Changes to education policy in England since 2010 have led teachers to reflect on what and how they teach. This paper presents original data exploring how a small selection (n = 10) of Heads of English in some English secondary schools are accommodating policy changes. Ball's analytic framework developed to explore neoliberal policy enactment in…

Purpose. The purpose of this adaptation sequential explanatory mixed methods study was to determine the degree of importance that higher education department chairs ascribe to DeVore's (1994) five stress-inducing behaviors of authoritative command, evaluation, norm discrepancy, sanction, and targeting when initiating change in the behaviors of…

Purpose: Whilst professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely explored at the school level, they have received less attention at the departmental level. The study takes the variance between departments and the role of departmental teacher leaders into consideration, and the relationships amongst departmental-level PLC dimensions, two…

Across the landscape of higher education, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused fundamental changes at a variety of scales. To understand which aspects of higher education instruction at the departmental (meso-scale) level were most and least impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, chairs of geoscience departments at public higher education institutions in…

The transformation of the model of university organization, with the passage of the traditional system of chairs to departmental, began in Spain in the mid-sixties. The educational policy of the regime, taking as reference foreign models such as the German or Anglo-Saxon, introduces via regulations, which are not real and operative, the bases of…

The role and influence of department heads on women in academia is understudied and weakly conceptualized. This article expounds on prior work, which identified limitations of department head literature, to put forth three problematic discourses that run through much of the department head research: the "discourse of fairness," the…

The purpose of this qualitative multi-case research study was to analyze the perceptions of academic leaders (faculty [and] department heads) within subcultures (academic units) on a community college campus. A subculture is a subdivision of a macro-culture that formed through differentiation. Differentiation, led to the development of subgroups…

Research exploring the challenges department chairs face has long suggested the role is difficult and lacks tangible reward (Buller, 2012, 2015; Gmelch et al., 2017). Yet, as higher education demographics, settings, and organizational expectations change and chairs function in more uncertain and increasingly complex institutional environments, it…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how faculty chairs at a large, Midwestern community college understand and engage with the assessment of student learning outcomes within academic programs. This study was informed by two conceptual paradigms of assessment: accountability and improvement. Sensemaking was used as a…

This research article aims to (1) determine the knowledge and experience of early childhood education of Suan Dusit University, and (2) develop and study the effectiveness of learning experience provision models that synergize the knowledge of Suan Dusit University to enhance the proper development of young children according to the 75/75…

This research investigated followers' expectations of their heads of departments (HoDs) and how they felt about the fulfilment of the expectations within the context of Ghanaian higher education. It further explored the nature of the challenges the HoDs faced as they tried to meet followers' expectations. The research used a phenomenological…

Using a blend of functional, distributed, and instructional leadership theories as a theoretical lens, this article presents the perspectives of Namibian principals, heads of departments (HODs) and teachers on the various leadership competencies that are required in their role of enabling school leaders to support their teachers' professional…

The present study aims to examine the context of academic dishonesty of research students in a public university setting in Bangladesh. In this regard, the researchers conducted interviews with the concerned authorities of the university, i.e., Chairpersons of the Departments, Deans of the Faculties, Proctor of the University, and Director of…

Department heads are central in the university setting as an important buffer between university leadership and academic staff. However, taking on a middle management role can lead to significant disruptions in academic careers. To investigate the career trajectories of 31 academics in middle management roles, two waves of semi-structured…

New public management (NPM) has dominated the reforms in the higher education sector and the academic discussion on how universities should be governed since the 1980s. Besides, the introduction of accountability and efficiency measures in the form of performance measurement and pay-for-performance scheme, a key debated aspect of NPM is the…