Student-centered leadership in higher education: Perspectives from academic Department Heads

Abstract

Student engagement, learning outcomes, and competency development have garnered growing attention in higher education. However, academic leaders often face challenges in fostering holistic student learning while also enhancing student career prospects. Drawing on student-centered leadership (SCL) theory, this study examines how university Department Heads (DHs) facilitate student learning and development, and explores the extent to which the K-12 SCL model is transferable to higher education contexts. The case study draws on semistructured interviews with eight DHs in a Canadian university. Data were analyzed using abductive reasoning. Findings show that DHs acted as operational actors who sought to improve learning outcomes by integrating high-impact practices into, and enhancing the quality of, teaching and curricula. A deep analysis of the findings suggests that DHs were required to make trade-offs between administrative compliance and student-centered practices, as their professional agency was constrained by intersecting cultural, structural, and resource-related factors. This study has two main theoretical contributions: (i) developing a novel typology of factors enabling or constraining SCL in higher education and (ii) proposing a context-specific framework for understanding how DHs achieve academic goals within their departments. The study concludes with recommendations for practice and future research.

Keywords

Student learning student-centered leadership Department Heads higher education

Introduction

In recent years, universities worldwide have been shaped by a shift toward intensified metrification of “quality” and increasing regulatory accountability (Hulme et al., 2023; Maddock, 2023; Zan et al., 2025). Within this governance regime, academic work is increasingly rendered calculable through a range of audit practices, including recruitment targets, standardized teaching evaluations, time allocation surveys, and research quality assessments (Hulme et al., 2023; Smithers and Gibbs, 2024). These metrics have been described by Deem and Baird (2020) as “agenda-setting tools” that steer academics toward measurable outcomes, potentially at the expense of the depth of student learning (p. 218). This shift echoes what Ball (2003) terms “the terrors of performativity” (p. 216), whereby traditional academic values are increasingly challenged by the imperative to meet metric-driven benchmarks.

While the impact of the aforementioned performative discourses is felt across the university, their associated mandates are primarily implemented at the departmental level (Rumsey, 2013). Here, the Department Head (DH) acts as the linchpin that translates institutional performance targets into actionable strategies within their academic unit (Ghamrawi et al., 2024). This intermediary role, however, is increasingly demanding amid constraits of limited time, resources, and decision-making authority, necessitating zero-sum trade-offs between audit-based accountability and teaching and learning enhancement (Zan et al., 2025). Such tensions are particularly pronounced in Canada, where provincial performance-based funding models and domestic tuition freezes frequently compel DHs to adopt a reactive “firefighting” mode of leadership (Lawrence and Rezai-Rashti, 2022; Rexe, 2015). Driven by these fiscal exigencies, they must prioritize graduate rates and grant capture for departmental survival, leaving little discretionary space to protect the intrinsic value of learning itself.

Despite a growing interest in leadership for learning in higher education, existing research remains geographically centered in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia (Frisk et al., 2023; Irving, 2015; Mason and de La Harpe, 2020), leaving North American contexts significantly underrepresented. Furthermore, the literature has focused more on leadership outcomes than on processes through which such outcomes are produced. In addition, the involvement of DHs in student-centered leadership (SCL) studies remains disproportionately limited compared to those focusing on faculty and student perspectives (Trinidad, 2020). In response, the present study seeks to address all of these gaps by investigating the lived experiences of DHs in leading student-centered learning and the ways in which they do so in a Canadian university. Although SCL is well-established in K-12 education, it is under-theorized in higher education. Thus, the study also examines the applicability of the K-12 SCL model (Robinson et al., 2008) to the university context and subsequently proposes a theoretical reconfiguration that incorporates the collegial governance and structural complexities of higher education.

This study is guided by the following research questions:

What strategies do university DHs employ to facilitate student-centered learning within their departments?

To what extent is the K-12 SCL model applicable or transferable to the context of higher education departments?

This study has the potential to enhance the understanding of SCL policy and practice among preachers (academia), practitioners (industry), and policymakers (government). The findings may inform academic leadership in curriculum design, teaching improvement, and student learning support applicable to the higher education sector globally. Industry practitioners could draw on these insights to strengthen partnerships with universities through the co-design of work-integrated learning programs. Policymakers may also leverage the evidence to guide resource allocation and develop professional development programs that support systemic embedding of SCL in higher education institutions.

The following section provides a literature review on DHs and student-centered learning in higher education, followed by a presentation of the theoretical framework guiding this study. This is succeeded by a detailed description of the study's context, participants, and research methods. The final sections present a nuanced discussion and conclusion, highlighting the critical findings and their implications.

Department Heads in higher education

Appointed by and reporting to the Dean, DHs are academic staff who oversee the day-to-day operations of their departments and contribute to the advancement of academic missions (Kruse, 2022). While DHs hold formal authority over academic, fiscal, and personnel matters, their power is circumscribed by a line-management hierarchy where their agency is steered by the Dean's strategic priorities (Mason and de La Harpe, 2020). Consequently, the leadership capacity of DHs is contingent upon the Dean's explicit endorsement, formal authority delegation, and targeted resource allocation (McCowan et al., 2022; Sandefur and Oglesby, 1982). This hierarchical arrangement shifts DH leadership from formal authority toward negotiated agency, where decision-making is brokered through collegial consensus within shared governance structures.

