In the United Kingdom (UK), Higher Education Institutions share with other educational providers the duty to provide reasonable adjustments for students who disclose disabilities. The role of academic administrators in the operationalisation of legislation-driven policy related to disability within the university context is overlooked within…

The rise of China as the world factory in the last few decades has been accompanied by a rapid expansion in vocational education. A growing number of youth from rural backgrounds now have the chance to receive post-compulsory education in vocational training schools. Using human capital theory as an analytical focus, this study examines their…

This article reports on a study of the value master's students in a principal preparation program placed on a variety of instructional strategies. The aspiring principals completed a survey with fixed-response and open-ended items. The students' most valued class discussions were about how their personal experiences related to the class topic and…

A lack of esteem for teachers and the teaching profession is a central tenet underpinning policy reforms put forward by the 2010 UK Government White Paper "The Importance of Teaching". This article argues that the policy problem and solutions presented in the White Paper lack awareness of the historical and social positioning of…

The educational reforms that began in the 1990s have changed Brazilian universities' direction from welfare state institutions to market organisations. In postgraduate education, strategic alliances with international agencies, governments and corporations have become closer. At the same time, there has been a push for internationalisation of…

This article draws on stories of success in higher education by mature-age students of diverse backgrounds to highlight some key implications for institutional support. We begin by reviewing the post-World War II background of mature-age study in Australian higher education to provide a context for presenting some major findings from a small,…

How do academics make sense of university policies and strategic initiatives and act on them? Interviews were conducted with 27 mid-career academics in different disciplines, different research-intensive university environments and two countries (England and Australia). Data were analysed iteratively utilising a critical realist perspective,…

Researchers in the field of teaching and learning in higher education have identified concerns with top-down leadership models. Distributed (or shared) leadership approaches may provide more successful engagement with institutional change agendas, and provide more options to reward and recognise staff leading teaching and learning initiatives.…

Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development…

Capital expenditure at United Kingdom (UK) universities is rapidly rising, with new buildings erected on the premise that national and international competitiveness must be maintained. We examine students' engagement with and conceptualisation of university estate, and explore broader questions about the extent to which building design can…

The aim of this study was to identify how and why doctoral students do interdisciplinary research. A mixed-methods approach utilising bibliometric analysis of the publications of 195 students identified those who had published interdisciplinary research. This objective measurement of the interdisciplinarity, applying the Rao-Stirling index to Web…

To address the changing needs of the labour market better, higher education institutions have increasingly aimed to enhance their teaching quality and the learning experiences of their students. Therefore, a key concept of the missions of contemporary educational institutions is to improve students' employability after graduation. Although…

In the past few decades, the internationalisation of higher education has become an increasingly popular trend across different parts of the globe. The fierce global competition and the aggravating unemployment rate, coupled with low teaching and research quality revealed by universities in mainland China, have inevitably compelled a growing…

The starting point of this paper is the question: Which issues do students think are important when choosing a higher education institution, and how are they related to the factors taken into consideration in ranking institutions? The aim is to identify and rank the parameters students perceive as important when choosing their place of education.…

This article presents a qualitative case study based on an analysis of the outcomes and meanings attributed by university academics to an institutional merger, from the perspective of organisational identity. The change process may have broadened the "us and them" gap that exists between those responsible for university leadership and…