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Like pro-bono service of law and other professional practices, micro-credentialing has become the quasi-charity project of the rapidly commodifying higher education (HE) sector. Produced with minimum waste and expense, qualifications through micro-credentialing economises time spent and optimises efforts. As a result, these bite-size educational offerings are becoming abundant and attractive to both learners and providers. While learners learn on the job or in the job market, providers get an opportunity to package knowledge and skills. Among a plethora of courses with potential overlapping and mismatched competencies, however, a clear pathway to target a career through pastures of micro-credentialing is yet to emerge. If not, it may result in another system of skill poverty and thus alienate the essential autonomy of credential seekers. Autonomy or self-tailoring your own package of micro-credentials (MC) without a proper wayfinding system could be overwhelming, sometimes even counterproductive, if competency management is based on a one-size-fits-all model. Via a local case, this chapter reviews current MC available to capacitate a career using Construction Management (CM) as a point of departure. It aims to develop a wayfinding framework or user-friendly menu for those wanting to craft a career via a micro-credentialing ecosystem. Broadly, it investigates navigating various MC offerings equivalent to undergraduate qualifications needed to become a CM professional recognised by accreditation bodies. In the process, it systematically discourses multiple ontologies of micro-credentialing in links, lapses, overlaps, and intersections among competencies to untangle complexities and optimise opportunities. It was hoped that learners could target a career instead of matching a job profile in the micro-credentialing universe.

This chapter presents results from initial studies on personal certifications of innovation management professionals, drawing from a Swedish context. The results capture motivations for, as well as effects from, the certification process. They are discussed from the perspective of how this is relevant for developing and enhancing innovation leadership competencies. Increased knowledge, enhanced professional communication, and strengthened self-confidence related to innovation management were identified as outcomes for individuals pursuing the certifications. Further, this laid the ground for increased visibility, expanded network, and thus more opportunities to influence innovation work. An overarching theme appearing in the study is how a certification can contribute to strengthening the legitimacy of working with innovation management, and thus serve as an enabler for innovation management practice and subsequently innovation leadership. Effects from the certification that may be beneficial for successful innovation leadership include the opportunity for practitioners to articulate their own experiences and competencies, in addition to improving the impact of their efforts utilising innovation terminology. For organisations, knowledge of personal certification can be used both for recruitment and for development of existing personnel and their innovation leadership. Through a longer perspective, it can also contribute to decreasing the dependence on a few specific individuals and instead strengthen the long-term organisational innovation capabilities.

The internationalisation of industries has spilled over to academia, whereby institutions of higher learning (IHL) increasingly compete in the graduate quality and applied graduate knowledge capabilities that they can offer. With increasing global competition for students, combined with the evolving need for lifelong learning in dynamic industries impacted by digital knowledge management, there is an opportunity for IHLs to be able to evolve to ensure their business models enable services and service delivery to cater to and help shape industry demands. This chapter will look at micro-credentialing (MC) and how the provision of MCs has changed along with the evolving IHL education environment. The demands of students, employers and ecosystem considerations will be addressed through a review of the current landscape, pathways to MC and how MC may be operationalised. The Bersteinian approach to pedagogic classification, which identifies the framework of knowledge as being communicable via three axes of singularism, regionalism and a wider generalist approach is referenced as a framework. The resultant recommendations that draw upon these foundations will conclude the chapter.

School-level leaders should not be expected to be mired in emotional turmoil and sacrifice their own health, happiness and well-being to do their jobs effectively. While the emotional aspects of school-level leadership have continued to evolve and become increasingly complex since the turn of the twenty-first century, the supports available to these individuals remain outdated, ineffective, and moribund. If mentoring, anonymous telephone support lines and other ‘old school’ approaches for supporting school leaders were still effective, they would not be struggling to deal with the emotional aspects of their work and workload. Further, there is a need to provide ‘just-in-time’ supports that are available to school-level leaders when concerns arise. Absent structural changes, isolated and individualized approaches to self-care cannot mitigate the challenges principals face or the physical, mental and emotional toll associated with their work and workload. Communal strategies and policy levers are recommended in an effort to go beyond mindfulness and other (potentially) individualistic and neoliberal approaches to self-care. This chapter also explores how principal preparation programmes and other formal professional learning opportunities are an untapped resource in terms of strengthening school-level leaders' emotional regulation capacity and building a general appreciation for the emotional aspects of school-level leadership.

