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The work of academics has intensified, but the focus for most remains on teaching, research and contribution to service. Institutional imperatives and positioning within universities impact significantly on how individual academics fashion themselves to fit with expectations and demands. There is, of course, no simple version of scholarly identity and Barnett (2000) called attention to the ‘super complexity’ of academic work some time ago. ‘Scholarly’ has been deliberately used in the title of this chapter, even though ‘academic’ is also used throughout. The purpose here is to draw attention to – and avoid – the binary that Stuart Hall notes: Academic work is inherently conservative in as much as it seeks, first, to fulfill the relatively narrow and policed goals and interests of a given discipline or profession and, second, to fulfill the increasingly corporatized mission of higher education; intellectual work, in contrast is relentlessly critical, self-critical, and potentially revolutionary for it aims to critique, change, and even destroy institutions, disciplines and professions that rationalize exploitation, inequality and injustice. (reported in Olsen & Worsham, 2003, p. 13)

This book was written across a period of intense turmoil and change in higher education in Australia and England. We are deeply unsettled by these changes and wish to open up the discussion about what it means to be an academic and engage in academic work in the 21st century. Accordingly, each of the authors has nominated a theme or lens through which to examine the changes, tensions and uncertainties that have erupted in higher education. Thus, we offer this book as a constellation of ideas that traverse a number of aspects of our work and identities as academics. The overlap between these ideas is deliberate so that the multiple and complex challenges that underpin the higher education landscape can be examined.

A range of educational reforms were implemented in the 1980s and 1990s. These reforms were underpinned by a fundamental assumption that education, in a similar way to any other service, can be traded as a commodity in the marketplace. This chapter identifies the shifting priorities of the state and explores the impacts of these educational reforms on the teaching profession. It traces the emergence of new forms of schools and schooling that are ostensibly part of the ongoing privatization of public education. Conclusions on future directions for both schools and the education of teachers are offered.

Purpose – Health information technology (HIT) has been lauded as a foundation upon which the development of an integral solution to cost and quality problems facing many nations is predicated. Countries throughout the world have taken differing approaches in their efforts to advance that foundation through policy, financial, and cultural systems that come to support or hinder adoption. As we explore potential opportunities to learn from the experience of others, we pause to consider the environmental, regulatory, financial, and social dynamics that define the US context.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter outlines the framework for a comparative approach through four dimensions – environmental, regulation, financial, and social – through which comparative HIT studies should be explored.

Findings – With such markedly different contexts in which their HIT is embedded, it is important to not simply look at other countries as a yardstick upon which we compare our failures and successes. Rather, we must look critically at these examples understanding that the dynamics at play in each context have created opportunities and obligations that have come to define each country's implementation.

Originality/value – The need for a common framework through which scholars can explore comparative HIT systems, while remaining grounded in the US context is an important aspect of effective knowledge translation in adoption.

Thailand’s modernization and shift to a wage labor economy has led to increases in children’s educational attainment. This research, in two rural northern Thai villages, explores globalizing labor markets, traditional familial roles, and parental bias of educational investment by children’s gender and birth position, using a human behavioral ecology (HBE) framework. Survival models suggest that northern Thailand’s matrilineal tendencies may be increasing, not decreasing, with globalization: daughters bearing long-term expectations of support and remittance are more heavily invested in than sons, from whom matrilines expect and receive less. Birth position strongly affects educational attainment, reflecting differential familial helper and provider roles.

Although part of the United Kingdom, Scotland has its own distinctive education and schooling system, with university-based teacher education preparing teachers for an all-graduate profession. Through the establishment, in 1965, of the General Teaching Council (GTC) as the regulatory body for the teaching profession in Scotland, the General Teaching Council of Scotland became one of the first teaching councils in the world. In the twenty-first century, there have been two major reform programs impacting the teaching profession: A Teaching Profession for the 21st Century in 2001 and Teaching Scotland's Future in 2011. Currently, there is a major reform program underway arising from the recommendations of a further review looking at aspects of education reform and structural and functional change of key national agencies (the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Education Scotland). The reform program will have a number of implications for teacher education. These developments are explored in this chapter which situates them in the wider context of teacher education reform globally and current challenges such as recruitment downturns and retention issues, strengthening research on teacher education and the pressures of increasing accountability.

The purpose of this chapter is to consider a doctoral dividend in regard to leading, learning and researching.

Our methodology is to analyse the chapters here presented and argue for key findings of the doctorate as an educational dividend. The doctorate yields a distinctive dividend in three important ways. First, it provides a strategic approach to purposes, processes and practices embedded in professional learning that is required for a profession committed to self-improving education systems to provide high quality learning opportunities for students in their local and globalized contexts culturally, economically and politically. Second, because it provides a valuable contribution to the knowledge economy and role models the discovery approach to knowledge generation. Third, it enables the profession to develop the knowledge, skills and experience required to engage with what counts for evidence when making decisions.

The profession can share these ways of thinking and doing with all stakeholders in communities of practice which move beyond students and staff within education systems.

The social implications are that the doctorate enables capacity building for professional, organizational and participant learning communities and networks, thus creating new and effective directions for knowledge creation, transformative learning and an understanding of quality in a local, national and international context.

In this chapter the authors explore what it means to be an inclusive school leader through a discourse that focuses on “out of the box” approaches in preparing future school leaders to push the envelope of inclusive leadership practice. The purpose of this chapter is to (a) define inclusive education and leadership; (b) describe prevailing theoretical frameworks for leadership in inclusive education and build on emerging theories of inclusive psychology and inclusive pedagogy; (c) identify promising practices for leadership in inclusive education; (d) identify emerging understandings of leadership roles in inclusive education; and (e) suggest recommendations for policy, practice, and leadership preparation. In both the USA and the UK, contrasting and polarizing discourses that focus leaders’ attention on attainment and performance for pupils and appear to compete with the leadership role in including (i.e., effectively educating) those students who are known to have achievement gaps (e.g., those with disabilities). Alternative perspectives are offered that frame leadership for inclusive education in terms of broader concepts such as “leadership for learning.”

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

This concluding chapter not only summarises the key discussions and arguments of the preceding chapters but also reflects on organisational, managerial, supervisory, behavioural, social and cultural factors shaping the miners’ reactions to the restructured and formalised deep-level mining work processes and their unofficial job tactic of making a plan (planisa). The chapter provides suggestions on how the positive aspects of planisa could be harnessed and negative aspects addressed towards efficient, productive and safer organisational, managerial, supervisory and operational practices at the rock-face down the mine.