Post COVID: The Way Forward

#### **Chapter 18**

## Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program during the COVID-19 Pandemic

*Julie Willems, Cathy Haigh, Marianne Tare, Margaret Simmons, David Reser, Adelle McArdle and Shane Bullock*

#### **Abstract**

What can be learned through teaching and learning in crises, such as bushfires, floods, and the global COVID-19 disruption? How can insights gained be applied to prepare for inevitable future disruption to normal operation, especially in regions identified to be prone to natural hazards? In 2021, focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with academics, clinical tutors, and professional staff members to explore staff perceptions in a regional medical school in eastern Victoria, Australia, about their experiences of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Strategies are suggested to sustain teaching in times of crisis or natural disaster to future-proof against inevitable change including protocols, policy, staff checklists, and staff continuing professional development.

**Keywords:** sustainability, teaching and learning in disasters, staff voice, preparedness, qualitative research

#### **1. Introduction**

A social constructivist approach to research seeks to understand the effects of a range of discourses operating within society—events, realities, meanings, and experiences—on the perceived reality [1]. Qualitative approaches to uncover these connections share the goal of seeking to understand lived experience [2]. Teaching through a global pandemic provides a salient opportunity to explore the lived experiences of staff involved in persevering with the delivery of tertiary learning opportunities during a time of rapid change [3, 4].

In response to the pandemic and to contain the spread of COVID-19, many countries around the world temporarily closed educational facilities [5]. In Australia, the duration and extent of restrictions that impacted education varied across the nation [6], with Victoria experiencing some of the longest restrictions. Medical education was similarly

impacted, with the sudden cessation of in-person classes and clinical placements. COVID-19 necessitated many changes to teaching and learning in higher education. In our study, adaptations to teaching delivery are needed to accommodate the location of students across Australia and the world and in different time zones. A large study of medical students in the United Kingdom showed that students spent significantly more time using online learning platforms during the pandemic and appreciated the flexibility that online learning offered [7]. However, barriers to using online teaching modalities included poor internet connection and family distraction [7].

The sudden lockdown of educational facilities necessitated rapid transition to online teaching. Under normal circumstances, transition to online delivery is met with barriers that delay the development and implementation of the quality online learning environment in medical education [8]. The nature of the barriers was duly amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic due to factors such as isolation from the campus, lack of infrastructure in the home office, and absences of key support staff due to illness.

Online learning and flipped classroom strategies were implemented to continue curriculum delivery of medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic [9]. In medical education, restricted access to the clinical context precipitated a move to simulation-based learning environments. Simulations were also presented in the virtual context. Virtual clinical placements support the continuation of clinical teaching and the development of student competencies and confidence [10].

A study was undertaken in 2021 to explore the perceptions of staff working in a regional medical school about their experiences of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The geographical region in which the research occurred is known for its emergency and disaster profile, including floods and fires [11]. The rationale was to explore strategies implemented to maintain teaching in times of crisis or natural disaster.

#### **2. Methodology**

Qualitative research seeks to ask open-ended questions leading with "Why?", "How?", and "What?", to learn about the experiences of participants regarding a given situation, leading to the potential of a multiplicity of findings [12, 13]. The most common methods of qualitative data collection are flexible strategies such as focus groups and in-depth interviews, suitable for identifying unanticipated aspects of a social phenomenon, wherein the participants start to discuss various topics or themes and engage with each other [14]. Video technologies, such as Zoom™, have transformed these methods of data collection, reducing the need to travel [15]. This technology has been particularly useful in conducting research during the global COVID-19 pandemic and in a distributed education context.

This study was considered low risk; the research was approved by Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee ID# 24441. With targeted recruitment, participants were involved in the delivery and support of preclinical and clinical medical training across the region of Gippsland, eastern Victoria, Australia. A list of semi-structured questions was prepared to prompt discussion [12] and to ensure consistency across the different data-gathering sessions. The focus groups and interviews took place via Zoom™, running between 45 and 90 minutes, and were conducted by an independent facilitator. Eleven staff participated: six academics, three sessional clinical staff, and two professional staff members (**Table 1**).

*Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*


#### **Table 1.**

*Research participants.*

Participants were advised that the sessions would be recorded and sent to a Monashapproved professional service for transcription. As part of the transcript "cleaning" process, the participants have ascribed a code for anonymity. This code was a letter followed by a number "P" for professional staff, "A" for academics, or "S" for sessional staff.

The process of analysis began during the data collection phase as the facilitator conducting the interviews and focus groups began to see patterns emerging [16]. Inductive approaches to data coding and analysis allows codes and themes to derive from the data, not from preconceived ideas [1]. Coding of the raw data was an iterative process, defining the different thematic levels. The code book development was based on handwritten field notes and through the qualitative data analysis software, NVivo™. Rigor was enhanced by using a constant comparison approach [17].

#### **3. Findings**

Four themes were identified:


An overview of each theme, with representative participant quotes, follows. Under each theme and sub-category, the positives and negatives of the experiences are listed, noting that not every transition experience was negative.Theme 1: Rapid transition from face-to-face to teaching online.The traditional context of medical education is face-to-face. There were challenges across the board in moving to online teaching, including learning the appropriate and necessary technology. Staff stress across transitions was apparent.Adapting to change"Change" was mentioned by many participants alongside the urgent and rapid timeframe:

*And there was no time; we, I think it was a Monday, and then it was a Wednesday that we were teaching online. So, there was no time, really, to go "what's what?". (S3)*

Others spoke of the rapid change with disbelief

*I've worked for the (university) for 20 odd years; never, ever had I worked from home. So just getting into that routine of going from one end of my house to the other to go to work, that was in itself was weird. (P1)*

Learning the technologies There were some positives to be found in adapting to the new technology:

*I guess this time last year I probably didn't know what Zoom was and I'm much more computer literate and feel much more comfortable in this format which has been a good thing for me and so I guess that's a positive that I've learnt new skills that I wouldn't otherwise have had to learn and I've had to communicate with people in this sort of setting. (S1)*

There were also challenges:

*… we had to put in place systems to enable that delivery that we'd never used before. So, we all did have to learn Zoom, obviously … I hadn't had time to have any training yet, so I had to train myself in order to set-up Zoom meetings and work through all the glitches that we had. (P2)*

The new technology was recognized as having the potential to enhance teaching and learning, but also created challenges.Adapting to online teaching Many staff spoke about the "trial and error" approach:

*The thing was adapting the class teaching to the online environment and, although we had our materials from previous years that we could draw on, we needed to make sure that it worked in an online environment and it was a bit of trial and error to see what would work, what wouldn't work. (A1)*

Fatigue, in particular Zoom™ fatigue, was noted by the participants, and became a catalyst for change:

*I think (management was) getting feedback that (the students) didn't want to be on Zoom for too long and so then we were getting it filtered down to us that we needed to cut out half an hour or make the sessions shorter. I think that happened a few weeks into the online teaching, we had to cut things and change things around into shorter time frames. (S1)*

#### However, reducing student load increased workload for staff:

*… reducing the student load meant that the staff load increased (because) you had to. You were doing it at hours where you normally wouldn't be working or you were repeating things more than you normally would or stuff like that; so, we learnt a little bit, but I think that some of those compromises: good for the students; not so good for the staff. (A3)*

#### Staff related to student fatigue:

*Oh, it was fatiguing, and I can absolutely relate to student fatigue when you've had seven hours of Zoom meetings in a day. You can almost not talk; your brain, you're just fried. And so, I guess undergoing that meant we could absolutely relate to student fatigue. (A1)*

Physical fatigue was also a consideration:

*Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*

*I found the eye-strain not as bad as the sitting. Long periods of sitting …So the sitting was what, we would normally teach standing up; I would normally teach walking around, not sitting in a room. So, I found that, and actually, just sitting a lot was very tiring. (A3)*

#### Communication

Communication processes needed to be improved. Disparate information from multiple sources was identified as a problem:

*I guess the big challenge for my role was trying to get the information we needed to tell the students. So, communication was the most important part of last year … As it turns out, … the day-to-day challenges were in communication. And that was pervasive. (A4)*

Online communication behaviors and "soft skill" development for future clinicians were also highlighted:

*I'll just echo … the importance of communication skills, not only in clinical fields but in scientific fields. Certain students tend to use Zoom as a crutch because even more so in the Zoom environment, if they're afraid to participate or they don't want to participate, it's much easier for them to disconnect and even if they do want to participate but they're scared to, in real life they would be forced to talk and participate in a group environment but in the Zoom environment they can just hide behind a chat function which I've noticed quite a lot in my classes (and) it's not really teaching students how to communicate with their voice or with their body actions. (S2)*

#### Teamwork

Teamwork was a positive feature, with many praising collaborative efforts in adapting to online learning:

*… we're small and we are very supportive of our students. We (have) a small group of staff and everybody tends to know everybody and when the students have an issue, they know who to ask or they will get support …. (S1)*

#### The stress of constant change

The pivot of transition between workspaces—that is between working from home, returning to the office, then back home—was problematic for staff. Initially the disruption was anticipated to be a one-off event, yet it was protracted and has led to a "new" normal. One example was timetabling:

*… (It) was extremely time consuming. We ended up having four versions of the timetable last year (2020). Pretty much March, when we first started to go into lockdown, the timetable was set for the year. (Usually, there's) just tiny little alterations, normally, that happen … So, it can still take the odd time, every now and again, but not to the degree of what happened last year. We ended up doing, when we went into lockdown we did fully online. And then we had that tiny glimmer of hope that we'd come back to campus for two days, so we adjusted a couple of weeks based on that and then we … we only came back for a couple of days and that's when … we went back into lockdown after that. So, after that we went back to fully online. (P1)*

Catalyst for change

Staff saw value in the pandemic-invigorating change. There was an opportunity to reflect on past practice and the rationale for this:

*I think re-looking at how you teach … and how you interact with students is probably the main stuff I got out of it …. (A5)*

Theme 2: Transition from working in a professional/public to a personal/private space.

Social distancing measures and/or lockdowns changed work locations from public professional spaces to the private personal sphere. Work intruded into home lives; personal and professional boundaries blurred.Setting up workspaces

Setting up a home office spanned from:

*I had everything I needed. I'm a tech person and so I'm probably an outlier. (S2)*

… to …

*Yeah; I had to get a couple of cables; a keyboard; a mouse; I need(ed) to get a proper chair. And I had an old TV monitor that was modified to be an extra screen. 'Cos with the work I do, I can't do it on a laptop; it's just not viable. (P2)*

…and…

*… I was on a fold-out camp table from Bunnings1 ; it was on chocks 'cos it was the wrong height and the table rocked and the keyboard rocked on the table and so … I didn't want to spend money because I didn't know how long. But then, as we went on, it became, I actually need a proper chair and I need a proper desk and all those sorts of things because we are going to stick to it. (A3)*

Setting up to work from home was expensive and defining a workspace could be a challenge:

*… you need a place where you need to know your internet is capable; you need to have a desk; you need to have screen and computer. A quiet space because it's very hard to have concentration and teach when there's too much noise going on and some, in some respects … some noise is okay, but not for students; I think that that's not very fair, so … having time to set that up …. (A3)*

It was important to establish workspaces that would not interfere with the operations of the household:

*I set up really quickly in what I thought was probably going to be the best location in the house, that wasn't going to upset everyone else. It didn't really work, so I did in the end have to change it. And obviously, we went into winter too and it was the coldest part of the house so I was like "I can't do this; I can't be wearing a blanket all day". And … the set up definitely wasn't what I have now; I wish I had done this in the beginning, but I guess we didn't know how long we were going to be here. (P2)*

<sup>1</sup> Bunnings is a large Australian hardware chain store.

*Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*

#### Extra domestic disruptions

For staff with partners and/or children working from home, there were further disruptions:

*… 'cos you've got (children) at home and they're trying to adapt to a new environment as well; they've not got any social activity happening and they come out of their (room) during their break and then they're disrupting what I'm doing and that's not an intentional thing, but they're trying to adapt to their new environment to suit themselves and it didn't necessarily suit the whole household. (P2)*

Internet accessibility and stability

Location was often influenced by internet stability but this was not always reliable. In a rural setting this can be an additional problem. Internet accessibility was a big issue in the transition to working from home:

*The big (issue) for probably everyone is the internet and the way that we connect. I live in quite a rural area and I'm not in a town and our internet is not always great and so I don't know how you fix that …. (S1)*

Work often took longer to complete at home. One of the professional staff members described challenges in uploading teaching resources to Moodle:

*I didn't notice this until I went back into the office; I thought my home internet was pretty okay; never had any dramas with it … It wasn't until I went back into the office and I could upload a document to Moodle in about three minutes that at home was taking hours. (P1)*

Internet and technology access were also a consideration for student equity:

*I suppose making sure that the students have adequate internet is the big one … Making sure that they have access to support if they need internet help or funding is important. And making sure that they have devices and access to a computer which you assume they do have. But maybe some of them who are rural students are from underprivileged backgrounds and may need (more) support than others …. (S1)*

#### Reduced travel time

Reduced travel time was recognized as a time and economic saving:

*In terms of personal positives, in terms of travel time, there's no real need for the vast majority of my work to actually travel and so I feel like my work has become somewhat more efficient in terms of the amount of actual work that I get done for my role. (S2)*

#### Work-life balance

One participant summed up the challenge of work-life balance:

*… for all of us, (it) was a rapidly evolving situation that didn't just affect your working life; it affected every part of your life including personal life, so you couldn't go "oh, it's a difficult day at work; I'll just go home and do my usual relaxation …". (A5)*

Pandemic home-schooling

Juggling other personal roles, for example, parenting and home-schooling, was raised as a major issue across the staff cohorts:

*The people that I have spoken to, everyone's story sounds reasonably similar … I was home schooling … It was not much fun, I can tell you. (P1)*

An extended response from another participant covers the main issues experienced:

*… the thing that I found hardest was with the home schooling … I found, locally, within my local team and my supervisor, there was lots of understanding … But I found that (the larger university) was depressingly under-helpful … so, the homeschooling is happening and then you've got this program and this work that you need to deliver for your students; it's not (the university) that suffers; it's the kids that suffer. (A3)*

Some participants described how they coped:

*I just had to nick between the rooms at times or we would chat. If I was in a meeting, I would chat with him on an iPad and say "I can't talk right now; … move on to the next one; we'll worry about it later". (P1)*

Theme 3: Re-transition and the "new normal".

Further disruption emerged as the virus mutated. University and site-specific orders and lockdowns overlaid this. For example, clearances to return to work came on numerous occasions. Some staff thought that the first lockdown in Victoria, Australia would be a short-term event; others anticipated far-reaching consequences:

*I was getting it from everyone (and) I think it gave me a greater understanding of the impact of COVID and some of the things we could start predicting. I was going to meetings … "it's going to get bad; international travel will stop" (so) I could have those conversations with my other colleagues … knowing it was going to not go well … for our international (students) when they started to go home. (S3)*

Blended learning Students advocated to continue blended and flexible learning opportunities:

*A lot of students have given me feedback that … dictating their own learning time is more beneficial … "the fact that COVID has given me the option … to listen to my lecture at 2am is a good thing." … but again, you lose that interaction of in-person. (S2)*

Flexibility for staff Staff also hoped to continue flexible working:

*I think I like the flexibility of being able to work at home a little bit; I certainly saved a lot of time in commuting. (A3)*

Other gains

*Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*

Other considerations related to assessment and marking student presentations:

*… I've had to mark student presentations and when you're doing that in real life you can get quite panicky, but because with Zoom you can record it, you can go back and view over the student presentation more efficiently …. (S2)*

#### Increased agency was recognized:

*… I sort of feel now that nothing could be on the scale of what we had and I think that we can pretty much do anything. (P1)*

This reflection highlighted the aspects that staff and students did not want to lose in the "new normal" teaching and learning context.Theme 4: Future readiness.

The final theme emerging from the data related to preparations for sustainable teaching into the future, capturing the essence of why future-proofing ensures the continuation of quality teaching in inevitable emergencies:

*… we're responsible for educating people who are going to be doctors one day and in positions where if they make mistakes or haven't been taught properly then there are devastating consequences and so the staff dealing with the course need to feel that they're valued and well-supported all the way through. (S1)*

#### Good workplace culture Teamwork was key to success:

*… one of the reasons that it went so well is that we … all get on really well as colleagues and we can have the discussions … . Paramount, it was: "COVID's here; we can't change that and we have to do the best by our students plus, also, the best by our team". (S3)*

The issue of resilience Some staff picked up on the notion of resilience and its complexity:

*I think resilience is tossed about too much now … I think framing it as "how can staff manage these issues into the future?" rather than "get resilience" … So, framing it in a way that is "we just need to do the best we can with what we have; that's all". (A5)*

#### Considerations for uncertainty

The to-ing and fro-ing of being in and out of lockdowns was a challenge for staff, and related vacillation between teaching face-to-face, hybrid or online, led to consideration of uncertainty in future planning:

*… I think that back and forwards until we called it was actually quite hard. At one stage, we went back for one day and you then had to go back to "okay; it's back to online; all the students (go) home" and then we never went back for the rest of the year. (S3)*

#### The constant alternations led to staff exhaustion:

*… I think that's actually magnified the issue because people have come in to 2021, we had great hopes; we thought "we'll be sort of semi-normal" but it's not, and I think* 

*people have come in not having had a good break to refresh because we just had to start all over again at the start of the year. Lots of extra requirements; staff shortages. (A1)*

The continuous change of regulations was challenging for students too, as related by one of the professional staff members:

*… there were a number of students I was dealing with and I'd maybe need to get in contact and say "can you; you need to get this done by a certain date" their immunization. But then they would say "I'm in Melbourne". "No worries; just look into it when you come out of lockdown" and that sort of thing. They didn't need the extra pressure of trying to do more things when they couldn't even leave the house. (P1)*

#### Protocols and policies

There were suggestions to develop a "toolkit" while the adaptations to the pandemic were implemented:

*… I think whatever the transition is, it's probably going to be fast; … being able to say "we have the resources ready to go to roll out in an online environment" and the transition that we've had has done a lot of that preparing. So … I think it would be good to review the things that worked and to put them into a toolkit … (A3)*

These suggestions would provide a framework for the DISPLAN.2 One staff member spoke about the flow chart that they put in place:

*So (another colleague) and I wrote a protocol … So now we've got that in place … . We should have done that last year …. (A4)*

Others were also keen to capture details while they were fresh in the minds of those who worked during this crisis:

*… it doesn't matter what you teach, you can do it, as we've seen. But having some sort of plan of "if we're shut, what are we going to do?" … So I think a bit of a thought about "how long do you shut before you convert to a new style of program?" And I think, most of the time, it's not going to be an issue. If we have a bushfire, it's rare that we'd be closed for more than a week at a time … so I think that while it's fresh, there should be a short document … of how do you frame it? What's the experience with what's been done before? … a very basic (document) to help people who may not have been around during those times. (A5)*

A key issue to consider during crises is in and around clinical teaching, along with exposure to the clinical workplace and real patients:

*… a very big problem that we identified in the scientific field (was) that we were literally graduating an entire cohort of undergraduate students who had never stepped into the lab and so … we're getting a bunch of students who have never touched a pipette …. (S2)*

The clinical educators highlighted the potential for students to evade the practical elements of medical training and the impact this might have:

<sup>2</sup> DISPLAN is the shortened title for the Victoria State Disaster Plan, Australia.

*Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*

*… (the students) sort of had to teach themselves the physical examinations through videos and online content that was posted, and then they had to videotape themselves doing the physical examination of someone which often were their parents if they were at home … In some cases it was a pillow because some students were by themselves and didn't have anybody to practice with … and we had to watch the video and then critique it on a paper based form as well as we had to video ourselves giving them some feedback which we then had to send back to them which was a hugely complicated process. It was good in theory but it wasn't great in reality and it meant that that group of students never really learnt proper physical examination. (S1)*

#### Maintaining clear communication and connection Communications challenges were highlighted:

*It's been quite messy this year. Messaging from central faculty has been a bit ordinary in places, and so, yeah, I think they really need to do a better job in terms of getting information out there. It's not good; … we sort of get mixed messages or we don't get messages and stuff that they're saying is happening doesn't happen. (A6)*

Maintenance of clear communication in times of crisis was considered essential. This is related to seeking information:

*But one thing I have realised, and I'm sure everyone else would agree, is sometimes it takes longer to get answers when you're at home. So instead of knocking on a door or picking up the phone, one thing can take fifteen emails that could have been resolved a bit easier. (P1)*

Novel approaches arose to support students:

*What was better last year because of this Zoom and technology environment, it's very easy to organise mentor meetings with this group of students at quite a regular basis. We used Microsoft Teams as well and so what that allowed … it's really good and the students can set up their own messaging system and if the students had any problems then they just threw it into the Microsoft Teams and a student could help them if the student was feeling generous. And because I was their mentor, I could also help with their queries. So, it gave them a sense of connectivity where there might not be connectivity already. (S2)*

This comment supports the notion of virtual casual communication opportunities to help overcome some of the experienced challenges. Another major consideration was finding ways to support student safety, both physical and emotional:

*… many who were isolated from their support systems … we had so many depressed, anxious, teary, some self-harming, unsafe students who, because our hospitals went above and beyond the health department, as far as restrictions go … (were) more restricted than the healthcare workers. Who weren't allowed to leave … Or the hospital said they wouldn't be allowed on the wards … as time went on, being more creative about what we said to enable students to stay mentally safe. (A4)*

Another academic staff member also commented on the pastoral care issues that were potentially lost with the rapid transition to fully online learning:

*By the time they've hit fourth year it'd be rare for them to have an academic issue; but I've encountered a few personal issues and mental health problems. And it seems to be something that's increasing … And I guess seeing them face-to-face is a much better way to actually see how they're going and they're much more likely to just drop in and sit in my office and have a bit of a chat if something's going on they're worried about something … I think, for me, that was the biggest issue. Just that feeling that I didn't connect with them …. (A6)*

For this participant, establishing virtual office hours and having regular check-ins with students online, could provide opportunities for open communication around pastoral care issues, overcoming the tyranny of distance.Dedicated funding

Having a pool of money to access in order to help staff deliver teaching during crises was also a useful suggestion:

*… the ones who control the budget, so if they put budget money associated with … (technology) to support staff that could come in during a time of transition … "Find me a solution; great; and I'll keep working on the content". I think the central university has a budget role. (A3)*

Ongoing professional development for all staff

Continuing professional development of staff for future readiness to continue teaching through emergencies and disasters cannot be under-estimated. A key issue raised by participants was around learning technology, knowing the options available, and how to use these:

*I'm not great with technology, so I had to learn to work things that people probably take for granted. Chat bars and stuff like that. But anyway, I got the hang of it. Just boring things like sharing screens and stuff; I'd never had to do it because … I'd done everything face to face. (A6)*

Beyond basic technology use, other challenges included:

*… trying to work out ways that I could video myself and make a small enough file to send back to the student and often my internet was struggling with that, and that part nearly drove me insane. It was all good in theory, but the practicalities were difficult … (S1)*

Ongoing staff professional development was suggested as a solution:

*… in hindsight, we probably could have had quite a number of different training sessions, but now, look, there's still things with Zoom and Moodle, I'm sure, that I could know about. Especially Moodle, because Moodle's highly temperamental, I find. (A4)*

This unreliability was noted by another participant:

*And that's a bit of staff upskilling in different types of software or programs that might allow the students to collaborate with each other in slightly different ways … Platforms where, like I said, where if you're doing an online lecture or whatever, you can engage with them in a more visual way … so that they know who you are and they have a better personal connection with you. (A3)*

#### *Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*

This knowledge cannot be assumed, so needs to be developed. A "Skills Check" for professional development opportunities might be a possibility.

