Factors challenging and supporting scholarly activity for academic staff in a regional Australian university environment

Abstract

With expectations of academic staff to achieve high quality teaching and research outputs as performance measures it is timely to explore how staff perceive they are being supported to meet these ends. This article presents findings of a multi-method study that explored influences impacting on the quality and quantity of scholarly activity being undertaken by A- and B-level academic staff within a regional Australian university context. Findings suggest that barriers to achieving scholarly outputs appeared to centre on support from senior academics, intrapersonal and demographic characteristics of staff and academics’ perceptions of their roles as teachers and scholars. Tensions between the multi-faceted components of being an academic were generated by both the university and individual members of staff.