Monday Session II
10:45-12:15 | Room: Al Khayma Monday Session II: 10:45-12:15 Room: Al Khayma Higher Education Session Chair: Grant Cooper 34103
10:45-11:15 | Room: Al Khayma
Challenges of a Scientist Within the Intellectual Leadership in Higher Education Vilma Zydziunaite, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania Vaida Jurgile, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania Ilona Tandzegolskiene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
The intellectual leadership is the scope of challenging processes regarding developing, designing, creating, defining, ensuring, critiquing, teaching, instructing, researching, mentoring, enabling questioning, generating, envisioning, advocating, encouraging, re-imagining, managing, representing, counseling, achieving, evaluating, acting, providing. The aim: to describe how scientists describe the experience of challenges through the intellectual leadership in higher education. The research question: “What are the challenges of scientist’s intellectual leadership in higher education?” The Constructivist Grounded theory (Charmaz, 2011, 2012, 2014) was applied in the study. The qualitative data were analyzed by implementing initial, focused, axial and theoretical coding according to Charmaz (2012, 2014). The sample consisted of 39 scientists from 10 higher education schools of Lithuania. The theoretical sampling was applied to choose the research participants. Findings: Scientists meet challenges in their activities within higher education. This experience includes the following aspects: unmet expectations, isolation of science and practice, developing a research activity for the reward, running down the scientist’s potential, overshadowing scientific work by pedagogical activities, hindering scientific activities by work overload, lacking financial resources, lacking motivation for cooperation among academicians, avoiding timely fulfilment of responsibilities, maintaining reputation of international research teams, and losing the mission of the science by serving the employer. Conclusions: For scientists the intellectual leadership covers the wide range of aspects in association to their roles at the university and/or college. The general components of experienced challenges within the intellectual leadership in higher education refer to ideas, values, understandings, solutions, beliefs, visions, knowledge, approaches, purposes and actions. 33967
11:15-11:45 | Room: Al Khayma
Access to Higher Education: Does Distance Impact Students' Intentions to Attend University? Grant Cooper, RMIT University, Australia
The purpose of this study was to investigate if net of other factors, distance was a predictor of students' intentions to study at university. The Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth (LSAY) data indicated that geographical location in Australia significantly predicts students’ intentions to attend university. Provincial students were significantly less likely to report intent to study at university when compared to metropolitan students. Moreover, remote students were even less significantly likely to report an intention to go to university as students in the metro category. As distance increases, the likelihood of students reporting intent to study at university decreases. Students from regional and rural Australia face a number of barriers preventing them from accessing higher education. Increased access to higher education in regional and rural Australia is one component of a multi-faceted approach to tackling the barriers that commonly impact students’ participation. 34102
11:45-12:15 | Room: Al Khayma
Self-Identity of a Scientist with the Role of Intellectual Leader in Higher Education Vilma Zydziunaite, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania Vaida Jurgile, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
The intellectual leadership is a process in which new forms of knowledge are generated contextually (Stevenson, 2012). The aim: to describe how scientists construct their self-identity with the role of intellectual leader in higher education. The research question: “What aspects are associated with the scientist’s intellectual leadership in higher education?” The Constructivist Grounded theory (Charmaz, 2011, 2012, 2014) as the methodology and method was applied in the study. The qualitative data were analyzed by implementing initial, focused, axial and theoretical coding according to Charmaz (2012, 2014). The sample consisted of 39 scientists from 10 higher education schools of Lithuania. The theoretical sampling was applied to choose the research participants for the research study. Findings revealed that self-identity of a scientist within the role of intellectual leader in higher education is acknowledged through the following aspects: respect of peers; participation in discussions about science policy; combining the expert judgment and generating the innovative ideas; discovering personal “I” in the higher education school; contributing to the development of researchers and students; learning through cooperation; searching for meaning in research performance; performing everyday-routine work; experiencing the limitlessness of intellectual effect. Conclusions: Self-identity of a scientist is emerging through performance of particular roles, which provoke a sense of discipline ownership. Then the implemented research means something special and personal for the scientist. When the scientist undertakes ownership of his/her academic work, s/he is more committed and intrinsically motivated or more engaged with the role performance of the intellectual leader at a higher education school.
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