In recent years, the Chinese government has launched several policies to facilitate universities to develop performance measures closely related to national university rankings and resources allocation. Directed by these performance measures, academics employ various strategies to deal with the increasing requirements and pressure. Using a…

Universities attend to multiple demands, making it challenging to identify their particular academic project, which can be defined as how the university understands its key purposes and develops its organisation and activities in service of such. While the three pillars of higher education -- teaching, research, and service -- are cited as being…

The practice of students as partners can be applied to numerous facets of the university, including curriculum design, governance, and co-curricular programs. However, while scholars have also conceptualised that student partnership can occur through co-research, adoption is far from mainstream. In this paper, we seek to go 'under the hood' of…

This study aims to advance global readers' understanding of the scholarly publishing (SP) activity system experienced by six English language teaching (ELT) Indonesian lecturers using the activity theory as a framework that focuses on its concepts of contradiction, boundary objects, and boundary crossing. Semi-structured interviews were used to…

This article critically investigates the impact of a program of professional learning for education-focused academics (EFAs) in an Australian university, focused on developing their education research capability. The 'Higher Education Research' (HER) program employed a three-pronged strategy: skills development workshops; sustained small group…

There is an increasing expectation that early career researchers (ECRs) be active in communicating their research to diverse audiences both within and beyond academia. However, with limited time and an academic environment that disproportionately values certain research outputs over others, ECRs may struggle to build their expertise and confidence…

Universities, both in Canada and throughout the global North, are predicated on empiricist and positivist understandings of knowledge and knowledge production which are communicated and strengthened through research practices and protocols. Drawn from a larger study exploring research leadership among accomplished academic staff, this paper…

Higher education in Aotearoa New Zealand -- we have a problem. Maori and Pasifika academics are not given time to talk together about Maori and Pasifika student success. Often framed by 'the academy' from a deficit position, initiatives to address the 'problem' of Maori student and Pasifika student success is often ad hoc and disconnected, rarely…

Criticisms have been levelled at academics at a time when funding of universities is increasingly tied to private and corporate purposes and when academics are held accountable through a hierarchy of functions. Claims are also made that academics work within narrow specializations and are removed from real-world experience and problems. Boyer's…

The publish or perish adage is alive and well for early career academics (ECAs), who are under increasing pressure from higher education institutions for improved research performance. This paper explores the way in which ECAs respond to the managerial imperatives of one Australian regional university; specifically, a meta-reflexive lens was used…

Drawing on in-depth interviews and classroom observations with 14 academics from the field of applied sciences, this case study provides empirical evidences on the research-teaching nexus in the context of Chinese research universities by examining the multi-layered factors at the individual, institutional and organisational levels. The study…

This paper demonstrates that while ideals of close linkages between research and teaching are widely embraced in research-oriented universities, a practice of division of labour between teaching-oriented and research-oriented staff persists. In an investigation of how the research-teaching nexus is managed at three Swedish universities, we…

Universities must adapt to the challenges of social competitiveness and its new demands but there is still little evidence of how these changes are perceived by the academics. This paper provides insight on this matter and analyses the research culture of five Spanish universities from the perspective of the different academic bodies. A…

In this article we use cultural-historical activity theory to explore the place of research in the work of New Zealand university-based teacher educators (TEs). We consider how aspirations for a research-informed initial teacher education are served by New Zealand universities' recruitment practices and TEs' actual work. We suggest that TEs value…

Universities in Australia are becoming increasingly concerned with their reputation as "engaged" institutions. Yet there is significant confusion about what this idea of "engagement" means and no clear way of measuring or reporting it. In part, this is because of the nature of engagement itself which is dependent on local…