Departmental culture is a central aspect of teachers’ working environment in higher education, shaping teachers’ professional development as well as teaching and learning practices. Despite its importance, how departmental culture is perceived across different national contexts remains underexplored. China and Sweden represent higher education systems with distinct institutional arrangements and approaches to teacher professional development, which are likely to shape how departmental cultures are experienced by university teachers. Against this background, this study examines university teachers’ perceptions of departmental culture in China and Sweden and explores how teachers' perceptions differ across professional backgrounds and professional development practices.

The study is theoretically informed by Hargreaves’ (1994) school culture model and its extension to higher education by Tynjälä and Kálmán’s (2019, 2020). Within this framework, departmental culture is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct encompassing:

(1) culture of departmental support of teaching, referring to the extent to which teaching is valued and supported within departments;

(2) training- and project-centered professional culture, capturing departments’ use of formal and organized approaches to teaching development; and

(3) culture of voluntary collegial collaboration, reflecting informal and voluntary interactions among colleagues around teaching and professional development.

Guided by this framework, the study addresses the following research questions:

1. How do university teachers in China and Sweden perceive departmental culture?

2. How do teachers’ perceptions of departmental culture differ across professional backgrounds and professional development practices?

In this study, professional practices are understood as teachers’ engagement in pedagogical studies and professional development activities related to teaching, while professional background includes disciplinary affiliation and teaching experience.

By examining teachers’ perceptions within two national higher education systems, this study contributes to an international perspective on departmental culture in higher education, highlighting cross-national differences as well as differences associated with teachers’ professional backgrounds and professional development practices. The findings are expected to inform ongoing European and international discussions on academic work environments and teacher professional development in universities.

This study employed two validated instruments developed by Kálmán et al. (2020): the Inventory of Perceptions of Departmental Culture (IPDC) and the Inventory of Professional Development Activities (IPDA). The IPDC measures university teachers’ perceptions of departmental culture, while the IPDA captures teachers’ engagement in professional development activities related to teaching.The IPDC served as the primary instrument and its items were rated on a five-point Likert scale (1 = completely disagree to 5 = completely agree), while IPDA items assessed the frequency of participation in professional development activities on a five-point scale (1 = never to 5 = always). To examine whether a comparable factor structure of two instruments could be identified across national contexts, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted separately for the Chinese and Swedish samples. Based on the EFA results, the modified IPDC comprised three factors: culture of departmental support of teaching, training- and project-centered professional culture, and culture of voluntary collegial collaboration. The modified IPDA included two factors: research-focused professional development activities and sharing teaching practices with colleagues. Following EFA, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed separately in the Chinese and Swedish samples to validate the factor structure of the IPDC. Where theoretically justified, residual correlations were added based on modification indices. After acceptable model fit was established, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) was conducted to test measurement invariance across the two countries. Configural, metric, and scalar invariance models were examined. When full scalar invariance was not supported, selected item intercepts were freely estimated to achieve partial scalar invariance, which provided the basis for subsequent latent mean comparisons. To examine whether teachers’ perceptions of departmental culture were associated with professional backgrounds and professional development practices beyond national context, separate hierarchical regression analyses were conducted for each of the three departmental culture dimensions. Factor scores derived from the final partial scalar invariance model were used as dependent variables. Country, professional background variables (discipline and teaching experience), and professional development practices were entered stepwise as predictors. Interaction terms involving country were examined to assess whether associations differed by national context. Given substantial differences in the distribution of pedagogical study amount between China and Sweden, within-country hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using country-specific categorizations of pedagogical study amount. In addition, pairwise comparisons of adjusted means were conducted using general linear models to further examine group differences.

The results revealed significant national differences in teachers’ perceptions of departmental culture. Specifically, Swedish teachers reported higher levels of training- and project-centered professional culture and voluntary collegial collaboration than their Chinese counterparts. These findings suggest that national context plays an important role in shaping how departmental culture is experienced by university teachers. Across countries, professional development practices emerged as the most consistent correlates of departmental culture. In particular, sharing teaching practices with colleagues was positively associated with all dimensions of departmental culture, highlighting the importance of everyday professional interaction in fostering supportive and collaborative departmental environments. The role of pedagogical study amount, however, showed different patterns across the two countries. In China, engagement in pedagogical studies was associated with training- and project-centered and voluntary collegial collaboration culture, whereas in Sweden, higher levels of pedagogical study were more strongly linked to departmental support for teaching and training- and project-centered professional culture. This pattern suggests that the role of pedagogical study in shaping departmental culture varies across national higher education contexts. By contrast, professional backgrounds such as discipline, showed weaker association and more context-dependent associations with departmental culture, while teaching experience was not significantly related to any cultural dimension. Overall, the findings indicate that departmental culture is shaped less by stable background characteristics and more by broader national context and teachers’ active engagement in professional development.

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