Black womxn mid-level administrators in student affairs are DOPE! However, limited research examines our lived experience and voice at the intersection of race, gender, and organizational status. This qualitative research study uses Sista Circle Methodology to investigate the challenges of this population at Historically White Institutions.…

The inadequacy of training and support for academic middle managers in the US, UK, and Australia is well documented. What remains unclear is what would make for better professional development. This study fills this gap by investigating what associate deans at US research universities report learning 'on the job'. Drawing on their perspectives and…

The increasing diversity within the U.S. education system necessitates the presence of influential leaders capable of fostering Cultural Responsiveness (CR) through their leadership strategies. Previous research has underscored the critical significance of implementing CR in achieving effective outcomes for students' needs in today's evolving…

Department heads are central in the university setting as an important buffer between university leadership and academic staff. However, taking on a middle management role can lead to significant disruptions in academic careers. To investigate the career trajectories of 31 academics in middle management roles, two waves of semi-structured…

This study aims to examine which middle leaders' distributed leadership factors (cohesive leadership team, participative decision-making, leadership support and leadership supervision) are sufficient and to what degree these four factors are necessary for fostering high teacher commitment to change (TCTC). Data were gathered from 1018 Malaysian…

The research on Early Childhood Education and Care leadership has mainly focused on the kindergarten manager's perspectives. However, to fully understand leadership in ECEC settings, the middle-management level of pedagogical leaders must be included. The distributed framework is applied to investigate how the pedagogical leaders at the…

There has been little exploration of how Research Leads build bridges and manage networks to encourage teachers to be researchers. As a middle leader on a teaching timetable, in this article, I focus on some of the current issues and dilemmas I have personally faced when trying to thrive in this role. I address these issues and draw on my own…

Despite the critical contributions that student affairs professionals make to college students' learning and development and campus operations, mid-level professionals are at risk of leaving the field altogether. The current study investigated the role of sense of belonging in mid-level student affairs professionals' experiences and their turnover…

The notions of performativity and the use of accountability practices within the UK education sector are contentious. Although some commentators suggest that statistically driven performativity measures do not align with practitioner values, little research has investigated any potential differences in relation to job role and level of management…

In aggressively neo-liberalized higher education systems and in 'high-performing' research units--typically academic schools in high-ranking research universities--research assessment has come to dominate the daily organization and enactment of research and research culture. So much so in fact that academics' research praxis, their employability,…

Heads of department (HoDs) are commonly made responsible for implementing gender balance change in academia. Research has found that they are often reluctant to take ownership of this problem. Our study found that department heads in Norway did take on a lot of ownership for gender balance change and we divided their leadership approaches with…

This study considers the extent to which a professional development programme for educational leaders in a research-intensive university contributes to participants' adaptive expertise in the domain of leading educational change. We evaluated the programme by asking participants to execute an authentic task at the beginning and end of the…

Female leadership is increasing across many sectors, most notably in higher education, where female administrators in Canada represent half or more of institutional leaders. Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic put enormous strain on leaders, who managed increased demands at home while also providing support, vision, and direction for their teams at…

This study explored characteristics that principals, senior leadership team members, and middle leaders perceive as supporting the effective functioning of senior leadership teams (SLTs) in high-performing Catholic composite and secondary schools (CCSS) in Western Australia. Composite schools include both primary and secondary students. The…

Purpose: The challenges faced by universities in China have presented opportunities to enhance the leadership of educational leaders in universities. Little has been written about the leadership styles of mid-level educational leaders in Chinese higher education (HE). The objective of this study is to provide an authentic understanding of 1) the…