Departmental Culture Research Articles

Диагноз – слава (Незаконченная история Европейского университета в Санкт-Петербурге)

SUMMARY: Boris Kolonitskii’s essay addresses the history and nature of the European University in St. Petersburg (EU) with respect to the suspension of its activities and the debate that it aroused. The author is not sure whether this article will turn out to be an obituary or not. He makes a prediction that in light of the eventual closing of the university its history will be either eulogized or scorned. The sign of the latter attitude is already visible. This will make the critical assessment of the role of the European University in Russian and international scholarship and education impossible. Therefore Kolonitskii proposes to go beyond stereotypes (e.g., the EU as a well-paid agent of Westernization, the university as a homogenous institution and an embodiment of truly cosmopolitan knowledge) and looks at this institution as a laboratory of contemporary social knowledge. The author notes that the EU was a rather heterogeneous structure that hosted different departmental cultures and people with varying views on the nature and future of education and scholarship in the field of social sciences and humanities. He also notes that the university reproduced some of the drawbacks of the Soviet model of the university, i.e., the isolation of departments and the lack of interdisciplinary dialogue. Scrutinizing the structure of the university, Kolonitskii calls it a federative empire with complex and varying arrangements of autonomy and control. After a comprehensive survey of differences and cleavages in the intellectual and organizational set up of the university, the author asks how the integrity of the university is possible, and upon what does it rest. The suggested answer is that the intelligentsia’s stylistic and ethical code formed the basis of the university. It developed from the very beginning as a means of sociability by the faculty and students, and continues to ensure the solidarity of the corporation, and precludes the splits despite the crisis. The author then adds that one of the distinguishing features of the European University and the pillars of its integrity is its flexible and creative climate, the spirit of criticism and the eagerness to improve. The article then surveys a number of problems that the EU faces and warns against the danger of becoming a famous institution, where fame is due to a political crisis around the institution. This, as the author argues, might prevent the institution from addressing the real problems that it faces and forestall the full realization of the institution’s most promising features.

International restructuring of higher education: Comments on implications of global trends, for restructuring of Sociology in South Africa

The article comprises three sections, each divided into: (i) an analysis of a major trend pertaining to restructuring within universities internationally; (ii) comments on what the author views as some of the implications of this global trend, for sociology departments in South Africa. The first international trend, it is argued, is that we are seeing a fundamental transformation in research especially at research-oriented universities. This ‘2nd Academic Revolution’ of the late 20th century (the ‘1st’ saw the mission of pure basic research incorporated into university structures in the 1800s), sees a further mission: oriented more towards ‘use-inspired basic research’ and more responsive to civil society, although the current phase of capitalist industrialisation results in primary responsiveness to industry rather than to civic organisations. The second trend is viewed as an international consolidation of doctoral training and emerging PhD ‘departmental culture’, rooted in the American PhD system which emerged at research universities in the late 19th century, and which academic system now plays a leading global role. A strong PhD culture makes possible also the first trend, a strong capacity in use-inspired basic research; moreover, this research is of particular relevance at this historical moment in South African research universities including within sociology, it is argued. A third trend, within the European Union (EU), is outlined: an emerging, broad curriculum 3-year bachelor and more professionally oriented 2-year masters ‘two-cycle’ qualification structure, set in motion by the 1999 Bologna Declaration. For many European countries with a core one-cycle 5-year university qualification of magister (masters), this involves quite significant changes. This EU restructuring will have far-reaching implications internationally including for South Africa. One probable effect, moreover, will be to consolidate a qualitative divide between the ‘3+2’ phases and the PhD phase following, thus impacting on the second trend, of a special but vital PhD culture.

Gender Mainstreaming in Practice: A View from Rural Australia

This article focuses on gender mainstreaming in practice using the example of agriculture departments in Australia. Gender mainstreaming is a policy initiative adopted internationally following the Beijing women's conference in 1995 to address gender inequality. The move represents a policy shift from a focus solely addressing women's disadvantage to a broader attention to gender inequality. This article provides an historical overview of the move toward gender mainstreaming in the international environment, as well as a theoretical critique. Using the Australian case example, the shift of attention from rural women to gender mainstreaming in Australian agricultural departments appears to be taking place with little understanding of the concept of gender mainstreaming or its goals. It is further argued that recent moves by government departments of agriculture toward gender mainstreaming may have disadvantaged women. This article argues that, while in theory mainstreaming is a more successful way of addressing gender inequality, in practice it risks reducing attention to women unless changes occur in departmental cultures and gender mainstreaming accountability measures are introduced at international and national levels.

