The COVID-19 pandemic has created cause for rapid innovation in, reimagining of, and pivoting of higher education institutions. Prior to 2020, the global higher education sector began to radically focus their efforts on creating sustainable institutions, and incorporated the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The novel coronavirus pandemic may have changed that. This systematic review examines eight manuscripts, identified through a systematic search strategy on sustainability during the COVID-19 pandemic across 2020–2021. Interestingly, the low volume of manuscripts identified highlights potential learning and teaching risks, as priorities may have shifted during rapid digitalization and emergency remote teaching practices. These manuscripts focused on Goal 4, inclusive and equitable quality education (50%); Goal 8, decent work and economic growth; Goal 9, industry, innovation, and infrastructure (37.5%); and goal enabling through integrating and embedding sustainability into the curriculum (12.5%). The implications of this systematic review highlight a need to rebuild efforts to focus on the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly considering the evolving higher education landscape during COVID-19. While there were still considerable volumes of manuscripts on higher education and sustainability during 2020–2021, the lack of contextualization to current higher education conditions should be of concern for sustainability scholars. This systematic review creates a critical foundation for accelerating our understanding of achieving SDGs in higher education during and beyond the pandemic.

Increasingly poor and unethical decision-making on the part of leaders across the globe, such as the recent Australian Cricket Ball Tampering Scandal, pose a significant challenge for society and for organisations. Authentic leadership development is one strategy that has been positioned as an antidote to unethical leadership behaviours. However, despite growing interest in authentic leadership, the construct still embodies several criticisms including conceptual clarity; leader-centricity; bias towards the person, not the leader; philosophical ambiguity; and demographic challenges. Each of these criticisms will be explored in depth to inform a reconceptualisation of the authentic leader construct, comprising indicators of awareness, sincerity, balanced processing, positive moral perspective and informal influence. Importantly, this revised conceptualisation considers how researchers can conceptually distinguish between authentic leaders, followers and individuals. To conclude, we propose a research agenda for authentic leaders, encouraging the pursuit of further construct clarity, including the development of rigorous authentic leader behaviour measures, expanding the psychometric profile of the authentic leader construct, increasing the focus on authentic followers and enhancing leader development programmes. JEL Classification: M12

In the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was considerable innovation in designing and implementing teaching and learning with technology in fully online, face-to-face and blended modes. To provide an overview of technology-enhanced learning in higher education, we conducted a systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines of digital innovations in learning designs between 2014 and 2019, prior to emergency remote teaching responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. From 130 publications, we identified eight overlapping categories of digital technologies being deployed across higher education fields: simulation and augmented or virtual reality; Web 2.0; learning management systems; mobile learning; gamification and serious games; various technologies in classrooms; massive open online courses; and other software, websites, applications and cloud computing. We use these publications, supplemented with findings from selected meta-analyses and systematic reviews of specific technologies, as examples to guide educators designing technology-enhanced learning activities in changing circumstances that may require blended or fully online delivery. As the 130 publications had mixed perceived quality, levels of evidence and details of learning designs and evaluation presented, we suggest educators share their innovations following reporting guidelines relevant to their research methodologies, enabling others to consider transferability to other contexts and to build on their work. Implications for practice or policy: Leaders and administrators should support staff development of technological pedagogical content knowledge and teaching as design for student learning. Educators and instructional designers, in designing learning experiences, should consider adult learning theories, inclusive practices and digital equity and leverage multiple technologies to facilitate students learning their curricula. In educational research or scholarship of teaching and learning, researchers should provide sufficient detail to enable readers to assess transferability to their own contexts.