In contemporary higher education, authority can no longer be understood as a stable or self-evident attribute of the academic role. Intensifying social polarisation, growing distrust in institutions, and shifting epistemic norms have profoundly reshaped how authority is constructed, enacted, and evaluated within universities. Against this backdrop, the present study examines teacher authority as a form of everyday academic leadership, focusing on how it is perceived and legitimised by university students in two socio-politically distinct yet historically interconnected contexts: Poland and Ukraine.

Positioned within the thematic framework of ECER 2026, “Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research”, the study addresses the tension between epistemic authority (grounded in expertise and knowledge) and relational authority (grounded in trust, fairness, and ethical conduct). By foregrounding students’ perspectives, the research responds directly to the Network 22 special call on academic leadership for building a fairer world and fostering trust in polarised times, offering empirical insight into how leadership is enacted at the micro-level of everyday teaching practice.

The overarching objective of the study is to investigate how university students conceptualise and attribute teacher authority, and how these attributions relate to perceptions of trust, fairness, and legitimacy in higher education.

The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. How do university students in Poland and Ukraine conceptualise teacher authority in higher education?

2. Which dimensions of teacher behaviour and practice are most strongly associated with perceived authority and trust?

3. To what extent do student perceptions of teacher authority differ between the two national contexts?

4. How can teacher authority be interpreted as a form of everyday academic leadership that contributes to (or undermines) trust in higher education institutions?

The study adopts a relational and constructivist understanding of authority, drawing on sociological and educational theories that conceptualise authority not as coercive power, but as a form of legitimacy recognised by others. Teacher authority is thus treated as co-constructed, emerging through interaction, communicative practices, and shared norms rather than institutional position alone.

Framed in this way, teacher authority is interpreted as a manifestation of academic leadership enacted in everyday pedagogical encounters. This perspective aligns with contemporary leadership theories that emphasise distributed, relational, and practice-based forms of leadership, particularly relevant in higher education contexts characterised by weakened hierarchies and heightened expectations of participation and inclusion.

The comparative design (Poland–Ukraine) allows the study to explore how broader socio-political conditions shape students’ expectations of authority and trust in academia. While both systems share historical legacies of hierarchical education, they currently operate under different conditions of institutional stability, reform, and public trust. This contrast provides a productive lens for examining how authority is negotiated in contexts marked by varying degrees of social polarisation.

By empirically grounding discussions of academic leadership in student perceptions, the study contributes to higher education research in three ways:

(1) it reframes teacher authority as a key site of academic leadership;

(2) it provides comparative evidence on trust and fairness in higher education;

(3) it bridges theoretical debates on authority with actionable insights relevant to teaching practice and institutional credibility.

The study employs a quantitative, cross-sectional comparative design to examine university students’ perceptions of teacher authority in higher education in Poland and Ukraine. A survey-based approach was selected to capture patterns of authority attribution across a sizeable and diverse student population and to enable systematic cross-national comparison. The design is exploratory and comparative, focusing on both shared tendencies and context-specific differences in how authority and trust are perceived. Data were collected through an online questionnaire distributed among university students enrolled in higher education institutions in Poland and Ukraine. The final dataset comprises over 322 valid responses. Participation was voluntary and anonymous, and respondents represented various fields of study and stages of academic progression. The use of student-generated data is methodologically central, as it positions students as active interpreters of academic authority and leadership rather than passive recipients of institutional norms. The survey instrument operationalised teacher authority as a multidimensional construct, encompassing epistemic, relational, and ethical dimensions. Items were measured using Likert-type scales and addressed perceived subject-matter expertise, clarity of instruction, communicative practices, fairness, consistency, and trust in teachers. The questionnaire was informed by existing research on authority, trust, and academic leadership and adapted to ensure contextual relevance in both national settings. Data analysis proceeded in three stages. First, descriptive statistics were used to identify dominant trends in students’ perceptions within each national sample. Second, comparative analyses were conducted to examine differences between Polish and Ukrainian respondents. Depending on scale properties and distribution, appropriate inferential statistical tests (e.g. independent-samples t-tests or non-parametric equivalents) were applied. Third, correlational analyses explored relationships between perceived authority dimensions and levels of trust, supporting the study’s conceptualisation of authority as a relational and legitimacy-based phenomenon. Where applicable, internal consistency measures were used to assess the reliability of scale components. The study followed standard ethical guidelines for educational research. Participants were informed about the purpose of the study and their right to withdraw, and no identifiable personal data were collected. All analyses were conducted on aggregated data, with sensitivity to cross-national and socio-political contexts.

The study is expected to demonstrate that teacher authority in higher education is primarily constructed as a relational and legitimacy-based phenomenon, rather than as a function of formal position or institutional power alone. Across both national contexts, students are anticipated to attribute authority most strongly to teachers who combine epistemic credibility with fairness, clarity of communication, and ethical consistency. This finding would support contemporary theoretical perspectives that conceptualise authority as co-constructed through everyday academic interactions and sustained through trust. At the comparative level, the analysis is expected to reveal both shared patterns and context-specific differences in how authority is perceived by Polish and Ukrainian students. While core dimensions such as subject-matter expertise and organisational competence are likely to be valued similarly in both groups, differences may emerge in the relative importance assigned to relational practices, adaptability, and student-centred approaches. These differences are expected to reflect broader socio-political and institutional conditions shaping expectations of leadership, legitimacy, and trust in higher education. From the perspective of the Network 22 special call, the study is expected to highlight the micro-level foundations of trust in polarised times. By demonstrating how authority is negotiated in routine pedagogical encounters, the findings foreground the role of university teachers in shaping students’ broader orientations towards institutional fairness and legitimacy. Authority, when enacted responsibly, appears to support inclusive academic cultures and mitigate the effects of social and epistemic polarisation.

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