International Journal of Higher Education

I am proud to introduce our 2023 Special Issue focusing on university and college Thai graduates. In an increasing complex global set of events, we are reminded of the importance and value the role of education has in securing our futures. It is important that our scholars of tomorrow maintain their trust and faith in how their contribution will encourage others to pursue their hopes and dreams. To that end, this issue provides numerous strategies, program suggestions, personal development, teacher and peer support systems, and guidelines to empower upcoming educators, supervisors and managers. We are proud to present this Special Issue with a focus on sharing the latest research findings that may assist in improving student retention rates and improving the overall tertiary student experience, through contributions from China and Thailand.

The first article by Wang and colleagues explored features of the successful career transition among 12 Chinese vocational college maritime graduates, focussing on a number of challenging factors associated with the maritime profession. Their research findings recommend that shipping companies and society as a whole, pay attention to the career development of maritime students and improve the working environment in the maritime industry. In doing so, they are able to meet the needs for balancing family responsibilities, pursuing a more independent lifestyle, and maintaining social connections. The next article by Sriputta, Agsonsua,and Sirisuthi created a model for the development of effective private schools in the northeast of Thailand. Guided by three key components for school effectiveness prioritising the needs for development, their model is currently being trialled at a selected school in Bookeo District, Chaiyaphum Province. The model can be used as a framework in both elementary and secondary schools to become quality schools.  The third article by Chen Qian hypothesized that introducing the 3,000 year old Shangshan culture into China’s vocational colleges, would be an effective method to promote local culture. Integrating local culture into art and design teaching in China’s vocational colleges provided diversified teaching resources, heightened a students’ sense of cultural identity, improved their creative performance, and extended the influence of local cultures. 90 students learned about the integration of Shangshan culture into art and design and applied their learning to their artistic creations. The fourth article by Shuying and colleagues explored the strategies for strengthening the leadership development of college administrators via theories, drawing on the theoretical perspectives, and conducting empirical research through questionnaire survey research methods. In this study, five universities in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were grouped for a questionnaire survey using random sampling. College administrators and faculty, and staff members were assessed to provide an empirical research basis for leadership enhancement strategies. Their findings are presented as a model for other colleges to consider. The fifth article by Hu and colleagues examined the effect of positive emotions on the quality of life of Chinese college students, using the eight items of the Positive Emotion Scale and 24 items of the World Health Organization’s Quality-of-Life Brief Scale, to conduct a questionnaire survey of 961 Chinese college students. Their findings identified the relationship between college students’ positive emotions and quality of life, taking gender differences into account.

The sixth article by Li and Huang reported on how their understanding of the meaning of life for 968 Chinese college students, impacted upon how they adapted to school, and explored the conditions under which this effect can be strengthened. Their study contributes to deepen our comprehension of the relationship between the meaning in life and school adaptation among Chinese college students, and holds both theoretical and practical implications for college educators seeking to improve students’ school adaptation.  The next article by Xia and Wang explored how the deteriorating socio-economic environment in southwest China is exacerbated by the lack of educational resources for general universities, and negatively impacts upon graduate success in the competitive employment market. Based on the theoretical framework of social support, the study selected social support, social adaptation, psychological capital, self-care management ability and other scales to survey students in six universities in Southwest China. In order to address the resource gap and enable students to better adapt to society, their results suggest that (1) Social support has a significant positive impact on social adjustment; (2) Psychological capital and self-career management ability play a significant chain mediating role in the impact of social support on social adaptation; and (3) Due to the lack of objective educational resources, universities should actively establish links with social enterprises so that students can continuously build professional confidence through practice. The eight article by Song and colleagues used distributed leadership theory to investigate the relationship between a school’s perceived organizational culture and teacher leadership in higher education institutions in eastern China. The results revealed the influence of clan, adhocracy, hierarchical, and market cultures on teacher leadership, and provides suggestions for school administrators on how to improve university teacher leadership through school organizational culture. The next article by Chunxia and colleagues examined the current professional development of grassroots management personnel in Guangxi universities, and provides strategies, evaluation and feasibility for sustainability to reflect this. Their results reported that: 1) the influencing factors of the professional development of grassroots management personnel in Guangxi universities include five parts: professional awareness, professional spirit, professional knowledge and ability, professional organization, training, and guarantee system, and 2) the strategies for improving the professional development are considered appropriate, correct, feasible, and valuable. The tenth article by Ma, Chen and Cao developed and validated an international education cooperation inventory of Chinese college students, by conducting an expert review and survey of 91 Chinese students. They concluded that the international education cooperation inventory is an easy-to-use questionnaire that can be applied in future studies.