In summary, the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic demanded that clinical and academic staff rapidly transition to fully online instruction. The ramifications for educators and the units' support teams were widespread. Challenges ranged from technical, logistical, and financial hurdles to program design and delivery, the pastoral support of students, through to more personal impacts on work-life balance. Positive outcomes were also noted including improvement in teamwork amongst the faculty, flexibility in work arrangements, reduction in commute time to work, and a sense of achievement and better preparedness for dealing with future disruptions to educational delivery.

#### **4. Discussion, recommendations, and further research**

The recognition of how crises can create opportunities for structural change in the education space for the better, can lead to considerations of what can be done to optimize that opportunity [18]. There is much that can be learned from past experiences of teaching and learning in crises, from the current COVID-19 global disruption, and the preceding acute management of other crises such as bushfires and floods in regional settings. These insights can be applied to prepare for the future and further possible crises, whether these be climate or virus-related or imposed by the Government.

Despite the flexibility of online learning, educators experienced various challenges in applying this teaching mode during the pandemic, including readiness, technology literacy, access to technology, financial difficulties, and health risks [7]. The participants suggest both financial support and the enhancement of professional development activities for staff, alongside access to reliable educational resources beyond the pandemic [19].

While policy and protocols are two elements of the solution when operating in crisis mode, management cannot rely solely on the creation of crisis prevention strategies [18]. What is also required to future-proof educational spaces, is a strategy of holistic resilience [20, 21]. What would a shared understanding fostering resilience in crises look like? Systematic work is required to identify ways that provide for resilient communities, and this also applies to teaching and learning in times of crisis [22].

In Christchurch, New Zealand, the category 7.1 earthquake of September 2010, was followed by another of 6.3 magnitude in February 2011. The second earthquake while of a lesser magnitude was catastrophic, leading to 181 deaths and triggering a state of emergency in the region. This in turn impacted the delivery of education at institutions of higher education, such as the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Learning from our colleagues' experiences in higher education across the 'ditch'3 , key factors in sustainable teaching were the ability to respond swiftly and continue delivering teaching and learning without the physical place, due in turn to the infrastructure, pedagogy and capability supporting blended learning that was already in place [23]. These learnings are applicable to our context wherein there are implications for short-term management of crises such as fires and floods, versus long-term chronic management such as COVID-19. Investment in such approaches is likely to result in sustainable practice, such as a mix of flexible and hybrid delivery

<sup>3</sup> The 'ditch' is a colloquialism in Australia and New Zealand to refer to the Tasman Sea which separates the two countries.

rather than a simple return to face-to-face as the default. While a decade old, the advice offered by Mackey et al. [23] is still relevant and can help institutions of higher education plan and sustain equitable experiences for students in times of disaster or crisis. For staff and students, this advice involves different lenses and questions.Staff:


Students:


Communications:


Resources:

• In the event of a sudden and extended evacuation from workplaces, how will staff access the materials required to continue teaching?

*Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*


In anticipating crises, not as one-off extraneous events, but rather perceiving them as inevitable and preparing staff for them, by using this list, and from the responses of the participants in this study, we also add what management and leadership might consider.Management:


In reflecting on the four "Ss" that influence how an individual copes with transitions [24]—situation, self, support, and strategies—most of these considerations are covered in the above list, the final consideration is in and around fostering not only resilience of individuals, but holistic resilience more broadly conceptualized [20, 21, 25]. The final recommendation, therefore, is around the element of resilience.Fostering holistic resilience:


This list of recommendations may also be the basis of future research on the preparedness of staff to plan and sustain equitable experiences for students in times of disaster or crisis, in terms of dynamic individual and organizational checklists. It would certainly serve to highlight espoused rhetoric versus theory in practice.

Much more systematic work needs to be done on the identification of mechanisms that provide for resilient societies [22]. Further research will help in understanding the fragile relationship between crisis and change. Finally, it would be prudent to follow up reflectively with staff through the lens of the four "S's" [24] that influence how an individual copes with transitions in crises.

The study was limited for several reasons. First, it only explored the experiences of staff across regional sites in Gippsland, Australia. Second, the study was conducted at a time when staff had already experienced COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and were anticipating a "return to normal". With subsequent lockdowns in the state of Victoria, Australia, in 2021 due to new viral variants, it became clear that there would not be a "return to normal", but a switch to a "new normal". Of this, a hybrid approach rather than a return to fully face-to-face teaching and learning may become the reality, especially with the program delivery for offshore (international) students, and students in the subsequent clinical years given their need for workplace placements. As such, it would be useful to follow up with staff on the main themes elicited in this study. It would also be useful to investigate considerations of the need for students to contribute to surge workforce efforts.

#### **5. Conclusion**

This study chronicled the experiences of staff at a regional medical education provider of the modality shifts required by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences reflected the renewal and transformation of curriculum delivery, and the move toward sustainable teaching and learning in a region known for its vulnerability to natural hazards and disasters. In so doing, the research explored some of the barriers and challenges experienced in adapting from face-to-face teaching and clinical placements to an online/hybrid modality. Some outcomes were positive in terms of sustainable practice and equity of access to learning opportunities for students and will be an integral part of moving forward. The findings reinforce the need for checklists to assess program robustness, to harness technology, and for continuing professional development to ensure adaptability of students and staff.

At the point of writing this chapter, the pandemic is ongoing and continues to impact the medical program. There are cohorts of students who are entering and progressing across medicine with very different learning profiles to those that existed pre-pandemic. Considerations of preparedness for, and progression toward practice, are necessary for moving forward. With this in mind, we must not simply prepare for the inevitable rapid challenges that occur during crises, and any related shifts to online and hybrid teaching modalities; we must also be ready for a transformation of mindset [26]. Sustainability of teaching and learning in crises relies on responding to the challenges that arise, as well as recognizing the opportunities that arise.

#### **Acknowledgements**

We would like to acknowledge the academic, sessional, and clinical, and professional staff members who contributed their time during the pandemic to participate generously in this research. We would also like to acknowledge the team in the broader *Toward Sustainable Teaching: Staff Perceptions of the Delivery of a Rural Medical Program… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109417*

project: "Impacts, innovations and implications relating to the delivery of the Monash BMedSc/MD program across Gippsland sites during the COVID-19 pandemic." These were Professor Shane Bullock, Associate Professor Margaret Simmons, Dr. Adelle McArdle, Associate Professor Marianne Tare, Dr. David Reser, Dr. Sean Atkinson, Dr. Kris Gilbert, Dr. Julie Willems, Ms. Caroline Rossetti, Ms. Meagan Presley, Associate Professor Cathy Haigh, Ms. Casey Stubbs, Dr. Annette Connelly, Dr. Deidre Bentley, Dr. Warrick Pill, Dr. Amie Gillett, Dr. Paul Brougham, Ms. Marnie Connolly, Ms. Prue Berry, Ms. Jennie Casey, Ms. Deborah Hewetson, and Mr. Bill Haigh.

#### **Conflict of interest**

There are no known conflicts of interest in this article.

### **Author details**

Julie Willems\*, Cathy Haigh, Marianne Tare, Margaret Simmons, David Reser, Adelle McArdle and Shane Bullock Monash Rural Health, Monash University, Australia

\*Address all correspondence to: julie.willems@monash.edu

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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[18] Boin A, Hart PT, Kuipers S. The crisis approach. In: Rodriguez H, Donner W, Trainor JE, editors. Handbook of Disaster Research. Cham: Springer; 2018. pp. 23-38

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#### **Chapter 19**

## Exploring the Professional Development and Improvement Strategies of College Teachers' Skills in the Twenty-First Century in the Era of Covid-19

*Xiaoyao Yue, Yan Ye and Linjiao Zou*

#### **Abstract**

Covid-19, which suddenly broke out in 2019 and has been popular all over the world for more than 3 years, has brought unprecedented changes to human beings. Before that, colleges and universities have already need to change and innovate their curricula and teaching to teach "twenty-first century skills" for students, which are problem-solving and critical thinking, creativity and innovation, intercultural understanding, communications, information, media literacy, computing and ICT literacy, responsibility and leadership, accountability and productivity, self-direction and initiative, adaptability and flexibility. In this situation, TPD (teacher professional development) evokes teachers to satisfy students needs for education in the twenty-first century and in the era of Covid-19 even post-Covid-19, which increases the urgency and necessity. Through the systematic analysis of the relevant research results, summarized strategies of TPD in the twenty-first century Covid-19 and post-Covid-19 era: evaluation of TPD needs, cultivating skills of the twenty-first century, integrating ICT instruction, peer coaching, creating the positive culture of campus, building collaboration, initiative learning, embedding the core values, sustainable professional development, research projects and training teachers' emergency capabilities, to meet teachers' learning and practice, and to address challenges that have existed and may arise in future.

**Keywords:** Covid-19, online teaching/learning, teacher professional development, twenty-first century skills, twenty-first century education

#### **1. Introduction**

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, it has brought unprecedented changes to our life and educational environment, and it can be said that most of the devastating challenges [1]. For the sake of stopping the virus spread and reducing

the death toll, people took radical or restrictive measures, such as keeping social distances, and even blocking and closing offices, markets, schools, and universities [2]. This has also led to the gradual transformation of almost all offline activities into online forms [3–5].

Education is one of the most critical industries affected by the global Covid-19 pandemic [6]. On the basis of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization report on the interruption and response of Covid-19 education (2020), to control the Covid-19 pandemic spread, the governments in 190 countries and regions around the world have closed educational facilities of the educational systems [7]. The report further noted that these closures "affected 80 percent of the world's student population," who had to be shut out of educational institutions [8]. Higher education institutions, like other educational institutions, are forced to continue to provide educational services through "online distance teaching" to respond the Covid-19 [1, 9].

In fact, in the pre-Covid-19 era, "online distance teaching" has been developing on a small scale [6, 10]. There is an old history of distance teaching: 1) correspondence curriculum-conducted by ordinary mails with little interaction; 2) distance curriculum-disseminating contents by TV or radio; 3) CD-room curriculum; 4) online curriculum-synchronous or asynchronous Internet; 5) mobile learning-using devices such as mobile phones, audio digital players (IPods and MP3 players), or PDA (personal digital assistant) [11].

Educational institutions are increasingly required to use digital technologies to teach students skills and knowledge they need in the digital age, so some schools have launched distance education projects before the advent of Covid-19 [12, 13]. After all, this is the twenty-first century with the speedy development of globalization, politics, economy, and science technology, thus people need to master more and newer skills and abilities to work, live and learn, while college and universities must train twentyfirst century skills for students to meet the fierce challenges of today and the future [14–17]: such as problem-solving and critical thinking, creativity and innovation, intercultural understanding, communications, information, media literacy, computing and ICT literacy, responsibility and leadership, accountability and productivity, self-direction and initiative, adaptability and flexibility [18, 19]. Teachers must develop and master these professional abilities before they teach students to meet the students' needs [20].

However, in the era of Covid-19, teachers' skills development of the twenty-first century is more urgent and necessary, especially under the social background of "online teaching," which is forced to popularize [6]. Educators are the holders of knowledge and impart wisdom to students, but this concept has not been suitable for educational goals in the twenty-first century. Via clicks on computers, laptop, and mobile phones, students acquire knowledge or study technical skill, to enhance teacher professional development, we have to redefine teachers' role [11]. Although many universities (especially non-developed countries or regions) are not interested in "online teaching," Covid-19 makes this teaching model mandatory, and academic participants who are not ready for online teaching will be left behind by the age of science [21]. Moreover, the advocacy of the online classroom in the Covid-19 era will lay the foundation for solving the classroom behavior problems in any emergency in the era of post-Covid-19. Therefore, online classroom in the era of post-Covid-19 or its mixture with offline classroom will be a paradigm shift in the existing teaching practice [5, 8]. The corresponding teachers' professional development or promotion is particularly important.

*Exploring the Professional Development and Improvement Strategies of College Teachers' Skills… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108663*

#### **2. Methods**

This paper adopted the method of content analysis to attain the aim: To explore the teacher professional development and improvement strategies for education in the twenty-first century in the era of Covid-19. Content analysis is a method of summary and quantification according to the scientific standards [22]. It is widely regarded as systematic and transparent process, such as searching for themes, collecting data, data analysis, data interpretation and description, considering data context, and even philosophical background [23].

The authors systematically review recent studies published online on teacher professional development and also focus on the education of the twenty-first century in the Covid-19 era. Keywords identified based on the objectives of the paper focus on strategies of TPD (teacher professional development) and the education of the twenty-first century in the covid-19. With the theme of TPD strategies in universities for twenty-first century education in the Covid-19 era, we collected and classified the data and frequency of words statistics for each keyword and summarized based on the paper aim.

After analysis, the strategies of university teacher professional development for twenty-first century in the Covid-19 era even post-Covid-19 era are proposed: evaluation of TPD needs, cultivating twenty-first century skills, integrating ICT teaching, peer coaching, creating the positive culture of campus, building collaboration, initiative learning, embedding the core values, sustainable professional development, research projects, and training teachers' emergency capabilities.

#### **3. The twenty-first century education**

#### **3.1 The twenty-first century education**

The rapid development and new trends of globalization, politics, economy, science, and technology have a profound impact on our life, work, and learning in the twenty-first century, thus education has to be changed to meet and suit the twentyfirst century development [14, 24]. Related stakeholders appeal that we need to innovate curricula and teaching to teach "twenty-first century skills" for students.

#### **3.2 The twenty-first century skills**

In the twenty-first century, students' achievement and successful performance are important goals for education [25]. As students study knowledge and skills of the twenty-first century well, it can help them achieve higher academic performance in school, even better life and work after time [16]. Kozma [25] and Schleicher [16] also mentioned that school leaders should guide all staff to give service to students and give support them to develop the skills of the twenty-first century. Therefore, the relevant administrators must adjust and improve the related system to satisfy this requirement.

Some researchers have mentioned that students need to learn and have many skills for the twenty-first century [16, 17, 26]. There are twenty-first century skills framework listed by Partnership for twenty-first Century Skills [18]: problem-solving and critical thinking, creativity and innovation, intercultural understanding, communications, information, media literacy, computing, and ICT literacy. In 2019, this organization made the integration and supplement, then it listed three competencies

types: 1) learning skills, they are problem-solving and critical thinking, innovation and creativity, collaboration and communication; 2) literacy skills, they are media literacy, information literacy, and ICT literacy; 3) life skills, they are responsibility and leadership, accountability and productivity, self-direction and initiative, adaptability and flexibility, social and intercultural skills [19].

Above skills are crucial to students and their specific meanings as partners. To deliver "employable" graduates, college and universities have to train twenty-first century skills for students thoroughly and retain and expand their development [27].

#### **3.3 The twenty-first century higher education**

In the twenty-first century, as globalization evolves, the role of higher education institutions is increasingly like a tool of public diplomacy [28]. In this age of knowledge in the twenty-first century, the people who are educated and their thoughts have become the foundation of building national wealth, and the higher education value was never so important [29].

Meanwhile, Jesa and Nisha [30], Egan and peers [31] showed that creative thinking and discovery have been the central and necessary mission for higher education recent years, almost all higher education institutions impart new knowledge and skills to the young generation. The purpose of college and universities is to train students to attain career success with knowledge and ability after graduation [32]. Thus, it has become a vital mission and task for colleges and universities to train students with twenty-first century skills so that they can survive in the global society in the twentyfirst century.

Galicia [33] illustrated that higher education has adopted strategies to address twenty-first century education by developing the twenty-first century skills of teaching and learning, such as integrating media literacy into teaching. And other examples such as developing communication and critical thinking skills for students [34], training students intercultural understanding skills and ICT skills [35–37]. Without using ICT, some high-quality teaching processes of college and universities are actually unimaginable, especially due to its impact on developing necessary competencies and skills for twenty-first century [38].

#### **3.4 Higher education in the era of Covid-19 of twenty-first century**

In fact, before the Covid-19 pandemic, higher education faced different challenges [39]. As mentioned above, because of students' needs, teachers must master twenty-first century skills like creative thinking, critical thinking, information and communication technologies. Covid-19 brings more and more urgent challenges to higher education, such as the inability to interact face to face in the classroom, which means that teachers have to develop and organize students' learning better and create a distinctive learning environment with the assistant of digital technology [40]. The digital competence discussion has already become a much-talked-about topic nowadays, after the advent of the Covid-19, and its huge influence on the educational industry, it ached a new height regarding the concerns of digital competence [41].

However, "online teaching" makes it impossible for teachers to maximize the power of body language, facial expressions, and teachers' voice to enable students to understand the explained materials [2]; students are unable to ask teachers questions face to face, which may reduce the enthusiasm, creativity, and self-discipline of many students [42]; insufficient teaching resources for teachers and students, and *Exploring the Professional Development and Improvement Strategies of College Teachers' Skills… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108663*

most university teachers lack online teaching experience [2, 43], because many online courses were designed by learning design experts (that is, instructional designers) and delivered or implemented by instructor-teachers [40].

In the process of online teaching, family members may cause interference, resulting in the inability of teachers and students to focus on class and learning [12, 43]; communication technologies such as the Internet, virtual platforms, and social media are needed [4]. However, the conditions in some remote areas are limited, and many public departments and institutions especially in developing countries are usually unable to use formal online learning management systems to promote communication between teachers and students [1, 44]. Even in some backward countries or regions, a small number of students may not have mobile phones or computers, poor Internet signals, or no network [43]. Teachers and students who have lower digital ability are also easy to fall behind in "network classroom" [12].

Sobaih and peers [44] also listed 15 more specific challenges posed by online education: 1) new learning policies and programs; 2) new learning culture; 3) support of the management; 4) time limit; 5) security and privacy; 6) moral considerations; 7) IT infrastructure; 8) awareness of online classroom teaching and learning; 9) assessment and grading; 10) student needs; 11) coordination with students; 12) difficult implementation of practical courses; 13) student support; 14) sharing of materials and recordings; 15) selection of social media types to use. Mukhtar and peers' [45] research shows that online teaching is inefficient, such as inability to teach practical skills (especially medical courses), lack of student feedback, limited attention duration, and difficulty in maintaining academic integrity, such as lack of discipline and plagiarism.

Everything has its advantages and disadvantages, and Covid-19 also brings some opportunities, such as promoting the development and utilization of "online teaching" or "virtual classroom" or "mobile learning" in colleges and universities, so as to maintain the academic connection between teachers and students and make education continuous [39]. Online teaching often uses paperless methods to distribute materials and submit assignments, which is environmentally friendly [2]. Teachers and students can teach and learn without leaving home, and the time and place are convenient [4]. Teachers can provide instant feedback through social media, which sometimes takes several weeks to dissipate in the traditional teaching environment [39]. Online teaching has a lot of flexibility, such as ease of management—teachers have the right to turn on or unmute microphones and videos; accessibility—less confident students can easily contact through social media; comfort—can easily and comfortably lecture and attend lectures; asynchronous learning—courses are recorded and saved, and it is easy to go back to browse the course videos for summary [20, 43, 45, 46].

University researchers are looking for short-and long-term solutions to the threat virus poses to humans. In order to provide creation to address the latest challenges of online learning, teaching technicians, especially distance education researchers, need to leverage the sudden increase of online learning participants as an opportunity for research advances. Most of researchers will participate in research activities because of these new problems, and that will record a large number of research innovations and publications [12].

Thus it can be seen that Covid-19 is not all bad, but the challenges and problems it brings far outweigh the opportunities [1]. Unfortunately, comprehensive research shows that most students and educators (educational leaders and teachers) are not ready for online learning in the era of Covid-19, both psychologically and skillfully [1, 40], which may lead to teachers' inability to better help students learn and develop the skills they need in the twenty-first century to meet this challenge and more or unexpected challenges in the future. And for some governments, there are not enough policies to encourage and support college and universities to incorporate elements of modern educational technology into online curriculum [10]. However, teachers, as promoters of students' learning, play a vital role in their respective higher education institutions, so it is urgent to seek strategies for the teacher professional development or promotion under the background of Covid-19 in the twenty-first century [1, 47].

#### **4. TPD (teacher professional development)**

#### **4.1 Teacher professional development**

Many people regarded education and teacher professional development as the cornerstone of educational progress in a school reform age [48]. The focus on school quality has been on teacher professional development over the past few decades [49].

The teacher is one of the biggest factors on students' academic engagement and performance. DeMonte [50] believe that teachers' skills and knowledge of subject and class practice can be improved and strengthened by TPD. TPD is one of approaches to address teaching and student performance, and it is necessary to have intensive, sustainable, and content-centric TPD [51]. Professional development increases teacher knowledge, teacher skills, and student learning [52].

Nevertheless, currently, teachers face many challenges: The gap between economic growth and the declining quality of student learning [53] to meet twenty-first century education challenge, teacher professional development requires the investment of professional skills and knowledge; innovation is also urgent to promote professional development of teachers [54].

There are different kinds of definitions for TPD. Some think TPD is the product of complex and competing influences in both policy and practice [55]. Silver and peers [56] focus on TU (teacher understanding) as a central part of the teacher professional development process. It seems like most usually think teacher professional development is teachers' learning: how teachers learn to learn, and how they transform knowledge in practice for the benefit of their students' growth [57].

