Search results

In this study, the authors explored the situation of the doctoral candidate in the social sciences as they were confronted by crisis and forced to make changes to their dissertation research plans. The authors conceptualized this as a methodological pivot, or an unexpected shift in trajectory, in which candidates engaged and that culminated in new research plans.

Using situational analysis, a form of qualitative grounded theory, the authors conducted interviews and collected extant artifacts to understand the situations of the candidate engaged in the pivot. The analysis produced a situational map and a grounded theorizing. The authors also bound the analysis by a specific time period: the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA.

The grounded theorizing evidenced stages of pivoting, reflected as an internal process of grieving. Participants also endured external institutional impediments around programmatic support, funding and policy. Each internal and external situation exerted some degree of pressure on the candidate’s pivot. Technology and its impact on fieldwork, methodological assets and epistemological shifts mediated internal and external situations to produce the pivot.

This work is unique in that it expands on the field of study and practice that has emerged from the complexity of crisis in education, situated predominantly in lower to middle-income countries. In higher income countries, like the USA, educational institutions remain unprepared for crisis. This work underscores this paucity. The authors also build on the literature that addresses the challenges graduate learners face with support and its implications for persistence.

While the possibility of a university fostering sustainable development is present in the extant literature and policy documents, the idea still warrants further consideration. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the nature and outcomes of the university’s engagement with Indigenous communities and perceptions of Indigenous knowledge systems in both academic and non-academic activities, and what might be required to foster the university’s contributions towards sustainable development.

A qualitative case study of the only public university in The Gambia was conducted, including non-university actors. Interviews and focus group discussion methods were used, and these enabled close collaboration between researchers and participants, and the latter were empowered to describe their perceptions of reality.

Three major sets of findings emerged from the analysis of the transcripts from interviews and focus group discussions with the university and community members. These are the limited nature of and outcomes from university–community engagement, the sustainable outcomes of Indigenous practices and ideas for Indigenising university engagement for sustainable development.

Particular implications of the study that underpins this paper can be underscored; these include: a contribution to the literature on ways of connecting Indigenous communities with universities, and to a conceptualisation of the Indigenised university; a provision of insights into the connectivity between university community engagement, Indigenous knowledge systems and sustainable development; the creation of a context for subsequent studies on practical steps that universities might take in the direction of epistemic justice and sustainable development for all; and heightening the intractability of theoretical and philosophical issues of epistemology, knowledge ecology and epistemological justice, as they reveal themselves in practice, in complex situations.

Matters of the university reaching out to Indigenous peoples have yet to find their way into conceptualisations of the university for sustainable development. This paper addresses this gap in the existing literature by advancing possibilities for the Indigenised university for sustainable development to emerge.

This chapter grapples with questions of agency in the development of African higher education, with a special focus on the Association of African Universities (AAU), an organization outside of formal education policymaking on the continent. Through the lens of rhetorical institutionalism, findings illustrate how the AAU has adopted and adapted competing institutional logics to exert influence over development policymaking. Next, I will discuss how systems of persuasion were cultivated and symbols employed to establish the legitimacy of the organization in a heterogeneous institutional field that includes universities, development agencies, nongovernmental organizations, supranational arrangements, and the influence of international financial institutions. This enabled the AAU to extend institutional logics into African higher education. This case study seeks to upend the pervasive crisis narrative that perpetuates both the impotence of African institutions and the stewardship of outside development elites. Finally this chapter considers the implications of this critical case study for development discourse and practice.

Higher education institutions around the world have increasingly come to see information and communication technology (ICT) as vital to the business of teaching and learning. Institutions invest a considerable amount of time and resources to erecting the appropriate institutional infrastructure, creating policy and practice, instituting strategy, training faculty, and building the capacity of technology staff. However, in under-resourced regions of the world, such as Africa, ICT, the availability and use of, has several challenges to overcome: a lack of institutional infrastructure, sufficient bandwidth, and limited capacity to employ ICT in the research process or the classroom. Universities report inadequate funding, poor management and infrastructure, resistance to change, inadequate training, and high costs associated with effective ICT use. Moreover, critiques of Western technopositivism surface misgivings related to the performance outcomes and appropriateness of ICT adoption in Africa. In this chapter, the author will explore the work of international organizations and regional and national research and education networks in the diffusion of ICT discourse, consider on-the-ground adoptions and innovation at universities in Nigeria, and reflect on the suitability and sustainability of technology adoption, all within an ICT for development (ICT4D) framework that lenses the evolution of technological applications in higher education. This chapter is significant in that it connects African higher education to ICT4D and frames the various discourses, policy landscapes and practice arenas, as they relate to international actors, continental initiatives, networks, universities, and faculty.

WHAT WAS DESCRIBED as a “new‐look” Library Association Council, the first constituted under the scheme of reorganisation, met last month at Chaucer House. There were many new faces, especially from the ranks of the university and special libraries, and it was a happy thought on somebody's part to have a roll‐call, so that old and new members could be introduced to one another. The reorganisation of the Association was still not signed and sealed by the Privy Council, but members were informed that approval was imminent, subject to a minor alteration in the audit arrangements. This alteration was speedily accepted by Council and the Privy Council's final approval has now been given.