The study of national research assessment exercises serves to evaluate the effectiveness of policies versus their objectives and to improve the formulation of future initiatives. The aim of the current study is to verify whether the introduction of the first performance-based research funding in Italy, based on the 2004-10 VQR assessment, achieved…

University social responsibility (USR) is a fashionable concept that is often presented as a paradox, with the implication that it can help universities meet the social dimension of higher education, without questioning the hegemonic meanings of academic excellence and the university mission. We draw on data collected through a focus group of…

The European Commission recently incentivized universities to establish alliances in order to institutionalise regional collaboration through the European Universities Initiative (EUI). Alliances are envisioned to maintain Europe's global position and enhance regional integration. Their mission statements are ways of signalling identity and…

Three dimensional (3D) design and printing are customizable and cost-effective approaches to developing small equipment and other items for use in various interdisciplinary applications. However, many pedagogical approaches to 3D printing focus more on the generation of artifacts than on the involvement of students as creators. Moreover, library…

High school science fairs provide an exceptional opportunity for students to gain experience with scientific research, and participation has positive outcomes with respect to chosen careers in the sciences. However, it can be challenging to engage high school students in university-level research outside of formal internship programs. Here, we…

This article explores Meyerson and Scully's concept of 'tempered radicalism' (1995) in the context of contemporary academic practice and identity. We report on a collaborative autoethnographic study which addressed the question: 'What does the concept of tempered radicalism mean to us as academics in contemporary higher education?' We explore how…

The Careers Hubs pilot (2018-2020) tested a place-based network model designed to facilitate English schools and colleges delivering career guidance, measured primarily by adherence to eight benchmarks of good practice. Using a standardised measurement tool, career guidance in hub schools was observed to improve faster than a matched comparison…

Serious games (SGs) offer an engaging format for teaching industrial engineering (IE) methodologies. IE methodologies involve people following a process in a set of conditions to design, improve and install systems, which are easily scripted into gameplay. The scholarship has proposed co-design approaches for teachers and SG designers. However,…

Improvement networks are a relatively recent phenomenon in US education that create interorganizational networks of educators working together to improve specific educational problems. A shared emphasis of these networks is the use of data to support the improvement process, but little is known about their data use in practice. This study takes an…

This design research study describes how one mentor teacher-teacher candidate dyad co-learned to promote student engagement and participation through using a "Collaborative Learning Structure" (CLS) tool that we are developing. We share how the dyad used the CLS, with support from a professional development facilitator and fellow…

Purpose: Professional development schools (PDSs) advocate links between schools and teacher education programs, but how do mentor teachers in schools experience their role in this? Therefore, this research focuses on mentor teachers to investigate the change brought about by the implementation of a complex-wide PDS. Design/methodology/approach:…

Purpose: This paper adds to the understandings of how face-to-face meetings contribute to the network governance and global mobility of United Nations (UN) policy programs on environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Design/Approach/Methods: Data from interviews with 13 international ESE policy leaders were transcribed, coded, and analyzed…

Purpose: This paper examines the experiences of a team of female academics (teaching a large cohort of undergraduate students) and the coping mechanisms used to combat the challenges they confront in the Australian higher education sector. Design/methodology/approach: Using a reflective autoethnographic method and strengths perspective, the…

This article explores experiences of teaching qualitative research (QR) broadly, and qualitative methods (QM) more specifically in medicine, highlighting the challenges faced, and offering recommendations for overcoming them. Using collective online interviews, collaborative autoethnography (CAE) was employed to generate data comprising educator's…

Environmental Education has become over recent decades an emerging area of knowledge; its evolution has been conditioned not only by different regional dynamics, but also by international guidelines and trends. Therefore, the literature reports multiple and diverse pedagogical, curricular and transdisciplinary approaches to this topic. Likewise,…