A large and increasing proportion of teaching in UK universities is being fulfilled by staff on casual, rather than permanent, contracts. This paper examines how the proportion of teaching by casual staff affected student satisfaction in 2014-15. We find that an increased proportion of casual teaching leads to lower student satisfaction, even when…

The psychological contract shapes people's perceptions and behaviours in the workplace through how people perceive and react to feedback from their environment. Little research has been carried out on the psychological contracts of university professional staff and this oversight is particularly problematic due to the impact that the psychological…

Across higher education, increasing regulation and a focus on student satisfaction and experience have stimulated a proliferation of student engagement activities aimed at driving positive change. Nevertheless, we are not seeing the transformative changes we seek. We position this as a dual problem of focus and organisational learning. In…

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in government initiatives to widen Higher Education (HE) participation in the UK. Consequently, various Further Education Colleges (FECs) provide HE in order to meet that drive. In 2021, 162 FECs provided HE undergraduate degrees, yet little research has been focused on HE lecturers and their…

In education systems across the world, teachers are under increasing quality assurance scrutiny in relation to the provision of feedback comments to students. This is particularly pertinent in higher education, where accountability arising from student dissatisfaction with feedback causes concern for institutions. Through semi-structured…

Higher Education is in the midst of a digital revolution, with institutions bidding to harness the potential of technology. Periods of online learning experienced during recent times have accelerated the move towards widespread adoption, affording institutions the opportunity to evaluate and reflect on digitally mediated approaches. This report…

This case study of large-class teaching at a UK university focuses on the place of large-scale lectures in academics' approaches to teaching, their "use" by students in their studies, and their relationship to institutional quality assurance policies. The case is a second-year module comprised of 180 students, and it includes two-hour…

Performance appraisal is one of the key management tools which identifies employees' strengths and weaknesses. Usually, this is the major mechanism of gathering information for rewarding/training employees based on their performance, and hence a key to achieve organisational goals by creating a satisfied workforce. Therefore, this study was aimed…

Academic culture now places high expectations on researchers to demonstrate research productivity alongside teaching, leadership and knowledge exchange. In two studies of researchers across career stages in UK higher education institutions (HEIs), we examined workplace climate within academic departments as (1) supportive of researchers' needs for…

Being lectured by a woman physicist can benefit students' performance, motivation, and engagement with physics. However, due to the severe underrepresentation of women physics faculty, these instances may be scarce. Through semistructured interviews with seven women physics lecturers, we used expectancy-value theory to understand the situative…

The quality of working life (QoWL) has preoccupied practitioners and management scholars since the 1960s [Grote, G., and D. Guest. 2017. "The Case for Reinvigorating Quality of Working Life Research." "Human Relations" 70 (2): 149-167. doi:10.1177/0018726716654746], while satisfaction and occupational stress for professional…

In this paper, we present results from an extensive survey of United Kingdom (UK) university academics investigating satisfaction with senior managers and university governance: the Senior Management Survey (SMS). In total, 5888 academic staff across the United Kingdom Higher Education (HE) sector completed the survey, and results were used to…

Purpose: The issues in the current Built Environment Higher Education (BEHE) curricula recognise a critical need for enhancing the quality of teaching. This paper aims to identify the need for a best practice in teaching within BEHE curricula and recommend a set of drivers to enhance the current teaching practices in the Built Environment (BE)…

The focus of this article is the inter-relationship between two canonical notions in contemporary education discourse: 'reflective practice' and 'student satisfaction' in the context of the marketisation of higher education across Europe and the concomitant emphasis on student autonomy and institutional competitiveness. Drawing on the work of Jan…

This paper explores the forms of lived time that characterise a vocational relationship to academic work. Drawing on interviews and surveys with over 30 academics who have left the profession early or have given up looking for ongoing academic work, it paints a portrait of vocationalism as a double-edged sword. The research found that despite…