There is a complex framework for teacher professional development. Opfer and Pedder [58] showed that it can be split into three kinds of systems for TPD, namely school system, teacher system, and learning activity system. School system, namely the influence of school culture and circumstance on teachers' learning, it will share mission and vision of the school to teachers in order to support their teaching and learning. Teacher system explains the influence of teachers' personal experience, beliefs, and goals on their own practice. Learning activity system is teacher professional development activity, like Liu and peers [54] mentioned cultivating a selforganized and self-maintained TPD practice community.

Teachers should work with their coworkers, so that they have mutual learning. One study believes that teacher professional development is embedded in work and sustainable [59]. Professional development is related to teachers' professional skills, knowledge, and teaching content and helps to improve teachers' professional ability and motivation [52]. As we know, there is usually a gap between theoretical understanding and practice. It is a procedure of being involved in change and organizational learning to plan and implement TPD [60]. The high-quality professional development is described in some research studies: consistent with school's goals;

*Exploring the Professional Development and Improvement Strategies of College Teachers' Skills… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108663*

being focused on core contents; active and initiative learning for new teaching strategies; collaboration for teachers; embedded tracking and continual feedback; and the link between doctrine and practice [61, 62].

Generally, professional development exploration and discussion are a long process, not short-term thing. And some schools have established the community for professional learning and development, so that it can change instruction practice and pay attention to students' learning effect. Teacher professional development is centered on students' learning. The findings debate promotes faculty teaching practice through careful observation and informal or formal discussions with peers.

#### **4.2 The TPD of the twenty-first century education**

Things are always changing. Based on the report of the UNESCO [63], systems of education are changing around the world.

One of the important contents of educational reform is teacher professional development [48]. In order to achieve twenty-first century education's expectations, TPD has to focus on skills of the twenty-first century. Teachers participating in professional development must improve skills of the twenty-first century, for instance, problem-solving, critical thinking, intercultural skill, innovation, creativity, communication and collaboration, media literacy and ICT literacy, flexibility and adaptability, responsibility, and leadership [19, 64].

As professionals, teachers need to engage themselves in continuous professional development [65], and TPD should integrate skills of the twenty-first century into instruction. For example, incorporate intercultural understanding skills into literature courses; in management classes, practice skills of the problem-solving and critical thinking; focus on technical skills in mathematics classes [66]. Teachers increasingly learn and understand skills of the twenty-first century with the teacher professional development. Therefore, teachers know how to improve students' skills for the twenty-first century, link skills of the twenty-first century to real life during teaching to stimulate interest of students [37].

Meanwhile, effective teacher professional development makes teachers become active learners and contents co-creators [67]. The form of activities, teachers' working background (school, major), and activity time affect teachers' learning. And so are the successful factors of schools and evaluation and feedback of teachers affecting effective TPD [61]. DeMonte [50] and others [57, 68, 69] demonstrated that focus on content, active learning, collaboration, expert support, teacher professional evaluation, and duration are the keywords of effective methods to teacher professional development.

#### **4.3 The TPD of higher education**

Liu and peers [54] mentioned that higher education teachers are more demanding, more precise, more comprehensive, and more enlightening compared with K-12 education. High-quality higher education teachers are with extensive and profound intellectual knowledge and skills [30]. Similarly, teacher professional development should also be deep-seated. Furthermore, qualified lectures were innovative and trained in a variety of teaching methods. The teaching strategies of university teachers usually include authoritative strategies, democratic strategies, and basic information technology strategies [48, 70, 71].

The old learning methods do not produce students with the skills to reflect on the complex university issues. They are ecological, social, and economic outstanding

problems, such as climate change, rapid biodiversity decline, poverty, and water shortages [72]. Interdisciplinary inquiry and collective action are key to promoting the learning of more knowledge. Therefore, teachers are encouraged to study more and newer knowledge and skills to nurture young generations, such as addressing complex problems, intercultural skill, ICT literacy, and leadership.

Nevertheless, in the traditional professional development, teachers usually have less opportunities to participate in the design. In fact, it will bring good challenges for teachers through the practical learning [73]. Practical learning directly involves experience of teachers and focuses on the feedback. The approach helps teachers develop constructive skills and knowledge, because teachers can better understand the system of school, reflect on teaching and curriculum, then they change the classroom practice and solve the students' problems.

#### **4.4 The TPD in the era of Covid-19 of twenty-first century**

In Covid-19 emergencies, teachers are required almost overnight to be designers and instructors, to use tools that few people can master, to design valuable learning activities, and to flourish in this unfamiliar space [40]. Because teachers' professional accomplishment is the most significant factor affecting students' online classroom satisfaction, thus affecting students' learning performance and quality, which means that teachers need to be very efficient and understand students' psychology when lecturing, in order to highlight and properly teach the course content [74].

Most teachers do not have online teaching experience, and in some cases, some of the practices used in face-to-face teaching can be migrated to an online teaching environment, but teaching online courses still requires teachers to acquire innovative and unique knowledge, skills, and abilities to operate successfully in teaching practice and to support students' learning [9, 43, 46]. For example, teachers need to learn to use many new virtual network platforms or software, especially for elderly teachers who are not skilled in modern technology; they must receive online teacher training or private guidance to prepare them for online teaching [10]. Teachers need to have the ability and literacy to manage communication technology, as well as skills such as flexibility, problem-solving, and creativity in curriculum planning and the use of distance learning tools [75, 76]. For example, teachers must be able to ensure that all students are ready to learn, which requires the exploration of creative teaching methods to attract them [43].

There are also a considerable number of teachers believe that social media has a lot of questions and questions from students throughout the day, putting more pressure on them, and time and energy management has become very uncontrollable [44]. There are also teachers who do not have such experience and do not have confidence in themselves, which makes online teaching a burden on themselves, thus unable to solve teaching problems very well. But in this special period, the complexity of teaching requires teachers to solve problems quickly in the virtual classroom [43]. Therefore, teachers' flexible time management ability and problem-solving ability are also very important.

Teachers also need to overcome the traditional model and challenge the virtual teaching form in which can't see students or even interact with each other [8]. Teachers need to redesign formative questions, tests, or exercises provided through digital and mobile technologies to interact with students to promote effective teaching and learning [4]. The evaluation after the delivery of teaching also needs to be significantly revised, thus the teaching evaluation of both teachers and students is more complex [12].

*Exploring the Professional Development and Improvement Strategies of College Teachers' Skills… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108663*

Teachers need to define the duration of online courses according to students' self-regulation and metacognitive abilities [4]. Teachers need to ensure and remind students that online resources, platforms, and applications for e-learning should not infringe on users' data privacy [44]. Moreover, teachers may need to know more about psychological counseling, as the continuous blockade not only brings challenges to students' learning, but also has a significant impact on students' mental health [6, 9]. This social division is a traumatic event that may have longterm cumulative adverse effects [7], such as related stress, depression, and anxiety [1, 77]. Cao and peers [78] identified three factors of anxiety for students: 1) economic stress; 2) the impact on daily life activities; 3) academic delays and difficulties during Covid-19 [78].

In order for higher education institutions around the world to remain competitive, it is necessary for teachers to be prepared for professional development. And now, more than ever, universities should invest in the teacher professional development, enable them to learn about effective teaching methods with or without online technology, and further to expand the effectiveness of education so that students attain development [40, 46].

#### **5. Suggestions on the professional development of university teachers in the era of Covid-19 of twenty-first century**

Pham and Ho [10] given the following suggestions in the study: 1) Policy: after Covid-19, encourage the combination of "online teaching" and "offline teaching" in most higher education courses, which will help higher education institutions, teachers, and students prepare for a smooth transition to the era of digitization and globalization. 2) System: institutions of higher education should build a quality system for online examinations and student engagement, such as changing teaching methods to maintain the quality of teaching, learning, and evaluation. 3) Support: financial, academic, and technical support for institutions of higher education that have not started online teaching during the Covid-19 period to obtain the latest management system operation [10]. More researchers have also mentioned the importance of reorganizing the teaching evaluation system in colleges and universities, such as replacing it with homework to avoid face-to-face final exams [2, 39, 44, 75].

Bao [42] summarized several effective strategies for university teachers' online teaching under Covid-19: 1) To better solve problems, universities and teachers work together to make contingency programs. 2) Redesign, dividing teaching contents into smaller units. 3) Improve the ability of communication and cooperation to gain multiparty support. 4) Improve the ability of management and motivation, and increase the control of online teaching, so as to strengthen students' active extracurricular learning [42].

As teachers need to provide psychological counseling or guidance for some students, universities or relevant institutions should also provide teachers with richer and corresponding psychological professional knowledge [6]. For the future, universities should evaluate their online learning strategies and use postmodern feedback to enable teachers to use different online solutions [39].

In terms of the competencies that leaders must possess in the universities environment, the role of principals is crucial, not only during the Covid-19 pandemic, but also under normal circumstances, the role and ability of principals must be able to provide teachers with a positive space to improve their teaching and learning abilities [20].

Colleges and universities need to help teachers improve their skills, develop teacher training programs, and help teachers adjust and adapt to their teaching styles and the way they interact with students in order to adapt to the online education environment. However, it should be adjusted according to the macro background of each country, the student profile and the field of learning [47]. As most college teachers have no online teaching experience and have no confidence in their online classes, universities also need to help teachers build effective self-beliefs so that it enhances their selfconfidence in teaching [20, 43].

The government and relevant departments need to further promote the construction of educational informatization; to prepare standardized learning and teaching equipment for students and teachers; conduct teachers training online, and support online academic research, especially to help students with difficulties during online classroom [79]. In order to provide a professional reference basis for teachers' online teaching, there is a need to develop a competency framework and other standards for that; to develop evidence-based policies, complemented by guidelines for the implementation of these policies so that it develops a comprehensive teacher education system and develop teachers' professional knowledge and skills [11, 46].

Almazova and peers [3] also mentioned that technical, psychological, methodological support and TPD plans are crucial to minimize negative impact of rapidly changing educational processes and to ensure effective online education: to help address mental barriers in online classroom; a developed material and base of technology, including software and hardware; support from organization and methodology-suggestions related to instruction activities during the digital education; TPD programs and supervision from universities, with a focus on the teachers' academic work quality while online working [3].

#### **6. Discussion**

It can be shown that TPD strategies in college and universities by reviewing and analyzing related researches for the Covid-19 era (even including post-Covid-19 era) in the twenty-first century as below: evaluation of TPD needs, cultivating skills of the twenty-first century, integrating ICT instruction, peer coaching, creating the positive culture of campus, building collaboration, initiative learning, embedding the core values, sustainable professional development, research projects, and training teachers' emergency capabilities.

#### **6.1 Evaluation of TPD needs**

It is a beneficial way: teachers reflecting on professional development. It involves analyzing teachers' needs and problems, improving training processes, and improving learners' efficacy and beliefs. Moreover, evaluation is able to improve cognition and practice of teachers. Self-assessment is also suitable for TPD. In the urgent Covid-19 era, the needs of TPD vary from time to time, especially the forced "online teaching" is the new experience for many teachers, and the skills or professional development that teachers need are different from those in the past. Countries, regions, and universities need to work together to reorganize teaching, learning, and evaluation systems to help teachers and stakeholders get more appropriate feedback and further enhance professional development.

*Exploring the Professional Development and Improvement Strategies of College Teachers' Skills… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108663*

#### **6.2 Cultivating skills of the twenty-first century**

TPD must assist teacher to cultivate skills of the twenty-first century. The skills of the twenty-first century usually refer to problem-solving and critical thinking, creativity and innovation, intercultural understanding, media literacy, computing and ICT literacy, responsibility and leadership, accountability and productivity, self-direction and initiative, adaptability, and flexibility. They need to be connected and coherent with contents, curriculum, and strategies of TPD. Especially in the sudden outbreak of the Covid-19 era, these skills are all the more urgent and necessary, because "online teaching" has been forced to become a mandatory teaching mode, and in the post-Covid-19 era, this model is more likely to be mixed with offline teaching to cope with the accelerating era of digitization and globalization.

#### **6.3 Integrating ICT instruction**

For TPD, it is able to use information communication technology. Generally, the online program provides a space for teachers to communicate mutually, so that they can learn or share twenty-first century skills training experience. Peer coaches are able to apply some videos while giving teachers training. Although most university teachers do not grow up in the Z or Alpha generation in the digital environment, they hold the mentality of lifelong learning or even master necessary information and communication technologies in the twenty-first century. They can be applied to teaching and academic, so that teachers can obtain better professional development.

#### **6.4 Peer coaching**

Coaching or guidance brings appropriate practice and tools for TPD. Experienced teachers need to be introduced to educate them in effective ways to develop their skills of the twenty-first century in professional development. The peer coaches may act as consultants or advisors so that they can help teachers who are not non-experienced and develop non-experienced teachers with communication skills, self-management, problem-solving. In general, because of knowing teachers well, peer coaches are able to devise useful guidance on how to teach skills of the twenty-first century and how to motivate students' learning during online and offline class. For example, in the context of Covid-19, many college teachers do not have the psychological, knowledge and skills experience of online teaching, so they can get more abundant guidance through peer coaching of experienced teachers.

#### **6.5 Creating the positive culture of campus**

Campus culture represents the learning environment of the school. In order to support TPD, school managers need to concern whether the organizational structure and system and environment are appropriate. To some extent, college and universities should develop positive culture of campus, to support TPD for the Covid-19 era in the twenty-first century education. For example, according to the actual situation of various countries, localities, and schools, school leaders should formulate teacher professional development plans different from offline teaching from the aspects of psychological obstacles, technical level, method support, teaching activities, academic development, and so on so that develop the supervision and guidance policy of online teaching.

#### **6.6 Building collaboration**

The collaboration methods include teacher network, teamwork, learning community, and peer coaching. With professional development embedded in work, group teachers are able to have together discussion, to share diverse ideas, and study mutually to get the same aim. More importantly, teachers improve themselves through working with others, in interdisciplinary teams, with the same aim for students' performance and success, as well as preparing for online teaching and improving new and corresponding teaching strategies.

#### **6.7 Initiative learning**

In general, the professional development program provides teachers some opportunities, which are active and increased engagement. Teachers are able to retrospect students' twenty-first century skill performance, the status, attitude, and effect of online learning, obtain their teaching feedback to support future professional development. In the process of devoting themselves to learning, students must fully participate in the three aspects of behavior, emotion, and cognition. In the case of online learning, more students will be unable to concentrate on learning because of a variety of situations (family interference, unsupervised, bad psychological state, poor network and facilities, etc.). This requires teachers to use more skills and teaching strategies to stimulate and help students to learn actively.

#### **6.8 Embedding the core values**

TPD needs to conform to teacher's aims, needs, attitudes, beliefs, and cognition. TPD also has to tally with the goals, standards, missions, and visions of the country, region, and college levels. In order to increase the skills of the Covid-19 era and post-Covid-19 era in the twenty-first century, the programs regarding teachers' training must be tailored to the targets, and certain section must be tailored to the context. So that it can make teacher professional development keep pace with the times, as to be able to deal with many sudden challenges.

#### **6.9 Sustainable professional development**

The duration is usually the length of time for TPD. There is a process for TPD, and it is not short-term shopping. However, TPD time is too long is disadvantageous. Some studies have shown that the impact on TPD is greatest when the duration exceeds 100 hours and less than 1 year. TPD period has to ensure contents and quality, to help teachers learn how to make skills of the twenty-first century into the curriculum and teaching, and help teachers develop and improve online teaching skills and strategies, and prepare for mixed online and offline teaching models in the post-Covid-19 era.

#### **6.10 Research projects**

We know that research projects play an important role in TPD of college and universities. Research of teachers' development, discussion, absorption, and practice of new skills and knowledge is essential. TPD of twenty-first century skills will be universal, effective, continuous, and constantly updated because of research projects. Such as "online teaching," which is very new to many teachers, has been investigated and studied by university scholars in many countries using different methods, and even continuous follow-up research, to support teachers' sustainable professional development.

#### **6.11 Training teachers' emergency capabilities**

University teachers need to cultivate emergency capabilities and keep a set of emergency plans in line with their own, whether in terms of psychology or action. Keep constant vigilance and learning to acquire emerging cutting-edge knowledge and skills, and to sum up their own plans and strategies of addressing acute problems, even keep them in a state of constant update. It is helpful for teachers to acquire or update professional development and skills better and faster when they may encounter large-scale events such as Covid-19 or other unexpected events in the future.

#### **7. Conclusion**

In a word, universities' TPD for Covid-19 and post Covid-19 education in the twenty-first century is all-important. To satisfy the needs of students, teachers must improve students' twenty-first century skills, including problem-solving and critical thinking, creativity and innovation, intercultural understanding, communications, information, media literacy, computing and ICT literacy, responsibility and leadership, accountability and productivity, self-direction and initiative, adaptability and flexibility. Teachers must master them to change the antiquated instruction. In the era of Covid-19 and post-Covid-19, they are particularly urgent and important. Strategies of TPD may include evaluation of TPD needs, cultivating skills of the twenty-first century, integrating ICT instruction, peer coaching, creating the positive culture of campus, building collaboration, initiative learning, embedding the core values, sustainable professional development, research projects, and training teachers' emergency capabilities. These strategies can satisfy teacher's learning and practice and help enhance TPD of college and universities education in the twenty-first century, Covid-19 era and post-Covid-19 era.

#### **8. Significance of the study**

The paper aims to provide relevant information on the teacher professional development of college for the education in the twenty-first century, Covid-19 era and post-Covid-19 era. The results pay attention to effective strategies of TPD for Covid-19 era education of the twenty-first century in college and universities. TPD for the Covid-19 era education of the twenty-first century is indispensable. University teachers will have more insight and understanding about the professional development of education in the twenty-first century. In addition, TPD became a portion of school innovation.

Education of the Covid-19 era in the twenty-first century provides new models and opportunities for teachers' professional development, to provide professional development strategies and suggestions for teachers and administrators for twentyfirst century education. Subsequent researchers are going to obtain more specific

information and knowledge concerning TPD in twenty-first century education. In this context, future studies are able to do more on TPD for education of post-Covid-19 era of the twenty-first education.

#### **Objectives**

To explore the teacher professional development and improvement strategies for education in the twenty-first century in the era of Covid-19.

### **Author details**

Xiaoyao Yue1 \*, Yan Ye1 and Linjiao Zou2

1 Graduate School of Education, Stamford International University, Bangkok, Thailand

2 Higher Education Research Institute, Yunnan University, China

\*Address all correspondence to: sandyyuexiaoyao@gmail.com

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Exploring the Professional Development and Improvement Strategies of College Teachers' Skills… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108663*

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#### **Chapter 20**

## Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher Education – Experience of Ukraine

*Valentyna Polykarpivna Antoniuk*

*Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army (Edward Everett, US politician and statesman, President of Harvard College)*

#### **Abstract**

This section aims to analyze the impact of the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine on the higher education system, the losses incurred, and the forced transformation processes that form new vectors for the development and modernization of higher education for post-war recovery. The introduction outlines the author's understanding of the essence of the war in Ukraine as a global civilizational conflict, its causes, and its consequences. Further, the analysis of challenges to the education system in the context of armed conflicts in the studies of foreign and domestic authors is carried out. The study of the problems of Ukraine's higher education began with its general characteristics in the pre-war period. The essential attention focuses on a review of the impact of the war on the system of higher education in Ukraine, where two stages are distinguished: the first is the consequences of the armed conflict of 2014-2021 for higher education in Ukraine and the peculiarities of the forced relocation of universities; the second is the risks and losses of higher education institutions in Ukraine in the context of the 2022 war. These are the problems of security and preservation of infrastructure, human resources, and student body of universities. The change in organizational forms and methods of training in combat conditions to ensure the educational process are highlighted as well as the importance of using digital technologies, innovative approaches, and international cooperation for the preservation of higher education. At the end of the section, the immediate and long-term negative consequences of the war for higher education in Ukraine are systematized, and it is concluded that the educational transformations caused by the war contribute to the formation of new vectors of post-war reforms and the development of the Ukrainian higher education system.

**Keywords:** war, Ukraine, higher education, war risks and losses, displaced universities, transformation of the educational process

#### **1. Introduction**

The importance of studying the impact of war on higher education is due to the fact that it is of key significance for the formation of human and intellectual capital, formation of the national elite, development of science and culture, improvement of the state technological level, formation of a modern economy, and establishment of democratic foundations of social development. As the history of armed conflicts shows, in any war, the education system becomes the arena of a battle, as it is the battle for people's minds and worldviews. In the conditions of the formation of the knowledge society and the aggravation of global contradictions, the war in the field of education becomes especially important.

The 21st century is characterized by increasing global instability and aggravation of various risks, as indicated in the results of the research by experts of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which annually publishes reports on global risks. According to their assessment, in recent decades, the most threatening to society in terms of probability are environmental risks and in terms of impact – geopolitical risks (large-scale terrorist attacks and the use of weapons of mass destruction). The war in Ukraine is the result of the escalation of global ideological and political confrontations in the conditions of the accumulation of lethal weapons and weapons of mass destruction. The war was a shock for Ukraine, which had a negative impact on all spheres of the country's social life, which made it necessary to study its causes and consequences.

In Ukraine, many scientists have analyzed the causes and the consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian war. It should be highlighted that the research of specialists of the National Institute of Strategic Studies [1, 2] have revealed the essence and features of hybrid wars, investigated the Ukrainian-Russian strategic confrontation and fault lines, and considered the prerequisites of Russian aggression against Ukraine and its consequences. In the publications of I. Rushchenko [3] and L. Zaliznyak [4], the civilization nature of the long Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which is caused by different historical, cultural, and mental differences in the organization of public life, is investigated. This aspect of the Russian-Ukrainian relations and confrontations has also been analyzed by the scientists of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine [5]. These and other publications lead to the conclusion that this war is based on civilizational opposites and strategic differences in the vectors of development of the two warring countries – Russia and Ukraine. Russia's aggression is due to the desire to build a Eurasian empire on the basis of autocracy through territorial expansion and annexations, primarily of Ukraine, which is substantiated in the book "Basics of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia" by Oleksandr Dugin, who is a modern Russian ideologist of Eurasianism [6]. Ukraine became the object of invasion as a result of choosing another vector of development, which is integration into the European social and economic area and the development of a free, democratic country, which is based on human rights and freedoms. Therefore, this war has a civilizational character, and it is carried out in an extremely brutal form and threatens democratic conquests and values of the world. And higher education is one of the greatest values.

