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The ideas and papers in this volume primarily showcase the work of a group of new scholars who will lead the next generation of educational practise and inquiry. While the topics explored are critical issues, the ways in which these new scholars have chosen to address them illustrates the diversity of voice, venue and value that has led them to present their work. Education and what it means has entered a new era in which the primary focus on education for the sake of education is strained. An educational free-for-all, in the sense of a no-holds-barred fight, seems in place as competition for market share, effective branding exercises and movement towards a client-based delivery of educational services (on demand as demanded) has been fuelled and compounded by litigation, accreditation, transfer credits and matters of patents, copyrights, ownership and monopoly. The link between education and financial well-being has been co-opted as the key to personal success. Unfortunately, the degree pursuit, often called the “paper chase” has become competitive for learners seeking scholarships, awards and entry into graduate school. This transition indicates movement from becoming well educated to employability potential paralleling much institutional retooling and sustenance of enhanced reputation and fiscal viability.

Measuring competencies acquired over the course of higher education is an area of research that largely has been neglected. This deficit can be attributed to the complexity of academic competencies since the variety of institutions, programs, occupational fields and job requirements render it difficult to define and even harder to measure outcomes. Thus, assessing the preconditions for and effects of competency development is a challenge methodologically. In this book, a comprehensive review of the international state of research on modeling and measuring competencies in higher education across several academic disciplines is presented, along with an evaluation of the field's strengths and weaknesses. Renowned experts share insight into the most important recent research projects and point out controversies and challenges. Competencies are regarded as context-specific dispositions acquired and required to cope successfully with domain-specific situations and tasks. However, the range of these dispositions is controversial. Should only cognitive facets be included or is it important to consider attitudes as well? Insufficient response rates and panel attrition are further challenges, as are the limitations of paper-and-pencil approaches to the complex measurement of higher education outcomes. Thus, this book may serve as a platform for the exchange of research experiences and perspectives and hopefully will instigate improvements in research into higher education.

Lonnin, an English dialect word, means a shared and borrowed, unofficial, track. The Lonnin Project is deliberately genre fluid, designed to resist classification by algorithm – an illustrated verse-novel and account of a creative process in which images, objects and texts are mutually affective. A quest for belonging, and the fickleness of recall in a fragile world, affect key characters in the narrative and the hybrid Project, which, in its entirety, explores creative outputs as a reciprocal refinement between image and text, reversing the habit of thought that prioritizes creative writing over art production. Here text is provisional until the visual illustrations are settled. This creative strategy has been relatively unexplored and so provides a useful guide for practice-based researchers, particularly those interested in Performance Writing. Unusually, the text initially precedes and provokes 3D artworks which claim to belong to characters in the novel. These objects are slowly hand-built from sustainable, repurposed materials to become the antithesis of ‘merchandise', occupying a mythical realm between the invented world of the story and material reality, where lonnin claims history resides. The objects are then re-expressed as 2D illustrations, refined to become cyanotypes, which subsequently modify the writing that originally inspired them.

Whether universities can survive as critical organisations in the current time is an open question which this volume seeks to address. The book examines particular aspects of three main themes: governance, critical regulation and regulated criticism; growth, equality, movement and instability in higher education systems; and teaching and learning. Topics range from ‘University Futures'to an examination of governance by procedure and the loss of the social process of the university; a discussion of the meaning of academic freedom; and approaches to managerialism. Quality management is discussed, along with the question of whether European Liberal Education actually exists. Various aspects of the theme of teaching and learning are examined, from student participation in out-of-class activities, to the role of Centres of Excellence, and a consideration of widening participation. The book is international in its reach, and addresses the continuing dilemmas faced in higher education systems, within Europe and beyond.

This volume brings together selected articles focused on higher education internationalization published in University World News (UWN) and International Higher Education (IHE) between 2011 and 2016. Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners alike further the development of higher education internationalization as a field of study through public and ongoing conversations. It is news, analysis, and commentary publications like UWN and IHE that facilitate this dialogue and keep pace with the most up-to-date developments in the field. Together, the articles included in this volume—alongside the section introductions—offer a rich and relevant picture of the dynamic state of higher education internationalization globally. While both publications are freely available online, this book provides a thematically coherent selection of articles, offering an accessible and analytic perspective on the pressing concerns of contemporary higher education internationalization.