This chapter examines early childhood pedagogy in Germany. It developed in the wake of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) education debate, and the expansion of higher education led to new types of application-oriented courses. For a long time, child day care in Germany was not seen as a subject of theoretical worth. Vocational training for kindergarten teachers, overwhelmingly employed in day care centers, has not yet been academized. The academic study of childhood pedagogy is a thereof separate project, taught especially at universities of applied science. Nevertheless, constructions of new disciplines are directed toward professional fields, for which they claim relevance with their academic training. With its focus on “Bildung” childhood pedagogy in Germany claims to offer a scientifically based solution to the practical problems of action in child day care. This chapter discusses the specific content of the curricula statistical figures of graduates at universities and in the fields of practice. It provides first empirical clarification on observable phenomena of a scientific “penetration” of cognitive rationality in kindergartens. It fosters an academic habitus that induces a distancing from direct interaction with children, leads to a diversification of tasks in day care centers, and promotes hierarchical processes of professional role differentiation in the field of childcare.

The focus of this chapter is on micro-credentials in higher education. In the current complex and fluid context, there is a demand for higher education providers to be able to respond with flexible and targeted provision of learning opportunities. Crafting micro-credentials, or disaggregating credentials, can be effective in reaching target audiences. For students, the availability of micro-credentials allows them to satisfy immediate learning needs. For industry, micro-credentials can provide elements of vocational training. On the other hand, it is a challenge to design micro-credentials that provide the cognitive perspective associated with higher education to ensure an appreciation of an associated body of knowledge or field of study. Further, education offered by universities and other higher education providers needs to have the potential to support the ongoing academic life of the institution, which is dependent on teaching being informed by research and current understandings in the field, and the research area being refreshed with talent with an appreciation of their field of study and associated bodies of knowledge. This, therefore, can be seen as something of an eco-system, which is dependent for its sustenance on learners acquiring more than fragments of knowledge or information. There are consequences for devising policies and procedures for the design, recognition, and provision of micro-credentials in higher education. Policies and procedures need to explicitly relate micro-credentials to the current and emerging understandings in an academic discipline or field of study. Academic standards that apply to offering credentials need to be maintained. Associated staff support and development is a requirement.

Universities must build curricula that prepare students for the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). However, given the pace of change, we cannot be certain of the attributes necessary to navigate the fourth industrial age (4IA). This chapter argues we can prepare graduates for this unknowable future through integrative, competence-based curricula, outlines how we conceptualize, design, teach and assess competence-based HE, and invest in those involved in teaching and learning at the University of Hull, UK.

To be competent is to have the necessary experience, knowledge and self-awareness to do something successfully. Competencies are “taught in practice and assessed in application” (Lawrence et al., 2020). Students learn by applying disciplinary knowledge to professional practice, where possible attending to live briefs or authentic teaching and assessment relevant to study, work and life. This has the potential to benefit the local region and students as they build educational, cultural and social capital.

To sustain the currency of competence-based HE, we work with the learning community (student sponsors, prospective, and current students, employers, and providers of voluntary and other services) in designing our programs of study. We facilitate mutual learning to design and deliver integrative curricula that are meaningful and relevant to all.

This chapter addresses the profession of research management and administration (RMA) in Portugal. It starts with a brief outline of the national research and innovation (R&I) ecosystem that contextualises the development of the profession. The RMA community is characterised and the expectations for the future of the RMA profession are summarised using data collected through a national online survey. It is posited that RMA in Portugal is an emergent career having developed key traits of a profession, namely common interests and practices, a concern with deepening specialised knowledge and skills, the existence of an organised network of practitioners, the offer of academic qualifications and training in the area, and the integration in international RMA communities of practice. Nevertheless, future developments in the European Research Area (ERA) are identified as a critical milestone that will influence the development and formal legislative institutionalisation of the RMA profession in Portugal.

Increased emphasis on offering quality education underscores the need for developing a rigorous process for assessing academic programs in higher education. In this chapter, we develop a practical and rigorous framework for comprehensive assessment of academic programs. This framework generates in-depth communication between the academic departments and the university administration. It provides a useful tool for advancing the university mission, setting priorities, allocating resources, and identifying future areas of potential growth. This data-driven framework covers a wide range of qualitative and quantitative variables. To ensure a smooth and efficient implementation of the assessment process we present the critical stages in the development of a successful program assessment framework − from determining the assessment criteria, establishing the organizational climate, appointing the assessment committee, preparing program self-studies, to collecting and analyzing data. We present real examples from the author’s home institution to illustrate and support the reader’s understanding of the framework.