Includes bibliographical references

List of contributors -- Editorial introduction -- The use of institutional theory in higher education research / Yuzhuo Cai and Yohannes Mehri -- The role of political and policy studies in higher education policy research / Andrew Gunn -- Evaluative research in higher education policy analysis / Murray Saunders, Cristina Sin and Steven Dempster -- Event history analysis: a primer for higher education researchers / T. Austin Lacy -- Efficiency in higher education: requirements, theory, methods and decision areas / Matthias Klumpp -- Three methods, four different outcomes! How to test the reliability and validity of a graduate survey competence scale / Mareike Landmann, Emilia Kmiotek-Meier, Daniel Lachmann and Jennifer Lorenz -- The change laboratory in higher education: research-intervention using activity theory / Brett Bligh and Michelle Flood -- What works? A critique of appreciative inquiry as a research method/ology / Lynn Clouder and Virginia King -- Images in research on teaching and learning in higher education / Erika Löfström, Anne Nevgi, Elisabeth Wegner and Mari Karm -- Exploring doctoral examiner judgements through the lenses of habermas and epistemic cognition / Neville Clement, Terence Lovat, Allyson Holbrook, Margaret Kiley, Sid Bourke, Brian Paltridge, Sue Starfield, Hedy Fairbairn and Dennis M. McInerney -- Theorising academic development as an academic discipline? Exploring academic developers' ways of knowing, theorising and use of methods / Megan Y.C.A. Kek and Sara Hammer -- Theorising inequality: two-dimensional participatory justice and higher education research / Andrew Morrison -- A normative framework or an emerging theory? The capability approach in higher education research / Ana Sofia Ribeiro -- Engineering phenomenography / Peter Gibbings, John Lidstone and Christine Bruce -- The narrative approach in higher education research / António Magalhães and Amélia Veiga.

This volume contains contemporary contributions to international debates regarding the application and development of theory and methodology in researching higher education.