Despite the pivotal role of DHs in institutional change, the literature highlights the temporary nature of their positions (Maddock, 2023). Their short-term appointments are typically accompanied by limited leadership or professional preparation (Hulme et al., 2023), underpinned by the traditional assumption that academic excellence automatically translates to leadership competence (Rumsey, 2013). This challenge is further exacerbated by the dual-identity pressure to maintain scholarly productivity in preparation for returning to faculty roles after their terms, leaving DHs with limited capacity for sustained pedagogical leadership (Zan et al., 2025). As a result, DHs often adopt a conservative leadership stance, prioritizing collegial relationships over transformative pedagogical reforms that may provoke peer conflict (Thornton et al., 2018).

Organizational culture and group dynamics jointly shape the leadership work of DHs. While organizational culture shapes normative expectations of DHs’ leadership behavior, group dynamics shape interaction patterns that directly influence collective behavior and departmental performance (Karanxha and Greenlee, 2010; Schein, 2010). Collaborative and adhocratic cultures enable DHs to facilitate the cultivation of relational trust (Lizier, 2024), fostering the psychological safety necessary for intellectual risk-taking and the open exchange of innovative ideas (Zan et al., 2025). Conversely, market-oriented cultures may intensify the compliance pressures of DHs, potentially eroding the goodwill capital essential for collaborative problem-solving within departments (Ghamrawi et al., 2024). Within these cultural frameworks, group dynamics act as the operational engine through which DHs employ informal power and authority to cultivate collective efficacy (Maddock, 2023). By institutionalizing inclusive decision-making and constructive feedback, DHs can transform these dynamics into a shared belief in the department's capacity in educational change.

Student-centered learning

Student-centered learning is an umbrella term for “classroom practices that involve students experiencing, collaborating, testing, creating, and directing their own learning” (Trinidad, 2020: 1013). Despite the variety of terms that relate to student-centered learning, these concepts are generally articulated through four interconnected pillars (Goodwin, 2024). These pillars consist of (1) active learning, engaging students in cognitive tasks to develop higher-order thinking; (2) experiential learning, linking concrete experience with reflection to generate abstract knowledge; (3) collaborative learning, involving students working with peers to construct shared understanding; and (4) problem-based learning, requiring students to structure their ideas to tackle complex challenges.

Despite varying understandings of student-centered learning, it is often contrasted with teacher-centered learning. The former is rooted in constructivist frameworks which assume that knowledge is co-constructed through active student engagement, whereas the latter reflects a traditional approach where teachers deliver knowledge to students who are positioned as passive receivers of information (Trinidad, 2020). However, this perspective often results in an oversimplified binary that polarizes teacher expertise and student agency as an “either-or” choice (Gómez, 2008). In fact, SCL represents a dynamic pedagogical continuum in which the degree of instructional guidance is contextually contingent upon disciplinary features and course levels, particularly in higher education (Trinidad, 2020). In introductory undergraduate courses or highly technical modules, instructor expertise serves as an essential epistemological anchor for ensuring academic rigor, as students may lack prior academic readiness (Kain, 2003). Conversely, graduate-level programs facilitate a shift toward reflexive knowledge co-construction, with students’ burgeoning expertise and intellectual agency becoming the primary drivers of the learning process (Robertson et al., 2023). This flexibility suggests that student-centered learning in higher education operates within a landscape that is far less structured than the prescriptive models typical of K-12 education.

The higher education literature highlights several prominent approaches to student-centered learning, comprising “Students as Partners” in curriculum design (Maharajan et al., 2025), peer-led learning models (Bhardwaj et al., 2025), and hands-on activities in virtual computer laboratories (Konak et al., 2014). These approaches underscore the pivotal role of students in shaping content, curriculum, and pedagogical practices. However, their implementation often encounters a constellation of systemic barriers, including cultural resistance in high power-distance contexts, faculty preference for traditional lecture-based approaches, and heightened student anxiety in less structured learning environments (Trinidad, 2020). Since educational change rarely occurs in an organizational vacuum (Mincu, 2022), addressing these challenges requires a pragmatic leadership approach that balances pedagogical ideals with the ethical and operational constraints of academic environments. Navigating this critical juncture is often considered to fall within the responsibility of DHs, who act as strategic brokers in implementing student-centered learning paradigms within departmental practices (Frisk et al., 2023; Ghamrawi et al., 2024). Yet, despite their important role, empirical research on how DHs facilitate student-centered learning in practice is still in its infancy.

Theoretical framework

SCL conceptualizes academic leaders as situated actors who position learners at the heart of organizational planning, emphasize agentic co-creation with teachers and students, and facilitate sensemaking within educational ecosystems (Krause, 2023). A recent systematic literature review and meta-analysis by Robinson and Gray (2019) indicates that tangible leadership practices have a greater impact on student learning outcomes than abstract leadership styles. Inspired by others’ work (Hallinger, 2005; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2005), they further argue for an SCL framework that enables academic leaders to translate aspirational learning goals into concrete strategic actions. Thus, SCL provides a valuable conceptual lens for examining how academic leaders contribute to student learning and development.

Extant SCL frameworks in higher education (e.g. Krause, 2023) primarily focus on macro-level institutional strategies, yet overlook the meso-level enactment of departmental leadership. However, Lizier (2024) and Mason and de La Harpe (2020) contend that leadership effects on student learning stem more from everyday practices than from overarching strategic frameworks. This critical gap underscores the need to develop an empirically grounded model of SCL tailored to the departmental context in higher education. Given that the roles of university DHs, including faculty development and budget oversight (Maddock, 2023), are functionally parallel to those of school principals (Table 1), Robinson et al.'s (2008) K-12 SCL framework provides a relevant and analogous lens for investigating how DHs support student-centered learning in universities.

Table 1.

Student-centered leadership dimensions in K-12 education.

