Work In Higher Education Research Articles

A utilisation focussed and viable systems approach for evaluating technology supported learning

The paper uses a higher education case study to illustrate a participative theory of change approach to evaluating technology supported learning. The approach is informed by the Viable Systems Model (VSM) and utilisation-focussed evaluation and, falls within the tradition of facilitated modelling approaches to operational research. We argue that this approach worked well in engaging primary evaluation users in a process of collaborative action research to improving an educational development initiative and that the approach helped generate information relevant to answering its primary users’ questions, to inform their specific decisions and actions relevant to their quality enhancement responsibilities.Through a case study, concerning the evaluation of an educational development initiative in a large UK university, we illustrate how the VSM and utilisation-focussed evaluation could be used to: (a) conceptualise the connection between strategies and their components at different levels of organisation; (b) to clarify the role and interests of stakeholders in these strategies; and (c) to scope evaluation to be relevant to informing the decisions and actions of these stakeholders. The paper contributes to illustrate how VSM principles can underpin a theory of change approach to engaging primary stakeholders in planning an intervention and its evaluation in the context of educational development work, in order to improve evaluation to be more relevant to their needs. The paper should be of interest to researchers exploring the use of systems theory in evaluation, in particular in the context of educational development work in higher education.

Struggling for visibility in higher education: caught between neoliberalism ‘out there’ and ‘in here’ – an autoethnographic account

What happens when neoliberalism as a structural and structuring force is taken up within institutions of higher education, and works upon academics in higher education individually? Employing a critical authoethnographic approach, this paper explores the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject. The struggle to make oneself visible is seen to occur under the gaze of academic normativity – the norms of academic practice that include both locally negotiated practices and the performative demands of auditing and metrics that characterise the neoliberal university. The paper indicates how the dual process of being worked upon and working upon ourselves can produce personally harmful effects. The result is a process of systemic violence. This paper invites higher education workers and policy-makers to think higher education otherwise and to reconsider our personal and collective complicity in the processes shaping higher education.

Civil Engineering Students in the Final Year of Their Bachelor’s Degree: Evaluation of Group Project Work under a Retrospective Dimension

AbstractA successful civil engineering project is often a highly collaborative team-based activity, and the engineering education community must therefore prepare graduates to work in this type of environment. A large body of research has demonstrated the considerable benefits and minor organizational problems of collaborative work in higher education. However, there are only a few case studies reported in the literature that evaluate the positive and negative experiences encountered by students when undertaking group projects, and these invariably focus on first-year students. This paper contributes to this limited literature by assessing previously existing methodologies applied to group projects in the final year of an engineering degree, and compares the results with those obtained for students with no experience in collaborative work. The methodology was tested on a survey sample of 105 students enrolled in the Roads module of the new Civil and Territorial Engineering degree at the Technical Universi...

Counter-conduct in creative university research: deliberations on freedom

ABSTRACTThis article describes how a political assemblage currently at work in higher education is re-articulating academic subjectivities. This assemblage draws together entrepreneurial and humanist concepts of creativity into an intellectual resource that can change national economies. Academics are urged to use their creativity to counteract the narrowing funding base of the university. The article first introduces a history of the concept of creativity and explains how governmental agendas for creative industry and creativity in education emerged. Second, it describes a practice-based research project that grapples with the difficulties of knowledge transfer between the ‘creative’ and ‘social science’ academic disciplines. This raises questions about creative knowledge and reveals some ethical tensions in the performance of academic research. The research project is then positioned as a ‘counter-conduct’, used to short-circuit the procedures implemented for the conduct of creative research in the creative, entrepreneurial university.

Taxi drivers with a PhD: trickle down or crowding-out for lower educated workers in Dutch cities?

Attracting higher educated workers is often seen as a means to stimulate employment in cities in general, leading to lower unemployment for the lower educated, the ‘trickle-down’ effect. However, lower educated workers may also experience crowding-out effects if these higher educated inhabitants accept jobs below their educational level. Based on an empirical analysis of a cross-section of Dutch cities, we find that these crowding-out effects indeed seem to occur. This implies that a trickle-down strategy cannot be seen as a panacea by urban policymakers for the problem of high unemployment amongst lower educated workers.

