This research investigates the value of teaching philosophies (TP) for today's academics and their institutions. It offers a new framework to enhance academic development, personal resilience, and institutional capacity building. Since the 1990s, TPs have been formalised as personally constructed and reflectively written statements of educational…

In the context of increased demands for excellence in all areas, academic promotion and tenure is now directly linked to achievement of measurable outputs in all areas of performance. In a work environment characterised by high workloads, competing expectations and reduced resources, academics must increasingly demonstrate active engagement with…

Against a backdrop of new public management (NPM) thinking and managerialism generally applied to universities in a range of countries, this study examines one of its manifestations--performance management for academics. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 40 academics at an Australian university, this article identifies six stances regularly…

This study adopted Jarzabkowski's (2005) qualitative, activity-based strategy as practice method to investigate leadership and management of interdisciplinary work. Interviews were conducted with 10 academics in Australia and the United Kingdom. Challenges raised by leaders of academic work can be grouped at various levels according to which…

Information obtained from department heads as well as from staff highlight the difficulties of heads who have to make evaluative statements on departmental staff that may further or slow down their career. Heads may have positional authority, but academic conventions often prevent heads from exercising it. (Author/MLW)

Faculty ratings by academic staff and students in a new Australian higher education institution were compared on 21 criteria of lecturing performance. Faculty placed more emphasis on a range of performance criteria, while students stressed pace of presentation. Analysis revealed differences in the two groups' schematic models. Both agree that the…

The professional development and evaluation of university academic staff members is discussed in an attempt to clarify the processes by which evaluation and professional development activities may become acceptable and helpful. Also presented are the student evaluation of teaching and the interrelationship between evaluation instruments and the…

Two student evaluation surveys developed in the United States were administered to a sample of University of Sydney students to determine their applicability in Australia. The Endeavor Instructional Rating Form (Frey et al.) measures seven components of effective teaching that have been demonstrated with the use of factor analysis in several…

Faculty attitudes concerning the Australian government's proposal for periodic reviews of faculty performance were determined through interviews in 1983. The Australian Senate's report on tenure of academic staff recommended that all staff be regularly reviewed on their performance in teaching, research, and service. A sample of 104 University of…

Five articles on research and development in higher education and three review articles are presented. Titles and authors are as follows: "Students' Assessments of Instruction as a Basis for Teaching Improvement and Promotions Decisions: A Case-Study" (John Jones); "The Making of Academic Promotion Decisions: Criteria and…

Surveys of Australian (n=293) and British (n=103) college faculty in 1993 assessed reactions to structural changes in the university systems in those countries. The survey investigated perceptions of institutional culture, resources, advantages, status of women academics, the change process, role of research, workload, faculty evaluation, mission,…