The article aims at investigating Italian academics' Public Engagement highlighting its two dimensions, namely "Local Community Engagement" (LCE) and "General Political Engagement" (GPE). It is based on the results of a national survey on academics' third mission activities carried out in the year 2015/2016 collecting…

The problem of gender disparity in computer science and engineering has persisted despite longstanding efforts made in higher education. This study drew data from ten female computer science and engineering faculty in China and Italy to demonstrate the gender-specific challenges they face. The researcher applied positioning theory to analyse…

The article analyses the effect of gender in professors' career advancement using data on the entire population of professors in the Italian university system, data on the National Scientific Qualification (NSQ) accreditation scheme, and data on scientific productivity (SciVal) for bibliometric scientific sectors. As NSQ accreditation is a…

Adult learners globally face a multitude of challenges in learning and obtaining educational degrees. This can be due to a variety of reasons including academic stress, as well as additional responsibilities with managing families, childcare, household duties, careers, and jobs. Different cultures may face unique barriers in education; however,…

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were several women in Italy, who gave pedagogy a new impulse. Among those women, two educationalists, Maria Montessori and Giuseppina Pizzigoni introduced new visions of the school by designing strategies that overcame the barriers to education. The first, with the structuring of a method, arose in Rome…

Lectures prevail as a ubiquitous teaching and learning method across universities worldwide. Whereas lectures have been conceptualized from language-centred perspectives, lectures' materiality as linked to their socio-cultural and historical meanings have been scarcely explored. To address this gap, we tackle the materiality of communication in…

This contribution explores how different policy discourses produce site-specific representations and self-representations of gender and leadership, which may reveal forms of subjectivation as well as spaces of resistance to hegemonic discourses. I will consider two different Higher Education policy systems: the UK system that since the 1980s has…

Italy opened the doors of its universities to female students in 1875. The general view was that very few women were clever enough to obtain a degree, so they would not threaten social stability. Female professors would be even rarer -- a few exceptional "male" women. Access to the professions was impossible in the case of the legal…

The underrepresentation of women in academe has been the focus of both academic literature and European policy-makers. However, albeit the number of female scientists has increased, true gender equality has yet to be achieved. When examining the reasons for this, we have to consider the interconnection between the expectations surrounding gender…

In the labour market women's jobs have frequently been conceptually and literally tied to housework and hence thought of as unskilled and therefore undervalued. Although academic institutions have undergone changes, the fact that women still carry the main responsibility for domestic and caring tasks continues to follow them into the academic work…

This article investigates whether the memories of women's movements that grew out of the Italian Resistance to the Nazi-Fascist Regime during the Second World War have left any legacy to women teachers in early childhood education. The article focuses on the case of internationally renowned and high-quality schools for young children, the…

Essays include: gentlemen and players, the changing British professoriate (Gareth Williams); the robed baron, the academic profession in the Italian university (Guido Martinotti, Alberto Giasanti); the changing role of the Japanese professor (William K. Cummings, Ikuo Amano); academic staff and academic drift in Australian colleges of advanced…

Women make up less than 29% of Italian university faculty and researchers, even less at the highest positions. An imbalance in female student enrollments and graduation rates in scientific disciplines suggests a need to focus recruitment in specific fields, especially engineering and agriculture. (SK)

This article describes the results of a workshop that was held in Valencia during the annual conference of SEFI in 2004. The authors give remarks on the results supported by relevant and recent research. In the workshop, where about 35 participants were present, the following questions were discussed and answered: Which factors indicate that an…