Exploring young-level academic leadership: A thematic analysis of a MOOC discussion forum

Abstract

Higher education institutions around the world have been experiencing pressures resulting in substantial changes. In this transformative era, the successful functioning of the universities and maintaining their competitive advantage highly relies on the institutional level governance and the capacities of academic leaders at all levels. Despite some studies in senior and middle-level academic leadership, there is still a scarcity of research on the young-level academic leaders. Young-level academic leaders are those who play a decisive role in both practices of department and research group running and teaching and research to promote the development of a new turn of higher education. They also constitute an important part of academic leaders as they have excelled competencies in welcoming change, inspiring, being receptive to feedback, and setting stretch goals. However, they struggle to lead teaching programs, course coordination, and research projects in an era of the ever-increasing impact of neo-liberalism in a more competitive environment. Therefore, this paper is intended to fill the gap to study the concepts, competencies, and challenges of young academic leadership. Conducting qualitative content analysis to explore the perceptions about young academic leadership in a MOOC course discussion forum, this study explores young-level academic leadership through online discussion forums to uncover additional materials in comparison to traditional qualitative methodologies. This study also documents the perspectives of MOOC discussion users on three main issues: the concept of young-level academic leadership, competencies to be an effective leader, and the current challenges they encounter. Moreover, it can serve as a stepping-stone for designing the leadership framework used in academic leadership development programs.

Keywords

• Young-level academic leaders
• concept
• competencies
• challenges

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