The next article by Fang and Chang examined the effect of creative self-efficacy and the college innovation climate, on the creativity of university students through the lens of social cognitive theory. A total of 573 questionnaires were collected from students at five universities in Hebei, China. The results confirmed that creative self-efficacy has a significant effect, and that college innovation climate has a significant positive effect on university students’ creativity. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights for enhancing creativity among university students.  The twelfth article by Liling, et al. explored the current situation of budget performance management of public universities in Guangdong, and investigated the guidelines for improving the budget performance management, together with effective evaluation of the adaptability and feasibility of these suggested guidelines.  The next article by Ma and Jiang investigated the effect of teacher support on college student’s mental health using the study demands-resources model. Additionally, it explored the mediating roles of study engagement and opportunities. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between college students’ perceived teacher support and their mental health, and highlighted that study engagement and opportunities act as mediators between college students’ perceived teacher support and their mental health. The next article is from Yinglun and colleagues, and they studied the current situation and knowledge management strategies for organizational management of higher vocational education administrators in Liaoning province, China. They aimed to provide knowledge management strategies, together with strategies to improve the evaluation, adaptability and feasibility to improve the organizational management of higher vocational education administrators. The fourteenth article by Tiejun and colleagues studied the factors that affect the development of metacognitive skills of 40 students from the highway engineering supervision major of Qinghai Communications Technical College in China, and developed an instructional model for improving metacognitive skills based on work-based learning. Their findings reported that after the implementation of the instructional model based on work-based learning, the metacognitive skill scores of the students were higher than the metacognitive skills of the students before the experiment, with a statistical significance of 0.01 level. The next article by Min and colleagues explored the current situation of industry-education integration under the background of the "double-high plan" in higher vocational college in Guizhou, China. They developed guidelines for industry-education integration, together with evaluation and feasibility for sustainability. Their findings reported that results found that the current situation of industry-education integration under the background of the "double high plan" included the attractiveness of higher vocational colleges, and that the higher vocational colleges in Guizhou had three dimensions: government, higher vocational colleges, and enterprises dimensions. The next article by Zhang and Huang explored the effects of three dimensions of paternalistic leadership i.e., authoritarian, benevolent, and moral leadership, on the creativity of Chinese college teachers. Their results suggest that college teachers perceived benevolent leadership and moral leadership has a significant positive impact on their creativity. Regarding their perceived authoritarian leadership, a significant negative effect was recorded on creativity and creativity self-efficacy to partially or completely mediate between all three dimensions of perceived paternalistic leadership and creativity. The seventeenth article by Tharmalee, Chusorn and Sirisuthi explored the components and indicators of the Academic Administration System’s approach for the excellence of medium-sized secondary schools. They explored the current conditions, assessed how to promote desirable conditions, and consider a priority needs index to study the results of implementation. They concluded that the Academic Administration System's comprehensive approach, encompassing input, process, output, and feedback aspects, resulted in exemplary performance establishing these secondary schools as models of excellence within the region. The next article by Zhao and Chen examined how the teachers of Chinese normal students integrated their courses based on socially shared regulations of learning theory, to supplement the existing coursework. Based on a modern Chinese flipped professional course for a normal university student in northwest China, this study provides teaching objectives and contents, teaching and learning methods, together with teaching evaluation methods. Ultimately, this study explored how to improve students’ self-regulated learning and Chinese language proficiency through the cultivation of self-regulated learning strategies. The next article by Wang and colleagues studied the factors influencing the development of subjective well-being, and the development of a mental health and life education curriculum based on Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning theory. They compared students' subjective well-being before and after the implementation of a mental health and life education curriculum, based on the Kolb’s experiential learning theory. Their results suggest that universities should implement management and teaching based on students' emotional and affective experiences, and add the content of life education to the universities' ideological and political theory education curriculum and students' professional curriculums. Students should put the knowledge and skills they have learned in life education into practice and maintain an optimistic attitude. The next article by Ding and Chen used a fairness heuristic theory to consider how the variable of a professional title impacts upon teamwork to advance educational innovation to achieve a common goal. Their results reported from 860 completed questionnaires, that different titles have a significantly different effect on a teachers’ willingness to share knowledge, and that their willingness to share knowledge has a significant and positive impact on their teamwork behaviour.  The second last article in this issue is from Ma and Wang, and they built a comprehensive and scientific Chinese high-vocational airliner professional ability evaluation index system, to solve the challenges and needs of the current evaluation system. Their study provides substantial guidance for the flight attendant specialty's training content and training scheme in Chinese higher vocational education, including improving efficiency, reducing training costs, and providing scientific reference for the talent training of the entire flight attendant industry. The final article in this Special issue is from Xu, Chen and Zhang who explored the research hotspots and research trends in information education from 2000 to 2022. Using CiteSpace as the research tool, they conducted a visual analysis based on social sciences citation index (SSCI) and science citation index (SCI) journal literature based on web of science (WOS) database data, and explored the limitations of information education research development and future development trends by conducting thematic keyword co-linear analysis and cluster analysis.

I sincerely hope that the broad range of topics and information shared are of benefit to our readers. Importantly, I would like to thank all contributors and reviewers who continue to make the timely publication of the current issue possible.  I look forward to receiving more contributions from researchers and practitioners for our future issues. Wishing all readers all the very best with their research studies.

We are seeking submissions for forthcoming issues published in February and April 2024. The paper should be written in professional English. The length of 3000-8000 words is preferred. All manuscripts should be prepared in MS-Word format, and submitted online: http://ijhe.sciedupress.com or sent to: ijhe@sciedupress.com

For any further information about the journal, please log on its website: http://ijhe.sciedupress.com

Deadline for Submission (February Issue): January 25, 2024

Deadline for Submission (April Issue): March 25, 2024