Educational Upgrading and Returns to Skills in Latin America: Evidence from a Supply-Demand Framework

It has been argued that a factor behind the decline in income inequality in Latin America in the 2000s was the educational upgrading of its labor force. Between 1990 and 2010, the proportion of the labor force in the region with at least secondary education increased from 40 to 60 percent. Concurrently, returns to secondary education completion fell throughout the past two decades, while the 2000s saw a reversal in the increase in the returns to tertiary education experienced in the 1990s. This paper studies the evolution of wage differentials and the trends in the supply of workers by educational level for 16 Latin American countries between 1990 and 2000. The analysis estimates the relative contribution of supply and demand factors behind recent trends in skill premia for tertiary and secondary educated workers. Supply-side factors seem to have limited explanatory power relative to demand-side factors, and are only relevant to explain part of the fall in wage premia for high-school graduates. Although there is significant heterogeneity in individual country experiences, on average the trend reversal in labor demand in the 2000s can be partially attributed to the recent boom in commodity prices that could favor the unskilled (non-tertiary educated) workforce, although employment patterns by sector suggest that other within-sector forces are also at play, such as technological diffusion or skill mismatches that may reduce the labor productivity of highly-educated workers.

Who benefits from group work in higher education? An attachment theory perspective

Several studies have pointed to the benefits of learning in groups. However, surprisingly little research has been conducted regarding what role relationship-related personality traits play in the effectiveness of this kind of student learning. Such personality factor can potentially buffer the students’ effectiveness in groups. The present study focused on attachment orientations—personal characteristics of individuals that reflect internal models of relationships—and assessed their impact on different aspects of students’ feelings and functioning in higher-education study groups. It was hypothesized that individuals with interpersonal difficulties (characterized by high attachment anxiety or avoidance) will not benefit from a learning group and that they may exhibit poorer performance in group projects. Participants (N = 244) were college students enrolled in courses that included a group project. They completed measures of their attachment orientations, instrumental and socio-emotional functioning in the group, and satisfaction from the group. Additionally, their GPA and grade in the group project were assessed. Results indicated negative associations of attachment anxiety and avoidance with students’ self-reported instrumental and socio-emotional functioning in the group. However, attachment anxiety was associated with higher grades in the group task. Attachment avoidance was not associated with students’ grades. The study’s findings generally suggest that attachment insecurities do not obscure students’ actual performance in group projects, contrary to students’ self-perceptions. Implications for group learning are discussed.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as a Subversive Activity

One of the most serious challenges facing higher education today is the erosion of academic culture—a declining sense that faculty form a community whose members reflect, deliberate, and make decisions together in the name of a shared educational vision. Our experience with Gonzaga University’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Initiative suggests that SoTL can be a powerful counter force to this erosion. What became increasingly evident as the initiative unfolded was that its most important result was the creation of a kind of alternative academic community that stands in opposition to many of the dis-integrative, disempowering forces at work in higher education. The scholarly examination of practice, done in a collaborative context, changed participants’ perceptions of learning, of themselves as teachers, and of the larger endeavor of which they are a part. Thus, we came to see the SoTL initiative as a subversive activity in the sense used by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner in their 1969 book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity: one that invites critical questions about education’s purposes, practices, and underlying assumptions, and in so doing reanimates core values.

Can latitudes become forms? Unveiling purpose in higher education practice

Abstract My praxis as teacher/scholar and the journey that led me here is marked by the political dimensions of education and visual art. For me, this relationship between education and politics is rooted in the Brazilian context of the mid-1960s, a time of great upheaval. Then and there, education and art provided strategies of resistance, with the arts articulating protest in veiled and codified language and transformative education methodologies providing tools to displace oligarchical assumptions about knowledge and society. This manuscript explores the motivations shaping my higher education work and its trajectory from my formative experiences in Brazil, and my professional training in the United States, to a global career.

Take time to reflect upon your career

On July 1, I celebrated my 35th anniversary working in higher education. Around this time each year I take time to reflect upon my career. I suggest that you set an annual time to do the same. It might be around the new year, or on your work anniversary, or on your career anniversary, or any time that makes sense for you. It's important to do so if what you want is a meaningful, well-planned-out career and not just a string of jobs.

Take time to reflect upon your career

I recently celebrated my 35th anniversary working in higher education. Around this time each year I take time to reflect upon my career. I suggest that you set an annual time to do the same. It might be around the new year, or on your work anniversary, or on your career anniversary, or any time that makes sense for you. It's important to do so if what you want is a meaningful, well‐planned‐out career and not just a string of jobs.

Take time to reflect upon your career

On July 1, I celebrated my 35th anniversary working in higher education. Around this time each year I take time to reflect upon my career. I suggest that you set an annual time to do the same. It might be around the new year, or on your work anniversary, or on your career anniversary, or any time that makes sense for you. It's important to do so if what you want is a meaningful, well‐planned‐out career and not just a string of jobs.

Take time to reflect upon your career

On July 1, I celebrated my 35th anniversary working in higher education. Around this time each year I take time to reflect upon my career. I suggest that you set an annual time to do the same. It might be around the new year, or on your work anniversary, or on your career anniversary, or any time that makes sense for you. It's important to do so if what you want is a meaningful, well‐planned‐out career and not just a string of jobs.