In recent decades, we have seen the emergence of private higher education as a global reality. Although there are specific reasons for its appearance in each system, there is also a significant degree of commonality in the context and purposes surrounding the rise of private higher education as an important factor in many systems. The analysis of private higher education has tended to be focused at the national level, often highlighting national peculiarities and variations. In this volume the authors move forward by proposing a unifying and coherent, but flexible, theoretical framework that may be applied in different countries and diverse systems. Hence, the overall goal of this book is to provide a framework for a better understanding of the public-private mix of higher education and a set of policy guidelines in dealing with the expansion of private higher education from a comparative perspective. This analytical framework will be applied to four case-studies (Pakistan, Portugal, South Korea and Uruguay). These cases illustrate the diversity of contexts in the development of private higher education, though they also highlight important commonalities. Based on that analysis, we present some general recommendations to build a more effective policy-framework that takes advantage of the private sector in order to fulfill better the missions of the higher education system.

Many countries now employ national evaluation systems to demonstrate publicly that universities provide a quality education. However, the current processes of quality evaluation are often detached from the practices of teaching and learning. In particular, those who teach and those who learn still have to be won over to such audit processes. This book argues that it is time for the higher education sector to concern itself with the human dimension so as to develop both academic professionalism and students'commitment to their learning. Based on five completed research projects, which explore academics'and students'experiences and their views of quality evaluation, the book argues that developing the intrinsic values of teaching and learning held by academics and students is key to achieving high quality education. In this book, the author critically reviews the four most frequently used terms related to current quality evaluation: ‘fitness for purpose', ‘value for money', ‘student satisfaction'and ‘students-as-customers', and argues for a motivationally intelligent quality approach, emphasising the moral dimension and the intrinsic values of academics and students. The author also outlines an improved quality evaluation system that encourages and increases academics'and students'commitment to teaching and learning.

Teaching and learning in higher education can evoke strong feelings, including confusion, anxiety, boredom, curiosity, surprise and exhilaration. These emotions affect students'learning, progress and overall success. Teachers'emotions affect how they teach and their relationships and communication with students. Yet the emotional dimensions of teachers'and students'experiences are rarely discussed in the context of improving higher education. This book addresses that gap, offering short, evocative case studies to spark conversation among university teachers. It challenges readers to reflect on how higher education feels, to explore the emotional landscape of courses and programmes they create and consider the emotional effects of messages embedded in various policies and practices. Following the student lifecycle from enrolment to reunion, each of the main chapters contains 10 to 15 accessible, emotionally-engaging poems that serve as succinct case studies highlighting how some aspect of learning, teaching or development in higher education feels. Each chapter also contains an expert scholarly commentary that identifies emergent themes across the cases and establishes connections to theory and practice in higher education. The poems-as-case-studies are ideal for use in faculty or educational development workshops or for individual reflection. A variety of theoretical perspectives and associated reflection prompts provide lenses for variously interpreting the poems. An appendix offers suggestions for structuring case discussions as part of educational development activities. The book promotes a person-centered discourse, giving voice to previously neglected aspects of higher education and reminding us that education is essentially a human endeavor.

Higher education is facing unprecedented change as today's graduates need particular skills, awareness, and knowledge to successfully navigate a complex and interconnected world. Higher education institutions and practitioners are under pressure to be attentive to internationalization initiatives that support increasingly diverse student populations and foster the development of global citizenship competencies which include, “problem-defining and solving perspectives that cross disciplinary and cultural boundaries” (Hudzik, 2004, p. 1 as cited in Leask & Bridge, 2013). Internationalizing Higher Education: Critical Collaborations across the Curriculum is for current and future faculty, student affairs staff, and administrators from diverse disciplinary, institutional, and geographic contexts. This edited volume invites readers to investigate, better understand, and inform intercultural pedagogy that supports the development of mindful global citizenship. This edited volume features reflective practitioners exploring the dynamic and evolving nature of intercultural learning as well as the tensions and complexities. Contributors include institutional researchers, directors and key implementers of EU/Bologna process in Poland (one of the newest members and one that is facing unprecedented change in the diversity of its students), international partners in learning abroad programs, and scholars and instructors across a range of humanities, STEM, and social sciences.