It should be noted that the above-mentioned publications do not give the analysis of the problems of education in the conditions of war. However, they reveal general causes of the armed confrontation, which is important for understanding its nature and negative consequences for the Ukrainian state. Its consequences for the economy and human development of the country are especially harmful, since Ukraine is having huge losses of material and human assets. It has caused great destruction to the

*Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

education system of Ukraine, including higher education. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the impact of the war, unleashed by Russia in Ukraine, on the system of higher education; the losses incurred and forced transformation processes that form new vectors of development; and modernization of higher education in the course of post-war recovery.

#### **2. Analysis of the challenges to the education system in the conditions of armed conflicts in the studies of foreign and national authors**

High-quality mass education is the most important achievement of a society. It forms a person's worldview, ensures his/her right to development, and provides modern knowledge and competencies necessary for successful economic activity.

The impact of war on education raises a number of humanitarian and social problems, which are the subject of concern of many international organizations and the object of analysis by numerous foreign and national researchers. In particular, UNESCO carries out an expertise in emergency situation trainings, including those caused by armed conflicts. It emphasizes that access to learning opportunities during crises is life-saving and life-sustaining. The specialists of the organization analyze the situation in education during wars in various countries, so Ukraine was no exception. Taking into account significant problems created by the war in Ukraine's education, UNESCO has launched programs to ensure the continuation of teaching and learning in Ukraine. The programs support online education, promote development of digital educational platforms and content and electronic assessment systems for higher education, and provide psychosocial support to participants in the educational process [7].

The international organization UNICEF, which carries out vigorous activities in Ukraine, plays a significant role in highlighting and solving the problems of education in wartime conditions. UNICEF specialists have prepared the report "Children and the War in Ukraine" [8], which, along with other aspects, studies, analyzes, and highlights the problems of children's education during the war. Also, the organization regularly reviews the humanitarian situation and identifies the directions of aid, including the provision of the educational process, in Ukraine [9].

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attacks (GCPEA), which was formed in 2010 to address the problem of targeted attacks on education during armed conflicts, is directly related to its activities in highlighting and solving the problems of education during wars. GCPEA regularly conducts research and prepares reports and publications on the situation with regard to education in various countries where such conflicts take place, like Afghanistan, Palestine, Yemen, and many other countries. Analytical reports named "Education Under Attack" are regularly prepared. Their releases for 2014, 2018, 2020, and 2022 are available now. The 2022 edition noted that the number of attacks on educational institutions and the use of educational institutions for military purposes increased by one-third from 2019 to 2020 and continued to increase in 2021. Over a thousand schools and universities were damaged in Ukraine from February 24 to June 1, 2022 [10].

Many foreign researchers analyze the impact of armed conflicts on education in certain countries, for example, in Bosnia and in other countries [11]. In India, it is done by taking into account the gender aspect [12]. Considerable attention is paid to the problems of higher education in the conditions of war, since it is this sector of education that forms highly qualified personnel. Arnaldo Pellin investigated the systemic effects of the war on higher education in Somalia and concluded that

systemic damage can only be overcome through collective efforts [13]. A group of researchers analyzed the condition and losses of higher education institutions in the conditions of permanent war in the Gaza Strip and determined directions of their protection against attacks [14]. The University of Cambridge has published the study results by Cambridge University scholars and Syrian academics in exile on the state of the Syrian higher education system after 8 years of war, concluding that it will gradually collapse [15]. In most studies, material and human losses of universities and colleges are analyzed, their consequences for the development of the country, and ways to protect higher educational institutions are determined.

In Ukraine, the issue of education in the conditions of war became relevant after Russia's occupation of Crimea and parts of the eastern regions of the country in 2014. In the monograph of scientists of Drahomanov National Pedagogical University, [16] analyzed the development of education in a conflict society and its role in building peace and investigated the problems of education in Ukraine in the conditions of a hybrid war; they paid considerable attention to the international practice of reintegration of higher education and the activities of displaced universities of Ukraine. Specialists of the Institute of Pedagogy of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (NAPS) of Ukraine [17] systematized the recommendations of international organizations regarding the organization of education in wartime conditions. Kharkiv IT Cluster has prepared a selection of the most important and up-to-date information about higher education at the end of September 2022, which outlines the changes and features of the educational process in the conditions of a full-scale war [18]. The independent analytical center and community Cedos that works on issues of social development in Ukraine pays considerable attention to the problems of education, which are discussed at round tables organized by it. The center has published discussion materials on the impact of the war on higher education [19]. The author has also made an analysis of the problems of education in Ukraine in the realities of the war from the standpoint of conditions for the formation of human capital [20].

#### **3. General characteristics of higher education in Ukraine in the pre-war period**

Ukraine has a long tradition of higher education development, which dates back to the founding of the Ostroh Academy in the 16th century and Kyiv-Mohyla Academy at the beginning of the 17th century. In the nineteenth century, universities, lyceums, and institutes were established in almost all large cities located on the territory of present-day Ukraine, and during the Soviet time, in all regional centers. In 1990, Ukraine had 149 state higher education institutions (HEIs), most of which were in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, and Lviv. It should be noted that after Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and began transition to a market economy, there was a boom in the development of higher education. The creation of private institutes and admission on a commercial basis of a significant number of applicants to state higher education institutions were due to the high demand of the population for higher education under the condition of low tuition fees. The number of higher education institutions increased more than twice from 1990 to 2007, and the number of students increased by 2.6 times, reaching 2372.5 thousand people in 2007 [21]. This increase in the amount of training of university specialists was not determined by the needs of the labor market and

#### *Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

was not accompanied by the corresponding development of the material base of higher education institutions and modernization of the educational process. "Massification" of higher education led to a decrease in its quality and insufficient compliance of the acquired qualifications with the requirements of the economy, which led to the devaluation of a university diploma [22]. Therefore, starting from the end of 2010, the process of optimizing the number of higher education institutions and the scope of university training of specialists, modernizing the content and directions of the world, and strengthening the emphasis on the quality of education and the formation of modern competencies has taken place. This was facilitated by: the Law "On Higher Education" of 2014 with amendments of 2020, which is aimed at quality training of competitive human capital for hightech and innovative development of the country; The National Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education, which was created on the model of the European independent quality assurance agencies; gradual integration of Ukrainian universities into the European space of higher education and their active participation in the EU Tempus and Erasmus+ programs.

On the eve of the 2022 war, Ukraine had a significant number of higher education institutions capable of training specialists for the economy. As of February 10, 2022, 336 universities, academies, and institutes and 96 other higher education institutions (schools, technical schools, and colleges) were operating, with 1,335,700 students studying at levels 5–8 of the Framework of Qualifications. The qualification levels are: Junior Specialist – 362.5 thousand people; Bachelor's degree – 707.3 thousand; Master's degree – 240.7 thousand; Doctor of Philosophy – 25.1 thousand people [23]. According to the share of students in the total population, which is 3.3%, Ukraine is approximately at the level of the developed European countries. According to our calculations based on the Eurostat data, in 2020, it was 3.9% in Germany, 3.4% in Italy, 4.5% in Spain, and 4.1% in France [24].

Ukraine has many good universities that are able to provide quality educational services and scientific research. According to the national rating of higher education institutions of Ukraine, which evaluates academic, scientific publishing and international activity and research achievements, the leaders occupying the first 5 positions among the Top-200 universities of Ukraine in 2022 were: Shevchenko Kyiv National University, Sikorskyi Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Karazin Kharkiv National University, Lviv Polytechnic Institute, and Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute [25]. Also, 11 universities of Ukraine were included in the QS World University Rankings 2023. Among them are Karazin Kharkiv National University, which has a rank in the range of 541–550 positions; Shevchenko Kyiv National University; and Sikorskyi Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, ranking between 651 and 701 positions [26]. So far, Ukrainian universities do not occupy very high positions in the world rankings; however, the number of national HEIs participating in international assessments is increasing. It should also be noted that Ukrainian students take part in the international contests of student works and quite often win.

*Examples. Two students of Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute took first place at the ICAMES 2019 International Competition (International Cultural and Academic Meeting of Engineering Students). There were 80 participants from 11 countries of the world who mastered engineering specialties [27]. In the international competition of scientific developments of schoolchildren and students "Science without Borders," which took place on May 29, 2022 in the city of Teplice (Czech Republic), Ukrainian students from the specialty "Management of Organizations and Administration" received 14 diplomas for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places [28].*

Despite certain achievements, there are currently many problems in the field of higher education in Ukraine that need to be solved as soon as possible: improving the quality of education for the formation of modern competencies, flexible change of training directions and qualifications to the changing needs of the labor market, modernization of the educational process based on digital technologies and global educational trends, raising the level of university science, and more active internationalization of university activities and active participation in the education of the adult population. The possibilities for solving these problems have significantly worsened in the conditions of a full-scale war unleashed by Russia, which has brought significant destruction to the higher education system of Ukraine.

#### **4. The war as a trigger of upheavals for Ukraine and its higher education system, main risks and threats**

The war brings huge threats to the education system due to: destruction of the educational infrastructure, use of educational facilities for military purposes, impossibility of organizing training during hostilities, risks to life and health of all participants in the educational process, and forced relocation of higher education institutions, teachers, and students to other territories. Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, which began in 2014 and lasted 8 years in the form of a hybrid war, continued with a full-scale war in 2022. It led to significant destruction and losses in the economy and social infrastructure, causing significant changes in higher education.

#### **4.1 The hybrid war of 2014: 2021 and its consequences for higher education**

In 2014, Russia occupied 7% of the territory of Ukraine, including Crimea and the eastern territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions [29]. Despite the fact that the active phase of the armed confrontation was suspended by a temporary ceasefire in September 2014, the war continued in a hybrid form, which combines military, quasi-military, diplomatic, informational, economic, and other means of warfare by the aggressor to achieve its strategic and political goals ([1], p. 19). Ukraine lost significant industrial potential, which was concentrated in the east of the country. Together with the costs of the war, this led to significant economic losses. According to the calculations of the London Centre for Economics and Business Research Cebr, the conflict with Russia cost Ukraine 280 billion US dollars in lost GDP for the period of 2014–2020; annually, Ukraine lost 19.9% of its GDP since 2014 [30]. Large economic losses limited the possibility of financing the system of education. In addition, during this period, Ukraine lost a number of educational institutions, teaching staff, and students who remained in the territory not controlled by Ukraine, which is shown in **Table 1**. The number of colleges decreased by 20% and their students by 24%; the number of teaching staff decreased almost by 16%. 48 universities with a large number of students and teachers remained in the occupied territories, so the student contingent of Ukrainian universities decreased by almost 17%.

The invasion of Russia in 2014, hostilities and occupation of the territory of Donbas (parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions), as well as the annexation of Crimea caused large-scale displacement of people and organizations. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in 2014–2015 exceeded 1.5 million people, most of whom were children and adolescents. Creation of fake republics of Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) in the occupied territories

*Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*


*\*Excluding the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, and the part of temporarily occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.*

#### **Table 1.**

*Changes in quantitative indicators of higher education in Ukraine in 2014–2015 [31–33].*

under the full control of the Russian Federation and repression against pro-Ukrainian citizens prompted the displacement of a significant number of people, enterprises, and organizations, including the majority of higher education institutions. 18 higher education institutions, three and a half thousand scientific and pedagogical workers, and almost forty thousand students left the occupied territories. 9 universities left the Donetsk region, 8 universities left the Luhansk region, and one university left Crimea [34]. Among those displaced were such powerful universities as: Donetsk National University (DonNU) (is located in Vinnytsia), Donetsk National Technical University (is located on the basis of its own branch in Pokrovsk), Dahl Eastern Ukrainian National University (now is in Severodonetsk), Luhansk National Agrarian University (in Kharkiv), and Taurida National University, named after V.I. Vernadskyi (in the city of Kyiv).

A review of numerous sources with information on the relocation of higher education institutions from the occupied territories in 2014–2015 makes it possible to determine the specifics of this process:

firstly, in the conditions of shock from the invasion and occupation, the political crisis in Ukraine (after the fighting on the Maidan in February 2014, President Yanukovych fled and the new authorities did not gain legitimacy), and confusion and sabotage of some local authorities, higher educational institutions (like other organizations) were left at the mercy of fate and had to decide for themselves what to do. The decision about the necessity of relocation did not come immediately but after the seizure of universities by armed men, banning of everything Ukrainian, and the demand to come under the jurisdiction of the LPR or DPR;

secondly, in choosing the strategy for further activity, the staff of the occupied higher education institutions were divided: one part decided to remain in the occupation, the other part decided to leave for the territory controlled by Ukraine. Therefore, as noted by R. Dodonov [35], almost every evacuated university in uncontrolled territories has its own "clone" that has completely switched its activities to Russian standards and ideological attitudes. During all the years of occupation between the divided universities, according to R. Dodonov, "an ideological gap has grown," which

can hardly be overcome even in the process of reintegration of the occupied territories into Ukraine, especially with a view to a full-scale war in 2022;

thirdly, the relocation and revival of the universities in new locations was carried out on the initiative and due to the efforts of the teams of the educational institutions themselves. At that time, the Ukrainian state did not initiate the evacuation of these educational and scientific institutions and actually did not provide assistance during the relocation process itself. In new places, resettled universities were treated as competitors, so they did not contribute too much to the organization of their activities. The relocation of higher education institutions became possible only due to the enthusiasm, perseverance, and hard work of the management of these institutions, their teachers, and students, practically without external help. It should be noted that the entire material component remained in the occupation; only the statutory documents and those methodical materials that were on electronic media were taken away. The local authorities provided premises for the displaced institutions, but they were not furnished. There was no necessary equipment, furniture, computers, and housing for teachers and students; there was a delay in funding. The author can personally confirm this situation of the displaced universities, since, being a forced displaced person from Donetsk herself, in October 2014, she was in close contact with the staff of the displaced Donetsk National University in Vinnytsia, who at that time had no material support, except for premises. Employees of DonNU had to search for sponsors and everything necessary for the educational process on their own, with great efforts, and set up work in a new place.

#### **4.2 The full-scale war of 2022 and its consequences for higher education**

Even more significant challenges and problems have arisen from a full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, causing massive destruction and considerable negative social-economic and humanitarian consequences [35]. As of September 5, 2022, according to Kyiv School of Economics, the total amount of direct losses reached \$114.5 billion. 412 industrial enterprises; 1153 cultural, sports, and tourist facilities; 15.3 thousand high-rise buildings and 115.9 thousand private houses; 1118 secondary education institutions; 978 medical institutions, and many other facilities were damaged and destroyed [36].

An analysis of the general situation in the country shows that the greatest risks for the education system are related to the following: 1) large-scale destruction of higher education facilities (educational buildings, laboratories, dormitories, etc.) as a result of bombings and rocket attacks; 2) a direct threat to the life and health of all subjects of the educational process, which caused, at the initial stage of the war, the chaotic departure of teachers and students of educational institutions to safer regions; 3) the necessity of forced relocation of higher educational institutions from the zone of hostilities, which took place both on the initiative of the universities themselves and on the decision of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine; 4) the loss of educational and production practice bases for students as a result of the destruction or relocation of enterprises; 5) a significant loss of the contingent of students and pedagogical and teaching staff as a result of migration and mobilization—a large number of them voluntarily joined the armed forces and territorial defense; 6) use of educational facilities for other purposes; 7) decrease in financial resources of higher education institutions; 8) the loss of managerial educational control over higher education institutions in the territories that have come under temporary occupation or are in the zone of active military operations [37].

*Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

The Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, together with the Institute of Educational Analytics and in partnership with the United Nations Children's Fund, Save the Children, and the World Bank, conducted a study of the state and needs of higher education in Ukraine during the war by surveying 749 universities and their separate units [38]. The obtained research results show the presence of such losses and problems.

#### *4.2.1 Educational institutions*

131 institutions, or 5.5% of all institutions of higher education, were destroyed. Most of them were in the city of Kharkiv, which has been constantly under fire. About 30 HEIs reported significant losses of laboratory equipment, library funds, educational materials, furniture, and office property. Universities suffer additional losses due to the use of their premises as temporary shelters for internally displaced persons (as noted by 83 surveyed universities). Also, 51 educational institutions indicated losses due to the need to build functional bomb shelters.

#### *4.2.2 Students*

The 2022 war has affected 1.5 million youth and over 70,000 foreign students studying in Ukraine. In various universities, from 1 to 30% of students became internally displaced persons or went abroad. For various reasons, almost 24,000 students did not resume their studies. It was revealed that more than 9000 students cannot continue their education due to the inability to pay for it; another significant number (28%) need to work for living; for some students, the reason was overloaded with care and household duties, which prevented them from returning to studies. Also, more than 100 higher education institutions named worsening psychological well-being as one of the reasons for students to stop studying.

#### *4.2.3 Teachers*

Many of them joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). For various reasons, about 2000 scientific and pedagogical workers could not continue teaching and scientific activities after February 24, 2022. A significant number of teachers (up to 30% in some universities) became internally displaced persons or went abroad. This has led to a shortage of teaching staff, as reported by 63 surveyed educational institutions. In addition to education, many university employees also engage in humanitarian activities, for example, collecting and sorting humanitarian aid.

#### *4.2.4 Educational activity*

All universities of Ukraine, despite the war, continue their activities; in most cases, all or more than half of the students have resumed their studies. More than half of HEIs (57%) provide educational services exclusively online, and 41% use a hybrid format (face-to-face and online). However, there are significant obstacles to quality educational activities: significant power outages and lack of Internet connection, the deterioration of the security situation at the training sites as a result of systematic missile attacks, and lack of technical means for online teaching and learning, which was indicated by almost 40% of respondents. Also, only half of educational institutions have the resources to organize inclusive (online) education for persons with special educational needs (SEN).

#### *4.2.5 Financial position*

In most institutions of higher education, the financial situation has worsened due to a decrease in income and an increase in expenses. This is due to: a) a reduction in budget funding. State expenditures on all education decreased by 14.84% of the planned. Financing of preferential long-term loans for obtaining higher education was completely canceled; funding of scientific research and scientific and technical development in higher education institutions was significantly reduced (by almost 20%) ([37], p. 234); b) loss of tuition fees for foreign and Ukrainian students who receive education under a contract form (30% of surveyed educational institutions indicated such losses); c) an increase in costs due to the need to adapt to activities under martial law (relocation, shelter arrangement, etc.). Therefore, about 20% of educational institutions reported that they had interruptions in the payment of salaries to their employees, and 23% had interruptions in the transfer of scholarships to students.

#### *4.2.6 Relocated institutions of higher education*

In the course of the full-scale war, many HEIs have appeared in the zone of hostilities. In order to create a safe educational environment for participants in the educational process from the regions where active hostilities are ongoing, in particular, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and certain communities of Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions, more than a hundred universities, institutes, colleges, and their separate structural units, amounting to almost 12% of their total number, were relocated in the country. Among them are: Melitopol State Pedagogical University, Kherson National Technical University, Taurida State Agricultural Technological University, Kherson State Maritime Academy, and many others ([37], p. 166–167). Many universities were relocated from the combat zone in Donbas for the second time. All relocated higher education institutions suffered significant losses: 1) personnel potential, which partly remained in the occupied territory and partly went abroad; 2) production areas, laboratories, other material and technical bases, and basic enterprises that were partners for students' practice; 3) a stable contingent of entrants/students who focused on safer regions of the country or went to study abroad; 4) previous directions and volumes of financing at the expense of the population, enterprises, regions, and the state. Such universities faced great difficulties in settling in new locations, supporting educational process, and recruiting applicants.

#### **4.3 Problems of higher education in the occupied territories**

Currently, there are about 1300 schools and 12 universities in the temporarily occupied territories [39]. According to the international norms, the aggressor country must preserve education in the occupied territories in the form it was before the occupation. Russia does not comply with these norms; during the occupation, it primarily subordinates educational institutions to establish control over public opinion and society as a whole. The occupying power changes the educational process in all educational institutions and subordinates it to Russian departments, forcing them to switch to Russian educational programs and standards and switch to teaching exclusively in the Russian language. This educational policy is aimed at destroying the Ukrainian identity. The main risks and problems

*Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

of education in the territories occupied by Russia are associated with the following processes:

There is an active search for teachers and lecturers loyal to the occupation authorities and their involvement in cooperation through material incentives and the provision of managerial positions. Since there were not many of them, persons without appropriate professional training, as well as teachers from Russia, are involved in the educational process;

Psychological and physical pressures are exerted on teachers (through threats, intimidation, kidnapping, bribery) to force them to work in Russified educational institutions. In Mariupol, which was on the verge of a humanitarian disaster, the occupiers threatened teachers who refused to cooperate to limit access to "humanitarian" aid. In August, the Russian military abducted the principals of lyceums No. 2 and No. 3, Oksana Yakubova and Iryna Dubas, from temporarily occupied Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region. Currently, the fate of these people is unknown [40];

Pressure is exerted on parents, forcing them to send their children to study in Russified educational institutions. In the Zaporizhzhia region and Mariupol, the Russians introduced a three-level system of sanctions for refusal: 1) warning, 2) a fine of 40,000 rubles (which is equivalent to UAH 12,000), and 3) deprivation of parental rights [40];

Ukrainian textbooks and books, primarily textbooks on the history of Ukraine, are being removed from school and university libraries, and they have been replaced with Russian textbooks and teaching aids.

Russian occupiers loot and take away the property of educational institutions. The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said that the invaders had taken away the property of music and art school, which was new, recently reconstructed with the help of European donors. Furniture, equipment, and LED screens [41] were exported;

Russian troops often place warehouses with weapons in the premises of educational institutions; therefore, there is a very high probability of provocations by the Russians, which endanger the participants of the educational process.

Some of the children and young people who remained in the occupied territories continued to study remotely at Ukrainian educational institutions. However, such training faces obstacles, such as: frequent cases of lack of mobile communication; a significant risk is the security situation, as the occupying power persecutes the families of such pupils and students.

#### **5. Problems of security and preservation of infrastructure, personnel potential, and student contingent of Ukrainian universities**

Universities, according to the international humanitarian law, are civilian objects without military purpose, so they should not be the object of armed attacks and shelling. However, Russia does not pay attention to this, as in other massive cases of violations of the international legal norms. Therefore, the shelling of Ukrainian universities is a targeted action and not an isolated case. Higher education institutions and their separate units were most affected in those regions located in the front-line zones – Kharkiv (1 higher education institution was destroyed, 23 were damaged), Donetsk (3 HEIs were destroyed, 9 damaged), Zaporizhzhia (5 HEIs were destroyed, 2 damaged), and Mykolaiv (5 HEIs were damaged), but universities in other regions were also destroyed and are constantly in the risk zone [42]. Below, there is information on some cities and universities.

