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Although universities have been decentralized for academic freedom and autonomy, resources are being increasingly centralized, and the role of central administration is growing for efficiency and excellence reasons. At the same time, a division of labor is progressing by assigning specific tasks to professionals. The professionals are also centrally managed. Educational development was introduced by central administration to cope with the massification and quality assurance of higher education. Although it played a great part in promoting educational reform, it also suffered from the rejection of academics and the lack of methodology. Unlike ITC service and student service, educational development touches the autonomy of academics and is always torn between the central administration and academics. This chapter analyzes the structural and cultural difficulty of educational development in Japan by tracing its historical development and by comparing to other countries.

This study focused on unpacking the instructional coaching process, addressing key questions about what happens during a coaching session and what coaching elements predict teacher outcomes.

Using coaching observational data, the research examined critical coaching processes described in the literature: coaching practices (observation, feedback, reflective discussion and planning), the coach–teacher relationship, coaching strategies and coaching duration. The study also developed a path model documenting how coaching behaviors predicted teacher instruction.

Results showed that the coach talked more than the teacher and that most coaching time was spent in reflective discussion. The coach–teacher relationship was promoted by building rapport and reciprocal trust, with use of “we” language demonstrating that coach and teacher were working as a partnership. Most common coaching strategies were clarifying and the coach prompting the teacher to attend to teacher or student behaviors. Path model analysis showed that (a) the coach–teacher relationship quality predicted the level of teacher engagement in coaching and their instructional reflection and (b) the quality of coaching strategies predicted the overall quality of the classroom instruction.

The study provides empirical evidence about the active ingredients of coaching – those underlying processes that impact and improve teacher practice.

Universities and their actions affect the environment directly and significantly. Therefore, the carbon footprint (CF) needs to be implemented in these institutions for mitigating climate change and its potential risks. Based on this understanding, the university consortium quality and environment (QualEnv) stands out by its main objective – to increase the university's contribution to sustainable development (SD) through the deployment of systematic environmental practices and quality processes. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to present the CF of the Latin American universities of the QualEnv consortium.

The study was based on the actions for adopting CF and its implementation at the universities that take part in the QualEnv consortium. The measurement process and report presentation were done properly by the universities and published as institutional documents. Therefore, data were collected and analyzed through a document search, systematic literature review and participant observation.

The results show knowledge deepening and systematization on CF in higher education. In addition, it presents the effort of a group of universities that, through a research network, seek to adopt practices towards a carbon-neutral university, which requires an incremental and systematic change to break out of the traditional system.

This paper discusses the practical implications for universities and the need to implement initiatives for measuring and reducing their CF since it shows how the institutions belonging to QualEnv consortium have created their own strategies to mitigate climate change and contribute to SD.

Digital transformation continues to rapidly progress in higher education globally, spanning all aspects of higher education operations, values and culture. Despite expanding literature, guidance remains focussed on emergency application during pandemic lockdowns and/or on single organisational case studies. Digital transformation frameworks that move beyond these foci are heavily criticised for being commercially contextualised (outside of higher education) and are often too narrowly conceptualised. The purpose of this paper is to review the most common framework currently used in the UK, which takes a strategic and organisational perspective on digital transformation.

This is a technical review article that summarises key guidance for organisational digital capability and then reflects on its application in the UK (a developed economy and higher education system) and in Vietnam (one of the fastest-growing economies with a developing higher education committed to digital transformation) as an initial attempt to explore its applicability beyond the UK context. Vietnam has been chosen as a reference context, given its significant current digital transformation policy reform at the national level and as a collaboration partner with the UK in its digital transformation.

The guidance highlights six core areas to consider for digital capability: information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, content and information, research and innovation, communication, learning, teaching and assessment and organisational digital culture. Although the framework is normative, findings suggest it is sufficiently open-ended to enable its users to determine practical steps to drive digital transformation. However, complementary tools are suggested to deal with the rapidly developing digital transformation policy context of Vietnam.

This is the first time a review has been conducted from the perspective of different countries, with a view to supporting leaders, managers and policymakers in the UK, Vietnam and other Association of South Eastern Nations (ASEAN) networks in their own digital transformation transitions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which a sample of US-based higher education institution’s (HEI’s) climate targets and associated climate action planning efforts align with the definitions of and practices associated with science-based targets (SBTs) that are typically used to organize corporate climate efforts. This analysis will be used to explore similarities and tease out differences between how US-based HEIs and corporations approach sustainable target setting and organize sustainable action.

The degree of intersection between a sample of HEI climate action plans from Ivy Plus (Ivy+) schools and the current SBT initiative (SBTi) general corporate protocol was assessed by using an objective-oriented evaluative approach.

While there were some areas of overlap between HEI’s climate action planning and SBTi’s general corporate protocol – for instance, the setting of both short- and long-term targets and large-scale investments in renewable energy – significant areas of difference in sampled HEIs included scant quantitative Scope 3 targets, the use offsets to meet short-term targets and a low absolute annual reduction of Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

This paper unites diverse areas of literature on SBTs, corporate sustainability target setting and sustainability in higher education. It provides an overview of the potential benefits and disadvantages of HEIs adopting SBTs and provides recommendations for the development of sector-specific SBTi guidelines.