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This paper presents the qualitative results of a larger mixed-methods study that examined teachers' experience transitioning to online teaching and learning (OTL) in Malaysian higher education (HE) institutions to understand how academics perceived their OTL readiness and what competencies were perceived to be central during the Covid-19 pandemic. Data collected from twenty-two teachers (n = 22) (three public; three private HEs) through semi-structured in-depth interviews revealed that OTL readiness was perceived through course design, communication competence, time management, and technological competence. Additionally, agentic competence emerged as crucial in shaping resilience and adaptability during the transition to OTL. The paper makes two contributions. First, the study contributed to the literature on online teaching readiness in that reconceptualisation needs to be holistic and inclusive due to the unique HE context. Second, it provides valuable insights to those who devise training exercises and universities required to respond to them in enhancing teacher agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precarity of the Ukrainian professoriate is a lacuna in the higher education literature. There was no research on this subject before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Furthermore, no investigations have been conducted on how university professors handle the hardships of teaching in wartime. This study tries to understand the phenomenon of precarity, as it is experienced by Ukrainian educators affected by the brutal invasion and ensuing dehumanization. The study explores the following questions: What do post-Soviet educators learn from precarity and hostile environments that undermine their individual and professional dignity? How do they manage the security deficit in their academic and living environments? By presenting insights from thirty-nine interviews, this paper elaborates on the phenomenon of precarity among university educators who are urged to redefine themselves, reinstate their academic identity, and salvage their teaching careers in the context of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massification of higher education has resulted in a highly diverse student body. Within this expansion, the increased number of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) students has unquestionably enriched university campuses, but has also brought challenges for teaching and learning within higher education systems. There are limited accounts in the scholarly literature with regard to university educators' perspectives of their teaching and students. In particular, limited attention has been paid to the care-related and emotional dimensions of teaching diverse cohorts. Through a mixed-method study of university educators, this paper provides a thematic analysis of university educators' experiences of teaching CALD students, including their reflections on students' specific needs, the existing supports offered and suggestions as to what supports are needed. It considers the visibility of the care work and emotional labour educators undertake, and problematises how this work is created by institutional assumptions but rarely recognised as legitimate 'work'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how academics navigate the Higher Education (HE) landscape being reshaped by the convergence of unbundling, marketisation and digitisation processes. Social Realism distinguishes three layers of social reality (in this case higher education): the empirical, the actual and the real. The empirical layer is presented by the academics and their teaching; the actual are the institutional processes of teaching, learning, assessment, mode of provision (online, blended); the real are the power and regulatory mechanisms that shape the first two and affect academics' agency. Two dimensions of academics' experiences and perceptions are presented. The structural dimension reflects academics' perceptions of the emergent organisation of the education environment including the changing narratives around digitisation, marketisation and unbundling in the context of digital inequalities. The professional dimension aspects play out at the actor level with respect to work-related issues, particularly their own. This dimension is portrayed in academics' concerns about ownership and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The questions driving this paper are: What sort of affective (dis)investment is needed in higher education to refuse the colonial university? How can educators and students in higher education invent 'pedagogies of refusal' that function affectively to challenge colonial futurity? What do pedagogies of refusal look like? This paper theorizes refusal as an affective practice that produces political effects and desires that challenge normative manifestations of power and control. It is argued that refusal may constitute a fruitful avenue toward decolonization of higher education, because it directs attention to the affective (dis)investments from/in desires that can be fulfilled by the university. To this end, the paper suggests that if the aim is to disrupt the seductive workings of colonial power in its most intimate dimensions, then it is crucial to invent pedagogies that engage with the affective (dis)investments of students and educators in colonial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I present a critical discussion of the ways that multilingualism is conceptualised in the context of higher education in Timor-Leste, a small, developing nation in South-East Asia. Drawing on a range of ethnographic data collected at multiple Timorese tertiary institutions from 2015 to 2018, I focus especially on the language-related beliefs and practices of a small group of petroleum studies lecturers, who are at the meeting point of diverse ideological forces that impact their teaching. I discuss their conceptualisations of both the 'language problem' facing them, and their own hybrid classroom communication practices, examining how these conceptualisations are shaped by wider political discourses favouring Portuguese, Indonesian and English. I argue that these discourses not only complicate due recognition of the considerable resourcefulness these lecturers display in communicating disciplinary knowledge to students, but also weigh heavily on their own perceptions of their everyday work as tertiary educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]