Institutional change is being called for to renew higher music education (HME). But what institutional pressures, specifically, are driving these calls, and how are HME organisations responding to pressures to change? By turning to institutional theory, we lean on the concept of institutional isomorphism to shed light on how HME organisations may…

Sense of belonging is an important psychological and social factor for college students. Students who report a strong sense of belonging to an institution are more likely to return the next year (Hausmann et al., 2007), stay in school (Fine, 1991), graduate (Morrow & Ackermann, 2012), learn (Kernahan et al., 2014), thrive (Strayhorn, 2019),…

This qualitative study investigated staff retention in higher education by focusing on the retention of academic advisors. Academic advisors play an integral role in student success and advising is notably one of the fields in higher education with the greatest turnover. This turnover comes at great costs, financial and otherwise, for the…

Taking the "Learning to 'tell Chinese's story well'" narrative prevalent in policies as a starting point, this article draws on data collected from a provincial university and delves into the institutional involvement and support in response to the state's international higher education policies. By foregrounding the underlying…

Higher education has a dual responsibility, both to the academy and to society at large, to effectively confront racism on campus. And yet, in the United States and perhaps elsewhere, it fails to effectively confront racism as the result of systemic flaws, expressed as organizational intransigence, even as new "supportive and protective"…

"Re:Tension" is a short 20 minute film that follows Thapelo, a bright and capable university student, on a day where he is unwittingly forced to question the judgements of his tutors and peers, and delve deeper into his own actions, choices and beliefs. "Re:Tension" addresses the topic of institutional racism and the gap in…

Higher education researchers have defined the need of feeling connected to a place or community as a sense of belonging or a student's ability to connect to campus through support systems, positive interactions, and mattering (Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Strayhorn, 2012). A student belonging to or within an institution has been associated with…

Opsimaths are a unique group of late learners among adult learners who qualify as Knowles' 'neglected species'. Opsimaths usually face more daunting challenges in their academic journey than other adult learners. In this study, we employ the [exploratory] phenomenological design to present the experiences of 15 opsimaths in Ghana who entered the…

This article responds to the rise of the micro-credential movement. It evidences the heightened attention politicians, policy-makers and educational leaders are giving to micro-credentials by framing the discussion in several recent high-level policy developments, an exponential growth in the number of academic publications and the increasing…

In a world characterised by supercomplexity, in which higher education (HE) is in the grip of neoliberal market forces (Barnett, 2000), it is incumbent upon participants in this sector to ask; what does it mean to belong, and to what? 'Belonging' has become a buzzword used by institutions to seemingly demonstrate how they seek to include students…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to discover, from career services practitioners' perspective, their involvement working with faculty advisors on academic and career advising of collegiate visual and performing artists (VPA). Habley (1988, 2009) wrote about the importance of research in academic advising, to promote scholarly inquiry,…

This paper focuses on an emerging group in Chinese higher education -- students in transnational higher education (TNHE). Recent research has documented much about students' motivations for attending TNHE institutions. However, the impact of such institutions on student outputs remains under-researched. This study conducted interviews with 78…

Since 2011 the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University has been actively supporting an ethos of belonging throughout their learning and teaching. In 2017 'belonging' became a formal university priority, embedded in the institution's strategy and dispersed across Colleges and Schools through a range of activities and interventions.…

Self-determination theory (SDT) posits a framework for human motivation, highlighting an individual's interactions and perceptions of his or her environment. Research incorporating a SDT framework has identified antecedents of psychological need satisfaction (PNS) in human motivation. Individual motivation broadens levels of social interactions as…

Educational developers around the world are employed in a range of settings and under different working conditions, including academic (faculty) positions and administrative (professional staff) roles. Curiously, in a survey of 1,000 developers from 38 countries, the authors find that a full 51% of developers in the United States are on…