Research area, work experience and parents’ completed higher education within scientists’ intellectual leadership in higher education: which roles matter?

Scientists as intellectual leaders are seen through their expertise and the scope of knowledge. The research issue in this pilot study was related to scientists‘ working in higher education schools and focused on intellectual leadership, which consists of different roles. The participants of the pilot study were researchers with acquired PhD. Data collection were accomplished by implementing the questioning survey from 2015-06-02 to 2015-06-30. In total 138 respondents filled in the instrument, but for data analysis were suitable 131 instrument. For data analysis were applied descriptive statistics, correlation analysis (Spearman), ANOVA, and Cronbach’s alpha was calculated. Findings showed that the roles of the advocate and critic for researchers from social sciences were more worth than for researchers from other research areas. The lowest assessments were related to the role of the mentor nevertheless of the scientist’s research area. Results revealed that more experienced scientists in higher education area more value the roles of academic citizen and public intellectual. The roles of ambassador, critic, advocate were assessed more positively by scientists one of whose parents was educated in higher education school. Intellectual leadership of a scientist in higher education is about everyday learning. The particular roles of a scientist are not in position of status quo. The core messages from this pilot study are the following: scientists from social research area see more complex their roles in higher education school; work experience of the scientist in higher education and the completed higher education of scientist’s parents matter