Academic Members’ Perceptions of Educational Leadership and Perceived Need for Leadership Capacity Building in Chinese Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Universities in China have faced great challenges in the past decade, such as challenges driven by globalization and technological progress. This requires leaders to meet the challenge of change. Little has been written from the perspective of educational leadership in Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs). This study aims to explore academic members’ perceptions of educational leadership and to explore factors contributing to the professional learning and growth of academic members in Chinese HEIs. Through a qualitative study, we explored the perceptions of 12 academic members from eight Chinese universities. The results provide us with a comprehensive conceptualized educational leadership, perceived effective educational leadership, and perceived need for capacity building. The results can be helpful to support sustainable professional development and also for administrators, universities, and policymakers in China in creating the environment and policies that facilitate the implementation of successful educational leadership experiences.

Keywords:

• Capacity building
• educational leadership
• higher education
• leadership development
• perceptions

Acknowledgments

I would like to show our special thanks of gratitude to my promoter Prof. Dr. Chang Zhu who gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on the topic Academic members’ perceptions of educational leadership and perceived need for leadership capacity building in the Chinese higher education institutions and we would like to express our grateful thanks to our colleagues and my previous teachers who supported this study, which helped me in doing further research and I came to know about so many new things. We are really thankful to them.

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.