This paper outlines the impact of phenomenography on higher education research and academic development. Interest in phenomenography as an educational research methodology continues to grow, but with interest growing faster than the number of experienced researchers, some misunderstandings of the approach have arisen and been circulating in…

In the academic literature, private supplementary tutoring is widely called shadow education because much of its content mimics that of schooling. The author of this paper wrote the first global study of the phenomenon, which was published in 1999 and set the agenda for much subsequent research. The present paper considers research emphases over…

The term "governance" is one of the most widely applied concepts in education policy and research. Yet its meaning has changed over space and time both analytically and normatively. This history is a complicated one marked by both shifts and continuations in the politics of language and the development of unique intellectual histories…

In this paper, based on an invited keynote given at the 2022 Colloquium of the Society for Educational Studies, I explore the question of the integrity of educational studies. I ask is whether educational studies in their current configuration are able to offer resistance to the instrumentalisation of education and the push towards empirical…

The complex and ever-changing nature of the field of educational development has led to a scholarship of educational development (SoED) that is rich but also enigmatic. The authors outline four lenses through which SoED might be viewed, ultimately proposing a framework for SoED that empowers scholars to engage in a sophisticated negotiation…

From the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, the development of the history of education in China can be divided into four stages: a budding period, one of tortuous development, a recovery stage and finally one of stable growth influenced by various ideas and themes from other countries. Abundant academic areas and topics as well as…

This text discusses the professional development of academic developers. It is based on the authors' reflections and observations in the context of a semi-formal programme, "Strategic Academic Development," held for academic developers in different regions of the world. Most recently the programme participants were academic developers in…

This commentary outlines the potential benefits of applying advances in the science of learning and development to special education service delivery and research. Building from a dynamic ecological systems perspective of development, it is argued that special education should focus on the whole child in context to leverage the correlated…

In recent decades, philosophy has been identified as a general approach to enhance the maturity of higher education as a field of study by enriching theory and method. In this article, I offer a new set of philosophical recommendations to spur the disciplinary development of higher education, departing from previous work in several meaningful…

SEERNet is a network of Digital Learning Platforms, researchers, and practitioners with the vision to leverage DLPs as research infrastructure, enabling researchers to ask and answer important questions about learning in ways that are grounded in realistic, widespread use of learning technologies. A first wave of work established the foundation…

In the new century, the quantity and quality of empirical education research in China have been greatly improved, and more people are paying attention to and engaging in evidence-based research and practice in education. In this context, Professor Robert Slavin, a well-known expert in evidence-based education at Johns Hopkins University in the…

Christian higher education (CHE) had been totally disappeared from the China mainland since the 1950s, and related studies only revived in the past 40 years since Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up policy in 1978. The present paper is an attempt to report what had happened in the past 40 years, and to illustrate some significant contributions…

The field of educational research is broad and changes form over time and space. This article reviews educational research in New Zealand over the past 100 years as a background to current policy and practice. It describes a series of landmarks over the century, the changing contexts and the assumptions which underlay them and identifies recurring…

We offer a framework for guiding an effective Center for Teaching and Learning: Responsiveness, Relationships, Resources, and Research. Our intention is to fill a gap in the literature on guidance for CTL leadership. These four principles are grounded in both scholarly and experiential evidence, drawing from multiple CTL directors with a range of…

This concluding chapter discusses the main challenges currently facing institutional research at small- and medium-sized colleges and describes how the field may evolve.