Faculty as Learners: Developing Thinking Communities

The shifting demographics of faculty ranks, expansion of faculty work, and the expectations of accountability and revenue production place new demands on today’s faculty. Collaborating with other faculty members is one option for easing workload demands and reinvigorating faculty members in the conduct of their teaching and research. In this article we discuss the importance of collaboration among faculty members in deriving new strategies for the classroom and approaches to research, and we provide suggestions for moving beyond short term collaborations and toward the creation of thinking communities that have the potential to re-energize faculty members and bring passion back to their work.     

Creating and Implementing a Faculty Interest Group for Historically Underrepresented Faculty

This article describes the creation and implementation of a faculty interest group for historically underrepresented faculty at a large, urban community college in the Northeast. Faculty interest groups provide opportunities for faculty across disciplines to meet to explore common interests and share concerns and best practices. The faculty interest group described in this article was designed to explore and address the challenges faced by historically underrepresented faculty and facilitate the process of attaining reappointment, promotion, and tenure. Nationwide, nearly half of community college students come from populations that are also historically underrepresented, and community colleges are challenged to recruit and retain faculty that mirror the student body. Research demonstrates that historically underrepresented faculty members enrich the overall education of all students, and yet a significant number of those faculty members describe their college campuses as unwelcoming. Factors that make campuses unwelcoming for these faculty include, but are not limited to, the following: isolation and marginalization; salary disparities; microaggressions based on race, gender, and sexual identity; heightened visibility; and additional role demands. Community college administrators ought to be concerned with historically underrepresented faculty members’ satisfaction and persistence on campus because these faculty members are vital members of the academy. Faculty interest groups for historically underrepresented faculty may provide the support and professional development opportunities that will ensure their retention and success in academia.     

Pedagogical Signals of Faculty Approachability: Factors Shaping Faculty–Student Interaction Outside the Classroom

Decades of research demonstrate that college students benefit from positive interaction with faculty members, although that same evidence suggests that those interactions are far from common, particularly outside the classroom. Moreover, relatively little is known about which, when, how, and why faculty members choose to engage with students outside of the classroom. Guided by the theory that faculty members use in-class behaviors to signal their “psychosocial approachability” for out-of-class interaction with students (Wilson et al. in Sociology of Education 47(1):74–92, 1974; College professors and their impact on students, 1975), this study uses data from 2,845 faculty members on 45 campuses to identify the personal, institutional, and pedagogical factors that influence the frequency and type of interaction faculty members have with students outside of the classroom.     

International Faculty Perceptions of Departmental Climate and Workplace Satisfaction

For this study we used the 2011–2014 survey data collected by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to examine the degree of international faculty members’ satisfaction with autonomy, interactions with colleagues, departmental climate, and recognition and the effect of these elements upon the overall workplace satisfaction of international faculty members relative to their U.S. citizen peers. This study helps identify factors that can enhance international faculty members’ satisfaction in order to aid institutions in their efforts not only to recruit the best talent but also to support and retain such talent.     

论高校英语专业青年教师专业素质的自我提升——从“外教社杯”全国高校外语教学大赛谈起

青年教师是高校英语专业教学的生力军,其业务水平高低对能否培养出高水平的英语专门人才至关重要.本文从“外教社杯”全国高校外语教学大赛谈起,对第三届英语专业组的比赛进行了分析,指出比赛当中反映出的青年教师业务素质存在的主要问题,以及产生这些问题的原因.从我国英语专业教育的高度和教师自身职业发展的角度,探讨高校英语专业青年教师专业素质自我提升的必要性及途径.     

Factors that Influence Faculty Adoption of Learning-Centered Approaches

This article proposes a recommended course of action for faculty development based upon Rogers’ theory of Diffusion of Innovations and data collected in a study looking at the prevalence of use of learning-centered teaching practices. Specific faculty development strategies are aligned with Rogers’ factors influencing decisions to adopt innovations. The analysis of data indicated that 14% of the faculty members interviewed used predominately learning-centered teaching approaches and 8% rejected learning-centered teaching. Between these extremes, the others used learning-centered teaching components that fit with their personal teaching style and naturally suit their discipline. These recommendations will assist faculty developers, deans, chairs, and mentors in helping faculty members adopt learning-centered teaching practices.     

How has Mexican faculty been trained? A national perspective and a case study

This article depicts how faculty members at Mexican higher education institutions have been prepared in order to assume their professional responsibilities. It relies on three elements: First, a secondary analysis of a national faculty survey composed of 3,861 faculty members from 65 institutions; second, 34 interviews conducted in eight higher education institutions; third, a primary analysis of an institution faculty survey in a public autonomous university. Results are presented regarding the following issues: first, the central traits of anticipatory or formative in-site faculty socialization; second, the changes in the highest degree faculty obtained at entry into academic life as compared to the obtained degree at the time of the survey; third, the formative time patterns during faculty’s higher education training, fourth, the conditions of study under which faculty members obtained their graduate degrees; and fifth, the academic inbreeding phenomenon.     

