Joakim Caspersen

Novice teachers and how they cope

Teachers often describe their first teaching job following graduation as a shocking experience. This description raises several questions: Do novice teachers actually have a lower level of coping than experienced teachers? Are there factors in the work environment that make coping difficult for all teachers at a school? This paper compares the ability of novice and experienced teachers to cope with their work, and how this ability is affected by the level of collegial and superior support and collaboration offered. Although we find few differences between novice and experienced teachers’ coping level, these two groups of teachers do differ in terms of the levels of collegial and superior support and collaboration. In addition to receiving a lower level of professional support from their superiors, novice teachers generally lack ways to articulate their own needs to colleagues. The ability of novice teachers to cope with their work should be considered a collective responsibility in schools rather than the fate of the individual teacher. This paper is based on observations, interviews and survey data from Norwegian schools.

Learning outcomes across disciplines and professions: measurement and interpretation

Learning outcomes of higher education are a quality tool in a changing higher education landscape but cannot be seen as neutral measures across professions and disciplines. Survey results from graduates and recent graduates indicate that prevailing measures of learning outcomes yield the same result within and across disciplinary and professional divides. The main interpretation is that learning outcomes must be seen as a valid construct but that the results are highly dependent on the profession and discipline in a way that cannot be reduced to differences in learning outcomes only; measurements of learning outcomes must also be interpreted as mirroring different knowledge structures and knowledge bases in different professions and disciplines. Thus, attempts to make neutral comparisons of learning outcomes between different professions and disciplines are vulnerable to measuring only the differences in knowledge structures.

Institutional Governance Structures

A great deal of effort has been undertaken to structure and organize higher education institutions in line with national policies, often inspired by international policy shifts. The influence of these policy shifts has been interpreted in several ways, with two dominant arguments prevailing (see, for example, Amaral, Jones and Karseth, 2002; Amaral, Meek and Larsen, 2003; Amaral et al., 2009; Huisman, 2009; Paradeise et al., 2009). On the one hand, studies focus on the similarities of the reforms and their similar influence on higher education institutions. On the other hand, national path dependencies and reform trajectories are emphasized. To provide an update on the influence of reforms on higher education institutions, a global literature review is presented. The review examines one key feature of higher education reforms: the changes in institutional governance structures.

Managing Learning Outcomes

It is probably uncontroversial to say that the last few decades have witnessed an increasing interest in leadership in higher education. The interest has been spurn by policy changes in higher education and public administration in general that have changed higher education governance profoundly. The general observation is that leadership in higher education has shifted from old modes of leadership based in academic and collegial values to new modes of governance increasingly based in social responsibleness and managerialism (consult for example Bleiklie, 2005; Shattock, 2002).

Managing mergers – governancing institutional integration

Despite striking similarities, the adoption and implementation of policy shifts regarding higher education governance vary considerably across the globe, suggesting a mixed picture of diversification and isomorphism both within and across national higher education systems. By unpacking one particular structural reform process, this paper focuses on mergers as both a governance tool and a governance result in higher education. The paper analyzes the strategic decisions taken by Norwegian higher education institutions during 2014 in the light of a proposed national reform to merge institutions in order to enhance quality in higher education. The empirical basis of the paper consists of analyses of the commissioned self-evaluations of the higher education institutions, and the strategic choices and dilemmas they expressed. The process can be seen as organizational engineering in the sense that it emerges from the selfevaluation process, but is also subject to governancing on the part of the ministry.

The relationship among learning outcome measures used in higher education

ABSTRACT Although grades are still considered important signifiers of graduates’ quality, greater attention has been paid to other measures of learning outcomes in higher education. This shift in attention is attributed to an increased focus on study quality, employability, quality development and accountability. This article examines how grades relate to different measures of self-reported learning outcomes in engineering, health programmes and education programmes. Longitudinal data from national surveys in Norway are analysed in combination with data from public registers. Self-reported learning outcomes are related to student engagement and factors indicative of effective educational practices, while grades are related more to student background characteristics. Self-reported learning outcomes therefore measure individual gain or value added, using the personal starting point as a reference In this regard, this paper argues that it is important to critically discuss what kind of measures should be used as learning outcomes.