Faculty renewal in Canada and Ontario: No forthcoming shortage! (with particular reference to education professors)

The age profile and other characteristics of the full-time professoriate in Canada and Ontario are discussed, with particular focus on the geographical source, previous activity, and age distribution of new appointments to university teaching posts. Patterns of inter-institutional mobility within the regions of Canada for junior and senior faculty are presented. Analysis includes the sources and implications of attrition and changing age profile trends. Historical data, in most cases from the 1970s onward, are presented and analyzed. The increasing use of part-time faculty is discussed, particularly in the context of diminishing federal and provincial government financial support for universities. Discussion on the future demand and supply of professors in Canada and Ontario is presented, but focuses on Faculties of Education. Some reference is made to the comparable situation in Australia, the United States, and other major industrialized countries. Despite the rapidly aging professoriate, the article concludes that there will not be an overall shortage of university teachers in the coming decade or so.     

Faculty and Technology: Implications for Faculty Training and Technology Leadership

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors affecting ICT adoption process and the implications for faculty training and technology leadership. Respondents represented a wide range of academic and professional positions. They identified themselves as Assistant, Associate, and Professor as well as Instructional Designer, Director of Technology, Information Manager, eLearning Manager, Assistant Department Chair, Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs and Consultant. The respondents identified Organizational Support, Leadership, Training and Development, and Resources as the predominate themes affecting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption process in higher education. Evidence from this study offers insights on how higher education administrators and technology leaders could help their faculty and staff to implement appropriate ICT tools and practices to improve student learning.     

Children writing: Multimodality and assessment in the writing classroom

Multimedia has had a widely recognised impact on society, but it is still under‐represented in the literacy pedagogies of many schools. This may relate to the way we view assessment for literacy, which is still almost wholly monomodal. Students assessed at a low level as producers of verbal text may respond positively when working multimodally, but the only assessment instruments we have do not reveal this. In a class of 26 ten‐year‐olds in Victoria, Australia, with rich access to computers, five children performed at a very low level when working with verbal expression only, but responded remarkably when invited to work multimodally. A programme of text production was monitored and the results analysed, progressing from handwritten monomodal work, through stages of multimodality to full multimodal expression. The results suggest strongly that some children need multimodal scaffolding in order to communicate complex ideas effectively. This, however, requires an acceptance of multimodal texts as part of the primary literacy curriculum. It is therefore suggested that assessment of multimodal composition, both narrative and other texts, should be developed to help teachers accept the value of introducing multimodal literacies into the classroom.     

Faculty Learning Matters: Organizational Conditions and Contexts that Shape Faculty Learning

This study explored the relationships between faculty scholarly learning, faculty teaching learning, institutional support, faculty demographics, disciplinary groups, working conditions, and career outcomes such as retention, productivity, satisfaction, and career agency. We found that the stronger the scholarly learning faculty members reported, the more institutional and unit support they perceived for learning, the more satisfied they were, the less likely they were to intend to leave their institution, and the more career agency they reported. Similarly, we found that faculty members who reported more learning related to teaching reported a decreased intent to leave the institution and increased career agency. We draw implications for the development of work environments that support scholarly and teaching learning.     

Backwards writing: An unexpected ability in writing

Summary The case of a left-handed female patient is described who presented serious problems in learning how to write during childhood, particularly in relation to directionality and letter sequence. The patient then learned to write correctly with her left hand, but practiced and maintained her ability to write backwards (from the last letter to the first). Implications of the case are discussed.Send Correspondence to Dr. Alfredo Ardila, Miami Institute of Psychology of the Caribbean Center for Advanced Studies, 8180 NW 36 Street, Second floor, Miami, Florida 33166-6612.     

Faculty Agency: Departmental Contexts that Matter in Faculty Careers

In a modern context of constrained resources and high demands, faculty exert agency to strategically navigate their careers (Baez 2000a; Neumann et al. 2006). Guided by the O’Meara et al. (2011) framework on agency in faculty professional lives, this study used Structural Equation Modeling to investigate which departmental factors (perceptions of tenure and promotion process, work-life climate, transparency, person-department fit, professional development resources, and collegiality) influenced faculty agentic perspective and agentic action. Results showed that faculty perceptions of certain departmental contexts do matter in faculty career agency, such as work-life climate, person-department fit, and professional development resources. These contexts have a particular influence on faculty agentic perspective. Results also showed a large effect of agentic perspective on agentic action. The study has important implications for administrators regarding departmental role in faculty agency and contributes to the growing body of literature on faculty sense of agency in academe.     

我国本科教学评估政策的历史演变

师范类专业认证与本科教学工作评估、专业评估、教师资格考试、专业建设等有较大区别,但部分行动者对此还不能准确辨析。通过历史制度主义视角,分析以往制度对师范类专业认证行动者的影响,总结目前师范类专业认证运行中存在的四种认识误区,提出行动者对师范类专业认证的理解应进行从宏观到中观、从管理到治理、从输入到产出、从预设到生成的逻辑转向,以减少师范类专业认证运行中的历史惯性和路径依赖,推进师范类专业认证制度作用的发挥。     

Learning science through writing: associations with prior conceptions of writing and perceptions of a writing program

Students in a large undergraduate biology course were expected to write a scientific report as a key part of their course design. This study investigates the quality of learning arising from the writing experience and how it relates to the quality of students’ preconceptions of learning through writing and their perceptions of their writing program that led to their report. Closed‐ended questionnaires investigating student conceptions and perceptions of writing, and approaches to writing, were completed by 121 students. Significant associations were found amongst qualitatively different prior and post conceptions of writing, approaches to writing and achievement. The results of the analyses suggest that the effective support of student experiences of writing reports requires teachers to be aware of the type of conceptions that students bring to their course and the perceptions they hold about the purpose of the writing program in which they are engaged.     

