Ane Turner Johnson

Performing and defying gender: An exploration of the lived experiences of women higher education administrators in sub-Saharan Africa

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the life and career paths of women higher education administrators in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the study sought to interpret the women’s experiences and identities, through the framework of intersectionality and gender performance, as ones that contributed to advancement within contexts traditionally barred to women. This research illustrates commonalities among the participants, elucidating the faith, family, and education as common constructs in their experiences and as mechanisms that propelled career trajectories. A major finding of the research is that the participants both preformed gender and defied it through the enactment of gender norms and personal agency, creating a threshold for their professional achievement in highly gendered cultures and institutions.

Universities, dependency and the market: innovative lessons from Kenya

Higher education in developing nations is typically viewed from a dependency perspective – institutions are seen as merely recipients of Western knowledge, aid and reform efforts. Nevertheless, universities in both the centre and the periphery are dealing with tensions between protecting the public good and embracing neoliberal values based on a market approach to higher education. In the USA and Europe these competing interests are typically cast as mutually exclusive. Our study on the market approach to higher education in Kenya, however, suggests that public and private interests can be complementary, contributing to a re-envisioning of the traditional mission of higher education. This article seeks to examine more fully the nature of reform efforts at two universities in Kenya, to elucidate lessons for universities undergoing market-oriented reform in the West and to suggest a reciprocal relationship between institutions in Africa and Europe, upending the centre-periphery paradigm.

A Part But Apart: Discursive Explorations of the University as Contested Space in Kenya

Despite increasing interest in education and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about how universities and their constituents experience and make meaning of violence. This paper sought to capture university participants’ sense of belongingness and attachment to the university space resulting from experiences with ethnic conflict in Western Kenya. This paper uses discourse analysis to elicit linguistic constructions of context, contestation, and identity. Three discourses emerged from interview transcripts when treated as text: the regulation of identities, being a part but apart, and campus as contested space. These discourses are characterized by descriptions of perceptions and symbolic norms, belongingness and non-belongingness, and place-work strategies employed by community constituents, both within and without the university. The findings have important implications for understanding the politicization of identity and place in times of conflict.

Entrepreneurial Orientation in Public Schools: The View from New Jersey

We utilize a sample of New Jersey schools to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and school performance. The results indicate a significant relationship between several dimensions of EO and performance after controlling for a number of relevant variables. Charter schools were found to have higher EO than traditional schools. The implications of these findings for education and entrepreneurship research are discussed.

Perspective Transformation in the Supplemental Instruction (SI) Leader

This qualitative case study explores how former Supplemental Instruction (SI) leaders experienced perspective transformation as a result of serving in a peer leadership role at a 4-year, private university through a blended theoretical framework based on the principles set forth by Mezirow and Nohl. Through their participation in interviews and graphic elicitations, former SI leaders offered valuable insights concerning the transformative nature of student leadership and its impact on the emerging sense of self in social and learning contexts. This study also assists in filling the void in research on how undergraduate students benefit by serving in a leadership role within a peer-facilitated academic assistance program in higher education.

University Infrastructures for Peace in Africa: The Transformative Potential of Higher Education in Conflict Contexts

The purpose of this article is to consider how higher education responds to conflict on campus and in the community. Moving beyond the victim/perpetrator paradigm prevalent in the literature on education in conflict contexts toward the transformative capacity of education, this research suggests that public universities may develop mechanisms that orient the institution toward capacity and consensus building—constructs associated with infrastructures for peace. Findings from comparative case studies conducted in Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya at two public universities demonstrate that both intentional and indirect policies were cultivated to contend with and possibly transform the conditions for localized conflict and begin to theorize university infrastructures for peace.