Although graduate academic institutions implement diverse annual review processes, their overall intent is focused on ensuring continuous improvement of program quality (National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, 2020). Through program review processes, university leaders (e.g., department chairs, program leads) analyze student…

The academic department is a key administrative unit in universities, and so heading, or chairing, a department is a key role. However, it is also known to be a challenging role and academics are often reluctant assume this position. Despite its importance, the head's role has not received sufficient academic attention and needs further…

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…

Background: The provision of graded accreditation and autonomy of colleges has been made in the national education policy (NEP) 2020 which will be applicable for all types of higher education institutions in the country. The authors have noticed that there are very few diploma engineering programmes having accreditation and that too will expire…

In the wake of national movements calling for attention to equity, colleges, departments, and instructors are now faced with various responsibilities to implement practices and structures to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This project aims to design a professional development program for mathematics graduate teaching assistants…

This critical reflection illuminates the planning, delivery, and evaluation of the 'pivots' an early childhood teacher preparation program made in response to the shift to virtual learning necessitated by the lock down measures prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge was to shift two undergraduate courses from in person to a virtual…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how principals, deputy principals, heads of departments (HoDs) and teachers as leaders exercise their agency within and through the organisational structure of their schools to improve academic quality. Design/methodology/approach: A case study was conducted in the wider context of school-based…

The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore how department chairs described the influence of recent corporate ethics scandals on content and availability of ethics education in postsecondary business schools in Arizona. The following research questions guided this study: RQ1: How do department chairs describe the influence of…

The purpose of the article is to justify the increasing role of a university department in achieving the major objective of higher education, namely to train highly qualified specialists for the national economy. The article contains some of the results of monitoring (questionnaire) of 350 heads of departments of Russian universities, as well as…

An unacceptable number of learners in under-resourced schools in South Africa are failing to perform adequately in national and international benchmark tests. Poor learner performance has been linked to poor-quality teaching, which, in turn, can be attributed in part to a lack of instructional leadership at schools. According to policy, heads of…

This review of research was prompted by the widespread belief that at least in a significant number of secondary schools, department heads are an underutilized, if not untapped, source of instructional leadership, the type of leadership critical to secondary-school improvement initiatives. Forty-two methodologically diverse empirical studies were…

This article reports a case study that investigated the ways in which heads of subject departments managed the development and application of new assessment strategies in one secondary school in Hong Kong. The data of the study were gathered through participant observation and interviews with 12 teachers who participated in an assessment for…

Many administrators are so overwhelmed by the basic responsibilities of their daily work that there seems to be little or no time left for providing quality leadership in instruction. Instead, schools employ department chairs, instructional specialists, and coordinators to provide instructional leadership. How can administrators find time in the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how principals and school supervisory authorities understand and use feedback from mandatory proficiency tests (VERA) in the low-stakes context of Germany. For the analysis, the authors refer to a theoretical model of schools that differentiates between Autonomous and Managed Professional…

Many of the policy documents and much of the recent literature talk about "leadership" when discussing the role of headteachers and principals of schools. The word is also used when writing about other senior and middle managers. It is a way of showing the difference between what used to be expected of headteachers and what is expected…