Research and teaching cultures in two contrasting UK policy contexts: Academic life in Education Departments in five English and Scottish universities

The paper explores academic staff and departmental research and teaching cultures in the Education Departments of five universities in Scotland and England, countries with increasingly diverging public policies in respect of education. The relationship between research and teaching, how the purposes of universities are defined and the status of research in Education are current UK higher education policy preoccupations. Data is drawn from interviews with 40 academics, observation of department settings, documentation and websites. The analysis draws on the work of Bourdieu, considering the changing habitus of individual academics, their departmental and academic subject context and the forms of symbolic capital now required in Scottish and English Education departments in response to new policies affecting their academic field. The paper also utilises recent literature on the research–teaching relationship. The career trajectories of respondents, their habitus and the forms of symbolic capital that they bring to academic life are examined, as are the extent to which the teaching and research cultures in each of the five departments studied mirror each other and whether these also reflect the two different policy contexts. The themes how academic cultures are shaped and research/teaching connections viewed have international as UK relevance.

Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time (review)

Reviewed by: Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time Karen Kurt Teal (bio) Christine L. Krueger , Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2002), ppx+182, $44.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. Christine Krueger, Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, [End Page 184] states that her vision for this collection of essays is "an Arnoldian project in its understanding of the broad relevance of Victorian culture to contemporary practices." She seeks to discuss "both the material of the academic disciplines and things that stir the greatest waves of Victorian nostalgia." In conducting the project, she finds that we have recreated a culture that represents the worst of Arnold's time: we are "disturbingly fragmented, narcissistic, jingoistic, instrumentalist, and vulgar." In other words, we are guided by images of the past and fall victim to our own nostalgic fantasy. Many of the essays engage the writings of modern writers on Victorian sexuality, concept of time, juvenile offenders, Oscar Wilde, and homosexuality. Few chapters remark directly upon the periodical press at the time, but all of the following are worth reading. Ellen Bayuk Rosenman's essay, "More Stories of Clothing and Furniture: Realism and Bad Commodities," examines the careful positioning practiced by the Victorian novelist when it comes to consumption of goods that are marketed for the general public. Cases in point are the distances the Victorian author places between him/herself and thing-wor-ship. Tantripp describes the dress, not Dorothea or the narrator of Middlemarch. Trollope's narrator feigns ignorance of the names of fabrics and styles to avoid being overly involved in commodity worship. Of course, this distancing undergoes serious strain as his narrator delimits the area of a proper gentleman in novels such as The Prime Minister and The Claverings, but Rosenman is absolutely correct: one can almost hear Trollope grunting while restraining himself from speaking brand names, even while consistently placing characters in select streets about Mayfair. Rosenman suggests that lavish modern films based on Victorian novels stoke the modern consumer's desire to own the same lovely furnishings. Sue Lonoff's essay charts the many ways the Victorian field of study is changing. She thinks we may have "post-ed" ourselves out, and that future students "will gleefully abandon the theories that seduced their elders." This is one of the most lively essays. In conducting a survey through the VICTORIA listserv on institutional and departmental cultures, Lonoff learns that one professor from a private liberal arts college likens her students' reading abilities to those of the workers "from the mines of the nineteenth century. Lonoff explains why: "We live in a culture that increasingly denigrates sustained, reflective reading, and students, who are very savvy customers, will rarely make efforts that yield minimal payoffs." She prescribes common sense in making our efforts valid in the eyes of the student. David Barndollar and Susan Schorn's essay, "Revisiting the Serial Format of Dickens's Novels; or, Little Dorrit Goes a Long Way," reports on a very interesting reading experiment at the University of Texas. A small group reads Little Dorrit in parcels, month by month. Finding it "difficult" [End Page 185] and "annoying" to read the story in Victorian-styled increments, the readers determined that they resented the doling out of the text by the all-powerful storyteller, and that it was clearer why Dickens is ultimately "celebrated for his characterization and narrative flow rather than his plot construction." Miriam Bailin's essay, "The New Victorians," finds that abundance is what our two eras share. She finds that in particulars we diverge wildly; our tastes for what we would term Victorian country manor grandeur would be shocked by the actual Victorian estates which were, in David Cannadine's words, "cold, gloomy, eerie, filthy, smelly and unsanitary." Much to point, George Steiner once remarked, "It is not the literal past that rules us, but images of the past." In Kate Lonsdale's essay, "Rounding Up the Usual Suspect," the nine-teenth-century press is tasked for creating a huge buzz around Jack the Ripper that lives on and still hampers police investigations. She cites the erroneous Yorkshire Ripper investigation as her...

