Shaping the Future of Higher Education: Positive and Sustainable Frameworks for Navigating Constant Change
About this ebook
Shaping the Future of Higher Education generates knowledge to enable researchers, teachers and leadership in higher education to learn how to positively embrace constant change through innovative, collaborative, systemic, critical and creative thinking and action. Through a participatory and transformative paradigm, it strives to create knowledge to enable everyone involved in higher education to move from talking about change to actioning it. The book presents possible structures and processes for learning, teaching, research, community engagement and leadership. It provides pathways to shape a higher education system that is inclusive and student-centred, that promotes knowledge democracy, and is responsive to and relevant for dealing with pressing social issues as they arise.
The contributing authors of this book are internationally renowned researchers with years of experience in their respective roles in higher education. Their ideas will benefit all who are involved in, concerned about, and/or actively promote most effective higher education practices.
About the author
Lesley Wood is an experienced action researcher of international repute. She has developed and conducted action research training for professional, organisational, and community development in different contexts. She is the founder Director of the research entity Community-Based Educational Research, at North-West University, and has been awarded several national and international funds for her projects. She is a National Research Foundation rated researcher. In 2014, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Moravian University in the US for her work in action research. She was inducted into the Academy of Science South Africa and the international Academy of Community-Engaged Scholarship in 2021. She has published over 100 articles, book chapters, and books, and has supervised many doctoral students. Her latest books include Participatory action learning and action research: Theory, process and practice (2020), Action learning and action research: Genres and approaches (2019), edited with Prof Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt, and Community-based research with vulnerable populations: Ethical, inclusive and sustainable frameworks for knowledge generation (2022).
Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt is an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, Australia; Pro Chancellor, Global University for Lifelong Learning (GULL), USA; Extraordinary Professor at North-West University, South Africa; and Honorary Citizen of the University of Innsbruck (Austria). She has four doctoral degrees: two PhDs in Australia (from the University of Queensland in Comparative Literature & Translation Science and from Deakin University in Higher Education), a Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in Management Education (IMCA, UK), and an Honorary Doctorate (D. Hon) in Professional Studies (GULL, USA). Ortrun has published widely and has received several national and internationally funded grants for her projects, and has held various honorary research and teaching appointments at international institutions at various times. Her career highlights are (1) her Festschrift, titled Lifelong action learning and action research: A tribute to the life and pioneering work of Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt, edited by Kearney and Todhunter (2015), and (2) the award in 2018 of Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO), in recognition for ‘Distinguished service to tertiary education in the field of action research and learning as an academic, author and mentor, and to professional bodies’.
