This thesis investigated the application of transformational leadership (TL) in the higher education (HE) research supervision context, with a specific focus on mechanisms underpinning leader effectiveness. In Chapter 1, the concept of TL is introduced, and the current research in HE briefly reviewed. The chapter highlights the suitability of the context for study in TL, and the need for research with a focus on mechanisms. In Chapter 2 the issue of contextually valid measurement is addressed. In a two-phase study (N = 389), the measurement properties of the Differentiated Transformational Leadership Inventory were explored using conventional confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and bi-factor models. Traditional CFA confirmed the eight-factor structure of the scale in the supervision context, while bi-factor models revealed a dominant general TL factor. Consequently, an abbreviated global scale was developed using the factor analyses and confirmed using multi-level CFA. In Chapter 3, two studies examined the role of several variables as mediators of the TL-performance relationship. Mediation analysis in Study 1 (N = 155) showed mixed support for the hypothesis that transformational leadership would positively impact grade performance via its influence on leader-member exchange, needs satisfaction and engagement, sequentially. A second study (N = 139) incorporating a time lag between leadership and LMX showed more positive support for the proposed indirect effects. Findings suggest that LMX, need satisfaction and engagement are important mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of TL. Chapter 4 examined the role of students’ implicit theories of ability as an alternative mechanism. A rationale is proposed whereby transformational supervisors may develop incremental beliefs of ability in their students that subsequently enable them to cope more effectively with setbacks. A sample of 421 PhD students completed an online questionnaire measuring TL, their implicit beliefs of ability in their PhD, and their coping styles. Mediation analyses provided some support for the hypotheses, demonstrating an indirect effect of transformational leadership on approach coping via students’ entity beliefs. Finally, in Chapter 5 the theoretical and applied implications of the thesis findings are discussed in relation to existing research. Overall, the findings of the thesis emphasise the applicability of transformational leadership to the HE supervision context, having demonstrated its direct and indirect relationship with key student outcomes including grade performance. Furthermore, the results provide insight into the mechanisms of transformational leader effectiveness that may aid practitioners in their own supervision practices. Finally, the thesis presents two new scales for the measurement of transformational leadership in the HE context for use by practitioners and researchers alike.

This research began in 2008 (the year of the first MOOC) with the aim of increasing understanding of the diversity and complexity of participants’ learning experiences in connectivist, massive, open, online learning environments (cMOOCs). Through their ‘massiveness’ and openness these MOOCs have the potential to influence traditional conventions of teaching and learning in Higher Education institutions by placing learners in new, uncertain and unpredictable environments. I have published 21 peer-reviewed works that have been cited by many other researchers in the field. These works contribute to an understanding of the theory and practice of MOOC pedagogy, individual participants’ learning experiences in MOOCs and the roles of teachers in facilitating these experiences. This has led to the development of a multi-dimensional framework (known as ‘Footprints of Emergence’), which takes a holistic approach to reflecting on and evaluating open learning. This unique framework, has been used in the UK, Europe, the USA and Canada to explore the design of open learning environments and to elicit and make explicit tacit understandings of individual learning experiences, positioning such experiences on a spectrum between prescribed and emergent learning. My work has been collaborative, open and emergent. The research has drawn on social learning theory and connectivism to conduct empirical research into MOOCs. The research findings highlight the diversity of participants in MOOCs and their vulnerability to imbalances of power relations, which can lead to isolation and exclusion, particularly in the absence of sound ethical teaching and learning practices. This is significant because MOOCs can be experienced as liminal spaces in which participants can have transformational learning experiences. I propose that a new perspective on the balance between structure and agency to support these transformational experiences is required. The Footprints of Emergence framework is suggested as a useful tool for determining what an appropriate balance might be. This research has implications for the methods used for investigating learning experiences in cMOOCs, the design of these MOOCs and the changing roles of teachers, learners and researchers in these environments. The research suggests that innovative methods and frameworks are needed for cMOOC research, that the design of cMOOCs should take greater account of the complexity of open environments, that new responsibilities are required of teachers and that a fresh perspective is needed on the ethics of teaching and learning in MOOCs.