The volume offers state-of-the art contributions in the intersection of academic profession, research training and institutional governance. They reflect the profound interest of contemporary researchers in the questions of how the contemporary higher education reforms across Europe affect university governance and especially the roles and functions of academics. The volume includes several contributions from the peripheral and developing higher education systems of Central and South-East Europe; hence, attempting to rebalance the European profile of higher education research and at the same time contribute to the most salient debates in the field. This book confirms, once again, that the higher education research landscape is a diverse and rich one. At the same time, these diverse cases have at least one commonality—the fact that even though they are located in different higher education systems, they address issues that, albeit as a rule context-specific, can be found in all parts of Europe and beyond. Certainly, the local responses to the hereby addressed global challenges represent a mere snapshot of a broader landscape the European higher education dynamics is.

World-class universities, commonly recognized as global research universities or flagship universities, are cornerstone institutions embedded in any academic system and play an important role in developing a nation's competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. The development of world-class universities is high on the policy agenda of various stakeholders across the globe. In the past few years, an increasing number of nations, regions and higher education institutions in both developed and developing countries have joined the same race for academic excellence and have adopted a range of development strategies and implemented various reforms. From a comparative perspective, How World-Class Universities Affect Global Higher Education intends to provide an in-depth picture of excellence initiatives and relevant policies adopted in various nations and regions, and to reflect opportunities and challenges of developing excellence. This book not only represents a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the topic of building world-class universities, but can be seen a continuation of the previous four volumes on this topic—World-Class Universities and Ranking: Aiming beyond Status, The World-Class University as Part of a New Higher Education Paradigm: From Institutional Qualities to Systemic Excellence, Paths to a World-Class University: Lessons from Practices and Experiences, and Building World-Class Universities: Different Approaches to a Shared Goal. All five books will be useful reading for students and academics in higher education generally, in addition to policy makers and informed practitioners.

This volume brings together diverse theoretical reflections and practices of community engaged scholarship in order to stimulate critical discussion, deepen theory, and invite critical practice. It is an international trend that higher education institutions and agencies are encouraging and promoting community engagement. At the same time, there is recognition of a lack of consistent definitions and understandings of what it is they are promoting. As a counterweight to the dominance of pragmatic and technical discussions in the literature on engaged scholarship, the chapters in this book shift the discourse to ask foundational questions that emphasize the political nature of engagement. Recognizing that acts of engagement are never neutral, the authors in this book explore how engaged scholarship requires decision-making that is inherently grounded in values, beliefs, and interpretations of what is and what ought to be. Alongside complex global and local social movements rising to address issues, for example climate change or the global financial collapse and the uneven consequences of these globalized problems, we see corresponding concerns expressed about the limited participation by excluded, silenced, and invisibilized people throughout the world. How can engaged scholarship be mobilized and who will it serve within such contexts? With contributions covering such diverse topics as a non-binary approach to engagement; citizenship of knowledge; university contexts and corporatization; stranger pedagogies and anti-foundational approaches to service learning; contemporary revolutionary movements in the Arab world; and transforming higher education through Africanist onto-epistemologies, this volume is poised to open the door to a deeper understanding of engaged scholarship.

The creative university is a new concept that has a number of competing conceptions emphasizing digital teaching, learning and research infrastructures, the paradigm of intellectual property, creative social development and academic entrepreneurship. Not only does the concept include the fostering and critique of creative content industries and new forms of distance and online education but more fundamentally it refers to a reassessment of neoliberal strategies to build the knowledge economy. The economic aspect of creativity refers to the production of new ideas, aesthetic forms, scholarship, original works of art and cultural products, as well as scientific inventions and technological innovations. It embraces open source communication as well as commercial intellectual property. All of this positions education at the center of the economy/ creativity nexus. But are education systems, institutions, assumptions and habits positioned and able so as to seize the opportunities and meet the challenges? This book uses different contexts to explore these vital issues.

Creative ways of thinking about leadership are helpful to guide practice and personal growth. This book builds a strategic roadmap for creative leadership practice, putting the spotlight on a leader's professional development journey in the process. The book is about leadership on the ground in higher education, where the ‘rubber hits the road'. It can also be useful in business, or for anyone wanting to think outside the square. Through a creative storytelling approach, the author takes the reader through Tuscany and her on-the-job experience as a leader of learning and teaching. Along the way, she explains some of the theoretical influences on her thinking and practice—in ways and combinations she hadn't read about in other leadership books, or experienced in professional development programmes. Through real stories, the author shows how she made creative connections in building her own knowledge on present and past experience, with reflection on how practice can be improved with a clear focus on collegiality and strategic outcomes. This approach reflects the five creative leadership signposts that she explains and illustrates throughout the book.

