This research investigates the value of teaching philosophies (TP) for today's academics and their institutions. It offers a new framework to enhance academic development, personal resilience, and institutional capacity building. Since the 1990s, TPs have been formalised as personally constructed and reflectively written statements of educational…

In the context of increased demands for excellence in all areas, academic promotion and tenure is now directly linked to achievement of measurable outputs in all areas of performance. In a work environment characterised by high workloads, competing expectations and reduced resources, academics must increasingly demonstrate active engagement with…

Against a backdrop of new public management (NPM) thinking and managerialism generally applied to universities in a range of countries, this study examines one of its manifestations--performance management for academics. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 40 academics at an Australian university, this article identifies six stances regularly…

This commentary presents an Australian perspective on Balkin and Mello's "Facilitating and Creating Synergies between Teaching and Research: The Role of the Academic Administrator." It addresses one particularly important aspect of the separation of teaching and research in business schools; namely, the increasing dominance of…

While there has been a good deal of discussion about the scholarship of teaching and learning, and models have been developed to understand its scope, the effects on students' learning of academics engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning are unclear. In the context of initiatives to develop the scholarship of teaching and learning in…

Commonwealth funding formulae have caused Australian universities to become obsessed with maximising external research funding. Considerable pressure is applied to faculties, departments and scholars to apply for funding, and relative success in attracting it is given excessive weight in evaluating research performance. This may be productive in…

This study adopted Jarzabkowski's (2005) qualitative, activity-based strategy as practice method to investigate leadership and management of interdisciplinary work. Interviews were conducted with 10 academics in Australia and the United Kingdom. Challenges raised by leaders of academic work can be grouped at various levels according to which…

A sample of research findings in the business/social science area is reviewed regarding: (1) how much research and publication is being done by academics; (2) the extent to which such activities have an effect on decisions associated with promotion, salary, and selection; and (3) how much importance academics themselves attach to research and…

The response of Sydney University to recent union agreements concerning the restructuring of Australia's faculty reward system is described, especially as it concerns new requirements for faculty development and evaluation. It is concluded that the new policy is a more enlightened one, emphasizing development over assessment. (MSE)

A discussion of the use of performance management for faculty and nonacademic staff in colleges and universities first offers the definition of performance management used in business, examines colleges and universities as institutions of learning, and suggests the notion of quality maintenance as a better approach to personnel management. (MSE)

Information obtained from department heads as well as from staff highlight the difficulties of heads who have to make evaluative statements on departmental staff that may further or slow down their career. Heads may have positional authority, but academic conventions often prevent heads from exercising it. (Author/MLW)

Suggests ways of improving the effectiveness of the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) in raising the quality of university teaching, including: (1) the wide reporting of more accurate teaching performance indicators; and (2) a revised university funding model in which university income is based on teaching performance indicators. (EV)

It is proposed that, in evaluation of higher education, the individual faculty member is a more appropriate unit of analysis than institution or department. A study of faculty (n=2,048) productivity in publishing scholarly journal articles provides evidence supporting this view. (Author/MSE)

Issues in the introduction of performance appraisal of individual academic staff members are examined from the viewpoint of general management theory and practice. Benefits to the faculty and institution and the potential for abuse of the procedures and results are discussed. (MSE)

Faculty ratings by academic staff and students in a new Australian higher education institution were compared on 21 criteria of lecturing performance. Faculty placed more emphasis on a range of performance criteria, while students stressed pace of presentation. Analysis revealed differences in the two groups' schematic models. Both agree that the…