Distance-education technology has moved towards multimedia-oriented systems which allow an effective synergy of synchronous and asynchronous interaction. Virtual classrooms have become more and more popular, providing a multi-media context for synchronous teaching and learning at universities world-wide. This dissertation investigates the impact of cultural background on teaching and learning in synchronous virtual classrooms from the perspective of teachers at universities. Nineteen interviews were carried out via Skype with 17 teachers from five different countries. A phenomenological approach was used for the data analysis to find the “essence” of the experience of using a virtual classroom for synchronous online conferencing. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: Culture and its effects, Technology, and Pedagogy. Within these themes, the participants explained their views of the various aspects that define culture, explained their own cultural backgrounds and reported their experiences of stereotyping, gender-related issues, using a webcam and recording in their virtual classroom teaching. Furthermore, the effects of technology in relation to teaching in multi-cultural virtual classes were addressed. Finally, the pedagogical impact of teaching in a virtual classroom with students from diverse cultural backgrounds was analysed. The results show that there were two layers of cultural impact arising from the teachers´ and the students´ cultural background. The first one was the obvious existence of different cultures and what the teachers experienced consciously. This included awareness of adjusted didactics when teaching in a virtual classroom with diverse students. However, there was a second level, which revealed that the teachers were showing behaviours related to the theories of white ignorance (Mills, 2007), double-consciousness (Du Bois, 1994) and even panopticism (Foucault, 1977) without being aware of it. Thus, the desired concept of multiculturalism (Richeson & Nussbaum, 2004) in virtual classroom teaching was not exercised. However, it was concluded that a virtual classroom can be used as a safe environment for students and teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds if the teachers are aware of their own presence (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000), their cultural background and which effects their belonging to a “dominant” culture will have on their own behaviour and that of their students. If managed carefully, the virtual classroom offers a mixture of tools that can be used appropriately for creating interactivity and constructing knowledge with diverse participants; e.g., text chat can be used as a discussion tool for students who are too shy to speak into a microphone. Future studies are recommended to investigate the perception of students from various cultural backgrounds, as the research presented in this thesis focused solely on teachers´ experiences.

Change in higher education has been researched at a variety of levels, from international policy to the response of the individual, but the academic department has received little attention as the focus. Deploying social practice theory underpinned by a critical realist ontology, this thesis reports a single-site ethnographic study into the factors which scaffold and inhibit change within a science department in a research-intensive university as a consequence of the implementation of a management initiative. The exemplar change programme described is Athena SWAN, which seeks to provide a framework to improve the working environment, especially for women. Multiple methods, including survey and interview, are used to explore the competences, materials and meanings germane to change in the instantiated practice. Perspectives from different staff groups are reported using an organisational model. This study explores the limitations of current models and suggests alternatives for the investigation of instantiations of given practices. This report demonstrates that effective change can be better scaffolded by the integration of practices across the department, paying due attention to the needs and perceptions of different staff groups, the impact of external environmental pressures and rate of change with time. An alternative model for conceptualising competing practices with apparently contradictory goals is offered as a means to articulate tensions and promote collaboration between practices and enhance opportunities for effective organisational change.

The dominant discourse concerned with the impact of being a mother on a woman’s professional career usually draws upon the language of limitations, constraints and glass ceilings. Motherhood is usually considered to inhibit a woman's career progression because women are distracted between separate spheres of activity; they spread time away from being an employee to include being a primary carer. Those working in the teaching profession are not immune to this constructed way of being and are also ill-defined in terms of their professional identity. Motherhood, however, is an enabling experience and shares a purposeful intent common with that of teaching; motherhood is an experience teaching can learn from rather than it disabling professional progression and development. Drawing upon phenomenological understandings of knowledge development and survey and interview methods of data collection from teacher educators working in a University's School of Education, findings from this enquiry indicate women considered their professional identity to have been influenced and enhanced by the experience of motherhood. Understandings of a teacher educator's professional identity were expressed in terms of relational, empathetic and value-led practice, which were expressions of their own personalities informed by motherhood. Whilst priorities had shifted as a result of becoming a mother, findings indicated teacher educators considered themselves to have become more reflexive and adaptable as a consequence of being a mother. Implications of this enquiry call for continuing professional development and return to work programmes to engage women in a dialogue about how motherhood benefits their professional identity and is an experience that should be celebrated in terms of career development rather than being accepted as a professional limitation.