1. Establishing goals and expectations by providing a sense of purpose and priority, developing staff commitment to goals and ensuring they have the capacity to meet them

2. Resourcing strategically in allocating and organizing funding, time, and staffing in ways that increase the likelihood of achieving the organizational goals

3. Ensuring quality teaching by promoting and taking an active role in the oversight of the instructional program and setting clear performance standards for teaching

4. Leading teacher learning and development by supporting and enhancing teachers’ professional learning to improve teaching quality and student outcomes through evidence-informed, collaborative and contextually relevant approaches

5. Ensuring an orderly and safe environment by establishing clear and consistently high expectations for student behavior and learning

Note: Adapted by Robinson et al. (2008).

While the above dimensions offer a starting point for understanding SCL, they either fail to capture the specific context of higher education or overlap conceptually. Thus, we reconfigure Robinson et al.'s (2008) framework to clarify conceptual distinctions and enhance its relevance to higher education (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Adaptation of Robinson et al.'s (2008) student-centered leadership dimensions for the higher education context.

First, establishing goals and expectations is reframed from a static administrative task into a context-responsive process, characterized by ongoing dialogue and sensitivity to diverse student learning needs (Vreuls et al., 2022). Second, leading teacher learning development and ensuring teaching quality are consolidated into a single dimension, as professional development serves as the primary mechanism for sustaining pedagogical excellence (Robinson and Gray, 2019). Finally, ensuring an orderly and safe environment is recontextualized from K-12 student behavior management to the cultivation of inclusive and supportive organizational culture in universities (Quinlan, 2014).

This adapted framework (Table 2) provides a theoretical, methodological, and analytical lens for this study. It enables a focused analysis of the data while facilitating a dialogue between K-12 literature and higher education empirical findings that would be difficult to achieve through a purely open-ended exploration. To maintain interpretive validity, we abstained from referencing the framework during data collection so as not to influence participants’ responses to SCL, thereby allowing context-specific themes to emerge naturally.

Table 2.

Adapted student-centered leadership dimensions in higher education.

Academic responsiveness enacted through curriculum development, program renewal, and collaborative partnerships to ensure academic offerings align with the evolving needs of students, disciplines, and society

Resourcing strategically in allocating and organizing funding, time and staffing in ways that increase the likelihood of achieving the organizational goals

Ensuring teaching quality by promoting and taking an active role in the oversight of the instructional program, setting clear performance standards for teaching and leading teacher professional learning and development

Fostering inclusive and supportive environments by cultivating physical, social, and institutional culture that enables educators to teach effectively and students to engage meaningfully, thrive intellectually, and contribute actively within academic and civic communities

Method

This qualitative study (with ethics approval) adopted an interpretive case study approach to examine the socially constructed nature of student-centered leadership by DHs (Priya, 2021). Rather than seeking statistical generalization, this approach can facilitate thick description, capturing nuanced institutional realities (Yin, 2018). By viewing leadership as a situated process deeply embedded in local conditions, this single-case study enables a rigorous examination of power dynamics that are often obscured in multicase research (Flyvbjerg, 2006). The analytical depth affored by the case study advances SCL theory by illuminating structural tensions that shape change in teaching and learning. Furthermore, as an instrumental case, the selected university exhibits structural features typical of Anglosphere higher education, offering insights that are theoretically transferable to comparable institutional contexts. The case boundary for this study was defined as the university-wide community, with a specific focus on DH roles as articulated in institutional policies.

Context of the study

Among approximately 150 Canadian higher education institutions, a large, research-intensive university was selected for this study. The university enrolls more than 26,000 students from over 130 countries and offers comprehensive programs in the social and natural sciences, business, and health-related fields, with particular strengths in the life sciences. In line with its regional mission and land-grant heritage, the university maintains a diverse student body predominantly drawn from the surrounding province, including an Indigenous cohort. Nonetheless, slightly more than 15% of the student population is international, which makes the population mixed. In response to this demographic diversity, the university has integrated internationalization, Indigenization, and sustainability into its strategic vision, promoting culturally responsive teaching and global engagement initiatives. These priorities are supported by Teaching and Learning Centers focusing on educational technology and curriculum design, as well as Learning Hubs that cultivate students’ academic skills and literacy competencies. Notwithstanding this institutional support, academic leaders still face significant challenges in implementing effective strategies to enhance student learning.

In this case-study university, most academic units appoint a DH to lead departmental teaching and learning activities, except for professional schools (e.g. the College of Law) where Associate Deans hold direct responsibility for academic oversight. The scope of DH responsibilities is outlined in Human Resources (2011), which specifies four primary pillars: (1) fostering healthy and positive academic environments; (2) administering resources to achieve outcomes set out in the Integrated Plan and Strategic Directions; (3) collaborating with academic staff to enhance program quality; and (4) supporting student learning experiences. Despite this formal articulation, the ways in which DHs interpret, prioritize, and enact these mandates vary considerably across departments.

Participants

While Lizier (2024) conceptualizes departmental leadership as a broad spectrum of roles, this study specifically focuses on DHs. Unlike discipline leaders or functional coordinators, DHs are situated at the intersection of formal line-management authority and accountability for pedagogical and curricular quality (Frisk et al., 2023). This pivotal positioning empowers them to mediate pedagogical pluralism by bridging disciplinary silos (Mäkiharju and Smeds-Nylund, 2025). By integrating faculty members’diverse teaching perspectives and research foci into a shared vision, DHs can promote coherence in course quality within their academic unit (Albert et al., 2023; Tamtik and Balasubramaniam, 2024). In doing so, DHs become critical interpretive conduits through which competing priorities from students, faculty members, and senior leaders are reconciled and operationalized. Their narratives, therefore, not only unpack the nuanced enactment of SCL within complex institutional contexts but also illuminate the realities of departmental change.

