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In this chapter, we contribute to ongoing discussions surrounding decolonising research and teaching in higher education by considering the place of language and linguistic diversity within this decolonising turn. The question we explore is how academic researchers and lecturers can recognise and respect that a move to decolonise will involve engaging with epistemologies expressed in different languages and expressed from diverse worldviews. We take inspiration from the work of linguistic citizenship researchers who make explicit the links between knowledge systems, languages and issues of equality/inequality. In linguistic citizenship, research connections are made between the everyday practice of translanguaging, moving between different linguistic repertoires by multilingual speakers, and transknowledging or the fluid movement between differing systems of knowing. To explore the potential of using the concepts of translanguaging and transknowledging as tools in the task of decolonising higher education research and practice, we discuss in depth two published research studies for critical reflection.

This performance autoethnography may or may not be interpreted as a continuation of a conversation regarding the experiences of those with devalued statuses in academic settings. The authors rely on “strange accounting” to consider their experiences in the academy from various standpoints: before and after promotion, before and after leaving academia. While reflecting on our past experiences, we introduce the concept of “everyday precariousness” as a way of explaining the normalization of instability, insecurity, and negative affect that is part of everyday life for those with devalued statuses in academic settings and beyond. Everyday precariousness is an embodied experience for those in vulnerable positions. Normalized exposure to risks, such as discrimination, harassment, bullying, or structural instability, produces an undercurrent of threat that permeates academic culture. Our stories of everyday precariousness span race, ethnicity, class, academic roles, and gender boundaries (among many others). Analyzing these experiences furthers previous work on the uses of strange accounting as well as the dynamics of status silencing. In the final analysis, unresisted and unabated, everyday precariousness and status silencing can lead to institutional failure and resonance disasters.

This chapter discusses the process of initiating and developing an open and ongoing conversation about values within a doctoral community in an education research center located within a British university. To do this, the authors first articulate the local and institutional context of this specific doctoral community and the intersections of values declared by the host institution and the specific research center.

This chapter then moves on to describing the process of building an open conversation with postgraduate researchers (PGRs) and staff supporting them. This open conversation questions and explores the institutionally stated values, starting from collaboratively negotiated guiding questions and prompts. The discussion of responses to those prompts, obtained through an anonymous online platform, grounds then a discussion of how values can become relevant and rooted in everyday experience for PGRs. The authors, as a collective, use the concept of “boundaries,” emerged in the conversations themselves but also relevant in academic literature, as a linking concept for the discussion of the responses.

The discussion then concludes by articulating the broader impact of the engagement in these conversations about values within and beyond the boundaries of the host institution and argues for the importance of such ongoing conversations as fundamental elements of fostering value-based communities and cultures in higher education contexts.

This chapter employs the shared leadership model in exploring how leaders of higher education institutions (HEIs) can partner with Public Policy Groups (PPGs) within the Global South, a region characterized by complex challenges such as underdeveloped economies, corrupt leadership, limited financial and human resources, and political instability in some cases. The driving forces for collaboration include interconnected national policies, shared goals, responsibility, and accountability for resources. The Zambian Higher Education Policy (HE policy) draws on national, regional, and global aspirations for education and skills development, making it a suitable tool for advancing a common agenda for social, economic, and environmental sustainability. HEIs can use their collective leadership competencies to understand the multidimensional context in which they must exercise their varied roles. HEIs require relational and dynamic processes, practices, and narratives to negotiate the ups and downs of the complex terrain for sustainable development and drive a more transformative and complementary agenda for change.

Business graduates’ enterprising capability augments their work readiness, transforming them into professionals capable of driving successful outcomes. At the core lie self-confidence and negotiating competence. However, embedding enterprise education and developing assessments to evidence learning is challenging. This study aims to offer a blueprint for establishing enterprise learning in the classroom and investigating the effectiveness of cultivating negotiating competence and self-confidence.

Modelled on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, students engage in in-class and real-life negotiations, assessing self-confidence using a scale founded in Bandura’s self-efficacy theory. Open-ended reflections are also submitted. Quantitative data is analysed through multiple linear regression, while quantitative and qualitative data triangulation substantiates enterprise learning in negotiating competence and self-confidence.

Students’ reflections show that low self-confidence poses an initial barrier in negotiations, overcome with successive engagements. Quantitative analysis uncovers response-shift biases, with female and male students overestimating initial self-confidence levels. The gender and difference score type interaction reveals a more pronounced bias among female students starting from a lower baseline than male students, implying a more substantial self-confidence improvement for female students. These findings challenge traditional assumptions about gender differences in negotiations and emphasize the need for nuanced perspectives.

Enterprising capability is pivotal for business professionals. This study highlights the advancement of negotiating competence and self-confidence. It contributes uniquely to the development of enterprise education pedagogy. Focusing on nuanced gender differences challenges prevailing assumptions, providing a perspective to the discourse on negotiating competence and self-confidence in management training.