Assessment Matters Integration, Reflection, Interpretation: Realizing the Goals of a General Education Capstone Course

For the past twenty-three years, students at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona have benefited from a sequential, interdisciplinary general education program that culminates in a capstone course. A departmental culture focused on assessment enabled faculty members to examine this capstone experience and make changes that have substantially improved student learning.

‘To honor and glorify God’: the role of religion in one intercollegiate athletics culture

Numerous events have provided evidence that the cultural values and assumptions of intercollegiate athletic departments are often incongruent with those of their host institutions. This discrepancy has even been evident in Christian institutions which seek to integrate faith into the learning experience. Using the organizational culture perspective, this study sought to determine how religion influenced the culture of one intercollegiate athletics department. The study took place at a highly selective evangelical Christian college with a nationally competitive athletic department. Data were collected through interviews with 19 campus leaders, observation of cultural events and document analysis. Analysis occurred qualitatively through a process of theorizing. The results indicate that evangelical Christianity played a significant role in the athletic department's culture by constraining its membership, influencing its pedagogy and guiding department decisions. As a result, its values and assumptions were consistent with those of the overall campus culture. The reasons underlying this cultural integration offer coaches and administrators of all institutional affiliations the possibility that the organizational culture perspective can be used to create athletic programs that are more consistent with institutional values.

Learning contexts

Learning contexts

Perspectives on … Writing Support for Junior Faculty Librarians: A Case Study

Teaching faculty learn to assimilate into their departmental culture as doctoral students; the terminal degree in Library Science, the Master's degree, however, provides training in the day-to-day operation of a library but not experience in scholarly publishing. As a result, library faculty on the tenure track live in a heightened state of anxiety when it comes to tenure and publishing. The University at Buffalo Libraries has successfully used the Academic Writing Group to alleviate tenure-track stress.

Agency Perspectives on Transition to Participatory Forest Management: A Case Study From Tamil Nadu, India

ABSTRACT India's Joint Forest Management (JFM) policy, in which government forest agencies and local communities jointly manage forests, has been touted as a successful strategy in helping both forests and people. Its efficacy in the field, however, is uneven. Although government forest departments are charged with implementing JFM, very little is known about their perspectives on this policy. Assessment of foresters' perspectives on JFM in Tamil Nadu, India, revealed that despite foresters' motivation toward implementing this policy, uncertain incentives and institutional complexities make the task complex and difficult. While decentralized decision making in the Tamil Nadu Forest Department could help mitigate the situation, the department's culture that limits feedback in the system stands as a strong barrier against organizational adaptation. Hence, pragmatic strategies for promoting participatory forest management should focus first on improving the institutional conditions of foresters' work in order to develop a shared vision and a unified strategy for successful action.

Innovating in higher education: contexts for change in learning technology

AbstractThis paper draws on three research projects (undertaken in 1997–99, 2002 and 2004–05) that have examined innovation in learning and teaching methods in UK higher education. The first two of these focused on such matters as departmental and institutional cultures and the factors that have either enabled or inhibited change. The third has begun to monitor the impact of the process of establishing Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The prospects for introducing innovations in teaching and learning in higher education are considered in relation to these wider contexts in terms of policies, structures and cultures.

Student perceptions of a quality clinical experience: findings from the literature and their application to radiation therapy

AbstractThis paper seeks to provide a review of research findings into the clinical experience from the perception of students, with the aim of improving the clinical placements of radiation therapy students. Drawing on evidence from other allied health professions, the attributes of the ideal supervisor perceived by students is presented. The effect of clinical environment, departmental culture and communication with universities on student perception is also discussed. The lack of literature on radiation therapy education in the clinical setting has been highlighted and may be remedied in the future with the appointment of research radiation therapists. There is an ongoing need for the universities to assist radiation therapists in maintaining their skills in the supervision of students, perhaps through the provision of workshops and seminars. The list of attributes of the ideal supervisor extracted from the literature is extensive. It is an unrealistic expectation for a person to possess all of the characteristics, however the challenge is for supervisors to develop and exhibit as many as possible.