Purposive sampling served as the overarching framework for participant recruitment to ensure relevance to the research. To reach this hard-to-reach administrative population, we employed two recruitment strategies: gatekeeper-facilitated outreach and limited snowball sampling. Initial outreach was facilitated by Faculty Deans, who forwarded invitation emails to DHs within their respective colleges. Given the low response rate resulting from DHs’ high-pressure workload, this strategy was supplemented by snowball sampling (Parker et al., 2019), where initial respondents recommended peers with relevant perspectives. To minimize selection bias and enhance the findings’ transferability, we applied a maximum variation strategy to ensure participant diversity in gender, discipline, and academic rank (Bouncken et al., 2026). Rather than seeking the statistical representativeness associated with stratified sampling, the strategy was used to capture the variances and patterns of leadership experiences. The resulting sample of eight DHs falls within the recommended range of six to 10 participants for a small-scale case study (Braun and Clarke, 2013). This sample size is theoretically robust under the principle of information power (Malterud et al., 2016), as the study's focused aim, participant specificity, and the thematic depth of the data together provide the analytical power required for this research.

Participants had diverse academic trajectories and extensive teaching and leadership experience. The sample included four men and four women. In terms of academic rank, four were full professors and the remaining four were associate professors. In this case-study university, DHs are typically appointed for a 5-year term, which may be extended for an additional three years subject to the Faculty Dean's approval. Their length of service as DHs ranged from one to nine years (M = 3.8 years). Participants represented a range of “hard” and “soft” disciplines (Bell and Thomson, 2018), including social sciences (5), STEM fields (2), and arts (1). All participants were White, except for one who identified as a person of color. To protect participants’ anonymity while ensuring contextual clarity, each interviewee was assigned a numbered pseudonym followed by gender (M/F), disciplinary field (SS: Social Sciences; STEM; Arts), and academic rank (FP: Full Professor; AP: Associate Professor). Noteworthy is that all participants carried a “balanced workload” (40% teaching, 40% research, and 20% service), with their leadership duties usually situated within the service category but often encroaching on teaching time in practice. Moreover, participants were typically compensated for their leadership duties through one or more course releases, a modest monthly stipend, and designated periods of paid administrative leave.

Data collection and analysis

This study draws on a subset of data from a broader project that investigates middle leadership of teaching and learning (Zan, 2024). For context, desktop research was conducted using institutional documents from a Canadian university. The document selection followed three criteria: (1) explicit articulation of DHs’ responsibilities in teaching and learning; (2) textual completeness and clarity; and (3) public availability. The final corpus comprised a range of regulatory and strategic documents, including Faculty Collective Agreements, Teaching Innovation and Strategic Planning, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Teaching, Peer Review of Teaching, and Job Descriptions of Department Heads. To identify leadership expectations pertaining to student learning, we additionally collected academic policy documents, including Course Delivery, Examinations and Grades, Student Affairs and Activities, and Student Learning Experience Feedback.

Furthermore, semistructured interviews were conducted with eight DHs via Zoom. Each session lasted approximately 60 min, allowing for an in-depth exploration of DHs’ leadership strategies. The interview protocol focused on three core areas: teaching quality enhancement, curriculum development, and inclusive learning environments. To ensure interpretative rigor, all interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and subjected to member checking. Each participant reviewed and approved their respective transcript, affirming that their views were accurately represented.

With the support of NVivo, data analysis was conducted through a two-stage process. Policy documents were inductively coded and analyzed, which identified academic oversight, quality assurance, academic dispute resolution, and learning community building as key roles of DHs in leading for learning. These insights informed the subsequent analysis of the interview data.

The analysis of interview transcripts followed an abductive logic, which “blends empirical observations with theoretical frameworks” (Khurshid et al., 2025: 1). Specifically, the four dimensions of the adapted SCL framework (Table 2) served as deductively derived themes, while unanticipated data were inductively coded to capture emerging phenomena. Our analysis proceeded through the following steps. We first immersed ourselves in the data through iterative reading, documenting initial insights into points of convergence and divergence in relation to the research questions. Subsequently, we independently coded the data, systematically labeling segments of text to capture nuanced patterns. We then collaboratively reviewed the codes, refined and developed themes, and reconciled discrepancies through discussion. This iterative refinement continued until thematic saturation was achieved, with the eighth interview yielding no new conceptual insights. Figure 2 illustrates the differences between the themes derived from the interviews and those outlined in the adapted SCL framework.

Figure 2.

Data analysis.

Findings and discussion

The analysis of our data highlights four overarching themes regarding how DHs support student-centered learning (Figure 2): (1) responsiveness to learner and societal needs, (2) strategic funding and partnerships, (3) teaching and teacher development, and (4) relational dynamics.

Responsiveness to learner and societal needs

Findings show that academic responsiveness in higher education is facilitated by DHs who align curriculum and program offerings with contemporary educational trends and objectives. Similar to previous research (Vreuls et al., 2022: 653; Trinidad, 2020), our findings indicate that such responsiveness necessitates intentional leadership agency, where DHs actively implemented high-impact practices (HIPs), initiated curricular change, and developed new academic programs.