Continuing Education for Professional Development in Higher Education Teaching

This paper presents a qualitative research of the case study type that was held with professionals from various fields of knowledge (law, nursing, administration, education, accounting, medicine, physical therapy, journalism, economics, engineering, etc.), undergraduates who participated in a continuing education course, specifically, a specialization in continuing education to work in higher education in a community institution. The research problem that guided the research was: What are the contributions, implications and impacts of continuing education for teaching in higher education from the perceptions of professionals from various fields of knowledge? The research aimed to analyze the professionals’ repercussions of the process of continuing education for the practice of teaching in higher education. The research involved three classes of specialization of the following years: 2013, with 25 students; 2014 with 22 students and 2015 with 23 students, totaling 70 subjects investigated. Data were collected from a questionnaire with open and closed questions which has enabled content analysis from the perspective of Bardin (2011) with the help of Atlas Ti software. The results showed that the participation in the continuing education course contributed to teaching in higher education through the possibility of obtaining pedagogical knowledge and practical application of these, which culminated in a reflection on pedagogical practice, impacting directly on the professional work of these teachers, who only felt the lack of a more detailed work with the education of the distance mode.

Do youths graduating in a recession incur permanent losses?

In flexible labor markets, low-educated entrants are harmed by economic downturns, but the penalties are short-lived. High-educated youth are less adversely affected, but the penalties persist longer. It takes about ten years for young cohorts that enter the labor market during a downturn to catch up to cohorts that did not. In rigid labor markets, however, while low-educated entrants are better shielded in the short term, both low- and high-educated workers never make up their earnings losses. Macroeconomic stabilization policies should be complemented by policies that aim at combining more job flexibility with job security.

Employment and taxes in Latin America: An empirical study of the effects of payroll, corporate income and value-added taxes on labor outcomes

This paper empirically explores the effects of payroll taxes, value-added taxes and corporate income taxes on a variety of labor market outcomes such as participation, employment, informality, and wages. The results are based on nationallevel data of labor variables for 15 Latin American countries, and indicate that the effects of each tax are markedly different and may depend on several aspects of labor and tax institutions. Payroll taxes reduce employment and increase labor costs when their benefits are not valued by workers, but otherwise may increase labor participation and not raise labor costs. Value-added taxes increase informality and reduce skilled labor demand. In contrast, corporate income taxes may help reduce informality, especially among low education workers, but when tax enforcement capabilities are strong they may reduce labor participation and employment of medium- and high-education workers.

Wage Dynamics and Racial and Ethnic Occupational Segregation among Less-Educated Men in Metropolitan Labor Markets

We assess whether occupational segregation in metropolitan labor markets is associated with the wages of, and contributes to racial/ethnic wage disparities among, less-educated men. To measure occupational segregation in metropolitan low wage markets, we create a segregation index measuring segregation between white, black, and Latino male high school-only educated workers and high school dropouts in 95 metropolitan labor markets utilizing a unique dataset of the structural characteristics of the ninety-five largest US metropolitan labor markets. We use regression, fixed effects, and generalized least squares estimation techniques to test whether this index is associated with wages and racial wage inequality among these men. The analyses reveal that in metropolitan labor markets characterized by more racial and ethnic segmentation in the low wage market, wages are lower among black and Latino men in particular, and racial-ethnic wage disparities among similarly less-educated white, black, and Latino men are higher.

College wage premiums and skills: a cross-country analysis

Workers with a college degree earn substantially more than workers with no such degree. Using recent data from 22 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, we estimate this college wage premium at 28 per cent for male full-time working employees, on average, ranging from 18 per cent in Sweden to 50 per cent in the Slovak Republic. This premium is largely explained by the higher skill levels of graduates from higher education combined with their use of these skills at work, as well as the match with job requirements for this skill proficiency and skill use. We find no effect of labour market institutions (e.g. the employment protection legislation or the coverage rate) on cross-country differences in the college wage premium. However, we find that cross-country variation in this premium is related to the relative supply of higher educated workers. Moreover, we find evidence that cross-country differences in the college wage premium are related to the degree to which educational credentials signal skills.

Take time to reflect upon your career

On July 1, I celebrated my 35th anniversary working in higher education. Around this time each year I take time to reflect upon my career. I suggest that you set an annual time to do the same. It might be around the new year, or on your work anniversary, or on your career anniversary, or any time that makes sense for you. It's important to do so if what you want is a meaningful, well‐planned‐out career and not just a string of jobs.

Take time to reflect upon your career

On July 1, I celebrated my 35th anniversary working in higher education. Around this time each year I take time to reflect upon my career. I suggest that you set an annual time to do the same. It might be around the new year, or on your work anniversary, or on your career anniversary, or any time that makes sense for you. It's important to do so if what you want is a meaningful, well‐planned‐out career and not just a string of jobs.