyse the ways in which crisis is defined and constructed in doctoral research since 2000. Through a pilot study using a prototype of a new AI tool, the paper offers both conceptual and methodological insights into constructions of crisis in this under-used field of research.