The current status of teaching staff innovation competence in Ugandan universities: perceptions of managers, teachers, and students

Abstract

How competent are university teaching staff to deliver effectively their present and future university duties in Uganda? This question was explored in this study by collecting data from managers (n = 90), teachers (n = 126), and students (n = 179) through a questionnaire administered at Kyambogo University. The results show that teacher performance in the role of innovating; knowledge society facilitating; collaborating and networking; higher education designing and developing; and entrepreneurship, could not be considered as satisfactory. It was also established that there are significant differences in the perception of the aforesaid among the respondent categories. The findings suggest that urgent intervention is needed to develop teacher innovation competence if Uganda wants to have an effective higher education. This study also highlights the centrality of using various internal key stakeholders in the educational system such as students and educational managers if effective teacher performance evaluation is to be attained in universities.

Individual Innovation Competence: A Systematic Review and Future Research Agenda

“…Jena & Sahoo, 2014;Mitchelmore & Rowley, 2010, 2013Taatila, 2010) after testing in educational settings. While studies have recognised the connection between entrepreneurship and innovation (Becherer & Maurer, 1999;Bergh et al, 2011;Bunk, 1994;Szerb, 2003), we found that innovation and entrepreneurship were also linked (Bjornali & Støren, 2012;Cerinšek & Dolinšek, 2009;Chell & Athayde, 2011;Edwards-Schachter et al, 2015;Gundry, Ofstein, & Kickul, 2014;Kasule et al, 2015;Santandreu-Mascarell et al, 2013;Waychal et al, 2011). The fifth area for further research is the different competences in each phase of the innovation process (Standing et al, 2016).…”

“…Content knowledge is mentioned as an innovation competency factor in only five studies (Avvisati et al, 2013;Bjornali & Støren, 2012;Jack et al, 2014;Kasule, Wesselink, Noroozi, & Mulder, 2015;Lindfors & Hilmola, 2015). Avvisati et al (2013) used the term subject knowledge, which is understood as a synonym for content knowledge.…”

A Systematic Literature Review of Teacher Entrepreneurship

“…Proactive. Teacher entrepreneurs are known to take initiative and act through self-motivation (Omer Attali & Yemini, 2017;Wilson Kasule et al, 2015). They are enthusiastic and energetic (Leffler, 2009) instigators (Hanson, 2017) who show an "operational translation of symbols and behaviors into actions" (Eyal & Kark, 2004, pp.…”

“…Opportunity-Minded. An entrepreneurial teacher is able to explore opportunities related to their work (Wilson Kasule et al, 2015), meaning they are continuously "proactively seeking and being ready to seize opportunities" (Borasi & Finnigan, 2010, p. 4). Opportunities are often in the form of problems in the classroom or educational system which teacher entrepreneurs believe can be resolved (van der Heijden et al, 2015).…”

Ugandan Teachers Epistemological Beliefs and Child-Led Research: Implications for Developing Inclusive Educational Practice

“…This suggests that Ugandan teachers' abilities and constraints in using particular pedagogical approaches, such as those intended by the thematic curriculum, are not simply produced by external contextual influences, but are shaped significantly by their epistemological beliefs. This may offer insights into the lack of change in classroom pedagogy in response to Ugandan initiatives in policy and curriculum design (Kasule et al, 2015) There is therefore is an explicit complementarity between Ugandan's policies to develop an inclusive education system, (U.P. E., (1997); People with Disability Act ( 2006)), and the pedagogical assumptions of the thematic curriculum (NCDC, 2006).…”