Croatian academics’ attitudes on the importance of academic profession competencies

Abstract

Academic profession is faced with changes and challenges in social environment that occur in the global area of higher education. These challenges call for (re)defining the existing and introducing new competencies for performing everyday academic duties. The research findings presented in this paper, attempt to answer the research question What are the competencies academics need at the start of their senior academic career? The research was conducted on a sample of 1130 academics of all academic positions from seven public universities in Croatia. The online survey examined the attitudes about how important each competency is to successfully perform the role of a senior academic as well as their assessment of the mastery of each competency. The evaluation scale contained 41 items - academic profession competencies. This paper will present the results of the rankings on the scale evaluating the importance of academic profession competencies and corresponding discussion about new research questions that has been opened. Some of these questions are related to discussions on approaches to acquiring new and/or redefining existing competencies of the academic profession and systems of support for acquiring and redefining academic profession’ competencies.

Keywords

• Academic profession,Academic profession competencies,(Senior) Academics

Kaynakça

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