Within any higher education institution, there are great teachers who recognize the challenges to sustaining a commitment to highly effective teaching. The current paper explores the beliefs and practices of 10 faculty members who won an undergraduate teacher of the year award at a research-intensive institution. The paper explores the challenges…

Participation and integration of non-traditional students (NTS) in university education is influenced by factors within the institution and those external to the institution, including participants' self-perceptions and dispositions. The objective of this qualitative study is to draw from the life-world environment component of Donaldson and…

One of the main beliefs in quality assurance is that this activity--indirectly--will stimulate change in the work practices associated with teaching and learning in higher education. However, few studies have provided empirical evidence of the existence of such a link. Instead, quality assurance has created an unfortunate divide between formal…

Desirable qualities for modern doctorate academic advisors in the USA that provide for successful completion were explored. In this mixed method study, both interview and survey data were collected. Interviews took place with 13 academic advisors and 18 doctoral candidates and graduates. Thirty-eight academic advisors and 151 candidates and…

Since their introduction in the 1990s, explicit standards documents have pervaded higher education assessment--success likely linked to their compatibility with constructive alignment and quality assurance regimes. Researchers, however, criticise that such documents are based on a misconception of standards as explicit and absolute, when in fact…

Vietnam's higher education is highly centralized in terms of its governance and management. A couple of higher education reform plans have been introduced over the past decade but they seem to result in poor outcomes. This paper addresses the challenges faced in the areas of governance, quality assurance and finance by a "key" university…

Malaysia has made significant progress in advancing access to education over the last two decades, having achieved the education goals of the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Unfortunately, this has not been accompanied by quality improvement, with reports of "unemployable" graduates a frequent refrain. This paper reports on a study of…

Evaluation systems including global university rankings have been recently introduced as mechanisms for assessing overall academic quality, appraising research reputation and as a basis for funding and policy decisions. This study explores the concept of research reputation in terms of how it is defined, constituted and assessed. Eight…

Within higher education, reflection has been seen as a prerequisite to quality teaching and developing as a teacher. However, little empirical research exists concerning the link between teacher reflection and action, which defines the extent to which the teacher's reflection-based views are channelled to the benefit of the students. This article…

Universities throughout Europe have adopted organisational strategies, structures, technologies, management instruments and values that are commonly found in the private sector. While these alleged managerial measures may be considered useful, and have a positive effect on the quality of teaching and research, there is also evidence of detrimental…

The literature on leadership in higher education is predominantly concerned with the role of formally designated senior managers such as heads of department and deans of faculty. By contrast, relatively little attention has focused on those performing informal and distributed forms of leadership, such as (full) university professors. This article…

The study aimed to investigate the process of reflection in professional nurse education and the part it played in a teaching and learning context. The research focused on the social construction of reflection within a post-registration, palliative care programme, accessed by nurses, in the United Kingdom (UK). Through an interpretive ethnographic…

Despite a detailed literature exploring the advancement of a learning outcomes approach in higher education, limited evidence exists concerning academics' use of them. This study employed a questionnaire survey and interviews with academic staff in three schools in one institution to explore their views and uses of learning outcomes. Whilst…

A competitive higher education environment marked by increased accountability and quality assurance measures for doctoral study, including the structured training of doctoral supervisors, has highlighted the need to clearly articulate and delineate the work of supervising doctoral students. This article responds to this imperative by examining the…

Doctoral degrees in the visual and performing arts are a fairly recent entrant in the research higher degree landscape in Australian universities. At the same time, a new kind of doctorate is evolving, a doctorate in which significant aspects of the claim for the doctoral characteristics of originality, mastery and contribution to the field are…