“Staff Development” as a Topic of Higher Education Research

the Purpose of the Research Papers in this Issue

Abstract

　 Staff Development (SD) is a topic that has become the focus of heightened attention. In the background to this trend is the fact that administrative and managerial staff have come to be regarded as major actors in the management of higher education institutions, and that professional associations and graduate school courses targeted at such staff have been established in rapid succession in recent years. The papers presented in this special issue take up various aspects of SD, aiming to clarify the problems relating to SD activities and to discuss the future direction of SD studies as a topic of higher education research.　 This paper begins by giving a description of the purpose of SD and the background context, as mentioned above, and then goes on to examine the content of each of the 5 specialist papers and to clarify the challenges facing future research. It concludes by discussing the necessity for the further development of SD studies as academic research which embodies two-way communication between research and practice.