The need for universities to connect with local communities and to make research relevant to the public has been highlighted over recent years through the debate about public engagement. While public engagement has been accepted as an idea by academia and justified by funding and assessment bodies, its effective implementation is still in its infancy for most universities around the world. At the same time, the Internet and its applications have made it possible for universities and academics to engage with the public in an easier and more effective way. The objective of this doctoral work is to study the use of online technologies by academics and the public in order to engage with each other, or in other words, online public engagement. Three surveys were conducted as part of this thesis, each of them looking at a different perspective on the topic under examination. The first survey, which used the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Uses & Gratifications Theory, focused on the use of online technologies for academic engagement, taking into consideration both users and non-users of online technologies. The second survey used the same research framework as the first, but it focused on why academics may be interested in using online technologies for engaging with the public. The final survey, which used the extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, focused on the public and more specifically on the factors that affect the public’s intention to engage with academics via online technologies. Structural Equation Modelling was used in all the three cases for the data analysis. Results suggest that although academics seem to use online technologies for both academic and public engagement, the latter use probably takes the form of a one-way communication as the most influential factors of attitude when it comes to engaging with the public are image and information seeking rather than networking. Similarly, the public seems to have a rather passive role in the public engagement process as the most important factor of their intentions to engage with academia online is habit. The thesis’s theoretical implications stem not only from the fact that it contributes to the knowledge about public engagement, but also from testing two relatively new IT adoption theories, namely Decomposed TPB and UTAUT2, in a new context. As far as the practical implications are concerned, universities and funding bodies can use the results in order to plan and launch more effective public engagement campaigns, while providers of online platforms that are interested in attracting users from academia can form more direct marketing approaches.

This thesis critically examines universities as cultural producers within the creative ecologies of their cities, with a focus on the occasions when they produce cultural events for the public. It is a context-specific and empirical study that examines events at three individual universities in major UK cities. It takes as its starting point the range of third mission, or engagement activities through which universities form links with the local cultural sector and to the wider community and considers how the university, a relatively permanent institution that constitutes the major element of the UK higher education landscape, provides a set of conditions and a site for a temporally bounded cultural formation, a festival. Festivals have not been extensively researched in this particular context and the understanding gained about the processes, structures and human networks through which they are designed, developed and delivered constitutes an original contribution of the PhD. Festival programmes are different to other types of public cultural programmes that are offered to the public on a year-round basis. Although it presents itself as a single phenomenon, the festival is actually a kind of meta-text, or an assemblage of texts and discourses. Festivals offer a spatially and temporally bounded public platform or ‘pop-up third place’ where university activities are externalised and made available for public exhibition and consumption. These dimensions create a discursive formation around the production of such festivals which are investigated using qualitative methods. The thesis is interested in understanding the effects of contemporary and political discourses on higher education and on what is produced, with regard to how the effects are mediated through the distinctiveness of individual places. It takes a theoretically informed look at how changes within the wider political economy of higher education have affected the way in which UK universities are managed, how they report to Government and what they produce. It argues that although the production of festivals is advocated under the ‘public engagement with research’ agenda, the festivals studied reveal a changing political culture within Higher Education.

This longitudinal qualitative study focuses on how four self-financed Chinese undergraduate students coped with their academic learning in a UK university. While there has been abundant literature on the academic difficulties and learning strategies of Chinese international students in English-speaking countries, mostly of it treats Chinese students as a cultural group, following a ‘large culture’ view. By contrast, this research aims to explore the factors that contribute to the variations among individuals during the dynamic interactions between their individual, cultural and educational elements, which represents a ‘small culture’ view. Based on the data collected mainly through semi-structured interviews and class observations, triangulated by academic transcripts and teacher feedback, the thesis presents each case through ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973). With reference to the existing research into culture, mindset, goal and self-efficacy theory, as well as academic coping and approaches to learning, this exploratory study contributes to the current literature in a number of specific ways. It is the first study to associate international students’ learning with their mindsets and self-efficacy. It identifies that Chinese students’ social goals can be both a source of motivation and pressure. Social goals can motivate students with a growth mindset to maintain their academic self-efficacy and adopt adaptive coping strategies, leading to positive learning outcomes. By contrast, social goals may pressurise those holding a fixed mindset to adopt maladaptive coping, in particular, problem-avoidance coping strategies, and in extreme cases, academic cheating, which further results in their dissatisfaction and disintegration. The research provides new insights into the impact of mindsets on Chinese students’ achievement goals, mediated by their specific cultural experience and the new learning environment. There appears to be a more complex relationship than the existing work on mindsets would lead us to believe between students’ mindsets and their learning outcomes. For these Chinese students at least, a growth mindset provides the necessary condition for learning goals to take place, but it may not be always sufficient. This seems to contradict the previous literature that a growth mindset is associated with learning goals. Similarly, while a fixed mindset can lead to a performance goal, which also confirms the existing literature. However, the study also finds that a surface learning approach does not always coincide with a fixed mindset. The teaching and learning environment may mediate the relationships between mindsets and learning behaviour. Students’ cultural values and beliefs, and their predominant mindsets formed during their socialisations may continue to influence their academic coping in the UK. However, these are also fluid constructs, which means that students are liable to change in a new learning environment. What is needed is to reach increase the understanding of the cultures of learning between UK universities and Chinese students to reduce the discrepancies between them. Chinese students’ tendency to believe in effort as a route to success (a growth mindset) can be an asset for UK educators to build on. Early interventions to help Chinese students to explore and develop a range of learning strategies to increase academic self-efficacy and to integrate them into a multi-cultural learning community are likely to increase their opportunities to make positive changes towards an enjoyable learning journey.