#### **5.1 Information about the destruction of individual cities and universities**

#### *5.1.1 Kharkiv*

Before the war, Kharkiv was considered to be a student city based on quantitative and qualitative indicators. The city had 40 institutions of higher education, where more than 160,000 students studied, including about 12,000 foreign students. In various international rankings, Kharkiv universities held leading positions among Ukrainian representatives and were consistently included in the TOP-1000 best higher education institutions in the world. The shelling of Kharkiv began from the first days of the war. Most of the city's universities suffered devastating blows: Kharkiv National University of Construction and Architecture, State Biotechnology University, Ukrainian Engineering and Pedagogical Academy, Ukrainian State University of Railway Transport, the building of the National Academy of Management under the President of Ukraine, and Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology. The greatest damage was caused to the oldest university of Ukraine, founded in 1804, Kharkiv National University named after Karazin. The building of the Faculty of Economics, Karazin Business School, and the university sports complex "Unifecht" were completely destroyed; two central buildings, the Museum of Nature, and the campus with dormitories were severely damaged. The Faculty of Physics and Technology was under constant shelling, which became one of the most affected [43]. Despite the proposals of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine, the university refused to evacuate to another city, believing that Karazin University is the heart of Kharkiv and their destinies are indivisible. The university created backup facilities (servers to ensure electronic document flow and remote educational process) on the basis of Poltava Polytechnic University and on March 28, resumed its educational and scientific process in a remote form.

#### *5.1.2 Mykolaiv*

In the morning of July 15, two of the city's largest universities were hit by shelling: Mykolaiv National University named after Sukhomlynskyi and Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding (NUS). Mykolaiv National University was hit by four rockets that destroyed the facade, walls, roof, and offices and damaged windows and doors, furniture, and equipment. Five rockets hit Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding, as a result of which a fire broke out on a total area of 100 square meters. There was partial damage to the building: two wings of the fifth and sixth floors were destroyed; windows and doors in the auditoriums, reading room, and sports hall were damaged. On August 19, the shipbuilding university was shelled again. Two rockets destroyed the main building, which fell down from the fourth floor to the basement [44].

#### *5.1.3 Kyiv*

On October 10, Russia carried out a powerful missile strike across Ukraine, which hit the center of the Ukrainian capital, causing damage to the buildings of the country's main university, Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University [45].

#### **5.2 Features of the activities of institutions of higher education during the war**

Institutions of higher education have a significant specificity of activity during the war, especially in front and near-front regions. The main tasks are to survive and

#### *Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

to provide high-quality educational services, to keep teaching staff and students adapting to new operating conditions. In accordance with the challenges of the war, the higher education institutions of Ukraine took the following ways of solving these tasks: they resumed educational activities at the first opportunity, transferring education to an online or hybrid offline/online format of work; searched for foreign sites for face-to-face training and communication support between teachers and students who have left; intensified the establishment of international partnership relations for support and assistance; and organized admissions process for the 2022/2023 academic year.

It should be noted that the universities lost a significant part of their student contingent as a result of the war. The admissions campaign also highlighted the acute problem of attracting young people to universities. For example, as of September 5, Karazin University received about 7700 applications, Sumy State University got 3800, and Black Sea National University, named after Petro Mohyla, received about a thousand applications [46]. In the previous year, 2021, the number of applications to these higher education institutions was several times greater. As a result of mobilization, migration, and mortality from hostilities, higher education institutions are losing customers of educational services. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, in 2022, 131 thousand school graduates entered higher educational institutions of Ukraine; last year, there were 239 thousand graduates. Such reduction threatens the existence of universities and institutes.

*An example of the impact of the war on the universities of Ukraine* is the fate of Dahl East Ukrainian National University [47], which was relocated twice from occupied Luhansk and was one of the leading universities of Ukraine before the war. In 2010, the total number of students, postgraduates, doctoral students, and trainees studying at the university in all forms of education was more than 30,000 people. The structure of the university included the following: 8 institutes and 17 faculties in the cities of Luhansk, Severodonetsk, Krasnodon, Rubizhne, Anthracit, Yalta, Yevpatoria, Feodosia, and Skadovsk; Institute of postgraduate education and distance learning; University College; Severodonetsk Chemical and Mechanical Technical School; Centre for pre-university training and career guidance. Powerful material and technical base were located in 57 educational buildings and laboratories with a total area of about 230,000 square meters. There were 8 dormitories with 4000 places, 6 canteens, 12 buffets, medical centers, stadiums, sports buildings, summer sports facilities, and so on [48].

In September 2014, due to the armed aggression of Russia, the university was temporarily moved to the city of Severodonetsk to the Technological Institute, which was the base of its separate structural unit. At the same time, the university lost not only material base but also almost half of the teachers and most of the students. The intense work of employees during 2014–2022 made it possible to restore educational and scientific activities and create new sites and laboratories. In 2021, the university entered the QS Emerging Europe and Central Asia University Rankings for the first time.

Since February 24, 2022, after the full-scale invasion of Russia, Severodonetsk has appeared in the zone of intense hostilities; the university was again moved to new locations – the cities of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Khmelnytskyi, and Dnipro, but later it was forced to move to the city of Kyiv. The university completely lost its material base newly created during the 8 years, 5% of the teaching staff, and more than 50% of the non-teaching staff, as well as the share of students. However, on March 14, 2022, the university resumed online work. The total number of applicants as of June 2022 was 3604 people, of which 1769 people (49%) were ordered by the state and 1835 people

(51%) were paid by individuals, including many who could not pay for education [48]. The university found itself in a very vulnerable position, since all sites in the relocation cities were provided temporarily, and from the side of other universities of Ukraine, there was no support but competition for students.

In her speech at the annual forum of the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), Olga Porkuyan, the Rector of Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University, vividly spoke about the destructive impact of the war on the educational and scientific environment in Ukraine: *the physical destruction and destruction of university buildings and other institutions, the material base, infrastructure as a result of shelling and bombings; difficult psychological condition of teachers, scientists and students due to the loss of loved ones, housing, property, constant danger and uncertainty, unsatisfactory everyday opportunities for work; a significant decrease in the funding of scientific research; closure of some scientific projects; loss by universities of traditional customers of scientific developments and scientific-technical services in connection with the closing of industrial enterprises, their destruction or the impossibility of evacuating business from the occupied territories; dispersion of scientific personnel throughout the country and abroad, which may lead to the disintegration of scientific schools; disruption of the usual connections among various institutions, impossibility to implement some joint projects* [49].

Despite all the losses and difficulties, the team of Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National University continues to provide educational services and tries to survive and preserve its university in these difficult conditions. For this purpose, the Strategy of the university in the conditions of evacuation - 2.0 (2022–2023) was developed and approved by the decision of the Academic Council of the university on September 30, 2022. The strengths of the university include the presence of experience in restoring activities and adapting to new conditions after relocation, as well as significant adaptation potential of employees. Strategic directions of the university are the following:


#### **6. Immediate and long-term consequences of the war for higher education in Ukraine**

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attacks notes that violent attacks on higher education occur in many conflict situations around the world and have a detrimental impact on higher education, destroying critical educational infrastructure, depleting valuable resources, and creating obstacles to educational access, achievement, and quality. All these factors also can be applied to Ukraine. As noted by Sameerah T Saeed and Patrick Blessinger (2022), educational systems often face problems due to low resistance to conflict. Conflict can have devastating consequences in contexts where educational systems are unstable or under-resourced.

#### *Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

An example is given of the war in Iraq, where the chaos and displacement of millions led to the destruction, looting, or burning of 84% of higher education institutions [50]. Ukraine has a fairly developed education system, which is characterized by considerable stability. Therefore, military actions caused significant damage to it but did not completely destroy it, as evidenced by the continuation of the educational process at both schools and universities, which, in the conditions of the war, not only provide educational process but also hold scientific conferences. The war continues, and the sum of losses for higher education in Ukraine has not yet ended. However, we can already talk about the short-term and long-term consequences of the war for the higher education system of Ukraine.

#### **6.1 Problems of higher education in Ukraine during the war and approaches to their solution**

The war started by Russia has caused a number of serious current problems in Ukrainian higher education as follows: forced resettlement of a significant number of students and university teachers to different regions of Ukraine and abroad, which disrupted the normal process of communication and cooperation in the learning process; the destruction and damage of educational institutions as a result of hostilities and missile attacks—the impossibility of their restoration during the war; a significant decrease in the financial resources of higher education institutions and opportunities to support educational infrastructure and material incentives for employees of higher education institutions; frequent interruptions in the educational process due to hostilities—risks during missile attacks, lack of electricity and the Internet, which lead to a decrease in the amount of educational material provided during classes and worsen the assimilation of knowledge and lower the quality of education. All these negative processes have led to the fact that the operating conditions of higher educational institutions of Ukraine significantly have worsened due to the loss of material and human assets, decrease in the number of students, which has put many higher education institutions on the verge of survival.

At the same time, the war has forced higher education institutions to mobilize and adapt their activities to new challenges and conditions. To ensure the educational process, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and institutions of higher education have transformed the organizational forms and methods of higher education in the conditions of military operations, which includes the following [37]:

expanding the autonomy of higher education institutions in the organization of the educational process. Decisions about the training format (online or offline) and its calendar schedule are made by the administration of higher education institutions from a safe position for students and teachers;

extensive use of digital technologies in the educational process to ensure distance learning process, improve qualifications of the teaching staff in the field of digital skills, and develop distance courses;

organizational and legal support for the transfer of higher education institutions from the occupied and front-line territories to safer regions;

support of forced national and international academic mobility of students, as well as referral to study at foreign universities;

provision of special support to residents of temporarily occupied territories to continue their studies or enroll in Ukrainian institutions of higher education;

development of research activities of universities, including those related to solving problems of crisis situations, with the needs of defense;

intensifying contacts and expanding partnerships with foreign universities and colleges in educational and scientific activities, using various forms of international cooperation to preserve the educational institution and solve its problems.

As Anatolii Babichev, Vice-Rector for Scientific and Pedagogical Work of Kazarin Kharkiv National University, stated: "Today, the university has more opportunities than there were before. Today we started to find even more new friends, new partners. Before the war, for about 20 years we were engaged in the branding of the university. And it was during the last six months that we managed to move on. For example, our alumni associations around the world became more active and began to take a more active part in the life of the university. In addition to humanitarian and financial aid, more partnership proposals and new projects began to appear" [46].

The challenges caused by war in the long term create new opportunities for the transformation of the higher education system to a new qualitative level. According to Sameerah T Saeed and Patrick Blessinger [50], "after the war in Ukraine, higher education institutions will be forced to adapt to new realities and opportunities. The devastation left behind by the conflict will give universities an opportunity to rethink their role and their place in society."

War and destruction should become an impetus to change approaches in the restoration of the higher education system of Ukraine. It should not be just an improvement of the existing system, which in many respects is a legacy of the Soviet Union, but the creation of an innovative model of higher education that is able to respond to the challenges of modern society. The National Declaration of Ukraine on the commitment to transform education, posted on the website of the UN national declarations, states: "It is necessary to carry out system-wide transformations, including the use of flexible teaching methods, rapid response to changes in the security situation, implementation of catch-up programmes and tools based on in-depth training and skills gap assessment" [51].

#### **6.2 Formation of new vectors of development of higher education in Ukraine**

*The Ukrainian system of higher education will not just have to be rebuilt but radically reformed*, which is facilitated by the transformations accelerated by the war, which form new vectors of development of higher education in Ukraine.

#### *6.2.1 Flexibility and adaptability*

During the war, the level of flexibility in the organization of university activities increased. This process should be expanded, especially with regard to the content of education and the formation of modern competencies, which must be radically revised in accordance with the trends of the national economy, labor market demands, and personnel needs of Ukraine both during the war and for the reconstruction of the economy. The Institute of Educational Analytics has developed proposals for changes in the directions and scope of personnel training in the war and post-war period [52]. Most universities have already started to do this; for example, Vayl' Stus Donetsk National University has introduced the Master's educational program "Management of post-conflict territories" [53].

#### *6.2.2 Broad implementation of information technologies*

1.deepening of the digital transformation of the educational process. It is due to digital technologies that Ukraine has managed to ensure the continuity and safety of the educational process in the conditions of military operations. *Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

The application site "All-Ukrainian School Online" has been developed, where all educational materials for pupils and students of grades 1–11 are posted. Ukrainian TV channels broadcast video lessons for schoolchildren in grades 5–11 as part of the "Education without Borders" project [54]. All universities have switched to online education. Currently, all university teachers have mastered the distance learning method and developed online courses in their subjects. This policy should be further expanded and deepened by building an ecosystem of digital education;

2.the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in HEIs, which is currently actively involved in leading countries to improve the quality of education. Education with the involvement of AI allows to personalize learning, taking into account the individuality of a student, and to deepen its content.

#### *6.2.3 Development of university science*

The war has shown that the loss of a university's scientific potential can put it beyond the limits of survival. University managers have felt and understood this. "If there is no scientific and industrial growth in universities, then they will not have a future," said the rector of Sumy State University, Vasyl Karpusha, at the online discussion "Universities in the Line of Fire" [46]. Therefore, better conditions should be created for the generation of new knowledge by university scientists and their implementation both in the educational process and in the sphere of economic activity. The development of the research and production potential of universities and strengthened cooperation with business and foreign partners in the field of science should be ensured. It should be noted that in this difficult time, most universities organize and hold scientific conferences, present their scientific works, and, at the same time, involve international partners in them.

#### *6.2.4 Activation of international cooperation*

The war has given a powerful impetus to the establishment of contacts with foreign partners. International academic and scientific cooperation should be strengthened. Many international projects and Ukrainian initiatives contribute to this. Thus, the "Twinning" project has united almost 90 Ukrainian universities with foreign institutions of higher education for long-term cooperation. To date, 144 universities from Ukraine have registered to participate in the project. Thanks to the support of the Association of Universities of the United Kingdom, leading British universities have joined the project, and their example has intensified interest in the event of universities of the EU, Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand [55].

#### *6.2.5 Optimizing the number of higher education institutions*

Ukraine currently has an excessive number of various institutions of higher education, among which many are small and are unable to provide high-quality education services. The task of optimizing their number has long been relevant. The war has accelerated this process, which can be seen on the example of individual displaced universities, which took the path of unification in order to strengthen the educational and scientific potential. Thus, in 2022, Luhansk National Agrarian University was reorganized into the Agrarian Faculty of Volodymyr Dahl East Ukrainian National

University [47]. The government plan for the post-war recovery of Ukraine, in the section on the recovery of education and science, provides for the reorganization of higher education institutions by creating one large regional university on the basis of existing higher education institutions [56]. This requires a balanced approach, which cannot be implemented by administrative coercion but only on the basis of achieving competitive advantages in the field of providing educational and research services. This approach cannot be applied to large educational centers, such as Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Lviv, where several powerful universities operate.

#### *6.2.6 Expanding financial autonomy and changing economic status of universities*

The financial support of higher education in Ukraine has always been insufficient, since 63% of higher education institutions are state-owned, and the state provides 77% of the total volume of financing of higher education [57]. As a result, most universities had a shortage of funds, which did not allow modernizing educational and research base of universities and providing decent remuneration for university teachers. A low level of financial autonomy does not allow managing available funds and property and attracting investments from businesses and grants from foundations. The war has reduced the possibilities of state financing of education, and the ability of households to pay for higher education services have also deteriorated. Therefore, the financial condition of universities has deteriorated significantly. In the field of higher education, there is an urgent task of changing the management system and providing financial autonomy, which is possible through the corporatization or privatization of universities, creation of endowment funds, and widespread introduction of the system of long-term interest-free loans for education.

The war has presented many serious challenges to the education of Ukraine in the field of education functioning and the formation of highly qualified personnel for the war and post-war economy as follows:

*firstly,* the creation of safe conditions for education and training of higher education personnel now, in the conditions of military operations, which is an obvious condition for the survival of education and prevention of its destruction. This is done by setting up a safe shelter in educational institutions for the organization of stationary training and by switching to a distance form of training;

*secondly*, restoring normal learning process and improving the quality of education. Constant interruptions in the learning process and its instability in the conditions of frequent power outages and the Internet reduce the quality of the educational process. This is also due to the transition of many higher education institutions exclusively to distance education, which requires a high level of self-organization of students to master academic disciplines. In order not to lose the current generation of children and youth in terms of education, conditions must be created for a faster return to classroom forms of education;

*thirdly*, preserving the contingent of students, including those who have gone abroad, and providing, if possible, quality education for the formation of sustainable knowledge and professional competences. This is done through the development of modern online courses in all subjects and methodical online provision of practical classes and knowledge control, the use of individual approaches and flexible asynchronous forms of work, and the development of educational video content. However, the lack of live contacts does not contribute to strengthening the university community;

*Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

*fourth,* preservation of personnel potential for further development of the higher education system in the war and post-war periods. This is one of the most important aspects, since many teachers have left Ukraine. Therefore, it is necessary to develop programs for the return and support of professors and teaching staff of universities, training of graduate students and doctoral students, the implementation of scientific projects, and active development of cooperation with foreign universities and colleagues.

It is clear that solving most of the current problems of higher education and creating conditions for its development are possible only after the end of the war. At the same time, the development of international cooperation in the field of education is very important.

#### **7. Conclusions**

The war started by Russia has caused enormous damage to the education system, which creates great risks for the post-war development of Ukraine. The following conclusions were made on the basis of the conducted research.

The increase in global instability and the prevalence of armed conflicts in the world endanger the education system and human development of the countries on whose territories military actions are taking place. This also applies to Ukraine as a result of the war unleashed by Russia back in 2014, which took place initially in a hybrid format, and from February 2022, is taking place in the form of a full-scale armed confrontation, covering almost a fifth of the territory of Ukraine. Currently, brutal military actions threaten the lives of the population, economic and social spheres, including higher education, which is of key importance for the formation of the country's human and intellectual capital, the formation of the worldview, and the future of the nation.

Many international organizations, including UNESCO, UNICEF, and the Global Coalition for the Protection of Education from Attacks (GCPEA), take care of the problems of education in the conditions of armed conflicts and are also analyzing the state and problems of education during the war in Ukraine and providing various assistance. Education in the conditions of war is the object of analysis by numerous foreign and domestic researchers who study various risks and losses in the field of education and their threats to society. The purpose of the author's research is to analyze the impact of the war in Ukraine on the system of higher education, the losses suffered and the forced transformation processes that form new vectors of development and modernization of higher education in the course of post-war reconstruction.

On the eve of the 2022 war, Ukraine had a significant number of higher education institutions capable of training specialists for the economy. As of February 10, 2022, there were 336 universities, academies, and institutes and 96 schools, technical schools, and colleges in which 1.34 million students studied. Over the past two decades, the system of higher education has been gradually modernized; the process of its integration into the European Higher Education Area has intensified, which has contributed to the improvement of the positions of Ukrainian universities in international rankings. Despite the existence of many problems in higher education in Ukraine, it developed in accordance with the world trends, but this development has been interrupted by Russia's armed aggression.

The consequences of the 2014–2021 hybrid war were significant losses of the territory, economic potential, and gross domestic product and a large number of internally displaced persons. For higher education, this led to a significant reduction in budget

funding; the loss of a part of universities and colleges, the student contingent, and teaching staff who remained in the occupied territories; and switching to studying according to Russian programs and standards. On their own initiative, 18 universities relocated to the territory controlled by Ukraine and had to resume their educational activities with great difficulty.

The full-scale war of 2022 has led to significant destruction of higher education institutions, mass internal and external migration of students and teachers, and suspension of the educational process and its transfer to a distance format. Currently, 131 institutions, or 5.5% of all institutions of higher education, have been destroyed or damaged. The higher school has lost a significant part of teachers and students as a result of migration and mobilization—a large number of them voluntarily joined the armed forces and territorial defense. Despite the fact that the educational process has resumed mainly in a distance format, frequent and long power outages and the absence of the Internet make effective learning impossible. As a result of large-scale destruction and violations of the educational process, Ukraine is at risk of losing the current generation of children and youth in terms of education, which will negatively affect the formation of the country's human capital.

At the same time, the war accelerates educational transformations that form new vectors for the development of higher education in Ukraine. These include the following: increasing the flexibility and adaptability of higher education institutions, wide implementation of information technologies in the organization of the educational process, stimulation of the development of university science, activation of international cooperation, optimization of the number of higher education institutions through their integration and consolidation, and expansion of financial autonomy of universities. This will make it possible to ensure the post-war development of higher education in Ukraine and its effective integration into the European area of higher education.

Currently, higher education in Ukraine needs to strengthen the protection against military attacks and destruction. Sansom Milton, Ghassan Elkahlout & Sultan Barakat [14], based on the analysis of international experience, systematized main areas of protection, such as the following: limiting the military use of university premises; strengthening university autonomy to protect higher education from politicization and ideological manipulation; physical protection, including blast-proof walls, shatterresistant glass, and surveillance cameras; supporting the mobility of displaced students, scientists, and universities to leave conflict zones; alternative distance forms of higher education; and university conflict preparedness – training on what to do during attacks, developing evacuation plans and sharing information during crises. Ukraine uses most of these directions. At the same time, the experience of organizing training during the war in Ukraine has revealed the need for broader measures related not only directly to educational institutions but also in general to the protection of infrastructure. In conditions of high risks of massive rocket attacks, this concerns primarily the protection of energy and utility infrastructure, since power outages and Internet absence do not allow universities to organize training even remotely.

*Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

#### **Author details**

Valentyna Polykarpivna Antoniuk Institute of Industrial Economics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine

\*Address all correspondence to: antonukvp@gmail.com

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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[34] Dodonov RO. Divided universities are a divided society. Social forecasting and projecting the future of the country: peacemaking in hybrid wars. Materials of the VI International Scientific Conference on March 25, 2016. Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine: KSK-Alliance; 2016. C. 50-52

[35] Socio-Economic and Humanitarian Consequences of Russian Aggression for Ukrainian Society. Kyiv, Ukraine: Razumkov Center; 2022

[36] The Total Amount of Direct Damage to Infrastructure Increased to \$114.5

billion. Available from: https://kse.ua/ ua/about-the-school/news/zagalnasuma-pryamih-zbitkiv-infrastrukturizrosla-do-114-5-mlrd/?fbclid=IwAR1M 1tpV44rqZGdPbcFYLnoOiATFWmT-S5RdfhpcfugLUlNUwLmwQjAmzx0 [Accessed: September 15, 2022]

[37] Education of Ukraine under martial law. Informational and Analytical Collection. Kyiv, Ukraine: MES of Ukraine. Institute of Educational Analytics; 2022

[38] Assessment of Higher Education needs of Ukraine. Primary Analysis. Kyiv, Ukraine: Institute of Educational Analytics. 2022. Available from: https:// iea.gov.ua/naukovo-analitichnadiyalnist/analitika/rezultatimonitoringovih-doslidzhen/2022-2/ [Accessed: October 21, 2022]

[39] Impact of the War on Higher Education in Ukraine. 5 October 2022. Available from: https://pon.org.ua/infoenglish/engnews/9820-impact-of-thewar-on-higher-education-in-ukraine. html [Accessed: October 21, 2022]

[40] Bondarchuk A. OCCUPIED. Russification of Ukrainian Education in the Temporarily Occupied Territories. Mirror Weekly. 2022. Available from: https://zn.ua/ukr/internal/okupovanirosijska-ukrajinska-osvita-natimchasovo-okupovanikh-teritorijakh. html [Accessed: October 15, 2022]

[41] Teachers Teach Patriots, and Russians Rob Schools: How Education Continues in the Occupation. 2022. Available from: https://24tv.ua/education/osvitaokupatsiyi-yak-trivaye-navchannyazahoplenih-rosiyeyu\_n2196359 [Accessed: November 15, 2022]

[42] Map of Damaged or Destroyed Educational Institutions. Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

*Perspective Chapter: The War as a Factor of Upheavals and Transformations in Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109688*

Available from: https://saveschools.in.ua/ [Accessed: October 15, 2022]

[43] Missile Attacks on Universities. Analytical Center "Observatory of Democracy. Available from: https:// od.org.ua/uk/%D1%80%D0%B0%D0 %BA%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BD%D0 %B8%D0%BC%D0%B8-%D1%83%D 0%B4%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B0%D 0%BC%D0%B8-%D0%BF%D0%BE- %D1%83%D0%BD%D1%96%D0%B2% D0%B5%D1%80%D1%81%D0%B8%D 1%82%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B0%D0 %BC/ [Accessed: October 28, 2022]

[44] Russian Troops Repeatedly Shelled the University in Mykolaiv - the Mayor. Public. News. 2022. Available from: https://suspilne.media/272726-vijska-rfpovtorno-obstrili-universitet-u-mikolaevimer/ [Accessed: October 15, 2022]

[45] Russian Attack on Kyiv: Shevchenko University and Business Center were Damaged. Channel 24. 2022. Available from: https://24tv.ua/udar-pokiyevu-poshkodzhen-zaznali-budivliuniversitetu-shevchenka\_n2174758 [Accessed: October 28, 2022]

[46] Skrypnyk A. How Universities Work on the Line of Fire. 2022. Available from: https://zn.ua/ukr/EDUCATION/jakpratsjujut-universiteti-na-liniji-vohnju. html [Accessed: October 29, 2022]

[47] SNU them. V. Dahl. Available from: https://snu.edu.ua/index.php/university/ [Accessed: October 29, 2022]

[48] Development strategy of Dahl EUNU. Far under Evacuation Conditions - 2.0 (2022-2023). Available from: https://snu.edu.ua/index.php/ university/strategiya-rozvytku-snu-imv-dalya/ [Accessed: October 29, 2022]

[49] Olga Porkuyan Spoke before the Scientific Community of the USA.

Available from: https://snu.edu.ua/ index.php/2022/09/15/olga-porkuyanvistupila-pered-naukovoyu-sp-lnotoyussha/?fbclid=IwAR1kcsT5ksvzUR4di9W A0pMY8UT5xfa3zjkuvQvrpAui6n4cwqh ZX2oy9\_Q [Accessed: October 30, 2022]

[50] Sameerah T. Saeed and Patrick Blessinger. Higher Education can help to Rebuild Society after War. London, UK: University World News; 2022. Available from: https://www. universityworldnews.com/post. php?story=20220826080927260 [Accessed: October 15, 2022]

[51] Ukraine National Statement of Commitment. 2022. Available from: https://transformingeducationsummit. sdg4education2030.org/ UkraineNationalStatement [Accessed: September 17, 2022]

[52] Proposals regarding Changes in the Directions and Scope of Personnel Training in the War and Post-War Period. Available from: https://iea.gov.ua/ naukovo-analitichna-diyalnist/analitika/ rezultati-naukovih-doslidzhen-2/2022-2/ [Accessed: November 14, 2022]

[53] Donetsk National University named after Vasyl Stus. Available from: https:// www.donnu.edu.ua/uk/ [Accessed: November 14, 2022]

[54] Education in Conditions of War: How Children can Study in Ukraine and Abroad. Available from: https://ldn.org. ua/useful-material/osvita-v-umovakhviyny-iak-dity-mozhut-navchatysiav-ukraini-ta-za-kordonom [Accessed: November 18, 2022]

[55] Review of the Current State of Education and Science in Ukraine in the Conditions of Russian Aggression (for 05 – 25 September 2022). Available from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19UfD2p

SvvrsFxmkiuGONbGYg15QfVjQv/view [Accessed: November 18, 2022]

[56] The National Council for the Recovery of Ukraine from the Consequences of the War. Project of the Recovery Plan of Ukraine. Materials of the working group "Education and Science". 2022. Available from: https:// www.kmu.gov.ua/storage/app/sites/1/ recoveryrada/ua/education-and-science. pdf [Accessed: November 18, 2022]

[57] Satellite account of education in Ukraine in 2020. Available from: https://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/ [Accessed: November 18, 2022]

### **Chapter 21**

Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit of Social Justice and Equity, the Case of Walter Sisulu University in South Africa

*Valindawo Valile M. Dwayi*

*"We will not go quietly! We have been screaming for too long!…..…if we are sentenced to death, …..I should go to the gallows singing, in order to indicate my determination for the other people who may come"*

*President Thabo Mbeki, 2021 [1]*

#### **Abstract**

In this chapter, I provide a perspective about what can constitute the struggles of the educational development practitioner for social justice and equity from the position of a senior manager. I enunciate the case of three crisis events about educational development from the social realist explanatory program, which draws on the critical realist philosophy, by arguing that what can be the crisis cases in the academic project can take place because the actors in such cases might be informed by the privileged discourses of economic rationality and neoliberalism (ER-NL) instead of social justice and equity (SJ-E). The instrumentalist and personal interests can allow for what can ultimately become more of the reproductive than what ought to be transformative outcomes. Such cases are antithetical to the value of university education as the public good. The analysis about the cases took a particular focus on the university education phase of its development as the two management and governance regimes were grappling with the institutional transformation change in general and the challenge of the academic project. The scholarly engagement of the cultural and human systems for some crisis events during the "change of guard," albeit with demonstrable silences about the critical construct of quality enhancement, allowed for what could be finally declared as the exploratory research. The significance of such exploratory research is thus the advancement of what ought to be the theorization and conceptualization about social practices in contexts of historical and structural disadvantage and their expressively veracious considerations.

**Keywords:** social justice and equity, Walter Sisulu University, academic project development framework, integrated quality management systems, decoloniality

#### **1. Introduction**

The main goal and objectives of this article are to reflect on the important aspects in the academic project as the discursive spaces for social justice and equity (SJ-E), which are enacted by agency. By the academic project, the article refers to the main elements of intellectualism in university education, which entails knowledge production, utility, and embodiment, and how the utility dimension in particular ought to constitute the struggles of the senior managers in education institutions. When some crisis events were reported as corporate social irresponsibility in one case of a university education in South Africa [2], not much was discussed as the idea of social justice and equity at the systemic levels of academic leadership and of management systems before the corporate level. To close the gap, this article revisits that discussion under the new topic, as an elaboration about the agenda for excellence which needs to be understood and explained as the concerns, choices, and projects about the idea of university education and for advancement of human flourishing. In a university education context, the latter refers to the constitutional imperative about the equity of epistemological access for the quality of academic success.

The main thesis for this article is that the struggles of the oppressed against the intransigence of the powerholders constitute the interplays between human nature and the objective conditions. Such struggles become more dynamic and developing when what ought to be the right choices and the emancipatory projects in contexts of historical and structural disadvantage seem to be promoting the economic rationality based on neoliberal thinking than what ought to be the enhancement strategies for human flourishing. For example, academic excellence, practical wisdom, and institutional integrity, as espoused values in one case of university education, could be easily undermined at the point of leadership, management, and governance systems, unfortunately by the very custodians of such systems. Such can be the dialectical relationship of human nature and the objective material conditions in which the human systems, for example, a senior manager, ought to engage both the idea of university education as the structural system, but most significantly, as the cultural system, and in that way providing what could be the practical alternatives to economic rationality and neoliberal thinking. Progressive and reconstructive forms of social justice and equity can work well for an institution, which makes the right choices and embarks on the emancipatory projects that can promote and monitor for academic excellence in ways that are both relevant and responsive to the profiles of students the institution registers in its academic programs.

Therefore, *Reflections from the Field* was about the journey, the "agenda for excellence" when the right choices and emancipatory projects about social justice ought to be enhanced against the backdrop of economic rationality and neoliberalism (ER-NL). The cases indicated how the instrumentalist and personal agendas can be quite enduring, which therefore constitutes more of the continuities than the discontinuities from the old regimes of order and of truth. Despite the affected students, having inherited the social and sociocultural conditions, which were never of their own making, such conditions would remain enduring. The scholarship value for such an agenda was, therefore, about engaging the iterative events and processes about the academic project, by focusing on what were apparently the synchronous and diachronous structural mechanisms over time as a social realist account about the struggles of the oppressed against the intransigence of the powerholders.

The *struggles of a senior manage*r constituted the call for deep dialogs and sustained conversations about the struggle of the oppressed against apathy, which

#### *Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

can play out in three ways the inaction of those who should have acted, the indifference about social injustice, which can be explained only as the perpetuation of the status quo, and ultimately the silence of the voice for social justice and equity, all of which the powerholders can be quite complicit. In that way, scholarship about the ideal of the equity of student access for the quality of academic success in university education ought to entail the knowledge of and for excellence in context-specific and actor-driven ways. That is only possible when the notion of knowledge can be deconstructed as the idea of Being and Becoming about social justice and equity, and thus making explicit the need for a backlash to the mainstreamed discourses! Such struggles need not be regarded as a precedent or misguided facts about students autonomous learning, that is, when the students, for example, cannot be held accountable for learning. However, such struggles call for reflexive praxis on the part of the broader academic enterprise, when, on the part of staff, academic freedom cannot remain unfettered, and on the part of the institution, such struggles can be the case of unmediated institutional accountability.

Therefore, against this brief introduction and observations, this article is organized around the basic logic of reproduction-understanding-broadening-advancement in research. While the SJ-E projects are generally understood to be the main project of the university education, especially in the Global South-South context, its mainstream practices need to be theorized by drawing from powerful lenses, especially for the university education sector, which is fast embracing the business management models as part of its management, leadership, and governance systems. Such broadening strategies about the concept will potentially advance the scholarship about the concept, especially in consideration of what could be value addition when the academic project and quality can be understood as dialectically related more to the social justice discourses than the mainstream cases of ER-NL. As such, the article is structured according to the following main sections,


#### **2. The complexity of power relations in the politics of being and knowledge**

The need for understanding and explanation of the SJ-E project in RSA has its roots from the inception of the current constitutional democracy. *The White Paper III on the Transformation of Higher Education in South Africa* [3] outlines several principles and the following one is quite illustrative about the issues at hand in this chapter.

*"Promote equity of access and fair chances of success to all who are seeking to realize their potential through higher education, while eradicating all forms of unfair discrimination and advancing redress for past inequalities." (p.14).*

To realize this principle, the National Plan for Higher Education [4] would be quite explicit about the need to produce the graduates needed for social and economic development in South Africa. Furthermore, the Higher Education Act (101 of 1997, as amended) [5] would empower the department of education with the responsibility to develop policies and regulations to govern the public university system in South Africa. The Act also served as the basis for the establishment and governance of all universities. The development of the system would be steered through three key mechanisms linked to the implementation of legislation, policy, and regulations: planning, funding, and quality assurance. Such mechanisms would be implemented in three points of national agency,


Therefore, the policy choices and strategic plans going forward would have to be measured against such noble foundations and principles, especially in consideration of social inequalities and the equity imperatives, which had their origins from the structured racist apartheid system. Such choices and plans would perhaps take the main variables, drawing from the realist stance (to be explained later), about


Quite earlier on after the advent of constitutional democracy in South Africa, two observations were made about the state of the university education both at global and in the South African context. The first, and at a global context, was raised by [6] in his reference to, "The university without condition." The second, at the local context, one was raised 3 years down the line, by [7] when he raised a rhetorical question, "When does the university cease to exist?" Then, two logical questions can emerge from the two observations. The first, is, what are these conditions that seem to make

*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

a university to cease? The second, what is in the nature of a university, anyway, that can be a subject to conditions that make its being to cease? The assumptions for such questions, which would be in line with the observations, would be what a university identity is, as a 'Being', suggests what it is not, which is a presupposition. The implications thereof, in turn, is that, while university education is a national project, its existential nature is also in terms of the global developments.

Therefore, it would make the major constitutional imperative to understand the value of the SJ-E projects, where the university education system ought to play a prominent role. The constitution of South Africa requires that no section of society should be unjustly and unfairly excluded from opportunities, resources, benefits, and privileges. In fact, Section 33 of the Constitution (RSA, 1996) declares that.

*"Everyone has the right to just administrative action that is lawful, reasonable, and procedurally fair."*

#### **2.1 The Main discourses about university education**

To further elaborate on the idea of a university as briefly alluded to above, one more source is quite significant for the required descriptive analysis of the struggles of a senior manager as discussed in this article. Firstly, [8] provides what could be regarded as the instructive cases about the importance of a discourse in our understanding of university education, and why it becomes a subject of transformation. The first major discourses, from [8], for example, relate to the nobility of the enlightenment values (truth and emancipation) as democracy, truth, citizenship and social justice, and equity. The second is the economic rationality discourse, which is linked to the imperative of knowledge economy and its related narrative of skills development. What is of interest for me are the discursive resources that university education practitioners can draw on for the truth about and the emancipatory choices and project about the other, at the local and implementation level.

#### **2.2 Social justice and equity as the main objective of university education in the global South-South**

Contemporary theories, namely, critical realist-oriented theories challenge the mainstream theories that have as their tenets based on the deontological positions and the self-referential explanations. Such theories tend to be dislocated from reality about a social reality/phenomenon. To counter such a weakness, critical realism allows the analyst to adopt a paradigm that is commensurable with the context and in ways that can be culturally relevant. By the power for transcendence, the analyst is then able to question a type of science (pseudoscience) that selects what counts as reality and what reality to count to promote interests or socially constructed views. Therefore, a social justice project that seeks to reflect university as a public good ought to adopt a kind of descriptive analysis that reflects these complex issues about a social phenomenon. For example, a consideration of Nancy Fraser's framing of social justice, [9] is helpful to identify the political and economic dimensions of social justice that, with knowledge systems thereof allow for the understanding of the complexity of the transformation project in the South African in context. This is the context, which is still steeped in and conditioned from the past system of social inequalities. Fraser has always viewed social justice from the perspective of participatory parity — how social beings are able to participate as equals, but she originally saw it from a two-dimensional perspective (recognition


#### **Table 1.**

*Conceptualization of Fraser's social justice and equity framework.*

and redistribution) — called a two-dimensional view of social justice. She now includes representation as another dimension into this view and calls it a three-dimensional view of social justice and she calls this a theory of post-Westphalian democratic justice.

**Table 1** indicates Fraser's three-dimensional theory of justice that can help to illustrate why, when the logic of university education ought to be about the public good, the results of the transformation project remain more reproductive about academic quality than transformative. It is when such a logic is based on the notion of social justice from the lens of participatory parity and equitable redistribution of resources. From a realist ontology stance, one would have to consider the political and economic dimensions as disentangled, and also how each of these dimensions is also taken upon as the cultural dimensions in open and complex social systems.

#### **3. Surfacing the ontological assumptions about social justice and equity**

Both the introduction and the discussion in the previous sections have briefly referred to the ontological assumptions that one can draw upon to understand and explain the dynamics about social justice and equity. In response to the need for human flourishing, the social world can be analyzed and discussed from the realist social theory, which allows for understanding and explanation of the social phenomenon as a dialectical relationship of structure, culture, and agency. Such a scholarly project requires for the understanding of the interplays of the latter in analytically distinct ways. In that regard, this article is contributing to the fastincreasing body of knowledge, by focusing on the value of agency as the subject of research. Therefore, the related questions, as the motivation for the critical realist-oriented research project, in this article, are,


**Table 2** portrays what [10] describes as the three domains of the empirical-actualreal in his explication of the critical realist theory. The life world is made up of the

*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

transitive and intransitive nature of the objects at the domain of the real, which can allow themselves or not as the subject of our inquiry. What then leads the critical oriented analyst is the transcendental question, that is, making an educated guess about what could be the structural mechanisms/conditions at the domain of the real, which can allow for the events and processes to be realized at the domain of the actual and further to how such events are experienced and observed at the domain of the empirical. The realist position about such dynamics of the social phenomenon is that the properties and powers of the subject of inquiry may lie dormant at the real, and not realized as events, but remain active. The same applies about the domain of the actual and the empirical. Understanding the subject of inquiry as deep ontology, as stratified reality (from right to left of **Table 2**), and as emergence (from left to right) then provides for a powerful way of explaining the dynamics of the complex and open social systems, for example. The simple analogy about this logic is that a tree may fall in the forest without such event being experienced. Let alone that such trees do grow as events, in particular ways, which may be transitive or intransitive to our reasoning. Such is the value of emergence in understanding and explaining the open and complex social systems, according to the critical realist philosophy. But how would such social systems be explained in terms of time and space?

**Table 3** elaborates on the power of emergence as reflected in **Table 2**, by adding the dimension of structural, cultural, and human systems as operating in terms of time


#### **Table 2.**

*The three domains of reality [10].*

#### **Table 3.**

*Archer's morphogenetic approach [11].*

and space. The value of **Table 2**, as representative both of critical realism philosophy (the three domains about reality) and social realism (the social world as organized in terms of the structural, cultural, and human systems) is about thinking, hypothetically speaking, about the elements of structure, culture, and agency (SCA) as analytically distinct and determining causal efficaciousness (the relative weight of each element on the other, especially structure, culture as sense and meaning making expressed as beliefs, norms, and standards). In this way, the structural and cultural systems take the macro level, which is enduring because it derives from history and social relations, to which the human system responds, but at the micro level, hence it is regarded as the level of mediations. Therefore, a study that draws on the social realist theory as an explanatory program, which is anchored on the critical realist philosophy, seeks to analyze, and explain these SCA interplays, as the synchronous and diachronous structural mechanisms, which are emergent (**Table 2**) and over time (**Table 3**, resulting in either the state of morphogenesis or morphogenesis or the variation of the outcomes).

To elaborate on Fraser model [10], and from the point of realist ontology, it would, therefore, be helpful to delineate the three dimensions as historicity of emergence, as an analysis of the conditions that allowed for what is actualized and further observed and experienced as social injustice, as affirmative actions about such injustices (for example, the profiles about the third band universities [2], which tend to be ameliorative than disruptive about the injustices of time and space. The value of this realist approach, where social reality is understood as deep, multi-layered, and complex, is to allow for how what appears as social ills can then be evaluated, and thus improved in sustainable ways. To illustrate this point, [11], for example, makes the following conclusion about the value of what could be a realist-oriented method for such an evaluative exercise.

*"If improvement is the purpose of evaluation, then it needs a theoretical frame that can hold both a recognition of the independent, material reality of the world (ontological realism) and a recognition of the constructed and partial nature of people's interpretations thereof (epistemological relativism) while keeping ontology and epistemology analytically distinct." (p.11).*

For example, the level of social injustice (**Table 1**) is quite typical of the old racist apartheid system in the South African context, which is still conditioned in the structural and historical disadvantage (**Table 3**). The affirmative responses about social justice and equity indicate when the idea of university education as the public good (assumedly as the progress that the new democratic state has made) is not transformative enough to address what could be the actual root causes, which is the ideal level of emergence (**Tables 2** and **3**). In this case, the current profiles of the university education sector in South Africa (RSAHET) [2] constitute a state of illegitimacy for some when the notion of the public good seems to be more about the reproductive outcomes (in this case, students from working-class families who happen to be the main feature of the historically disadvantaged universities and their low teaching and research outputs) than what ought to be the transformative outcomes. The main challenges about the RSAHET sector are, therefore, when student-staff-curriculum/knowledge profiles are framed as progressive and socially reconstructive, while in fact, they remain reproductive of the historical and structural disadvantage. This happens when university education, although it is espoused as the public good, its power relations, and the materialist conditions reinforce social injustices, or do not go far enough to yield transformative outcomes. In that case, while the transformative outcomes are espoused, the actual results can easily be affirmative responses basically due to the default positions

*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

and the fault consciousness about how the relational nature of power and economics might be perpetuating social ills, namely the disadvantage, exclusion, and marginalization of one (the oppressed) by the other (the powerholders). It takes consciousness about these relations as mired in complexity that such social ills might be abolished or at least be ameliorated. In this way, Fraser's theory of social justice (**Table 1**) allows for the understanding of the university profiles, and further to the discussion of the transformation constraints, as the evidence of the imperatives of social justice and the ideals of humanity not yet realized. The realist lens thereon allows for a critique of the transformation project about quality (**Table 3**) as the result of structural and causal mechanisms and their emergent powers and properties (**Table 2**).

From this point, the main sections of this article refer to the one case of Walter Sisulu University in South Africa, where the author had to engage the three crisis cases of academic exclusions, program accreditation, and institutional quality audits, which would play out in explicit ways in 2019/20, 2021/22 and in 2023, such developments were the result of the historical and structural disadvantage. The article then provides a normative description of these crisis cases as emergent from the previous phases about the institutional transformation project, applying both the critical realist analysis and the social realist explanation in such cases, and thus allowing for the ideal of the theory-methodology-practical program, which is required for any project about scholarship, before the conclusions can be made.

