EBOOK: Departmental Leadership in Higher Education


Book Description

This book is primarily aimed at those who have, or will have, a role in leading departments or teams in higher education institutions. It examines the ways in which mainstream leadership thinking does - and does not - apply to departments and teams in HEIs and suggests that departmental leadership is critical to institutional well-being. A series of substantive chapters explores assessment, learning and teaching, research and scholarship, administration and continuing professional development, and the final chapter discusses the ways in which individuals learn how to lead. The book offers a way of looking at the practice of leading rather than presenting a selection of tips or tools for leadership, but is studded with fascinating views from departmental leaders and extensive practical advice.




Servant Leadership for Higher Education


Book Description

SERVANT LEADERSHIP FOR HIGHER EDUCATION "Given the myriad of complex problems facing higher education, it is difficult to imagine that an administrator at any level of the institution could be effective without engaging in servant leadership. Higher education is a service industry and, consequently, this text is a must read for practicing administrators who are committed to effective leadership." MARY LOU HIGGERSON, Ph.D., vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of the college, Baldwin-Wallace College "Finally a thoughtful book on servant leadership with direct application to higher education. Includes many strategies for developing servant leadership in self, others, and organizations." DR. GARY L. FILAN, executive director, Chair Academy "With Servant Leadership for Higher Education Dan Wheeler brings the gauzy platitudes sometimes associated with servant leadership down to earth in a set of field-tested principles. I finished the book fantasizing about how much better off our colleges and universities would be if our leaders behaved like this!" JON WERGIN, professor of educational studies, Ph.D. in Leadership & Change Program, Antioch University "This is a must read for anyone thinking about becoming an academic leader. In the academy, it is not about command and control it's about serving your colleagues. Dan Wheeler's book 'nails it' as nothing is more critical to leaders than success in serving their colleagues." WALTER GMELCH, dean and professor, School of Education, University of San Francisco




Transparent Design in Higher Education Teaching and Leadership


Book Description

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework that has convincingly demonstrated that implementation increases retention and improved outcomes for all students. Its premise is simple: to make learning processes explicit and equitably accessible for all students. Transparent instruction involves faculty/student discussion about several important aspects of academic work before students undertake that work, making explicit the purpose of the work, the knowledge that will be gained and its utility in students’ lives beyond college; explaining the tasks involved, the expected criteria, and providing multiple examples of real-world work applications of the specific academic discipline. The simple change of making objective and methods explicit – that faculty recognize as consistent with their teaching goals – creates substantial benefits for students and demonstrably increases such predictors of college students’ success as academic confidence, sense of belonging in college, self-awareness of skill development, and persistence. This guide presents a brief history of TILT, summarizes both past and current research on its impact on learning, and describes the three-part Transparency Framework (of purposes, tasks and criteria). The three sections of the book in turn demonstrate why and how transparent instruction works suggesting strategies for instructors who wish to adopt it; describing how educational developers and teaching centers have adopted the Framework; and concluding with examples of how several institutions have used the Framework to connect the daily work of faculty with the learning goals that departments, programs and institutions aim to demonstrate.




EBOOK: Towards Strategic Staff Development in Higher Education


Book Description

This book focuses on strategic staff development in higher education, a sector in which it has been largely viewed as an operational activity with little organizational relevance. The book demonstrates how staff development needs to be based on modern theories of 'organizational learning', aligning itself with institutional and departmental needs as well as the wants and needs of individual staff. The book takes a broad definition of staff development and seeks to cover all aspects of the academic role and the interests of all staff. The traditional focus on teaching and learning is covered but not to the exclusion of other aspects or the interface between different roles. In order to achieve a strategic focus, authors are drawn from a range of backgrounds, including senior staff with strategic leadership roles. The book is, therefore, directed to a wider readership than the community of staff development professionals and designed partly to challenge the dominant discourse and established priorities of staff developers. Towards Strategic Staff Development in Higher Education seeks to combine scholarly review of relevent literature with practical strategies and suggestions for the intended readership, principally senior staff, heads of department and staff development professionals.




EBOOK: Being A Teacher In Higher Education


Book Description

Being A Teacher in Higher Education draws extensively on research literatures to give detailed advice about the core business of teaching: instruction, learning activities, assessment, planning and getting good evaluations. It offers hundreds of practical suggestions in a collegial rather than didactic style. This is not, however, another book of tips or heroic success stories. For one thing Peter Knight appreciates the different circumstances that new, part-time and established teachers are in. For another, he insists that teaching well (and enjoying it) is as much about how teachers feel about themselves as it is about how many slick teaching techniques they can string together. He argues that it is important to develop a sense of oneself as a good teacher (particularly in increasingly difficult working conditions); and it is for this reason that the final part of this work is about career management and handling change. This is a book about doing teaching and being a teacher: about reducing the likelihood of burn-out and improving the chances of getting the psychic rewards that make teaching fulfilling. It is an optimistic book for teachers in universities, many of whom feel that opportunities for professional fulfilment are becoming frozen.




