Academic freedom is of central importance to higher education and it affects all aspects of work at universities. It symbolizes academics' acceptance of the need for openness and flexibility (Balyer, 2011) and it protects the conditions leading to the creation of good teaching and learning, sound research, and scholarship (Atkinson, 2004).…

Drawing upon findings from a UK-based and -funded study of academic leadership provided by (full) professors, this article focuses on research leadership as perceived by those on the receiving end of it. Research leadership is defined as the influence of one or more people on the research-related behaviour, attitudes or intellectual capacity of…

This paper provides a new gender-based analysis of survey data collected on Hong Kong academics in 2008. First, it illustrates the gender differences that exist in the Hong Kong academy. Second, it discusses possible explanations for these differences as informed by the data. And third, it offers a novel argument, again informed by the data, for…

This article looks at a small group of women in Canadian faculties of education who hold what I call "lower-middle management" positions and considers whether they are on the ladder to recognized academic leadership or are in a revolving-door situation that will take them back to the ranks from whence they came. These nine women are…

Confronted with the processes of massification, commercialisation, internationalisation and reduced funding, universities also face an ageing academic workforce, with implications of a shrinking pool from which to recruit managerial and research leaders. A feminist analysis suggests that the policy problematic has been wrongly conceptualised as…

This qualitative study engaged women senior administrators at liberal arts colleges in the Upper Midwestern USA to better understand how their intersecting identities mediate their enacted leadership. Data were collected from eight participants via a questionnaire, document review, one-on-one interviews and observations. Positionality theory…

Drawing on data gathered from British Council seminars in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Dubai on "Absent Talent: Women in Research and Academic Leadership" (2012-2013), this paper discusses academic women's experiences and explanations for women's under-representation as knowledge leaders and producers in the global academy.…

The leadership of learning and teaching (L&T) in higher education has evolved over recent years. Part of the evolutionary process has seen the rise of the appointment of Associate Deans L&T (Academic, Education, "inter alia"). Implicit in this role is the assumption by many that associate deans are responsible for leading…

This paper explores the growth of corporate branding in higher education (HE) and its use by academic and professional managers as a mechanism for not only enhancing institutional reputation but also for facilitating internal culture change. It uses Bourdieu's framework of field, capital and habitus to analyse case studies of branding in two…

It has been argued that leadership in higher education differs from leadership in other organisational contexts, in part because of the culture of collegiality and autonomy underpinning academic work. Collegiality, however, is a complex and somewhat "slippery" idea that features in academic leadership literature in a variety of,…

This article addresses the question: To what extent do tertiary teachers and students have similar understandings of what engages students in classroom settings? It employs data from a funded research project in Aotearoa New Zealand that draws on selected questions from two surveys. One survey asked students how important nine selected teacher…

Existing research has yielded evidence to indicate that the expectancy-value theoretical model predicts students' learning in various achievement contexts. Achievement values and self-efficacy expectations, for example, have been found to exert positive effects on cognitive process and academic achievement outcomes. We tested a conceptual…

Peer review of teaching is a collegial process designed to help academics reflect on and improve their teaching practice. Considerable research supports the value of peer review of teaching. However, uptake of voluntary programs is typically low. Few studies have examined the predictors of engagement in voluntary peer review. This study surveyed…

Referencing skills contribute much to the emergence of voice in students' academic writing. Such skills have a bearing on the identity of learners as writers. In referring certain ideas to certain sources, the writer is able to distinguish voices of others and, in doing so, provide space for the hearing, or establishment, of their individual…

Developing an emancipatory interest enables individuals to free themselves from the intersubjective or commonly held meanings that dominate their understanding of their current world, and subsequently change their practices. We argue that developing an emancipatory interest is critical in learning to create social change, that is, wanting to…