This thesis is a study of the challenges of managing an international branch campus (IBC) of a UK university. Branch or satellite campuses are not a new phenomenon. Within the UK, the Universities of Leicester, Nottingham and Southampton all began as university colleges of the University of London, teaching a prescribed curriculum and acting as an examination centre for the University of London. Ironically perhaps, over a century after London provided higher education to the provinces, at least 13 provincial universities currently operate branch campuses in the capital, including Glasgow Caledonian University and the Universities of Liverpool, Cumbria, South Wales and Ulster (Quality Assurance Agency 2014). Internationally, the University of Ceylon (now separated into the Universities of Colombo, Peradeniya, Vidyodaya and Kelaniya) was also set up as an international college of the University of London. After World War II, a number of Commonwealth university colleges of the University of London were established under the ‘scheme of special relationships’. These colleges offered University of London degrees and were provided with academic support to develop their systems and procedures so that they could eventually become independent. The group of Commonwealth colleges in the special relationship included the predecessors of today’s Universities of Ibadan, Nairobi, West Indies and Zimbabwe (Harte 1986). The current wave of IBCs is, however, different from the university colleges of yesteryear in two important respects. First, today’s IBCs are the private initiatives of UK universities, rather than part of a wider development policy agenda driven by the UK or a foreign colonial government. Second, the IBCs are privately owned, either wholly or jointly by the UK universities, rather than being public institutions set up by a government. This is reflected in the titles of the new IBCs which either position them as an extension of the UK university (eg, University of Reading Malaysia, University of Middlesex Dubai) or highlight the nature of the educational partnership (eg, International University of Malaya Wales, Xi’an Jaiotong Liverpool University). The common thread connecting today’s IBCs to the past is that they follow the historical 8 convention of teaching curricula designed in the UK and awarding the degrees of the home university. The 21st century version of the IBC is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the conclusion of the ‘Uruguay Round’ of trade talks and the establishment of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in 1995, non-tariff barriers effectively precluded trade in educational services in most markets. The oldest ‘modern’ IBC is the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, which was set up in 2000. Most of the UK’s IBC’s have been established only in the last ten years and a number ─ for example, the University of Reading Malaysia and Heriot-Watt University Malaysia ─ are still in their infancy. Building and operating an IBC represents a ‘brave new frontier’ for UK universities and this thesis sheds important light on the challenges involved. The international strategy literature provides a valuable conceptual framework within which to organise these challenges. The globalisation of business is far more advanced than that of higher education and the management models much better understood. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have developed sophisticated techniques for managing extensive networks of overseas subsidiaries and have dedicated functional departments to oversee the movement of labour, goods, services and capital across national borders. A fundamental challenge for MNCs is to determine how much to localise their product or service to meet the needs of each national market. Universities face the same dilemma with their IBCs. Should they be ‘clones’ of the home campus, providing an educational experience which is identical to that on the home campus? Or should they localise the curriculum and pedagogy to adapt to the learning styles and context of the host market? Unlike MNCs, however, UK universities are not huge corporations with HR and finance departments accustomed to dealing with transfer pricing, international tax issues and managing internationally mobile staff. They are stolid, UK-based organisations with a public sector ethos and a tradition of being managed by academics, rather than professional career managers. They are characterised by arcane governance structures, internal politics and glacial decision-making. More than half the UK universities (ie, 9 the former polytechnics and colleges of higher education) have been independent of local government control for less than 25 years and many still operate on the basis of employment contracts and working practices from this era. The scale of the IBCs relative to their UK campuses is, moreover, generally so small that the organisational ‘centre of gravity’ is overwhelmingly the UK-based operation. A second difference between MNCs’ subsidiaries and IBCs is that, despite the advent of GATS, higher education remains a highly regulated sector. UK universities are subject to oversight by the national Higher Education Funding Councils, the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). When they establish IBCs which provide UK degrees, the IBCs are subject to the same scrutiny by the QAA. At the same time, IBCs are regulated by the equivalent bodies in the host country, either arms-length organisations like the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) or the host Ministry of Education. Governments in many countries subsidise higher education, either indirectly by providing students with grants or loans to contribute towards tuition costs or directly by subsidising universities or operating them as part of the public sector. To control the cost to the taxpayer, they often impose enrolment caps; to meet public good objectives, governments may use a range of levers from moral suasion to purpose-specific grants to steer universities to admit students from underrepresented backgrounds or undertake research in particular areas. At the very least, IBCs must compete with subsidised, regulated local universities, but often they themselves are subject to the same regulation and control. Because of these two important differences between MNCs and universities, the focus of this study is on the challenges of managing an IBC as perceived by the IBC managers. While there is a well-developed literature on principal-agent theory, much of the international strategy literature on localisation approaches the problem from an organisational perspective; that is, it couches the challenge to the MNC as an entity of determining the optimal degree of localisation. In the case of an IBC, the senior management of the home university may similarly take a view, in principle, of the optimal degree of localisation of the curriculum. But because the management systems of a UK university are so underdeveloped in terms of controlling a small IBC thousands of kilometres away, and because there are other equally powerful stakeholders in the 10 host country involved, it is the IBC manager in situ who has to balance these competing demands. This study uses critical realism as the conceptual framework. This is because IBC managers are operating in the context of hard objective, external facts (government regulations, enrolment targets, financial budgets), but they nevertheless have to construct their own understanding of their objectives within the context of the wider social structures and power relations. For IBC managers, they are working in an alien culture where they may not speak the local language or fully comprehend the social norms and conventions. They have to work out what they think are the agendas of the host government, their joint venture partner and their competitors and what they believe their students want. They also have to interpret the home university’s objectives, which may be vague or ambiguous given the differing objectives of the most senior leaders (eg, the pro vice-chancellor teaching and learning is likely to take a different view from the chief financial officer about the objectives of the IBC) and the shifting political alliances in the senior management team. / Using semi-structured interviews with IBC managers, mostly in their own offices at the IBC, this thesis finds that the managers feel pressure to localise the staff base, the curriculum (broadly defined to embrace content, pedagogy and assessment) and research. This pressure emanates from five main clusters of stakeholders: the home university, the joint venture partner, the host country (government, regulators and employers), competitors and students.