High-impact practices

In an era where information is readily available and global competition is prominent, learning itself has become increasingly critical for participation in the knowledge economy (Trinidad, 2020). Participants highlighted that this shift led them to move away from information delivery toward the integration HIPs into departmental curricula. Some described using simulations, internships, and capstone projects to boost students’ competitiveness and support their career development, which resonates with the finding of Greenman et al. (2022). Notably, while HIPs are traditionally confined to undergraduate education (McClellan et al., 2023), most participants extended them to the graduate level. For example, four DHs established teaching apprenticeships to prepare PhD students for the professoriate, whereas two others championed experiential learning through fieldwork in graduate courses. As one DH explained:

Students need to get out there, touch the soil, feel the world and let their learning grow from what they see, hear and do. (Interviewee 7—M, STEM, AP)

This extract illustrates how DHs conceptualize learning as embodied, positioning engagement with real-world contexts as critical to knowledge construction. In this way, HIPs are not simply additional pedagogical techniques but are used to reframe the curriculum through lived experiences that enhance student engagement (McClellan et al., 2023).

However, DHs also raised concerns about the socially exclusionary risks associated with HIPs, which echoes the finding of Greenman et al. (2022) regarding systemic disparities in student participation. Two participants cautioned that these initiatives, if not supported by deliberate intervention, may primarily “polish the best students” (Interviewee 3—M, Arts, FP) and thus reproduce “social stratifications” (Interviewee 4—M, SS, FP). These accounts imply that HIPs may consolidate privilege, as the competitive advantage is largely secured by those who possess the established social capital to leverage such opportunities.

Collectively, findings show that DHs’ professional agency enables high-impact learning experiences but also generates tension with education equity issues. While DHs act as catalysts for innovation in the knowledge economy, the benefits may be concentrated among the most prepared students, particularly if inclusive scaffolding is lacking.

Curriculum change

Curriculum change is increasingly shaped by student advocacy, which often clashes with university structural constraints. While DHs demonstrated a clear commitment to supporting learning improvements, their responses to student needs remain largely procedural and selective due to the pressures of faculty conflicting expectations and pervasive resource scarcity, as seen below:

Students challenged the status quo by asking for the reinstatement of a course that had not been offered for several years … I navigated faculty conflicting opinions and built consensus to offer it as an equivalent option based on the existing structure and the course was successfully reintroduced this semester. (Interviewee 3—M, Arts, FP)

We can't always say yes to every request due to the limited resource available, but I truly believe our job is to actively serve our students and help their learning and scholarship flourish. (M, SS, AP)

Taken together, these accounts suggest that DHs operate within a constrained “middle space,” where student-centered aspirations are balanced against faculty consensus and resource constraints. Within this space, curriculum change tends to take the form of negotiated and incremental adjustments, corresponding with Quinlan (2014), who observed that while student input can initiate curriculum change, its breadth and depth are shaped by the institutional contexts in which academic leaders operate.

Another significant barrier to curriculum change lies in the territoriality of academic departments, where learner-responsive initiatives often collide with long-standing disciplinary boundaries. For example, one DH's attempt to modify specialized statistics courses encountered resistance from another department that claimed “ownership” of the subject area. This compelled the DH to engage in an exhausting cycle of “500 meetings” merely to justify the curricular differentiation (Interviewee 5—F, STEM, AP). This finding indicates that “rock-solid” institutional structures (Vreuls et al., 2022: 653) could obstruct the departmental responsiveness necessary for student learning and success.

Program development

While university policy documents champion internationalization and interdisciplinarity in teaching and learning, participants mentioned a lack of formal institutional support that relegated these strategic priorities to symbolic rhetoric. To navigate this tension, three participants described how they drew on these institutional visions to justify program development initiatives, including global exchange, online learning, and interdisciplinary degree programs:

In response to the institutional emphasis on internationalization, I developed a 2+2 honors program with a Chinese university, supported informally by my colleagues. (Interviewee 4—M, SS, FP)

Echoing institutional priorities around accessibility and innovation, we developed an online program which opened doors to a broader demographic that traditional structures failed to address without formal institutional support. (Interviewee 6—F, SS, FP)

Shaped by institutional interdisciplinary requirements, I designed a combined Bachelor of Arts and Science degree… to push against traditional disciplinary boundaries. (Interviewee 4—M, SS, FP)

These accounts suggest that DHs actively mobilize institutional discourses to legitimize departmental program development initiatives in contexts where formal support is limited. This pattern may be understood as “appropriation mechanisms” (Morales et al., 2022: 1), where institutional visions are reinterpreted as a basis for bottom-up innovation.

Strategic funding and partnerships

Among the strategies that supported student-centered learning, participants highlighted how they worked to enable more flexible and responsive forms of curriculum development:

I’ve worked with faculty to develop several new graduate courses. The university provides a template to fill out and a course can only be offered twice with departmental approval before it's regularized with a permanent course number. This structure allowed iterative experimentation in curriculum design within the constraints of limited funding support. (Interviewee 1—F, SS, AP)

Our department regularly hosts guest speakers from industry and private companies who provide graduate students with diverse insights into artificial intelligence that are not always available within the department, thereby expanding the range of learning opportunities available to students. (Interviewee 5—F, STEM, AP)

These extracts show how DHs exercised discretionary agency to create space for student-centered learning within institutional resource constraints. By navigating the interstices of policy frameworks, they use administrative tools as mechanisms for curriculum innovation. For example, Interviewee 1 used the course development template to enable trial-and-error experimentation, creating a safe failure zone that reduced the cost associated with formal administrative approval processes. Similarly, Interviewee 5 acted as a boundary spanner by leveraging industry networks to bring external expertise into the classroom when departmental teaching resources were limited, thereby enhancing the real-world relevance of student learning experiences. Together, these practices could be conceptualized as “passive-active leadership” (Ding et al., 2024: 1), where DHs operate within rigid bureaucratic structures yet actively reshape them to support teaching and learning.

