Professors as Academic Leaders
Expectations, Enacted Professionalism and Evolving Roles
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:22nd Aug '19
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Draws on cutting-edge research to consider the purpose of professors and explores the changing nature of professorship.
What is the role of a professor? How does someone achieve professorial status? What do non-professorial colleagues think about professors? How do professors themselves perceive their roles? What are the bases of these perceptions, and what are their implications for the professoriate’s evolving role both within the neoliberal university, and in the approaching post-neoliberal era?
Professors as Academic Leaders draws on a wealth of data not only to explore what it is to be a professor but also to consider how professors are perceived by others. Linda Evans presents the findings from four studies, with a combined data base of over 2,400 questionnaire responses and over 90 interview transcripts, and discusses their implications for the future development of the UK-based professoriate and academic leadership in higher education. She analyses the concepts of leadership and of professionalism, and illustrates how, in trying to meet people’s expectations of them, professors’ ‘enacted’, professionalism is shaped by the professionalism that others demand of them. Professorship is revealed to be demanding, at times stressful and morale-sapping, and at times exhilarating and rewarding. Linda Evans questions whether universities are making best use of their most senior academics, and proposes ways of refashioning professorship.
This is a worthwhile read for faculty and administrators. Administrators and their governing boards who read this book will further gain a fresh perspective on the impact of their policies. Evans’s book may be of particular interest for those who research job-related attitudes and leadership. * Academy of Management Learning & Education *
A marvellous piece of work. Linda Evans’ meticulous scholarship and elegant analysis gives us the definitive authority on what it means to become, to be and to do work as a professor in the 21st-century university. * Rob Cuthbert, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England, UK and Managing Partner, Practical Academics *
In a period of intense change and flux within higher education the need for academic leaders has never been greater. In this context, Linda Evans' Professors as Academic Leaders provides a novel and magisterial account of the changing roles and expectations that professors are increasingly expected to fulfil. What marks this book out is its precision and positivity. While not denying the existence of critical challenges, Evans focuses on the opportunities for the academy to shape the agenda and to reinvigorate scholarship.... Every academic needs to read this book. * Matthew Flinders, Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre, University of Sheffield, UK *
ISBN: 9781350126626
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 417g
296 pages