EBOOK: Higher Education Pedagogies


Book Description

What does higher education learning and teaching enable students to do and to become? Which human capabilities are valued in higher education, and how do we identify them? How might the human capability approach lead to improved student learning, as well as to accomplished and ethical university teaching? This book sets out to generate new ways of reflecting ethically about the purposes and values of contemporary higher education in relation to agency, learning, public values and democratic life, and the pedagogies which support these. It offers an alternative to human capital theory and emphasises the intrinsic as well as the economic value of higher learning. Based upon the human capability approach, developed by economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, the book shows the importance of justice as a value in higher education. It places freedom, human flourishing, and students’ educational development at its centre. Furthermore, it takes up the value Sen attributes to education in the capability approach, and demonstrates its relevance for higher education. Higher Education Pedagogies offers illustrative narratives of capability, learning and pedagogy, drawing on student and lecturer voices to demonstrate how this multi-dimensional approach can be developed and applied in higher education. It suggests an ethical approach to higher education practice, and to teaching and learning policy development and evaluation. As such, the book is essential reading for students and scholars of higher education, as well as university lecturers, managers and policy-makers concerned with teaching and learning.




EBOOK: Higher Education And The Lifecourse


Book Description

"key arguments for policy and practice for lifelong learning in higher education." Higher Education Digest At the beginning of the 21st century it is increasingly clear to professionals at all levels of formal and informal education that we need to refresh the concept of lifelong learning. Most importantly, the concept needs to be expanded so that it is lifelong and lifewide, concerned not just with serial requirements of those already engaged, but also with the creation of opportunities for those who have not found the existing structures and processes accessible or useful. This book discusses resulting arguments about policy and practice in three parts: Part One focuses on the lifelong dimension, addressing in particular the changing nature of the student population. Part Two investigates the lifewide connections between higher education and other areas of social and economic life. Part Three offers a structural analysis, based on research on changing needs of learners, and setting out some key implications for higher education. Higher Education and the Lifecourse provides a timely analysis of the higher education sector and will be an important resource for graduate students, researchers, policy makers and senior managers within the fields of higher and post-compulsory education.




EBOOK: Higher Education And Social Justice


Book Description

Is access to higher education really open to all? How does the experience of higher education vary between social groups? Are graduate jobs harder to find for some than for others? The transformation of higher education from an elite experience to a mass system delivering advanced education to a socially mixed clientele has often been conflated with a process of equalization through wider access. But is this really the case? Andy Furlong and Fred Cartmel fear not, arguing that young people from social and economically disadvantaged families suffer from unfair access arrangements, have a poorer student experience and have limited contact with their middle class peers. Moreover, students from less advantaged families who successfully complete their courses tend to face greater difficulty securing graduate jobs and may be left with higher levels of debt. Taking a holistic approach that focuses on access to higher education, experiences in higher education and gains derived from participation, the book explores the barriers that impede the progress of young people from less advantaged families and outlines the various forms of stratification that help limit the possibilities for social mobility through education. Higher Education and Social Justice provides essential reading for anyone who has an interest in higher education or a concern for social justice, including lecturers, administrators and policy makers in higher education.




EBOOK: First Generation Entry into Higher Education


Book Description

“This book does not focus simply on the employment prospects of first generation higher education entrants but rather engages with the wider possibilities of social engagement and transformation that can arise from participation in higher education. It provides essential reading for administrators, policy-makers, managers, academics and indeed anyone else interested in how to widen the socio-economic base of higher education so that the process is informed by a significant concern with social justice and reducing inequality.” Rosemary Deem, Professor of Education, University of Bristol This book examines the proposition that parental education is a key factor contributing to the access and success of students, but that insufficient attention is paid to this by researchers, national systems and institutional interventions. Analysis of research findings from ten countries, plus a UK wide study, indicates that parental education is more important in determining access to higher education than parental employment or financial status. The book provides a clear conceptualisation of first generation entry, exploring its complex interrelationship with social class. Furthermore, it demonstrates that when first generation entry is used as a lens, it disrupts the taken for granted assumptions regarding widening participation and helps produce much more effective approaches to targeting access and supporting student success. First Generation Entry into Higher Education provides a unique and insightful examination of how first generation entrants are supported or otherwise by different national approaches and institutional responses. The book is essential reading for all with an interest in widening participation in higher education.




EBOOK: Globalization and Reform in Higher Education


Book Description

As the ability of each higher education system to produce the highly-skilled citizens required in the twenty first century becomes crucial, governments are recognizing and responding to global, as well as local, economic and cultural changes. Moreover, as the effects of globalization spread, their impact upon individual governments and their higher education institutions are becoming steadily more apparent. This book charts the key issues that are involved in reforming higher education to meet new global challenges. It draws on a team of distinguished international researchers from North America, Africa, Australia and Europe who consider particular topics: the reform of governance and finance, the funding of higher education, managerialism, accreditation and quality assurance, the use of performance indicators, faculty roles and rewards, and the cultural, social and ethical dimensions of change. The concluding section consists of two case studies: the first is a detailed discussion of the Australian government’s introduction of higher education reform; the second assesses the transformation of higher education in South Africa in the face of contemporary global and local change. Globalization and Reform in Higher Education enables readers to develop a firm grasp of the current state of play in higher education institutions worldwide, issues to be dealt with, and difficulties that have to be transcended. The book is essential reading for academics, senior managers, parliamentarians and civil servants involved in higher education policy-making. Contributors Rosemary Deem, Heather Eggins, Elaine El-Khawas, D. Bruce Johnstone, Mary-Louise Kearney, Adrianna Kezar, Elisabeth Lillie, Simon Marginson, Ann I. Morey, Preeti Shroff-Mehta, Barbara Sporn, George Subotzky and William Taylor.