Faculty do Matter: The Role of College Faculty in Student Learning and Engagement

This study uses two national data sets to explore the relationship between faculty practices and student engagement. Our findings suggest that students report higher levels of engagement and learning at institutions where faculty members use active and collaborative learning techniques, engage students in experiences, emphasize higher-order cognitive activities in the classroom, interact with students, challenge students academically, and value enriching educational experiences.     

The Redirection: An Indicator of How Teachers Respond to Student Thinking

Responsive teaching occurs when teachers take up and respond to their students’ ideas during instruction (J. L. Pierson, 2008). Although responsive teaching is gaining recognition as an effective strategy for encouraging student learning, few methods of analysis are capable of characterizing the different ways in which teachers take up their students’ ideas in the moment. This article presents and exemplifies a new methodological construct, the redirection, which provides researchers with a means of detecting nuanced differences in how teachers respond to their students’ thinking. The redirection construct emerged via systematic discourse analysis of 1 science teacher’s classroom discussions during 3 implementations of an inquiry-based module on the water cycle. Redirections are defined as instances when a teacher invites students to shift or redirect their attention to a new locus. Such shifts reflect different types of teacher responsiveness and, as such, can be used to capture the different ways in which teachers take up their students’ ideas. This article presents a comprehensive coding scheme for the redirection, in addition to segments of classroom discourse to exemplify each redirection coding category. A comparison of 3 5th-grade teachers using the construct provides an illustrative example of the type of analysis such a coding scheme affords learning sciences researchers.     

高校教师评价:实践与构想

高校教师评价作为教师管理的重要环节，现状不容乐观。由于教师评价导向的偏差．教师评价缺乏合理性和激励性；教师评价模式单一．忽视个性和专业发展的需要。在“以人为本”、尊重差异和注重专业发展等原则的指导下，构建全面合理的高校教师评价体系，应当注重教师胜任力评价．完善课堂教学评价，改进教学绩效评价，才能充分发挥评价的导向、激励和改进功能。     

Relationships between writing motivation, writing activity, and writing performance: effects of grade, sex, and ability

A convenience sample of 618 children and adolescents in grades 4 through 10, excluding grade 8, were asked to complete a writing motivation and activity scale and to provide a timed narrative writing sample to permit an examination of the relationships between writing motivation, writing activity, writing performance, and the student characteristics of grade, sex, and teacher judgment of writing ability. Female students and older students wrote qualitatively better fictional stories, as did students with higher levels of writing ability based on teacher judgment. With respect to writing activity, more frequent writing in and out of school was reported by girls, better writers, and younger students. In a path analysis, grade and sex directly influenced writing activity, while sex, teacher judgment of writing ability, and writing activity directly influenced some aspects of writing motivation. Overall, teacher judgment of writing ability, grade level, and motivational beliefs each exerted a significant direct positive influence on narrative quality, whereas performance goals exerted a significant direct negative impact on quality.     

Faculty dynamation: Guided empowerment

Dynamation is the integrative process whereby the sum total of all learning, knowledge, experiences, and feelings are brought to bear on productive, creative action and problem solving. In this paper, we describe some of the benefits of dynamation, outline a general approach to it-including the importance of friendship (the core of the empowerment process)- and explain several key incentives that will encourage faculty, through dynamation, to engage in growth activities. Throughout the article we discuss ten techniques developers can use. Our focus is on informal facilitator-enhanced (guided) empowerment. That is, we look at growth that is likely to result when developers work with faculty with the goal of growth, change, and development.Richard L. Weaver II is a professor in the Department of Interpersonal and Public Communication at Bowling Green State University. Darrell Mullins is an assistant professor in the Communication Department at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Howard W. Cotrell is an associate professor in the Instructional Media Center at Bowling Green State University. Thomas A. Michel is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Business at Fordham University, Bronx, New York.     

Faculty salary equity: Issues and options

How do you develop a salary equity analysis procedure that will help identify whether or not your institution has a reasonably equitable and legally defensible salary structure? This paper presents a multiphase approach to identify and correct salary inequities based on gender. The major steps are to (1) determine if a problem situation exists by using a conceptually sound, objective procedure that does a legal and effective job of explaining faculty salaries; (2) develop feasible adjustment strategies if inequities exist that solve or improve the situation; (3) implement the correction and establish a monitoring process that is consistent with the culture and values of the institution. Involving and educating key university personnel in the selection of models and strategies is critical to acceptance and validation of the process and to minimizing negative reaction internal or external to the campus. This paper is designed to be helpful to administrators and researchers who need to make informed choices about salary equity models and implementation strategies.     

徐州师范大学工学院师资队伍建设的实践与思考

师资队伍建设是学校实现快速发展最根本的一环。徐州师范大学工学院自建院以来牢牢把握这一点，采取有力措施．一手抓培养，一手抓引进，取得了十分显著的成绩．带动了学院事业的快速发展。