As excellence in teaching and learning, in combination with a focus on student performance rates, are guiding the demands placed on higher education institutions, modern universities are attributing strategic importance to leadership of teaching and learning. Previous studies on educational leadership have, nevertheless, identified significant challenges to such leadership due to lack of clear role descriptions, lack of recognition, and lack of access to professional development and support. Using empirical data from a Swedish comprehensive university, we explore the experiences of an appointed leadership role for teaching and learning, that is, the Education Leader, at the department level. Our findings show that a university-wide policy establishing the role and a support structure around it has resulted in a clearly visible and valued role across the university. Furthermore, Education Leaders experience being positioned at the heart of the department’s educational activities, performing hub-like work in relation to those they lead. However, some challenges related to the complexity of the department contexts are also identified.

Between February 2002 and November 2018, Swedish politicians from the Centre, Christian Democrat, Moderate, Liberal and Sweden Democrat parties proposed policies to ban clothing variously referred to as the "burka," "fullcovering veil," "face veil" and "niqab" (Arabic for face veil) at least 38 times, six at the national level and thirty-two at the municipal. Research suggests that circa 100 women in Sweden wear a "burka"; clearly these policy proposals have little to do with the burka's prevalence. What, then, do these policy proposals attempt to govern? In this text we adopt feminist political scientist Carol Bacchi's "what is the problem represented to be?" approach to analyse Swedish bills to regulate the burka. These policy proposals, we contend, have more to do with conceptualizing Swedishness than addressing an existing "problem" of women who wear burka.

Higher education teaching demands theoretical and practical knowledge. It goes without saying, a strong knowledge of one’s subject is essential. But while teaching principles are generally gleaned from short courses, it is one’s own teaching that offer the main ground for gaining practical teaching knowledge. To examine this claim we have conducted an interview-study in which Swedish business administration academics have described where they learned something about their teaching. An interpretative analysis led to six different lessons learned, ranging from the personal, through the pedagogical, to the interpersonal. We claim there are three necessary opportunities to turn the experience into an occasion for learning: reflection over experience, the opportunity to articulate one’s experience, and a forum for sharing; particularly experiences connected with risk-taking. We conclude that academics need opportunities to reflect on and articulate their learning experiences related to the practices of teaching, and to share and discuss them with colleagues.

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