This thesis explores how, Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is being influenced by the globalising influences of the Tertiary Education and Training (TET) market and the associated national organisational changes in Botswana. Botswana achieved its independence in 1966 and was once one of the poorest countries in the world. However, since the discovery of diamonds, Botswana has risen into an upper middle-income country with one of the highest investments per GDP in the world in education and training. Government Technical Colleges (GTCs) have been equally supported with heavy investment in modernising, equipping and expanding facilities to the highest first world standards which have virtually doubled the available student capacity since 2000. In 2000, a new full-time qualification, the Botswana Technical Education Programme (BTEP) was launched to enable more young people to access TVET. Botswana has always been committed to privatisation in the belief that it is more efficient and effective than governmental bureaucracies. For this reason Botswana University and a number of higher education colleges were established as parastatal institutions from their inception. To further liberalise tertiary education and training (TET) and increase opportunities for youth, private universities and colleges were encouraged to establish themselves in Botswana with the attraction of access to the government Grant/Loan Scheme (GLS) in 2007. The GLS pays institutional fees and provides a living allowance grant/loan to students. GTCs were only recognised as secondary education and training institutions despite offering certificate and diploma qualifications similar to some of the tertiary institutes. This initially widened the academic/vocational divide and excluded GTC students from accessing the GLS and the status that this provided. This situation was exposed in 2007 as BTEP students began to leave GTCs to enrol with the new private tertiary institutions, in a desire to obtain the GLS. Government ministers became concerned, having declared their commitment to operating GTCs at full capacity and so in 2010 included all BTEP students under the GLS. A number of the existing GTCs are now planned to become tertiary parastatal institutions believing this will enable them to compete more fairly within the educational tertiary market. The researcher uses an intensive case study methodology to explore the issues and challenges impacting Botswana GTCs at this time of radical educational change. Within the government ministries, there remains confusion over craft/artisan and technician qualifications. A conflict of interest between various government ministry departments is identified, and this is likely to prevent some of the planned rationalisation to reduce duplication of provision. Implementation of change appears to be much harder to achieve than agreeing the principles of policy reform. The research concludes by exploring what might be done to enable the BTEP qualification to play a greater contributory role in achieving Botswana’s vision of an educated and high skill/ knowledge based economy.