Universities attend to multiple demands, making it challenging to identify their particular academic project, which can be defined as how the university understands its key purposes and develops its organisation and activities in service of such. While the three pillars of higher education -- teaching, research, and service -- are cited as being…

The relationship between teaching and research in the modern university has been the subject of vigorous scholarly enquiry in the education literature for several decades. Few international comparative studies are reported in the literature. This study compares and discusses the teaching-research nexus (TRN) in accounting in three international…

Background: Literature on the academic identities of South African black women in higher education institutions predominantly focuses more on students and academics in general and less on professors. Studying the academic identities of black women is important in understanding how their reality in higher education is constructed and professors are…

Community engagement as a public mission of higher education is widely accepted in South Africa. This is articulated in White Paper 3 on the transformation of higher education and in institutional policies that promote different forms of community engagement. However, compared to the traditional roles of teaching and research, community engagement…

An increase in research productivity is of vital importance in the development of countries worldwide. However, when research outputs are measured, many higher education faculties neither meet the expectations regarding quality nor quantity despite the increasing drive towards publications. This paper examines how academic managers can reform a…

This paper explores academic promotion practices in higher education institutions. Promotion of faculty members of universities is one of the major mechanisms in maintaining and improving the quality and efficiency of higher education and research activities in the country. Appointment processes are therefore critical to institutional development;…

Teaching is increasingly being considered for inclusion in academic promotions in a number of universities. This raises questions about how teaching is appraised in relation to research; and which teaching criteria contribute to promotions outcomes. This article investigates these questions from a gender perspective by statistically analysing the…

This article reports on the role and value of social reflexivity in collaborative research in contexts of extreme inequality. Social reflexivity mediates the enablements and constraints generated by the internal and external contextual conditions impinging on the research collaboration. It fosters the ability of participants in a collaborative…

In South African public higher education, the miseducative legacies of the past weigh heavily. This article offers our learning as leaders of a multicultural community of university educators that seeks to contribute towards repairing the damages of a divided and discriminatory past by means of self-study research. Through a collaborative…

Since 1994, the eyes of the world have been on South Africa, observing with interest the societal reconstruction project, upon which the country had embarked. In this project, higher education is both the terrain and the perceived instrument of change. In this higher education system and its mission, the academic profession is pivotal--especially,…

The South African higher education fraternity has experienced an outflow of senior research capacity during the past decade, resulting in a large influx of younger and less-published academics. More emphasis is therefore placed on the role of the central institution in ensuring research output. The Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at a…

Research output affects both the strength and funding of universities. Accordingly university academic staff members are under pressure to be active and productive in research. Though all academics have research interest, all are not producing research output which is accredited by the Department of Education (DOE). We analyzed the demographic and…

National and international developments in higher education and the resultant pressure on universities to demonstrate excellence, including excellence in research, had a far-reaching effect on faculties of education who had traditionally focused more on excellence in teaching than on research. In South Africa, as part of transformation policies…

We reflect on methodological issues arising in two of our own research projects as a form of practice, as a way of engaging in a praxis of project research. The projects chosen for this purpose are themselves concerned with teacher education and curriculum development in environmental education: they include participatory "reflective…