#### **4. A University in pursuit of identity and importance for the public good**

The case about Walter Sisulu University (WSU) is its power to present the opportunity about understanding and explanation of academic project as the struggle terrain of a senior manager in pursuit of the agenda for excellence as social justice and equity. For this article, WSU was chosen by means of convenient and purpose sampling. The critical element was access to the data, amongst which were the organizational records and the personal experiences and observations of the manager, at least per the critical realist and social theory (CRST) (**Tables 2** and **3**). Critical about WSU was the first national institutional audits, which took place in 2020/11 and the second one in 2022/23. The second audit coincided with the change of guard at WSU, which would usher in the new institutional strategic plan 2020–2024*, "An Impactful and Technology-infused African University," a university "In Pursuit for Excellence."* What would remain quite instructive, for the purposes of the discussion in this article, would be the potential continuities from the old regimes of power and of truth, as evidenced in the crisis events during the transition from the previous regime of 2015–2019, *"An Engaged University for Rural Development and Urban Renewal.*" Therefore, this article *problematizes* this issue of potentially self-reproductive systems as the challenge of practice, and thus of the theory about social justice and equity by situating the case of a senior manager whose story is reflected in three main crisis points about his struggle for restorative justice for all.

**Table 4** provides the context in which the senior manager had to pursue the SJ-E choices and projects. Soon after the WSU establishment as the result of the merger of three legacy universities, the Assessor Report by the National Ministry of Education called for the institution of the Administration Regime (2012–2013), which would have to release the executive management team and to disband the university council by taking over its powers. This Administration Regime also had to respond to the first institutional audit report of 2011, which had foregrounded, amongst others, the crisis event of student exclusions, while still grappling with the enduring challenge of program accreditations.


*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*


#### **Table 4.**

*A tabular representation of the WSU phases on which the struggle of a senior manager in the agenda for excellence was socially embedded.*

According to the rule G7 of WSU General Rules and Regulations [27], and in accordance with the Section 37(4) of the Higher Educations Act (Act 101 of 1997) [5] as amended, students who do not perform as expected in terms of.

G7.3 – Exceed duration.

G7.1 – Not enough credits to proceed to the next level.

G1.2 – Fails the course/module twice are excluded from all academic programs or modules at WSU for a period of a year.

Although the G7 Rule cases dated back to 2009, 2011, and 2014, there was strong evidence that these cases were not managed in a responsible way. The institutional registrar's circular of 28 February 2023 [28] announced about "A Special Senate meeting held on February 28, 2023 (which had) resolved to suspend the implementation of the G7 Rule for the 2022 academic year's final performance results" [29]. Prior to this announcement, two media articles reported as follows about the saga of G7 Rule/ management of the academic exclusion policy in 2020 and 2021 in succession,

*"WSU students' year in turmoil after they were suddenly deregistered." [23].*

*"The university assumes full responsibility and offers an unqualified apology to affected students and their families. We assure you that the matter is under investigation and that consequences management will occur where necessary." [24].*

The second crisis related to unaccredited academic programs, arguable in the case where an academic program ought to be the main currency of any university institution, and as regulated by means of the program accreditation criteria (CHE, 2004), in the case of South Africa. The institutional report of 2011 constituted a third crisis event at macro level. The report had 30 recommendations and with just five commendations.

From an organizational design principle, it could, thus, be argued that the student/academic exclusions (Crisis Case 1) were more of the learning and teaching processes at operational level, accreditation of curriculum development and program management (Crisis Case 2) at functional level, while the institutional audit report (Crisis Case 3) reflected the challenges at strategy level. The crisis events (Column 3) ensued despite the first two columns, as the recommendations of the CHE about the quality systems (Colum 1). The anomaly of the crisis event about academic exclusions became more serious when students were registered for 2020 academic year only to be de-registered few months later. This was not the first case, as the HEQC recommendation 20 had resulted from the similar case in 2009. Strangely, the three crisis cases also played out in explicit ways in 2019/20, 2021/22, and as emergent during the second phase of the national institutional audits of 2021–2023 when the WSU institutional audit report was released during the final stages of preparing this article [14]. The cumulative effect of these crisis events would indicate the case of social reproductive systems, at least from the social scientist who draws from social realism (Section 3). Consequently, Phase III of the WSU Regime (2020–2024) would have to address the complexity of the systemic challenges, which should have been addressed during the previous regimes of 2015–2019, especially Phase 1 and Phase 2. In the social realist lens (**Table 2**), the WSU Regime of 2020–2024 inherited the conditions, which were never of their own making, as such conditions were the result of the social and sociocultural phase of the previous regimes. The institutional values were already compromised, at least based on the three crisis events, whereby student learning seemed to constitute a disjuncture with the institution's professed (academic) *excellence*, whereby curriculum development and program management seemed not aligned to (practical) *wisdom*, and about strategic planning and implementation, which seemed to be antithetical to (institutional) *integrity*.

At the core of these observations shall, therefore, be the main claim for this article that, the struggle of a senior manager constituted the struggles of the oppressed against the intransigence of powerholders. Such struggles are dynamic and developing in the ever-continuous relationships of the human nature and the objective material conditions of time and in space. In the next sub-section, I describe how the crisis events took place against the backdrop of the struggles of the senior manager.

#### **4.1 A developmental university which is scientific, innovative, technological, and entrepreneurial (2005–2011)**

The crisis events 1, 2, and 3 in Phase III emerged from what had always been the endemic dysfunctional culture of the academic project, which was been at the coal face of the struggle terrain of the senior manager, as punctuated by the major events during the pre-administration phase. Upon the establishment of WSU, the then national Ministry of Education [28] made the following statement,

*"In order to give our nation value for (higher education) investment, universities must attend to the low throughput rates at first-year level, must develop effective academic development programs (not pass one pass all), and must promote enrolment ion key disciplines of science, engineering, technology, and commence."*

About WSU, the first institutional audit post constitutional democracy had the following statement to make about the agenda for excellence as the operational terrain of the senior manager,

*Commendation 2: "The HEQC commends Walter Sisulu University on the work done by the center for learning and teaching development (CLTD) in supporting both staff* 

*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

*and students; in improving student success; in helping staff improve their teaching, program design, and assessment skills; and providing resources to build institutional capacity to deliver on its mission", p.9. [13].*

However, this commendation about "the center" would prove to be the major hurdle as the WSU academic project seemed to be conditioned by the heavily structured and historical social and sociocultural context (**Table 3**).

#### **4.2 An engaged University for Rural Development and Urban Renewal (2015–2019/20)**

As indicated on **Table 1**, the commendation about the CLTD role had to be juxtaposed with the following two recommendations,

*Recommendation 19: "The HEQC recommends that WSU develops an appropriate institution-wide strategy on teaching and learning, and assessment, to ensure the success of students, and which is consistent with the University's aspirations to be a developmental university that has specific teaching and learning goals, and which is linked to academic and pastoral support systems," p.12. [13].*

*Recommendation 4: "The HEQC recommends that Walter Sisulu University strengthen its reporting and monitoring mechanisms in all areas with special focus on student success, throughput, and graduation rates….; and ensure that the appropriate divisions take responsibility for the implementation of policies and plans," p.11. [13].*

Central to the main argument for this article are, therefore, the systemic interventions that the center for learning and teaching development (henceforth, "the center") had to embark upon in pursuit of the academic enterprise as social justice and equity projects. Such projects must ensure that the equity of student access to university education leads to the quality of their academic success, especially for students from workingclass families, who are already historically and structurally conditioned to perform poorly in the academic spaces as generally organized for a typical South African context!

#### *4.2.1 The academic project, agenda for excellence as social justice and equity*

The Centre, soon after a commendation from the CHE 2011, adopted as its Slogan, "Agenda for Excellence". Such a slogan sought to bring to life the three main institutional values of Excellence-Wisdom-Integrity, which had to be elaborated on as the expressively veracious considerations, the structural and cultural system points as enacted by human/agency system, according to **Table 3**! For example, the Centre sought to guard against the potential complacency, whose source could be the misplaced cultural system (beliefs, values, norms, and standards), which is always dialectically related to the structural system (the roles, functions, and responsibilities). At the point of human system, the Centre had as its head a senior manager in charge of the staff complement which included specialists in the education development field.

The senior manager, who himself was the product of the fast-growing movement and the emerging field of higher education studies in South Africa post constitutional democracy, had to deal with the dilemma and paradoxes of the position by means of what is explained in the body of knowledge as middling out [15]. Buttressed between the top down and bottom up, and with the top-down weighing heavily on his responsibilities, the art of management had to involve the ways of thinking, of doing and of making about the positions in such a manner that, while the policies and strategies could be conceptualized and coordinated effectively and efficiently as the Agenda for Excellence. Such an implementation approach should not undermine the value of the academic project and its ideal bottom-up approaches for a typical university education! It is from the bottom-up approach that the value of scholarship ought to count more than the ostensibly powerful position of the Office of the Vice Chancellor and Principal in the idea of university education. Such would be the call not just for the idea of scholarship where position and practice can be easily conflated, but also about activism when the right choices and the emancipatory projects must be for social justice and equity as the attainment of the common and public good. The Centre had been established against the historical and structural conditions which were never of own making to the senior manager and his team of professionals, but the conditions to which they had to respond by means of a concerted effort of social action and human agency. It was against such a compelling background, therefore, that the institutional strategy on academic monitoring and support for integrated academic development (henceforth, WSU AMS-IAD Strategy) was conceptualized and implemented as part of Phase II (WSU 2015–2019 Phase) and in response to Phase I (WSU 2005–2011) (**Table 1**).

#### *4.2.2 The WSU AMS-IAD strategy, the conceptualization and academic leadership at the operations level*

From its conception, the center had to grapple with the ideals of a sociocultural approach than what was already identified as the neoclassical approach about learning!! From the cultural system point (**Table 3**), the value of excellence had been the main feature of WSU upon her establishment in 2005. By 2015, the center had to adopt such an agenda more as an engagement process, a reflexive dialectical process, which could allow for transformative agency to emerge, than what had already appeared to be reproductive outcomes when the idea of university education as the public and the common good can be contested in power relations and in materials interests. It would have to be the center's philosophical position that the notion about excellence would have to be made explicit as scholarship of engagement [2], institution-wide. During Phase II, the "war cry" for the "agenda for excellence" was deconstructed into a mantra code-named, *Profile-Develop-Recognize,* which was made up of the following four basic elements of *Data-Information-Knowledge-Practical Wisdom*, where knowledge, as the prerequisite for wisdom, would become a contested issue along the complexity of power relations in the politics of knowledge and of Being and Becoming!


*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

Therefore, the "agenda for excellence" entailed strategy development and implementation along the *Data-Information-Knowledge-Practical Wisdom Logic*, through which the reflexive dialectical process about the right choices and emancipatory projects would have to entail social justice and equity in ways, which can allow for the transformative agency to emerge! In this way, the struggle of a senior manager and his team constituted the response to the three recommendations (Columns 1 and 2 of **Table 1**), especially against the compelling evidence about the Crisis Cases 1, 2, and 3 as already experienced from the first phase of the national institutional audits of 2005–2011 (the words, cases, and events are used interchangeable in this article).

**Figure 1** reflects these four critical elements of the WSU AMS 2015–2019/20, where student learning is not only dialectically related to teaching competences (operations level) but also both emerge at the level of program management and the level of management systems (business level). In this way, the WSU strategy AMS-IAD 2015–2019/20 sought to make loud the voice for social justice and equity by being explicit about the programs and services, which would permeate the basic elements of student learning, of curriculum development and of academic staff development and, therefore, of program management.


#### **Figure 1.**

*The critical elements of the institutional strategy on academic monitoring and support for integrated academic development emerge at the level of leadership and management roles, created by the author.*

program with the heads of department for further areas of support, while the case of Category C would invite more evaluations from peers, students, etc.).

#### *4.2.3 The WSU AMS-IAD strategy at the academic leadership and management systems level*

The WSU AMS-IAD Strategy 2015–2019/20 was planned with the sole purpose for the promotion and monitoring of student academic success in various stages of the institutional value chain (from student entry to exit levels), while, in between, the integrated academic development would have to allow for horizontal articulation (breadth, at the point of structural system) (**Table 3**), and vertical articulation (depth, at the point of cultural system) (**Table 2**) and over time. At management systems level, the strategy sought to allow for the alternative ways of promoting and monitoring for epistemological access in systemic ways: While the strategy was conceptualized to empower academic leadership on how to engage excellence as part of their portfolios,

a.the required structural systems would have to address the potential disconnect,

b.the potential faculty consciousness thereof would have to allow for elaboration along the cultural system, and

c.in ways that the human system had to be ideally more transformative!

Such were the institutionalized efforts for the equity of access and the quality of success where the key performance areas about integrated academic development constituted the means to an end. The assumption in terms of the agency thereof would be that other colleagues at management level would be able to bring to life these efforts for an approved institutional strategy and toward what should be a "network of outcomes".

The case of examinations analysis and the G7 Rule/academic exclusions during the academic year 2014/15 meant regular engagements with the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic Affairs and Research (DVC AAR), to whom the senior manager reported per line function. As the result, the following extract from the senate resolution of April 2015 [30] would be quite instructive.

*"Each and every current class …to report interim performance in terms of continuous assessment at each senate so that classes that are at risk can receive the attention of senate and the necessary support. All academics that are currently in class therefore should submit their current class performance in terms of tests, term papers, or any other relevant performance indicator."*

The senate resolution would later be elaborated on in the institutional risk register of February 2016 [29], with the following instructive statement.

*"HoDs to effectively monitor students at risk, reporting to the deans on quarterly basis."*

Ideally, and as emergent at institutional level, would be the responsibility and functions of both the management systems and governance structures. It would be the elaboration of the Senate Resolution [30] and the risk identification and management, where in the Heads of Departments (HoDs), Deans of Faculties, Campus

#### *Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

Rectors, and the Office of DVC AAR in providing the monitoring and oversight roles, functions, and responsibilities as already well documented and outlined in the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy 2015–2019/20 [23].

Therefore, IAD needed to be understood and applied as representing the complexity of the academic project, which is multilayered and where the actual measure is about the notion of quality as not only about emergence, in realist terms (**Table 2**) but takes place over time (morphogenesis/morphostasis, **Table 3**). While the programs and services are reflected as discrete and fragmented (**Table 4**), the actual organizing principle was the equity of student access for the quality of success as the developmental imperative, a social justice and equity project, but in more about the open and complex social ways than the deterministic ways.

However, these activities, while necessary, their adequacy would be a subject of explanatory critique. Some level of caution would be required for these activities not to be just representations of how teaching/courses can be measured in ways that can be better managed. The actual work would have to be beyond the reductionist and technicist ways of doing, as what ought to be teaching/course delivery should be more about the value of what is being measured, than the measurement itself. The principled position about integrated academic development is not for the discrete support systems about students, staff, and curriculum, which would be a deficit model, but about the integrated approach, when the focus is on the quality as knowledge, based on the performance data and information, and how that knowledge can be recontextualized as varieties of a curriculum in ways, which can be context-specific and actor-driven.

At this point of the article, the discussion then takes more of the methodology aspects about critical realist analysis about the three crisis cases as the disjuncture of the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy 2015–2019/20 especially at the points of cultural and human systems. This has to do with the further elaboration of a scholarship project within the Theory-Methodology-Practical Program chain.

#### **5. A critical realist analysis about the three crisis events as misrepresentations of social justice and equity**

The crisis events 1, 2, and 3 (**Table 4**) indicates what can be argued as the intransigence of powerholders, when the academic choices, and the management projects they embark upon, can be incongruous with the ideal of social justice and equity in the idea of university education as the public good. Such choices and projects can inadvertently and unwittingly promote historical and structural disadvantage. This section of the article seeks to illustrate how such choices and projects can play out as emergent in terms of the systemic levels of academic leadership, management system systems, and governance structures over time. In such a critical realist analytical approach, the social scientist/researcher is interested in what might be the synchronous and diachronous structural mechanisms that can generate such events, which reinforce more of the positions of the powerholders than the actual truth and the emancipatory projects for the oppressed. The struggle of senior managers, in such contexts, goes beyond the design and coordination of the strategy, but the ability to describe such events and before they can be explained as a practical program (where the logical point is about both activism and scholarship by ensuring the alignment between theory, methodology and practical program.)

Therefore, the analysis in this section seeks to introduce the critical realist tools of transfactuality as a form of retroductive reasoning and for a transcendental argument. Drawing from the critical realist perspective (Section 3) helps to understand

how the synchronous and diachronous structural mechanisms were quite enduring in in 2019/20; 2021/22; 2022/23 despite the earlier recommendations of the national institutional audits of 2011. Having the three crisis cases juxtaposed with each other and against the prescripts of the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy 2015–2019/20 surfaced the dissonances of one fact against the other. "Absenting" in the three crisis cases surfaced the contradictions and inconsistencies of Being and Becoming (**Table 1**) about the institutional values of excellence, wisdom, and integrity. Such a morphogenetic methodology allows for identifying what could have been the practical alternatives (transformative outcomes in the morphogenetic state) as against the compelling evidence in the form of the reproductive outcomes, the morphostatis state about the cases under review. Absenting tactics in each case would entail what must have been the real cases as inferred from the situation under the critical realist examination (domain of the real, **Table 2**).

In a nutshell, the reproductive outcomes (the morphostasis state in 2019/20, in 2021/22, and in 2022/23) all stemmed from what can be the blind pursuit of meritocracy when the notions of quality can masquerade as the "Pursuit of *Excellence,*" as the inadequacies about *wisdom,* and as the undermining of *integrity*. Therefore, making inferences, through a comparison of one fact against another, and by means of retroductive reasoning, becomes a powerful way of advancing a transcendental argument about how the struggle of the oppressed against the intransigence of the powerholders is about emergence and over time. But what kind of questions could be driving such a scholarly approach?

#### **5.1 Toward the transcendental argument about the silences and superficialities in "pursuit of excellence"**

The main question, according to **Table 4** is that the crisis events of 2019/20, 2021/22, and of 2022/23, as mapped out in the last column, is whether such events constituted the unintended consequences about the management of the academic enterprise (the HEQC Recommendations 19 and 20 about WSU as outlined in Column 1). The preliminary finding about the table, at least at face value, is about the contradictions and inconsistencies of the academic project as fractured in systemic levels. In reading the data initially (**Tables 2** and **3**), I was working at the levels of the empirical (reported in the media as the crisis) as observations and experiences, and then the level of the actual (organizational records) in that I was identifying events and processes about the crisis events as mis/representations of social justice and equity. In critical realist terms, the analysis took the examination of the interplays between the mechanisms of structure, culture, and agency, and whether there seemed to be some constraints and enablers confronted some groups of respondents more than others. Having done this, I was able to move to abstractions at the level of the real to identify the mechanisms, which could constitute the interplays with each other across the entire spectrum of the HEQC Recommendations of 2011 [13] over time resulting in crisis events of Phase III as confirmed in the HEQC Institutional Audit Report of 2023 [14].

Therefore, the following three questions arise, which make for a transcendental argument,

*What the reality must have been like for the events/the crisis points, and the processes/ phases to take place the way they did? What mechanisms must have been generating the kinds of the events and processes as those that are manifest at the domain of the actual and how the latter is further reflected as the empirical data?*

*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

Therefore, the analysis thus far seems to indicate the following two main findings:


The cited cases were quite illustrative about what turned out to be more of the continuities than what ought to have been the discontinuities from the old regimes of power and of truth. This was the case of what I argue about elsewhere [2] as the complexity of power relations in the politics of knowledge and of Being and Becoming! In such cases, the Idea of Being needs to focus on the possible simplification, namely,


The research value for such an exercise, as scholarship, would entail promotion of the transformative outcomes as a cultural system about SJ-E. Specifically, it would be about the value of emergence of, from the discrete functions as academically led, to management systems and as regulated by the governance structures, for the requisite institutional culture of excellence.

#### **5.2 How the incongruity about three crisis cases must have been the result of sociocultural conditioning?**

The cases seemed to be indicating in profound ways the inaction of those who should have acted, the indifference of the professorate when it should have known better, and the silence of the voice for social justice and equity when it should have been loud. For WSU, such was the travesty of justice when in consideration of Excellence-Wisdom-Integrity as espoused institutional values.

**Table 5** indicated more of the state of morphostasis as more of the reproductive outcomes (Column 1 and 2) than what could have been the ideal of the transformative outcomes, the morphogenetic state. The management of learning, teaching, and assessment systems, as the enabling mechanisms for the idea of university education as the public and common good, seems to be reproductive of the social injustice and iniquities, and at least ameliorative, instead of being transformative. The inadequate roles, functions, and responsibilities of academic managers, as actors in the system, as


**Table 5.**

*The WSU AMS-IAD strategy 2015–2019/20 in the lens of Nancy Fraser's social justice and equity model.*

agency, do not seem to go far enough in enacting both the AMS-IAD strategy, hence the enduring crisis events as indicative of how self-productive the historical and structural disadvantage can be.

#### **6. The social realist account: from the transformational but back to the reproductive outcomes**

In this section, I discuss how the silences about the three crisis cases were incongruous with the institutional values of Excellence-Wisdom-Integrity in open and dynamic ways when the crisis cases evidenced the serious shortfalls as the inaction of those who should have acted, the indifference of the professorate when it should have known

#### *Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

better, and the silence of the voice for social justice and equity when it should have been loud. I, therefore, demonstrate how I draw on the critical realist tools of retroductive reasoning in order to explain, as a transcendental argument, for what must have generated the crisis events in the academic project and per the case study where the actors seemed to be struggling to engage the WSU AMS-IAD strategy goals and objectives, and, in the processes, allowing more of the reproductive (the state of morphostasis) than what would have been the transformative (morphogenesis) outcomes in learning, teaching, and assessment as the core functions of university education.

I build my claims on the social realist explanation (retroductive reasoning for a transcendental argument), in four ways (elaboration on **Table 3** about the methodology of morphogenesis)


#### **6.1 The social and sociocultural interactions, the T2-T3 points**

One of the positions that makes social realism to be a powerful explanatory program (**Table 3**) is its ability to apply its tools about rationality. One of those, relevant for the discussion, is transfactuality, that is, the ability to engage the assumption that, because the numbers are, or the statement is, it thus serves as a measure of reality. Transfactuality allows for abductive logic as questioning the taken-for-granted views about what appears as empirical because the observations and opinions at the domain of the empirical are the result of other two emergent layers (domain of the actual, and the domain of the real) in nondeterministic and in irreducible ways. Therefore, this description of what the ontological assumptions can be about SJ-E projects seek to foreground the role of agency (human system as choice or non-choices, as actions of no actions), which operate in dynamic relationships with the social and cultural systems, as indicated on the diagram.

