Findings are presented from a small-scale longitudinal study of first-year psychology students' learning. Three developmental hierarchies were derived in the analysis of the interview data, which described different aspects of the variation in students' accounts of their conceptions of essay writing. Although the findings did suggest that the…

This study is an attempt to understand better the complex nature of tertiary teaching by identifying and investigating the attributes of a group of excellent teachers in science departments of the University. In working with this group of teachers we examined what they say about their teaching and what they do in their teaching practice. Our…

Scholars have studied epistemological development--or how one understands knowledge and knowing--of college students for many years. Research in this domain has included benchmarking studies of epistemological development, examinations of how curricular innovations impact epistemology, and some studies of differences in epistemological development…

Theorists such as Gumport (2000) suggest that different conceptions of higher education may have important consequences for students and society. We explore this possibility by considering a specific research question: Do students who attend for-profit post-secondary schools show lower levels of civic engagement than students who attend non-profit…

The new phenomenon of European integration has again challenged our conceptual and empirical tools for higher education studies to integrate the international dimension into frameworks that tend to concentrate on the single nation state and domestic:

Increasingly the social, educational, cultural, linguistic, religious and racial diversity of South African society is finding expression within South African institutions of higher education. Consequently, "diversity'', "diversity issues'' and "diversification'', have become part of the education debate and policy,and pose new challenges to South…

During the last decade the demand for university education in the Netherlands has grown, and until two years ago there was still a yearly increase in the number of students attending university. However, not all of these students graduate and those that do often take longer than the programmed four years to finish their studies. The policy of the…

The field trialling of inventory scales reflecting variation in students' mathematics study and learning processes is described. These scales predict learning outcomes (final marks), but with differentiated patterns of relationship to those outcomes. In combination, the scales also detect cohorts of students at risk of study failure. The work…

This article examines the restructuring of administrative staff in universities through empirically documenting such processes and providing a theoretically founded interpretation and analysis of change. The empirical material is drawn from a context of Norwegian universities the last two decades. Two major changes can be observed in this period.…

Universities worldwide now encounter far greater challenges, and are subjected to an unprecedented level of external scrutiny. The change in governance ideology in the higher education sector has altered the way in which universities are managed, a phenomenon identified by Slaughter and Leslie as academic capitalism. This article examines how…