As higher education quality assurance in many countries in Europe has become a mature activity, some agencies carrying out external quality assurance are developing beyond their core tasks and missions. The current study identifies new tasks taken up within quality assurance agencies and analyses the drivers behind such development. Based on an…

Government regulations require businesses to improve their processes and products/services in a green and sustainable manner. For being environmentally friendly, businesses should invest more on eco-innovation practices. Firms eco-innovate to promote eco-efficiency and sustainability. This paper evaluates the eco-innovation performance of…

This position paper sets out to examine value creation in the engineering enterprise, a process that has mostly been associated with innovation and entrepreneurs. An analysis of the literature on engineering value creation in business studies, engineering and engineering education publications shows that there has been surprisingly little…

Purpose: The aim of this study is to obtain a broader knowledge of innovative pedagogical practices in higher education, by analysing the particular case of the Higher Institute of Administration and Languages (ISAL). The literature review reveals a gap in this scientific field, and filling this gap is as imperative as the need to articulate…

This article intends to empirically document the ambiguity, even ambivalence, of governance practices , through the study of a public policy in Portugal, the Programme InovAction, that stimulates intervention projects in 'local state of emergency' territories. In this way, we search to contribute to the debate around the reform of the State and…

This article addresses academics who innovate in higher education and their characteristics. We undertake a qualitative case study of six individuals who implemented disruptive and transformative pedagogical approaches and curricular practices in their departments and/or at their institutions. Our findings point to six common…

Purpose: The construction of learning scenarios is a way to plan for teaching activities, promoting the development of skills related to problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. Using learning scenarios as a lesson planning strategy becomes a powerful tool in initial teacher education. On the one hand, it mobilizes…

The increasing popularity of tablets in society generally has sparked much interest in their educational potential and while a number of studies on the use of tablets in schools have been conducted world-wide most of these have been conducted in English-speaking and well-resourced education jurisdictions such as the UK, Australia, New Zealand and…

Innovation, a complex concept, underpinned a four-year pan-European research project designed to increase the effective use of technology in school classrooms. This article revisits evaluation data collected during the project and explores the challenges of conceptualising, realising and researching "innovation." The authors describe how…

The EduLab model is a "new" educational model that integrates technologies in educational contexts comprising full equipped classrooms with attractive and easy-to-use technological resources. This model tries to promote a dynamic and more effective teaching and learning process. For this purpose, the model provides teachers training and…

Purpose: Focusing on the specific context of two European old industrial regions--South Yorkshire (UK) and North Region of Portugal--this paper aims to identify and conceptualise a set of relational capabilities that business leaders perceive to play a key role in industrial rejuvenation. Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative research design…

A three-year-case study funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) from the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education was designed to study a 30-year project of music and drama in primary schools in Madeira. This article reports on the narratives of the three main figures in the project as they elaborate on its…

Nowadays few young people are prepared to consider setting up and managing their own business as a realistic and attractive career option. It is therefore necessary to expose children to the concept of entrepreneurship from a very early age, which means that the school has a fundamental role to play in this task. This research seeks to understand…

Over 50% of Portuguese graduates are out of work for more than six months after leaving university, against the OECD average of 42%. This suggests that universities need to do more to improve graduates' chances on the labour market and, in many ways, the Bologna reform provided European Union universities with an opportunity to tackle this issue.…

This study examines the influence of culture on digital libraries of the first wave. The local cultures of innovation of five European national libraries (Biblioteca nacional de Portugal, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Die Deutsche Bibliothek, the National Library of Scotland, and the British Library) are reconstructed in case histories from…