Conference Program

The Italian university system is undergoing a phase of institutional reconfiguration marked by structural reforms, external evaluation mechanisms (from the AVA system to the ANVUR guidelines on teaching quality) and growing social expectations in terms of skills and employability. The persistent misalignment between stated educational objectives and actual results suggests that the issue is not exclusively related to curricula and teaching methodologies, but also to the institutional framework within which educational responsibility is defined, distributed and implemented.

International literature has progressively redefined academic leadership, shifting the focus from an individual and hierarchical conception to a relational and distributed perspective (Bryman, 2007; Bolden et al., 2012). More recent studies highlight how the sustainability of university innovation depends on the integration of strategic and pedagogical dimensions (Dinh et al., 2020; Cheng et al., 2024; Maheshwari et al., 2024) and how, in the absence of structured liaison mechanisms, responsibility for improving teaching tends to remain diffuse but poorly formalised, generating discontinuity in change processes (Cardinali & Cinque, 2025; Serbati, 2025).

This paper takes academic leadership as an analytical category to interpret the misalignment between educational intentions and actual results, proposing a reinterpretation of it as the pedagogical infrastructure of the university. This expression does not refer to a top-level function or a set of individual skills, but rather to the institutional configuration that makes educational responsibility visible, coordinated and sustainable, integrating academic strategy, teaching coordination and faculty development.

The objective is:

1. To develop a theoretical definition of pedagogical infrastructure as a meso-institutional level that organises the relationships between governance, teaching design and professional development.

2. To analyse how this infrastructure is actually configured in Italian universities.

3. To identify organisational indicators of its consolidation.

The research integrates an exploratory qualitative survey based on:

• Semi-structured interviews with teaching coordination figures (programme directors, teaching delegates, faculty development representatives).

• Documentary analysis of institutional university mechanisms (strategic plans, AVA documents, teaching regulations).

The thematic analysis made it possible to reconstruct the links between strategic direction, teaching coordination and professional development, identifying emerging configurations of pedagogical infrastructure.

The results highlight different configurations of pedagogical infrastructure, characterised by varying degrees of formalisation, integration and continuity. In contexts where the link between strategy, teaching coordination and faculty development is structured and institutionalised, educational quality emerges as a systemic principle; conversely, where this link is entrusted to episodic or individual initiatives, improvement processes are fragmented and discontinuous.

In line with Italian reflections on the role of Teaching and Learning Centres and faculty development as strategic levers of quality (Perla, 2023; Felisatti, 2023), the analysis suggests that the systematisation of faculty development pathways is a relevant indicator of the consolidation of the pedagogical infrastructure at university level. It operates as a structural device for integration between academic autonomy, educational responsibility and teaching quality, configuring leadership not as an individual attribute but as an organisational condition of university quality.