Despite these strategic practices, one DH emphasized that relying on informal mechanisms is problematic, as it is difficult to maintain long-term change once early-stage enthusiasm and temporary funding run out, as the following extract illustrates:

It's like trying to keep a fire burning once the initial fuel of energy and short-term funding is gone, and maintaining momentum for innovation becomes really tough. (Interviewee 2—M, Arts, FP)

This metaphor reveals the vulnerability of student-centered initiatives that operate without structural support. The dearth of institutional resources and funding shifts the responsibility for sustaining innovation onto DHs, necessitating additional labor to champion student-centered values. This may result in the leadership burnout among DHs, ultimately leaving learning improvement fragmented and episodic instead of being embedded as a sustained cultural change within academic departments.

Teaching and teacher development

Enhancing teaching relevance

Within the broader agenda of teaching and teacher development, DHs sought to enhance teaching relevance by promoting intellectual breadth and social awareness. Participants described how they encouraged faculty members to transcend traditional disciplinary silos and equip students with the capacity to navigate complex social realities:

I frequently suggested faculty to critically consider whether their course materials were representative of multiple worldviews and disciplines rather than a singular one. (Interviewee 1—F, SS, AP)

I call for greater attention to equipping students with social knowledge. This helps them understand the nature and functioning of social institutions, enabling them to engage in discussions of societal issues, identify problems and propose solutions, ultimately enhancing the quality of public discourse. (Interviewee 4—M, SS, FP)

These extracts signify an effort to challenge disciplinary boundaries, which parallel findings from Walton (2025), who underscores the necessity of “weakening the pedagogical insulation of special and regular teaching” (p. 578). By advocating for multiple worldviews and social knowledge, DHs act as epistemic brokers who shift student learning from a narrow disciplinary focus toward a multidimensional framework. This repositioning contributes to more inclusive pedagogical practices that benefit all students (Walton, 2025).

Leading teacher learning and development

In response to the perceived lack of structured professional development opportunities, DHs took the initiative to build informal peer learning communities. Moving away from top-down training, participants described how they utilized their own pedagogical lessons learned as a catalyst for collective learning. For example, one DH initiated a reciprocal feedback loop by sharing personal instructional pitfalls to facilitate shared problem-solving:

I discussed challenges I faced in my own classes and strategies I used to handle them… they often came back the next month to share what worked for them. They told me that trying my strategies improved their classroom experience and helped them tackle challenges in their own teaching. (Interviewee 6—F, SS, FP)

Although this finding appears teacher-centered, such a focus is characteristic of the early stages of SCL transformation, where DHs prioritize strengthening instructional capacity as a precursor to enhancing student experience. This capacity-building is achieved by transitioning teaching into “community property” (Quinlan and Åkerlind, 2000), whereby classroom practice moves from the private domain into a shared space through informal peer exchange. However, because these exchanges operate outside formal reward systems, they constitute a form of “unrecognized labor” (Interviewee 7—M, STEM, AP). Without institutionalizing such networks, the university continues to frame teaching as an individual aptitude rather than a professional competency requiring systemic investment.

Relational dynamics

Findings show that relational dynamics emerged as a “soft” mechanism through which DHs enact SCL. When navigating the interpersonal tensions inherent in SCL practices, participants prioritized maintaining mutual respect, as shown in the following extract:

It's essential to maintain mutual respect while engaging in serious conversations, even if criticism is involved. Some may mistake criticism for offense, but it's important to clarify that criticism is about actions or products without being aggressive or insulting. (Interviewee 2—M, SS, AP)

This extract reflects what Ellison and Borden (2022) describe as a form of “constructive friction” (p. 283), where mutual respect helps facilitate conversations that involve critical feedback for the enhancement of teaching and learning. Recasting critique as a collaborative developmental asset rather than a personal attack helps divide professional identity from pedagogical performance. This reframing enables feedback to be experienced as a shared commitment to quality rather than an assertion of hierarchical authority, thereby easing the conflicts inherent in student-centered reform.

Another finding pertains to the ways in which DHs sought to ensure procedural fairness in learning assessment. Participants emphasized that maintaining transparency and objectivity are essential for preserving the credibility of student evaluations. This commitment is mirrored in the following extract:

I review grade distributions to ensure they fall within a normal range and identify any anomalies. When a student appeals a mark, I oversee the process, with an external, anonymous evaluator assessing the work to guarantee fairness and transparency. (Interviewee 1—F, SS, AP)

In cases of contested assessments, the DH implemented anonymized external reviews to mitigate potential bias in faculty judgment, thereby supporting procedural integrity in grade appeals. This extract illustrates ensuring fair assessment requires an intentional oversight mechanism to complement relational approaches to academic work. This finding confirms Hulme et al.'s (2023) observation of the importance of formal accountability structures in DHs' teaching and learning leadership practices.