Higher education is in transition. On the one hand, over the last decades it has become politically and economically more important and thus also an object of reforms. On the other hand, higher education has become less special and is no longer able to justify its unique governance arrangements. This volume presents a collection of contributions that go beyond reform agendas as such and focus on the effects of reforms at all relevant levels in higher education systems. It is organised in four themes—education, research, governance, and academic profession—with a variety of levels of analysis, theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and geographical foci. The topics in focus include the possible impact of latest national and European initiatives, changes in the primary processes (education and research) on the levels of institutions, professions and for individuals as well as higher education dynamics in contexts often overlooked in the literature (e. g. Africa). The aim is to ‘take stock'of the growing knowledge basis with respect to higher education with a special focus on the influence of reforms on the key aspects of higher education.

Practice-Based Education: Perspectives and Strategies. This book draws on the collective vision, research, scholarship and experience of leading academics in the field of practice-based and professional education. It presents multiple perspectives and critical appraisals on this significant trend in higher education and examines strategies for implementing this challenging and inspiring mode of learning, teaching and curriculum development. Eighteen chapters are presented across three sections of the book: Contesting and Contextualising Practice-Based Education Practice-Based Education Pedagogy and Strategies The Future of Practice-Based Education.

All over Europe, universities are moving over to English as the language of instruction. This development has been accelerated by global forces, and its pedagogical consequences have yet to be fully explored. This book examines this situation from the point of view of students and teachers, focusing particularly on the acquisition of English language writing skills in European university contexts. It takes an academic approach, and is firmly grounded in the bibliography on teaching academic writing to second language users in English-speaking countries, as well as in the bibliography on teaching English in Europe in higher education. In addition to providing sound pedagogical guidelines, it also brings together the most recent critiques of current practice and an overview of the innovative approaches devised in the last ten years. This is a book for all those who are involved in the changing European university scenario: English teachers and writing instructors, lecturers faced with the challenge of teaching their courses in English, university administrators and decision-makers.

Two noted professors on opposite sides of the cultural wars come together and engage in “cooperative argumentation”. One, a “Jewish, atheist libertarian” and the other a “mixed blood American Indian” bring to the table two radically different worldviews to bear on the role of colleges and universities in studying social and ecological justice. The result is an entertaining and enlightening journey that reveals surprising connections and previously misunderstood rationales that may be at the root of a world too polarized to function sanely.

This book attempts to re-imagine the purpose of the doctorate, which has historically been used to prepare leaders who will work to improve the sciences (social and physical), humanities, and professions, while articulating curriculum as a living shape where students, faculty, and institution melded in a humanist and creative process. This idea, seriously eroded by the explosion in doctoral degrees between the early 1970s (20, 000 doctorate per year) and last year (to over 46, 000)—and an explosion in doctoral and research universities that has created a crossroads for the doctorate in America. We believe the value of a doctorate is Intellectual Capital, and are particularly interested in encouraging reflection as an important characteristic of a successful quality doctoral program. We posit that a “good doctoral” experience fosters active engagement in reflection on all elements of our work—the intellectual, advisory, and pedagogical work of faculty, curricular opportunities, as well as the intellectual of the doctoral candidates through an avocation that drives research and theory in our fields. Specific issues raised in this edited volume include comprehensive analysis of programs, rethinking evaluation and programmatic coherence, doctoral degrees beyond the discipline, subject, and field, and implications of individual identity. Along with authors'chapters, we paid attention to encourage reflection as an important characteristic of a quality doctoral program; positing that “good doctoral” experiences foster active engagement in reflection on all elements of the doctoral experience, including program and curricular issues, personal relationships, work, and the creation of a community of scholars.

The quality of higher education is a hot topic, especially as students around the world are asked to pay more towards their own education, and expect to get what they pay for. In addition, league tables, both national and international, have come to dominate discussion, with several governments, and many institutions, setting themselves the goal of improving their ratings. In this volume Professor Turner examines the assumptions that are being made about what counts as quality, and what the traditional purposes of universities are. But with the growth of mass higher education, and the rise of student centred approaches to learning and teaching, it has become increasingly clear that high quality education is education that meets the needs of the student at that particular moment, and promotes their future development. After examining a range of different approaches to the quality of higher education and its measurement, Professor Turner develops an approach to benchmarking and quality enhancement that is better suited to the ethos of individualised learning, and uses it to critique the philosophies that have dominated debates about quality to date.