The French higher education system has experienced reforms since the 2000s that gradually emphasized the executive power of universities and the centralization of decision-making. This culminated with the excellence initiatives (Idex) that concentrated 7.7 billion euros on only nine institutions to create “world-class” universities and made their leaders responsible for the local allocation of this substantial endowment. The universities’ executives had four years to complete changes in governance in order to see their institution permanently awarded the title and the funding of Idex. The hiring process is one of the elements that this policy impacted the most within these universities, enabling leaders to create new kinds of positions and control the hiring process. However, by looking at the hiring practices within three different Idex, we will show that collegiality did not disappear but rather it evolved: in the three cases, the closest colleagues have been marginalized but decision-making remained collective and in the hands of academics chosen by the university executives. Variations in the intensity of this evolution could be observed according to two dimensions. First, the scientific reputation of the university: the higher it is, the less collegiality is transformed. Second, the level of external pressures: the less collegial universities have relaxed their hiring practices after the evaluation that permanently granted them the label of Idex.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education in the UK focuses on maintaining, enhancing and standardising the quality of higher education. Of significant impact are the development of subject benchmark statements (SBS) by the QAA, which describe the type and content of study along with the academic standards expected of graduates in specific disciplines. Prior to 2022, the QAA did not have a SBS to which higher education policing programmes could be directly aligned.

Over 12-months, a SBS advisory group with representatives from higher education across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, The College of Policing, QAA, Police Federation of England and Wales and policing, worked in partnership to harness their collective professional experience and knowledge to create the first UK SBS for policing. Post publication of the SBS, permission was sought and granted from both the College of Policing and QAA for members of the advisory group to reflect in an article on their experiences of collaborating and working in partnership to achieve the SBS.

There is great importance of creating a shared vision and mutual trust, developed through open facilitated discussions, with representatives championing their cause and developing a collaborative and partnership approach to completing the SBS.

A collaborative and partnership approach is essential in developing and recognising the academic discipline of policing. This necessarily requires the joint development of initiatives, one of which is the coming together of higher education institutions, PSRBs and practitioner groups to collaborate and design QAA benchmark statements.

The SBS advisory group has further driven forward the emergence of policing as a recognised academic discipline to benefit multiple stakeholders.

The SBS for policing is the first across the UK. The authors experiences can be used to assist others in their developments of similar subject specific benchmarking or academic quality standards.

The built environment is a complex sector that demands coordination and cooperation of stakeholders. Construction projects from the complex sector require skills, services, and integration of major disciplines in the built environment. Sustainability of the major disciplines' standards regarding the appropriateness of the built environment tertiary education cannot be over-emphasised in Nigeria. Studies concerning Nigeria's built environment programmes accreditation (BEPA) in the 21st-century education system are scarce. Thus, the study investigated the relevance and perceived factors hindering Nigeria's BEPA in the 21st-century education system. Also, the study proffered measures to improve Nigerian built environment tertiary education accreditation ranking.

Data were sourced from elite virtual interviews across Nigeria. The interviewees were knowledgeable about Nigeria's built environment programmes accreditation, and many of them have been directly or indirectly involved. The investigators utilised a thematic analysis for the collated data and enhanced it with secondary sources.

The study revealed that several Nigerian academia in the built environment lack fame in research, publication, and citations due to barriers in their workplace. It has hindered their global institution's accreditation and ranking standards. Findings identified inadequate basic infrastructure, obsolete curricula, lack of research novelty, lack of higher education institutions funding, inadequate staffing and lax upskilling and reskilling, and unethical practices “systematic corruption” as major factors hindering BEPA. Also, findings proffered measures to improve Nigeria's BEPA global ranking.

The study is limited to the perceived barriers and measures to improve BEPA in the 21st-century in Nigeria via semi-structured virtual interviews. Future study is needed to validate the findings as highlighted in the thematic network.

The paper confirms that the BEPA requires innovative and multidisciplinary measures to improve the global ranking of these programmes and, by extension, the higher education institutions ranking globally. The paper would stir major stakeholders and advance the built environment programmes quality accreditation regarding international best practices and maintain the minimum standards.

The paper comprehensively analyses the perceived factors and proffered measures to improve Nigeria's BEPA in the 21st-century via a thematic network. The outcome intends to improve the global ranking and stir stakeholders to reposition and showcase Nigeria's built environment programmes to the world.

Women who are the primary caretaker of the home, as a choice or as a necessity, have to negotiate an effective work-life balance and many times, the need to take care of their home results in lost opportunities for career development and advancement (Maki, 2015). For most, the opportunity to capitalize on the missed opportunities will occur after childbearing years (Maki, 2015). This study reconstructed the advancement to executive leadership of women who were employed at four-year, public universities using narrative inquiry and guided by the conceptual framework of social cognitive theory (Andrews, Squire, & Tamboukou, 2013; Bandura, 1989). In this study, six women in higher education were interviewed to discuss work-life balance as it pertains to being an executive leader of a four-year public institution. The participants of this study pinpointed family and work-life balance as important factors for their decision-making process. Balancing work and life can be challenging when you are a person in a leadership position and the degree of difficulty increases when children and family are included. Many women believe that they must choose between their careers and their family. Women postponing their careers for their spouses may not seem abnormal because there tends to be an expectation that male's advancement is prioritized over the woman's (Parker, 2015). As more women are taking on leadership roles, the idea and evolution of establishing and maintaining a strategy for work-life balance becomes a very integral topic and one that needs continuous exploration.