Alongside these individual-level interventions, the successful enactment of SCL also involves cultivating collective relational dynamics. While hierarchical directives may offer administrative efficiency, participants interviewed prioritized informal dialogue and consensus-building, with curriculum development treated as a shared responsibility rather than an isolated endeavor:

Many questions have been posed, and problems have usually been addressed and resolved within the process… A much more user-friendly way is to be working behind the scenes in small groups of people, to be building consensus, and to be asking questions to others in departmental meetings. (Interviewees 3—M, Arts, FP)

We don't do things very formally. Typically, there's one person who leads that and everybody can contribute. When suggesting specific modules or readings, it's uncommon for one person to develop them without input or review from others. (Interviewee 8—F, SS, FP)

Indeed, these findings echo previous research, wherein DHs are found to adopt discursive leadership to foster collaborative culture and collegial relationships (Zan et al., 2025). This leadership positions the DH's role as a facilitator who leads teaching and learning through communication and consensus rather than command and control. However, the highly distributed nature of such collaboration can create a procedural void where student-centered innovation lacks a clear path to fruition. As one DH observed, the absence of structured follow-up mechanisms could undermine implementation continuity, rendering the transition from brainstorming to curriculum change precarious:

Informal discussions are great for generating ideas, but sometimes they lack structure. Without a clear framework or follow-up, valuable suggestions can easily slip through the cracks. (Interviewee 1—F, SS, AP)

Collectively, these extracts underscore a key challenge of SCL implementation. While informal dialogue and decentralized structure can powerfully ignite collective creativity, this energy is prone to rapid dissipation if it is not supported by accountability and incentives. This finding suggests that sustaining student-centered innovation requires a balance between informal collaboration and formal structures that ensure ideas are followed through in practice.

Conclusion

This study highlights that the interplay between organizational culture and group dynamics serves as a double-edged synergy for SCL enactment. While a culture of mutual trust and open dialogues empowers DHs to mobilize collaborative leadership across pedagogical and curricular initiatives, this heavy reliance on informal approaches frequently compromises long-term momentum. In the absence of systemic institutionalized structures and support, the social capital of DHs that sparks creative breakthroughs fails to secure their permanence. Consequently, the prevailing culture functions as a generative boundary that enables shared responsibility for transformative practice but constrains its sustainability in the absence of formalized institutional frameworks.

In answer to the first research question, the findings show that DHs enact SCL through four strategies that blur the conceptual boundaries between organizational management and leadership. First, academic responsiveness is facilitated by DHs who champion HIPs, learner-responsive curricula, and innovative programs. This strategic leadership moves beyond administrative oversight to support students in acquiring disciplinary knowledge and developing intellectual competencies directly. Second, strategic resourcing reflects how DHs purposefully mobilize finite funding and external partnerships as tools for pedagogical and program renewal, ensuring that students’ learning experiences are both intellectually rich and vocationally relevant. Third, ensuring teaching quality illustrates how DHs encourage faculty members to innovate instructional models that deepen student engagement and foster social awareness. Additionally, DHs lead peer learning communities to ensure that teaching improvements yield meaningful gains for students. Fourth, fostering inclusive and supportive environments reflects relational leadership, where DHs build the trust and fair processes necessary to protect student academic interests and promote equitable learning outcomes. While SCL is evident in areas such as curriculum and program development as it directly addresses student needs and experiences (Frisk et al., 2023), it may appear muted or underdeveloped in findings pertaining to teacher development, which seem teacher-centric on the surface. However, in line with Marshall et al. (2011), our study suggests that these domains are inextricably linked in practice, with teacher-focused support serving as a necessary condition for achieving student-centered outcomes. Consequently, the coordination of departmental human and material resources emerges as a key mechanism shaping the enactment of SCL.

In response to the second research question, this study shows that although SCL activities in higher education broadly resemble those in K-12 settings, their operational priorities differ due to distinct educational objectives and types of service to society. These differences are primarily evident across three domains: interplay of pedagogy and agency, governance and power, and societal mission, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3.

Contextual differences of SCL: higher education versus K-12 education.

Conceptual cluster	Dimension of difference	Higher education (academy)	K-12 education (schooling)
Pedagogy and agency	Epistemic autonomy	Fragmented: Inherent disagreement over teaching values and research foci	Coordinated: Unified provincial curriculum framework.
	Discipline boundary	Interdisciplinary: Cross-disciplinary learning pathway.	Modular: Rigidly organized by age and domain-specific subject.
	Pedagogical orientation	Student-empowering: Highlighted learner agency, specialized expertise, and the co-construction of knowledg.	Prescriptive: A linear developmental arc where students are protected learners within a fixed social mandate.
Governance and power	Leadership agency	Negotiated: Relational labor driven by individual initiatives.	Systemic: Driven by top-down administrative mandate.
Governance and power	Accountability mechanism	Multidimensional market accountability: Driven by disciplinary reputation, graduate employability, and student competitiveness	Standardized output accountability: Predicated on testing, provincial-mandated benchmarks, and uniform proficiency rates
Societal mission	Social function	Professionalization: Focused on global employability and knowledge economy	Civic foundation: Focused on socialization and fundamental literacy rates
Societal mission	Equity logic	Equity-mindedness: Deliberate efforts to mitigate market-driven stratification in competitive fields	Universal mandate: Legal obligation to ensure base-level parity for all

Our findings demonstrate that SCL in higher education is governed by a co-production logic that differs from the transmission logic of K-12 schooling (Cooney and Cohen, 2024; Maharajan et al., 2025). While the literature posits a pedagogical continuum requiring a balance between teacher expertise and student choice (Trinidad, 2020), our findings indicated a recalibration of this balance toward heightened student participation, manifested through DHs' active integration of HIPs into graduate-level curricula and their use of student feedback to inform curriculum renewal. The necessity of this co-production stems from the unique academic environment. Unlike the unified provincial frameworks in K-12 education (Raptis, 2017), DHs must navigate a landscape of fragmented and epistemic autonomy that fosters the specialized agency required for disciplinary mastery. Additionally, university DHs acted as boundary-spanners who dismantled modular structures in K-12 education to facilitate interdisciplinary pathways, expanding students’ intellectual horizons and multidimensional thinking required for critical inquiry.