According to Archer's morphogenetic approach [11] (**Table 3**), the current challenges bout the SJ-E theories and practices, per already cited cases of academic exclusions, program accreditation, and the institutional audit, which was quite scathing about the academic project, would constitute the T 1 point, the inherited context of disadvantage, the previous T 4 point.


Such dynamics of the open and complex social world call for the realist understanding of SJ-E as the condition of historical and social relations which, depending on the quality of agency, might result in either reproductive or transformative outcomes or the variations of both. [2] draws on the same theoretical lens to explain the workings (T2-T3) of the idea of university education as the public good as deep ontology, stratification, causally efficaciousness, and emergence. In the case of the three crisis events as analyzed above, the T2-T3 cycles took the following iterative processes, which unfortunately resulted more in the reproductive than the idea of the transformative outcomes,


According to Archer's methodology of morphogenesis/morphostasis (**Table 3**) the actors in social systems do not just inherit the social and sociocultural conditions (T1), which are never of their own making. Their social action and human agency take the form of the iterative cycles of T2-T3, through which the nature of social and sociocultural interactions (the interplays of structure and culture as enacted by human action) for either the reproductive/morphostasis or transformative/morphogenesis states to take place, which is thus T4.

#### *6.1.1 The academic leadership and excellence, the inaction of those who should have acted*

The irresponsible management of the academic exclusion policy, whose source was the G7 Rule as regulated [5], meant that social disadvantage, exclusion, and marginalization could be enacted by the inaction of those who should have accordingly acted. At least 100 students per the cited cases were unfairly deregistered from the education system, the act which the powers that be from institutional management, had

*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

to apologize for much later! For such students, and at least per the cases which call within the radar of this project, the redistribution of the resources which the university ought to provide, could not be realized, and thus defeating the basic principles and foundations of the South African Constitution which is founded on the Basic Human Rights, the access and success principles of the transformation of university education, and let alone undermining the very institutional value on academic excellence as espoused at WSU. It is extremely unfortunate that the culprits in such acts could not engage the resources in their disposal as in the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy and its bouquet of integrated academic development programs and services.

The University Registrar's Circular of 28 February 2023 [26], about "G7 Rule Suspended-2022 Academic Year Performance Final Results" surfaces very controversial issues about how the resolution of the "special senate" [25], which took place on the same day, must have arrived at the decision. The content analysis of this circular against the senate management report reveals other anomalies about how the case could have been handled against what ought to be good practices of corporate governance and leadership.

*Item 5.1: Review the implementation of the G7 Rule: "The meeting took notice of a verbal report from the DVC: AAR emanating from the meeting that was held on 23 February 2023 with student leadership concerning the implementation of Rule G7 for 2022 academic year" ([25], page 4 of 4).*

The timing of the senate decision about the management of the G7 Rule seemed to be quite questionable. G7 Rule ought to be implemented from the beginning of the academic year, right during student registration. Also, the submission about the case in the form of "a verbal report," seemingly indicated an absence of a written management report to be submitted at this level of the governance structure. An educated guess from these activities (making inferences for a transcendental argument) is that there seemed to be pressure from students who were intent on registration by forcing the powers that be to bend the institutional rules, of which they ought to be custodians! All these activities seemed to sit against what ought to be good practices for the systems and processes, which need to follow good knowledge management system for audit trails, and for a university context, which is supposed to embrace institutional research as a form of scholarship. Worse still, the activities, as documented both in the circular and the senate report [25] and the registrar's circular [26], were inconsistent with the prescripts of the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy, which take care of the more developmental way of attending to student academic challenges before such students reach the "academic exclusion points."

Therefore, the discussion, thus, far, makes up for the case of *a structural system* when the roles, duties, and responsibilities of the affected heads of departments, deans of faculties, office of the registrar, the office of the campus rector, and the office of DVC. AAR, including all senators present at the meeting [25], is seemingly not the proxy for the actual equity of student access for the quality of academic success. The management of this crisis case reflected the inaction of those who should have acted for a university that is ostensibly in "Pursuit of Excellence" [16].

While university education is naturally designed for the middle- and high-income families, the AMS-IAD Strategy was designed to restructure such a model in ways that education as the public good could be common and be accessible to all [3]. The case about the academic exclusion indicated that it cannot always be the case! The actors in this case apparently drew on their neoclassical approach about student learning, with

its deficit model, to perpetrate historical and structural disadvantage advertently and unwittingly instead of embracing the sociocultural approach as advanced and promoted by means of the AMS-IAD Strategy [22]. In the 2019/20 case about the management of the academic exclusion policy, the following statement by the affected student was quite indicative of how the no access to the public and common good that the university has to offer, can have disastrous consequences when in consideration of what should have been the redistributive value,

*"Next year NSFAS will need our 2020 academic records, and we will have nothing to show. How will we secure funding to further our studies?" [24].*

The strange turn of the events from this case was when the university management had to make a public apology for their mishaps [24].

#### *6.1.2 The management systems and practical wisdom, the indifference of the professoriate when it should have known better*

At *the cultural systems level*, as the apparent misrecognition of the plight of students in the lens of the social justice and equity, the idea of university education as the public good was not a values-free exercise for students who were on the negative ends of such acts of academic exclusion. The case of the unaccredited advanced diploma in internal auditing, for example, indicated how the inactions on academic excellence can emerge at the point of the indifference of the professorate when it should have known better. Not only 100 students were academic excluded unfairly in Crisis Case 1, but under Crisis Case 2, a total of 125 students were affected by such forms of apathy when WSU had to discontinue admitting students when it could have been the case. Such forms of apathy are antithetical to the ideal of (practical) *wisdom* as an institutional value. More than once, the institution was given an opportunity to correct this, as dating back to the advent of the higher education qualifications sub-framework, and as consequently outlined both in the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy [22].

An academic program ought to be the currency of any university education. The fact that the program could be discontinued due to the accreditation issues talked quite extensively to the challenges of apathy when empathy about students that WSU is able to admit in her programs should have weighed heavily on the part of the professorate, as the powerholders in this case. It was quite a sad turn of events that the case could reflect the case of the professorate who seemed to miss the reality that the concrete singular must be the enabling mechanism for universal plurality. It also defeats the realist-oriented logic that the Data-Information-Knowledge-Practical Wisdom chain could not apply quite adequately in the case of the advanced diploma in internal auditing. Data about academic excellence ought to constitute the wellembedded management information systems, which, when deconstructed from a powerful knowledge perspective, should lead to the practical wisdom in the idea of university education, in "Pursuit of Excellence." It is by drawing on the powerful knowledge, at least per the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy, that the re-acculturation of plurality of perspectives could have been possible, at least at the point of scholarship of engagement, as I argue elsewhere [2] about such realms of new possibilities. Curriculum development and program management constituted the roles, functions, and responsibilities of the actors [25] who were ostensibly members of the professorate in an ideal university education context! While a university can register students who are underprepared to do well in a typically middle- and top-class university

#### *Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

environment, for the South African transformation project, it is also incumbent upon the university to design the readiness systems and processes for such students, hence the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy was designed for that purpose as the battery of programs and services! The case of an advanced diploma in internal auditing meant that these enabling mechanisms for curriculum development and program management could not be adequately engaged, and hence the unaccredited status. If Crisis Case 1 was more about the silences and superficialities of academic leadership when in pursuit of excellence, Crisis Case 2 about the management systems level already pointed to what can be the challenges at governance structure level. That turned out to be the case about the Crisis Event, which would be quite instructive about the notion of emergence and morphostasis at strategy level. That is ideally the case about the governance structures, which must be the "driving force" for a university education as the embodiment of social justice and equity.

#### *6.1.3 The governance structure and integrity, the silence of social justice when it should have been loud*

The unintended consequences of both the structural and cultural systems played out in the 3rd dimension, the dimension of human systems as the actors on the roles, functions, and responsibilities and further on the beliefs, norms, and standards in the idea of university education as the public good. Such an idea ought to take the reframing of parity and rights for the indigent, especially in the case of a university institution, which serves most of the community that is still steeped in the historical and structural disadvantage. The intransigence of the powerholders, as emergent at the operations and management levels, becomes more pronounced at strategy level when the systems and processes can be in place both the inaction and the indifference can emerge as the silence of the voice for social justice and equity when it could have been loud. A critique about inaction and apathy at the institutional level is about a university, which might still be locked up in the neoclassical approach about the idea of a university as the ivory tower status secluded from the community the varsity serves! Great pity that the governance structures, as constitutive of the actors in Crisis Cases 1 and 2, could still be displaying the shortfall of what ought to have been the sociocultural approach as provided in the WSU AMS-IAD Strategy [22]. The institutional audit report of 2023 [14] provides compelling evidence for how Crisis Case 3 played out in the form of the silences and superficialities of integrated quality management systems, which could not go far enough in terms of coherence, functionality, responsiveness and meaningfully structured, where the management, leadership and governance systems ought to be the main actors.

#### **6.2 Engaging the dis/continuities from the old regimes of power and of truth**

The Crisis Cases 1, 2, and 3, especially as evidenced by the institutional audit report of 2023, paint what seem to be the major constraints in the struggle of a senior manager when in pursuit of social justice and equity as the "agenda for excellence." Such actors as implied in the report have the temerity to draw on the dominant explanations of quality as if quality is not contested in power relations and in the materialist interests favorable to them. It is not rocketing science that such audacity has its source as the systems of domination and control about student learning, about curriculum development and program management, which, at Institutional level, can lead to the recurring of very negative institutional audit reports [13, 14], and thus defeating the

whole logic about the idea of university education as the silences in the idea voice for social justice and equity! It is quite instructive about such cases that the two institutional audit reports took place with a decade in between (2011 to 2023). In such cases, as [31] would raise a rhetorical question, would be whether the "subaltern can speak"? I would, thus, provide a rejoinder: If so, in whose language, anyway? Which rules of engagement would apply in such dialogs and conversations as the requisite forms of scholarship of engagement and in context-specific and actor-driven ways [2]?

Therefore, it is this point about engaging the systems of domination and control, about the dominant explanations about quality, which constituted the struggle of a senior manager at WSU. Such struggles are not unique, they constitute the struggles of the oppressed and their beneficiaries, against the intransigence of the powerholders! They are struggles, which are constitutive of the dynamic and developing relationships between the human nature and the objective materials conditions of life in time and in diversity of spaces! Such struggles make for the ethico-political and moral choices and projects for the advancement of human flourishing. Such are the struggles against brutality, against dehumanizing tendencies, and against how patronizing and condescending the attitudes can be in the social world!

As illustrated in this article, such are the struggles against the inaction of those who should have acted, against the indifference of those who should have known better, and the fight for making loud the voice for social justice when it can be so silent! Such social ills, the forms of social injustice and iniquities as the misrepresentation of the other when reframing of their parity and rights could have worked better, as the maldistribution of resources about the other when the alternative could have been the restructuring of the economic model, and as the misrecognition of the other when the right choices and emancipatory projects for the other could have been the re-acculturation of plurality in advancement of human flourishing, need to be ameliorated and at best be abolished!

Therefore, the discussion in this article has revealed the frivolity of the blind claims about quality when in consideration of how some critical cases of an academic enterprise might be incongruous with the espoused institutional values of Excellence-Wisdom-Integrity. Cumulatively, the findings of the institutional audit report [14] point to the crisis events as the enduring events and processes over time [13], and most significantly as the result of questionable foundations about WSU merger, [3, 4], a university that is still grappling to find her identity. The crisis events of 2019/20, 2021/22, and 2022/23 indicate how the management of the academic project in "Pursuit of Excellence" can get lost at the point of academic leadership as the question of interplays of structural, cultural, and human systems! The case of G7 Rule/Academic Exclusion crisis of 2019/20, which led to the "postponement of the policy" for 2022, albeit in 2023 [25, 26], for example, constitutes not only the T4 point of the reproductive outcomes about excellence but the potential T1 point if such an event is engaged progressively and in socially reconstructive ways. This is the critical point about emergence to the social science scholars who draw on the power of critical realist philosophy (**Table 2**, Section 3).

The idea about university education as the embodiment of *excellence* ought to be mutually constitutive with *wisdom* and *integrity*, with all the three as important dimensions of power political relations and economic interests as embedded in cultural systems. For a university education system, such a responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the professorate, which, per the three crisis cases, the assumed actors in the "Pursuit of Excellence," unfortunately remained indifferent. In contexts of historical and structural disadvantage, exclusion, and marginalization, academic leadership ought to entail a particular focus on the identity as the veracious and expressively

#### *Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

consideration, that is, on the right choices and the emancipatory project for the historically and structurally disadvantaged, excluded, and marginalized. The three crisis cases indicate the serious absences in all the three accounts of academic exclusions of program accreditations, and of institutional audits, at least from the point of those who were on the negative ends of such forms of indifference and apathy. However, it is important to note that, in a dynamic and developing relationship between human nature and the objective material conditions, this T4 point is also a T1 point for the next cycle, which therefore presents more of the opportunities than the challenges to the current WSU Regime of 2020–2024 [16] as it embarks on the institutional projects for the iterative elaboration about a university in "Pursuit of Excellence" for Vision 2030.

#### **7. Toward the practical alternatives for transformative agency**

The next logical point in the theory-methodology-practical program chain, should entail the potential resolution points about the three Crisis Cases, which punctuated the struggle of a senior manager for SJ-E projects. As it has been the running thread in this article, such cases signified the struggles of the oppressed against the intransigence of the powerholders! According to the discussion thus far, such Crisis Cases call for what could have been the action versus inaction, the empathy of the professorate instead of the indifference, and the voice of social justice and equity when it was so glaringly silent. A cautionary note, though, is not to consider these points as binaries, as disabling dualisms, since the edges within them can always be blurred in open and complex social systems! Therefore, in this Section, I focus on the case of curriculum development and program management to illustrate the value of human system as in interaction with the structural and cultural systems. I argue that the transformative outcomes about the case of the unaccredited program of advanced diploma in internal auditing, while conditioned in its history and social relations about its management, reconstituting it should have called upon social action and human agency. The reflexive dialectical processes thereof, which included even calling upon external consultants, could not go far enough in ensuring that corporate agency can emerge for the idea of transformative outcomes as re-acculturating universal plurality from the concrete singular. In the previous section, I briefly touched on this point as the value of the data-information-knowledge-practical wisdom chain. This could have been the case of how of the re-curriculation of the program at the point of knowledge should have been built on extensive data and on easily accessible information and in ways that could have led to the practical wisdom, and thus emergence at management, leadership, and governance systems levels as morphogenesis. Applying such logical approach in more context-specific and actor-driven ways could have solved both other two cases of academic exclusions and the negative institutional audit report at the three points of action instead of inaction, of empathy instead of indifference, and of making loud the voice for social justice and equity, and thus go a long way in ensuring a flawless institutional audit report as the new WSU Regimen of 2020–2024 is busy rolling for WSU Vision 2030 [16].

#### **7.1 Transformative agency, the dream deferred?**

Summarily, transformative Agency in corporate ways ought to entail a broad-based movement of critical minds in university education, and thereby taking a stand together for the sake of the scholarship and its future. This point is very instructive for the

current WSU Regime of 2020–2024 whose vision is about "an impactful and technologyinfused African university," a university "In Pursuit of Excellence!" I personally take the view that the current vision is more about the enabling mechanisms, where the outcome remains for the idea of "an engaged university for rural development and urban renewal (2015–2019/20)." Otherwise, what would be the idea of university education for in the context of Walter Sisulu University? For me, the new vision statement does not go far enough in promising radical conceptual shifts about what WSU could have been in 2015–2019, but is a travesty of justice, and indictment on the part of those who ought to have been the actors of the previous regime, as the crisis events of 2019/20, of 2021/22 and of 2022/23 seemed to be so instructive. As it were, the three crisis cases as the subject of inquiry in this article might be the workings of pretense, grand standing, and political posturing so typical of the powerholders. Such is in the nature of the struggles of the oppressed against the intransigence of the powerholders as a dynamic relationship between the human nature and the objective material conditions.

The struggle of a senior manager constituted my personal reflections of managing and leading the dynamics in the case of the center and the approved but inadequately enacted, WSU AMS-IAD Strategy 2015–2019/20 due to the inaction of those who should have acted, the indifference of the professorate when it should have known better and most significantly, the silence of the voice for social justice and equity when such voices could have been much louder. It is about human nature, especially drawing from social reality theories, that people will always inherit the circumstances, which are never of their own making, when the efforts for university education transformation can easily yield more of the reproductive than the ideal of transformative outcomes. However, it is from the conditions of their time and space that they can call for what might be the right choices and emancipatory projects, through human and social action as the reflexive dialectical processes can allow for transformative agency to emerge. The events and process about the pursuit for social justice and equity in such circumstances of inheritance, and their conditions of choices and projects, might have to be selfincriminating and thus defeatist if they cannot be theorized and thus conceptualized by means of contemporary scholarship endeavors. Nevertheless, the struggles of a senior manager in such contexts, and drawing from the statement by Mr. Thabo Mbheki, former President of South Africa [1], a social scientist and researcher in the pursuit of social justice and equity for human flourishing might have to go to "the gallows singing, in order to indicate (the) determination for the other people who may come".

Therefore, to possible transform the system in such institutions, as the WSU context and their expressively veracious considerations, need to understand the transformation project in context-specific, in concept-dependent, and in actor-driven ways. A university in "Pursuit of Excellence" can not afford to be seen as playing to the gallery, as waxing lyrical when it comes to the forms of injustice, of unfairness, of authoritarianism, and of indifference as experienced by the academically excluded students in the Crisis Case 1 and 2. By contrast, 'the social struggles of the oppressed and exploited against such structures and their beneficiaries (the systems of domination and control, their cultural systems of dominant exploitations about the social phenomenon) are morally right'; they are 'objectively, ethico-political 'right-action.'

#### **8. The reflections, integration, and conclusions**

This article reported on the struggles of a senior manager by mapping out social justice and equity (SJ-E) projects in one case of a university education

#### *Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

institution over three phases of her transformation project. The advent of the national institutional audit (2021–2024), the second one post-constitutional democracy, allowed for the potential analysis about the value of understanding the role of agency in the theory and practice of SJ-E projects for the idea of university education as the public and the common good. The struggle of a senior manager was about the struggles on behalf of the oppressed against the intransigence of the powerholders, who inadvertently and unwittingly chose and embarked upon projects that could make perpetual the historical and structural disadvantage! It was the struggle/a process whose product would become tested at the point of the crisis events, thus raising a question about what can always be the structural generative mechanisms for the enduring social ills.

The events and processes about the idea of an engaged university for rural development and urban renewal itself could have passed the test in terms of concept. However, and most significantly, such a test could be rendered unworkable at the point of the theory-practice nexus, of the cultural system and how such systems can be enacted, as discussed in this article. Not the least of such a possibility was the value of scholarship of engagement, which constituted the main claims in this article, about the three events which were emergent and quite enduring over time. The events permeated the first institutional audit report of 2011 to the current, per the recently released institutional audit report of April 2023. The institutional plan 2020–2024, while necessary and significant, the inadequacies thereof are likely to be surfaced at the points of the transformation project which is likely to assume a very challenged character against the assumed trajectories and let alone the dynamics thereof! The critical success factor for the plan will be the quality of leadership for the character of the WSU transformation project for what are the assumed trajectories and let alone the dynamics of the open and complex social systems! If the plan does not stem the tide about the cases of social injustice and iniquities as discussed in this article, a prediction can be made, on the strength of, on the balance of probabilities beyond the reasonable doubt, that the major crisis events of 2012–2013 are likely to set in at WSU, and thus subjecting this institution to an unfortunate era of the Administration Regime as it happened in 2011! That is not a far-fetched reality given the fact that WSU still belongs to the category of historically disadvantaged institutions in South Africa who had to undergo the administration for the second time post-constitutional democracy. Such would be the case of a never-ending struggle, given some of the unresolved issues in the three crisis events, namely the postponed implementation of the G7/Academic Exclusion Policy institution wide, the still unaccredited academic program in the case of Advanced Diploma in Internal Auditing, and the still pending improvement plans for the recently released institutional audit report of April 2023. In the light of the latter cases, such struggles of the oppressed remain a forever developing and evolving dynamic relationship between the human nature and the objective conditions in the pursuit of excellence, in the idea of university education as the common and the public good!

#### **Declaration**

This chapter is a dedication to all the educational development activists and scholars who are in the coal face of the struggles of the oppressed against the intransigence of powerholders. Such struggles are emergent from personal to institutional spaces, from the national and global spaces and over time!

*Higher Education – Reflections from the Field – Volume 1*

#### **Author details**

Valindawo Valile M. Dwayi Walter Sisulu University, East London, South Africa

\*Address all correspondence to: vdwayi@wsu.ac.za

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*Perspective Chapter: Reflections from the Field – The Struggles of a Senior Manager in Pursuit… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112626*

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## *Edited by Lee Waller and Sharon Kay Waller*

COVID wrought havoc on the world's economic systems. Higher education did not escape the ravages brought on by the pandemic as institutions of higher education around the world faced major upheavals in their educational delivery systems. Some institutions were prepared for the required transition to online learning. Most were not. Whether prepared or not, educators rose to the challenge. The innovativeness of educators met the challenges as digital learning replaced the face-to-face environment. In fact, some of the distance models proved so engaging that many students no longer desire a return to the face-to-face model. As with all transitions, some things were lost while others were gained. This book examines practice in the field as institutions struggled to face the worst global pandemic in the last century. The book is organized into four sections on "The Perspectives of Higher Education", "COVID as a Catalyst for Change", "Embracing Online Learning as a Response to COVID", and "Post Covid: The Way Forward". It presents various perspectives from educators around the world to illustrate the struggles and triumphs of those facing new challenges and implementing new ideas to empower the educational process. These discussions shed light on the impact of the pandemic and the future of higher education post-COVID. Higher education has been forever changed, and higher education as it once was may never return. While many questions arise, the achievements in meeting and overcoming the pandemic illustrate the creativity and innovativeness of educators around the world who inspired future generations of learners to reach new heights of accomplishment even in the face of the pandemic.

*Katherine K.M. Stavropoulos, Education and Human Development Series Editor*

Published in London, UK © 2023 IntechOpen © NeoLeo / iStock

Higher Education - Reflections From the Field - Volume 1

IntechOpen Series

Education and Human Development, Volume 3

Higher Education

Reflections From the Field - Volume 1

*Edited by Lee Waller and Sharon Kay Waller*