The supervision and production of a PhD thesis often presents a potentially interesting tension between PhDs as conforming to disciplinary epistemologies and PhDs as breaking epistemological boundaries. No academic discipline has been left untouched by decolonial thinking in the South African university space since the eruption of radicalized…

In this article, we share themes and tensions experienced by humanities faculty undertaking a scholarship of teaching & learning (SoTL) project as part of a multi-campus, grant-funded initiative. Faculty participants in the project iteratively transformed a course to improve one or more aspects of their students' learning over a three-year…

The purpose of this study was to examine gender and discipline-based Differential Item Functioning (DIF) and Differential Distractor Functioning (DDF) on the Islamic Azad University English Proficiency Test (IAUEPT). The study evaluated DIF and DDF across genders and disciplines using the Rasch model. To conduct DIF and DDF analysis, the examinees…

Researchers increasingly engage with the digital archives built by libraries, archives, and museums, but many institutions still seek to learn more about researchers' needs and practices with these digital collections. This paper presents a user assessment study for "Emblematica Online," a research digital library that provides digitized…

This article reports on an interdisciplinary project that conducted a series of systematic reviews of academic research about the use of pornography and sexual health. Academics from a variety of disciplines were involved; half of the team had a background in humanities and the other half a background in psychology. While working closely together,…

Background: Recent decades have seen an increased number of literacy education researchers attending to LGBTQ people and texts in secondary schools, frequently documenting tensions that emerge, such as conflict. However, this research tends to be limited in scope with respect to time, texts, and identities. Moreover, it shows that students tend to…

Polymathy may be defined as the productive pursuit of multiple endeavors, simultaneously or serially, across a lifetime. As such, polymathic breadth of interest across knowledge domains characterizes Nobel laureates in the sciences, literature, economics, and peace, though interest patterns vary between groups. Economics laureates, like science…

Rising worldwide scrutiny of the PhD has focused on issues such as return on investment and career outcomes. This article investigates PhD graduate careers and knowledge transfer looking at the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS). Firstly, our extensive literature review of PhD graduate outcomes reveals limited knowledge of HASS careers…

Research on how performance-based funding influences the behaviour and performance of academics is limited in Europe. In this study, we investigate the changing publication patterns among Finnish academics associated with the introduction of awarding funding for publications within specific journals in the national performance-based funding model.…

The level of critical thinking skills of Omani tertiary-level students is an area that has received only a limited amount of investigative attention. This study employed an adapted version of the Cornell Class-Reasoning Test, Form X to assess the critical thinking skills of students in the humanities- and science-based colleges of Sultan Qaboos…

It is a strange and sobering experience to read Hofstadter in our own anti-intellectual era. If anything, left-leaning intellectuals' sense of alienation has increased since the 1990s. To challenge anti-intellectualism in American education, the liberal arts and sciences will need to be restored to their central place in the curriculum.

Purpose: The study aims to examine the vertical integration of the sustainable development goals (SGDs) in Portuguese public higher education institutions, namely, at the level of undergraduate and master's degrees, and the extent to which Portuguese higher education institutions (HEI) are preparing for the United Nations' call to promote SDGs.…

"Pastimes" (7th ed.) introduces the phenomenon of leisure and reflects a wide range of material from the disciplines of leisure studies, sociology, psychology, economics, political science, history, anthropology, geography, the humanities, and media and cultural studies. This book discusses leisure from personal, societal, and systems…

Recently, the need to contribute to the evaluation of the scientific, social, and political impact of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research has become a demand of policy makers and society. The international scientific community has made significant advances that have transformed the impact of evaluation landscape. This article reviews the…

Drawing on the work of Lee Shulman, this article reviews literature exploring the concept of signasture pedagogies, which are described as having have surface, deep and implicit structures. These structures are complex and changing; concerned with habits of head, hand and heart. Emerging from professional education and now being explored in STEM…