This essay discusses the utilization of safeguard strategies, particularly Improvement Science principles, in the academic and professional writing of scholar-practitioners within EdD programs. These strategies bridge the gap between theory and practice, enabling graduate students to apply their scholarly insights meaningfully. The essay…

The use of Improvement Science (IS) for the dissertation in practice (DiP) must be encouraged because the questions and concerns addressed in these projects go beyond answering basic research. Authors of dissertations in practice will bring philosophical assumptions, select research designs, and situate themselves somewhere along the practitioner…

In this article, derria byrd contends that more robust interrogation of the organizational contribution to inequity in higher education would be aided by understanding higher education organizations as social actors. Organizational social actor theory demonstrates that colleges and universities are more than inert contexts in which marginalized…

Improvement and action-oriented research approaches make iterative testing to learn about systems and adaptive change a central practice. As the need to develop the field's capacity to improve grows, so does the need to develop leaders' capacity for leading and conducting iterative cycles of testing. The present study reveals how EdD candidates…

Professional staff occupy an essential role in universities, and yet they have received little attention in the existing French literature, despite the considerable changes afoot in academic institutions. Based on qualitative research consisting primarily of 43 semi-structured interviews, this article looks at representations of development…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze and map the terrain of human resource management (HRM) in higher education (HE) contexts, with the aim of uncovering potential gaps within the existing knowledge base. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs a unique, in-depth bibliometric analysis of 945 publications from the Web of Science…

Background: As more education practitioners adopt techniques of improvement science to address problems of practice, there is an increasing demand for leaders with the knowledge and capacity to lead improvement efforts. However, little research explores how school leaders learn to lead improvement science in their school context or the challenges…

This study explores change processes in higher music education by following the development of the Centre for Excellence in Music Performance Education (CEMPE) at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH) over the period 2014-2023. The following research question is addressed: How has institutional change been enabled in a higher music education…

Current research supports the need for data-driven systems that occur naturally through a culture of continuous growth. Told through an ethnographic case study design and the lens of shared leadership, is the story of one educator preparation program's journey to improve curricula, clinical practice, and performance management through improvement…

This paper is concerned with long term strategic planning in higher education and focuses on Ontario's strategic mandate agreement (SMA) sector planning framework. In 2012, the province initiated its new SMA planning process by requiring all higher education institutions to propose their own strategies for their academic visions, missions, and…

The purpose of this article is to present an instructional innovation called the Structure-Culture Alignment Activity, which leads students through the process of aligning cultural values pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DEI) to two important structural elements, formalization and centralization. Using decision making, team…

This chapter reviews social and organizational theories that influence governance to contextualize new ways to think about the roles of boards of trustees. This chapter discusses how various organizational theories help define the roles of boards of trustees, the CEO, and other stakeholders with respect to governance. Using this backdrop, reforms…

Academic interdisciplinarity has become a powerful means of addressing challenges facing contemporary society as well as offering opportunities to advance knowledge. To better understand the role of university interdisciplinary organizations (IDOs), the authors studied 18 IDOs at Stanford University in the USA. They propose that IDOs not only…

The purpose of this study was to understand how academic deans describe the competing logics influencing academic program development. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from eight participants employed as academic deans in mid-sized, private universities with a Basic Carnegie Classification as a Doctoral University. The study…

"Coupling" is a concept used within education, business, and organizational management literature. Its application to organizational management literature allows researchers to understand how organizations function. This article argues that coupling theory can be applied to advising systems' technical (practice) and authoritative…