Furthermore, SCL in higher education is shaped by shifting governance and power relations, moving from the standardized output accountability of K-12 schooling—predicated on testing and proficiency—to the multi-dimensional market accountabilities such as disciplinary reputation, global rankings, and graduate employability (Hulme et al., 2023). Moreover, unlike the top-down administrative directives typical of schools (Robinson and Gray, 2019), SCL in higher education is an iterative process negotiated through DHs’ professional agency and sustained initiative.

Finally, the societal mission of higher education shifts SCL from universal socialization in K-12 schooling toward professionalization. While school leaders operate within a mandate of civic foundation (Bundy, 2009), DHs acted as gatekeepers of professional and disciplinary formation in the global knowledge economy. As such, SCL becomes a mechanism of disciplinary socialization into specialized communities. While equity is a universal mandate in K-12 education, deliberate adoption of an equity-oriented stance to ensure that market-driven logics do not reinforce existing inequalities is necessary in higher education.

Theoretical contributions

This study offers two key theoretical contributions to the study of SCL in higher education. It develops a multi-level typology of factors that enable or constrain SCL enacted by DHs. Moving beyond previous single-level analyses, this framework systematically maps influences across five dimensions: nano (student learning needs), micro (faculty collegiality and self-efficacy), meso (departmental responsiveness and peer networks), macro (institutional hierarchy, policies, and culture), and supra (national/global economic, technological, and geopolitical transformations). By integrating these layers, the typology provides a comprehensive lens for examining the systemic drivers of SCL.

Another theoretical contribution is the proposed Restrictions-Responses-Results (3R) framework (Figure 3), which conceptualizes how departmental leadership influences student outcomes. The framework delineates how institutional policies and structures (Restrictions) shape leadership practices in teaching, curriculum and faculty development (Responses), which in turn drive student academic and professional outcomes (Results). By mapping how practices (Y) respond to constraints (X) to produce outcomes (Z), the 3R Framework provides a robust systemic lens for examining the indirect impact of departmental leadership on student success.

Figure 3.

The 3R (Restrictions–Responses–Results) framework for investigating the ways in which departmental leaders achieve academic goals.

Practical implications

Several strategic recommendations emerge from this study to enhance the quality and sustainability of SCL. Institutions should provide explicit job descriptions for DHs that clearly articulate accountability processes and recognition mechanisms, thereby formalizing student learning and development as a core leadership mandate. To fulfill this mandate, targeted training programs for DHs should combine technical expertise in pedagogy with the relational capacities required to navigate faculty resistance and build trust and collaboration. Equipped with these skills, DHs should embed student learning considerations into faculty mentoring practices, thereby aligning instructional quality with SCL goals. This individual-level support should be complemented by institutionally designed faculty development programs that explicitly prioritize student learning outcomes, moving beyond a purely teacher-centric focus. Further institutional support is necessary, particularly through targeted funding and resource allocation to maintain resilience against departmental burnout and turnover. This may include, for example, investment in technological infrastructure such as data dashboards that track student performance, engagement, and employability, which enables DHs to implement timely and targeted interventions to address learning achievement gaps.

Limitations and future research

The study has engendered certain limitations. The findings are derived from a single university case in the Canadian context. While this approach provides in-depth insights into the enactment of SCL, it may not capture perspectives from different higher education systems. Future research could adopt a multicase design to compare how governance structures, policy frameworks, and organizational cultures shape the enactment of SCL by DHs across diverse university contexts.

While the sample of eight information-rich participants provided sufficient depth for this case study, we acknowledge that the generalizability of the findings is limited, underscoring the need for a larger sample in future research. In addition, this study focuses exclusively on DHs, thereby limiting data triangulation with other key stakeholders such as senior leaders, faculty members, and students. It is recommended that future inquiries broaden their scope to include multiple stakeholders whose perspectives may provide additional insights into the topic. Furthermore, the lack of differentiated analysis obscures how discipline, gender, and academic rank influence the SCL practices of DHs. Exploring how these factors mediate the relationship between DHs’ leadership intentions (attitudes, subjective norms, and self-efficacy) and SCL behavior would make a significant contribution to the literature.

As this study relied on self-reported data, the findings may be subject to recall bias and social desirability bias (Gower et al., 2022). Specifically, participants may have selectively reconstructed past experiences or provided post hoc rationalizations to align with professional norms, prioritizing narrative consistency over precise accounts of their actual decision-making processes. Additionally, the depth of the dialogue may have been affected by the online interview format or the specific probing styles employed. While these limitations are inherent in qualitative research, we engaged in ongoing reflexivity to critically examine our role in eliciting and interpreting participants’ narratives.

While DHs are increasingly recognized as “essential potential players” in advancing EDI (Ghamrawi et al., 2025: 1920), such a role has not been examined in sufficient depth. This study opens further avenues for understanding how DHs lead EDI in teaching and learning. Given that leadership for student learning in higher education is “radically undertheorized” (Bell and Thomson, 2018: 281), future studies could employ grounded theory to reconceptualize how such leadership shapes quality learning outcomes.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Yu Zan

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

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

Author biographies

Yu Zan is a doctoral candidate in Educational Administration at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Her research interests encompass educational leadership, teaching and learning in higher education, and social justice. Currently, she investigates middle leadership for equity, diversity, and inclusion in teaching and learning within higher education. She is also actively involved in grant-funded projects addressing higher education governance and policy reform.

Paul Newton is a professor and the Department Head of Educational Administration at the University of Saskatchewan. His scholarly interests include administrative knowledge for enhancing learning, principal assessment literacy, and leadership practices at the district level. He has authored numerous journal articles and co-edited several books. He currently serves as the Principal Investigator on an SSHRC-funded project examining the leadership of university Department Heads in fostering teaching and learning across Canadian institutions.

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