Aligning Academic Activities: Implications for Teaching and Research in a New Zealand Institute of Technology

Abstract

A problem situation that is at the heart of a New Zealand higher education institute applying for university status is meeting the requirement for sufficient academic staff with postgraduate qualifications. For this particular New Zealand higher education institute that was originally a teaching institution offering only sub-degree qualifications, the move to firstly offering degrees and secondly seeking university status has meant that employment conditions have shifted for many academics. In order to explore the multiple world views on the impact to the whole system of a significant number of staff upgrading qualifications whilst engaged in full-time teaching at the same time, views were sought from senior executives, heads of schools, human resource personnel and staff engaged in their own postgraduate study. Multiple conceptual models have been utilised to gain an understanding of this problem situation: Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland and Scholes, 1990Scholes, , 1999 in both its original and its current form; complexity theory (McKenna, 1999;Merry, 1995;Stacey, 1996) and context-dependent cluster model (CDCM) (Fielden and London, 2001). These multiple conceptual models have all contributed to providing a basis upon which to compare multiple-perceived worlds with appropriate conceptual models upon which to base a future action plan.Outcomes discussed are both positive and negative factors including: recognition, time, stress, employment contracts, senior staff expectations, family, collegial and institutional support and the integration of own study with teaching practice and content. Implications for alignment across institutional organisational levels and also for higher education outside of the university sector are also discussed.

Características de la Enseñanza Eficaz en Educación Superior: modalidad presencial vs virtual

“…En la Tabla 7 se observa la información referente a los factores relacionados a la enseñanza eficaz en la modalidad presencial. En el Factor externo fueron: financiamiento institucional que apoyan la labor docente (Capano y Pritoni, 2019;Fielden y Malcom, 2005;Serbati et al, 2020) y la infraestructura que tiene la institución (Chakraborty y Biswas, 2019;Rueda-Beltrán et al, 2019;Serbati et al, 2020), así como el nivel de satisfacción del estudiante con el curso y el docente (Fuentes et al, 2016). En el Factor organizacional se identificaron: la carga de trabajo del curso (Mardikyan y Badur, 2011), y las acciones de todos los involucrados en el proceso educativo (Carrasco et al, 2016).…”

Identities of research-active academics in new universities: towards a complete academic profession cross-cutting different worlds of practice

“…These imply challenges for university managers in strategically aligning a university's practices with its research mission, and scaffolding academics' contributions to the development of emerging practices (cf. Fielden and Malcolm 2005).…”

The dichotomy that faces nursing tutorial staff

“…In fact one is led to believe that confidence in the abilities of these staff to undertake any level of research is seriously lacking. In a review of the literature summarised by Fielder & Malcolm (2005) it was stated that there was a common agreement across all sectors of academia that time pressures were a major factor when staff engaged in postgraduate study [5]. They identified time release from teaching duties was important for engagement in research.…”

“…This is not assisted by the lack of institutional support for professional development in this area. It is stated that perceptions of value were associated strongly with the support and time release to undertake research activity given by an institution employing the staff member [5]. With the current drive in the New Zealand tertiary sector, driven by Government and implemented by direction of the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), it would take a bold employer to reduce the staff/student ratio to allow this to happen.…”