As the higher education landscape has shifted and calls for change and improvements have grown louder, researchers have turned to empirical investigations of what makes change possible in higher education. Recent studies on the impact of informal interactions for promoting change have given impetus to social network analysis as an approach to…

Background: The current interest in models-based practice (MBP) as an innovation and framework has necessitated deeper understanding of both what MBP is and how teacher educators teach pre-service teachers about innovative approaches such as MBP. Despite several studies of individual teacher educators enacting MBP, there are few examples of how…

In the light of recent challenges facing the field of outdoor adventure education in higher education, this exploratory study sought to identify some of the underlying political and institutional factors and societal influences on an international level that have led to the success of some programmes and the closure of others. Thirty-eight outdoor…

Examines how two government-initiated reforms, result-oriented planning and quality assessment, were perceived by 43 department heads and faculty at Norwegian colleges and universities. While result-oriented planning was perceived as an unnecessary reform, causing high tension and having only symbolic effects, quality assessment was seen as valid,…

A survey of 1,579 faculty members in 201 academic departments at Norway's 4 universities found no significant relationship between department size and research productivity, as measured by scientific publishing. Faculty in smaller departments were more content with their research environment than their colleagues in larger departments. However,…