In this article, David Watson debates the pros and cons of leadership skills in both a small and large university. Watson relates his own experiences regarding the changing atmosphere of leadership. He states that his experiences have caused him to reflect on what is genuinely generic about individual capacities for institutional leadership: that…

With various internet resources available to students, the main aim of a good university education today should not merely be to provide students with content knowledge, but rather to equip them with essential skills necessary to develop into lifelong learners. Among science educators, repeated calls have been made to promote a more holistic…

In this article, the author asserts that whether we write creatively or academically (or both) it takes time to understand the reasons why we "want" to write, and the more we write, the more we fully begin to appreciate why we have to write in the ?rst place. From an early age, nearly every day, Rachel Hains-Wesson actively participated in…

The paper makes a number of arguments about the research interview and maintains that, despite the near ubiquity of the method in higher education research, the interview remains under-theorised and mis-described. We argue that by virtue of being "insider", higher education research involves a form of tacit ethnography where multiple…

In the field of higher education there are few places reserved for philosophical exploration, and this, this author argues, can limit and distort the cartography. Higher education research tends to be framed as the empirical process of collecting and analysing qualitative or quantitative data. But this conception of research leaves little space…

As "Australasian Journal of Educational Technology" (AJET) Production Editor, the author evaluates whether AJET is providing a fair and adequate representation for researchers in Asian countries, with particular reference to AJET's aspiration to be "a front ranked international journal with an Australasian character"…

A dominant theme emerging from contemporary university assessment literature is the need to enhance student learning through effective formative feedback and the need to improve current practices. Of particular concern is the traditional university examination. There is a growing body of opinion that the handwritten extended-prose examination is…

In this commentary, the author considers two articles: Simon C. Barrie's "A research-based approach to generic graduate attributes policy" (2004) and Ronald Barnett's "Learning for an unknown future" (2004). Taken as a set, these two articles raise several questions about higher education that transcend national boundaries and institutional type.…

Two articles dealing with different dimensions of student learning are discussed for their contemporary relevance. The first, "Culturally mixed groups on international campuses: An opportunity for intercultural learning" by Simone Volet and Grace Ang (1998), examines the factors that encourage students to gravitate towards co-nationals rather than…

In this article, the author comments on two highly cited articles and how they link to wider trends in higher education research. The two papers in question, Angela Brew's article from 2003, "Teaching and research: New relationships and their implications for inquiry-based teaching and learning in higher education" and Gerlese Akerlind's article…

What is it to learn for an unknown future? It might be said that the future has always been unknown but this question surely takes on a new pedagogical challenge in the contemporary age. Generic skills may seem to offer the basis of just such a learning for an unknown future. Generic skills, by definition, are those that surely hold across…

In 2008, Denise Bradley and colleagues published their "Review of Australian Higher Education." A key point of the Bradley Review was to highlight the long-standing under-representation of working-class people at Australia's universities. Working-class people represent 25% of Australia's general population; however, they represent only 15% of…

In this invited commentary, I offer a critique of two lacunae in the emerging field. I consider how aspects of research on the transformations of global higher education constitute an emergent sociology of higher education, and I also review how the dominant tendencies occlude gender and feminist perspectives. By way of enticing readers to…

Academics who specialise in improving the teaching of "hard" sciences like chemistry, biology, maths and physics are increasing in number and influence at Australian universities. Those in academia who have channelled their energies into teaching are delighted with this development. It means that many committed tertiary teachers can now look…

The authors are both professional practitioners (law and social work, respectively) who entered the university as discipline-based scholars. Their respective interests in teaching and learning have led them both down a path where they have transitioned from a discipline-based orientation to organizational roles grounded primarily in teaching and…