Working Group 1: Concepts and Measures of Academic Responsibility Over Time

Working Group One

Conceptions and Measures of Academic Responsibility Over Time

Overview
Why This Matters
Key Areas of Focus
How the Group Works
Members

Overview

This Working Group investigates critically how academic responsibility in universities has been performed, represented, and measured over time. It looks at how these ideas have evolved in the literature, how they relate to current university assessment metrics, and what these concepts and metrics reward or reinforce.

They aim to connect these findings to a contemporary understanding of academic responsibility, including roles of education, research and social responsibility.

Why This Matters

How academic responsibility is defined and measured can shape what universities prioritize, how they are perceived, and which forms of performance are valued. Rankings and performance metrics can shape academic practices, markets, and what stakeholders value.

At a time when knowledge and authority are increasingly contested, critically examining these concepts and measures can help clarify what academic responsibility should mean in contemporary academic practice today.

Key Areas of Focus

The Working Group is addressing two central questions:

How has academic responsibility in universities been conceptualized in the literature over time?
How do institutions that “do” academic responsibility differ from those that do less?

The findings of these research questions could be used by the group to inform an explanatory framework for academic responsibility in these current times and determine the "levers" that may be used to influence it.

The group has also discussed how academic responsibility and quality/impact are measured, including how this relates to rankings published by platforms such as Times Higher Education and the Shanghai Ranking.

How the Group Works

The group combines a critical literature review and empirical analysis of university data. For the first research question, it will use a critical review approach to examine how academic responsibility has been represented in literature over time. For the second research question, the group will analyse publicly available university ranking data and other institutional data to assess what current measures reveal about education, research, and social impact.

The findings from both strands will then be reviewed together to explore how concepts of academic responsibility relate to the ways institutional performance is measured in practice.

Members