Environmental sustainability and management reform in local government: an empirical analysis

English A new stage of environmental policy making in local government has emerged as managerial reforms to improve the performance of local government in England seek to secure sustainability alongside more traditional measures such as economy, efficiency and effectiveness. In this article we present the first empirical test of the relationship between environmental sustainability and managerial reform, using the example of Best Value. Data are drawn from a large survey of 706 officers in 102 English local authorities. Statistical results suggest that sustainability, inspired by managerial reform, is assisted by favourable environmental attitudes and the presence of strong corporate values but is frustrated by poor integration and departmental cultures towards sustainability. An agenda of further research is offered in conclusion.

Confrontational Structure of Relations between Sections, and Departmental Cultures in Japanese Local Governments

Confrontational Structure of Relations between Sections, and Departmental Cultures in Japanese Local Governments

Nurse-academics’ scholarly productivity: Perceived frames and facilitators

ABSTRACTThe reward system within Universities remains focused on research, with a benchmark of scholarly productivity, especially in relation to promotion. Despite their relative newness to the tertiary system, nurse academics are judged by the same standards as other disciplines. This study sought to examine factors that constrained and/or facilitated scholarly productivity. The study used a questionnaire survey technique to establish current productivity levels, and frame and facilitating factor theory and analysis to identify major constraints and facilitators. Findings from the study were that the unremitting nature of teaching, course coordination and university service workloads interact to the detriment of research and writing. Facilitating factors included a departmental culture that values and supports research, in conjunction with tangible support from University management. Mentorship was viewed as desirable, but often not available. An environment that more actively prioritises, fosters and supports academic scholarly productivity is needed.

Comparing Institutional Relationships with Academic Departments: A Study of Five Academic Fields

Any effort to understand academic departments would be facilitated by a better understanding of its relationship between its two larger spheres: the institution and the discipline. This study particularly asks: How do the relationships between institutional culture and the culture of the academic department vary by disciplinary field? Using discriminant analyses, this study compares five disciplinary fields (i.e., Biology, Business, Education, English, and Political Science) across varying aspects of culture (i.e., Instrumental Orientation, Affective/Multicultural Orientation, Interpersonal Orientation,andReputation Orientation, etc.). Correlation analyses then reveal the extent to which these same aspects of culture for the institution are associated with the departmental culture for each of the five fields.

Trained for isolation: The impact of departmental cultures on student teachers' views and practices of collaboration

Today, isolated practice is regarded by most educators, administrators and policymakers as an inadequate way of performing teachers' work. Most teachers and teacher educators embrace the current dominant discourse on the virtues of teacher collaboration, but these beliefs do not always materialize in the way programs of initial teacher education are organized and in the way student teachers experience their practice training. This paper examines this contradiction by analyzing the network structure and contents of teachers' professional interactions with student teachers and among themselves in two secondary-school English departments. The data show that despite the formal arrangements and the discourses favoring collaborative practice, the student teachers within the two departments were socialized into professional cultures that framed their views of themselves and of teaching in essentially isolated ways. The paper discusses implications of these results for studies of collaborative cultures in teaching and for the training of beginning teachers.

Developing a departmental culture for reporting adverse incidents.

A simple, reproducible model for reporting adverse events was developed in order to promote cultural awareness and acceptance of risk management within the authors' department. A departmental proforma was created and prospective reporting of adverse events was encouraged. In the six months prior to commencing this study only four adverse incidents were reported. Following the introduction of the proforma 64 critical incidents and near-misses were reported in the one-year period. In conclusion a simple model for reporting critical incidents and near-misses has been established. This has fostered a cultural change within the department and all members of staff feel more comfortable with reporting such incidents. The process is seen as educational and an important part of continuing professional and departmental development. Protocols and changes in organisational practice have been developed to reduce and prevent the occurrence of adverse events and offer patients continuous improvement in care.

A Same-Day Standard for Responding to Drug Information Requests by a Pharmaceutical Company

A system is described that provides the necessary support for a pharmaceutical company drug information department to provide timely responses to drug information requests by healthcare professionals. This system uses a same-day standard for providing responses to most drug information requests. This system is based in part on the development of a pervasive departmental culture developed by establishing written performance standards and in part on the development of facilitating materials and procedures. The physical components of the system utilize several easy-to-implement features that can be adapted to a variety of drug company settings where rapid communication of information is valued as an important drug information department goal.

Community, Collegiality, and Departmental Culture

Community, Collegiality, and Departmental Culture