Metaphorical images of an organization: the power of symbolic constructs in reading change in higher education organizations

Based on interviews with 24 faculty members at a large, public university, this article reports the use of metaphors as a new conceptual strategy to analyze change in higher education organizations. Results of the study indicate that strategic choices guiding the behavior of the organization under study and the metaphorical images held by the faculty members about their organization show a high degree of congruence. Implications for change and maintenance of enacted realities in higher education organizations are discussed.     

Negotiating Academic Learning and Research: The Spiritual Praxis of Graduate Students of Color

Drawing on data collected in a qualitative study of racially minoritized faculty members, this article examines the challenges these faculty members faced in bringing different aspects of their spirituality into their scholarly work as graduate students. This article explores the questions: How do racially minoritized graduate students negotiate their spiritual identities and integrate their spiritual epistemologies and cultural knowledge into academic practices, and what challenges do they face in doing both? This article presents three salient themes: sacred subjectivity in student-focused research, spiritual praxis in the classroom, and new visions for inclusive spiritual expression in the academy. By focusing our analysis on study participants' strategies for resisting pressures to closet their beliefs, this article affirms the importance of legitimizing the spiritual epistemological perspectives of racially minoritized graduate students in creating a more equitable and diverse higher education culture.     

To What Degree Does the Desire for Promotion Motivate Faculty to Perform Research? Testing the Expectancy Theory

Based on the rationale of expectancy theory, this article examines to what degree the desire for promotion motivates faculty to do research. Using Taiwanese faculty survey data, it is found that faculty members who show higher motivation for promotion display better research performance than their colleagues who show lower motivation for promotion. This article also indicates that different kinds of rewards have different motivating effects on various types of faculty research performance. After controlling for the effects of demographic, educational, and institutional variables, the results of logistic regressions show that faculty who think promotion and the satisfaction of curiosity are important tend to publish articles; faculty who want to demonstrate their mastery of their disciplines tend to publish books; and faculty who care about personal income are more likely to seek and receive the National Science Council Research Outcome Grant.     

DETERMINANTS OF INTERNATIONAL FACULTY MOBILITY

This article opens with a discussion of the position of international faculty mobility in university organizations. It then turns to an analysis of the motivations which induce faculty members to perform their tasks and more specifically to take part in this type of mobility. The analysis leads to the presentation of a conceptual framework for international faculty mobility; and following sections present some of its major professional and personal determinants. The article concludes with a discussion of how it can best be encouraged by organizational strategies.     

Studying the Professional Lives and Work of Faculty Involved in Community Engagement

Community engagement is one of the major innovations that has occurred in higher education over the last 20 years. At the center of this innovation are faculty members because of their intimate ties to the academic mission. This article examines the progress that has been made in understanding this critical area of faculty work. It builds on past research to consider how the conceptualization of faculty community engagement influences the kinds of questions we ask about it and the kinds of recruitment, support, and professional growth we provide. Implications of the study and for the practice of faculty community engagement are provided for researchers, administrators, and faculty members.     

Interaction of efficacy,commitment, and expectations in the formation of faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining

A model of the formation of faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining is developed which reflects recent developments in theory and research in organizational behavior. The model is an alternative to those grounded in need-satisfaction theories and takes into account interaction effects among variables. Hypotheses are formulated which explore how faculty members develop: (1) beliefs about, and effective responses toward, their work environment; and (2) propensities to wish to change that environment by implementating collective bargaining. Empirical data are analyzed to assess the main effects of, and interactions among, organizational commitment, perceived personal efficacy, and expectations with respect to the impact of bargaining.An earlier draft of this article was presented before the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Chicago, March 1978.     

A New Model for the New Media‐‐International University: The University of the Web

This article provides an overview of the programmes, the faculty, and the instructional model of International University. This institution delivers all its courses and degree programmes using multiple media. As IU has a “virtual campus”, Internet e‐mail and course‐specific Web pages serve as the primary instructional tools for interaction between faculty members and students. All the content and media components are developed exclusively to provide an instructional model that requires faculty to contemplate their roles as teachers. The article further describes a new multi‐tiered faculty structure, the instructional design and delivery of content, the providing of student and faculty services in an on‐line environment, and the development of pedagogy to facilitate teaching and learning on‐line.     

The evaluation of faculty development programs

This article reviews literature pertinent to the evaluation of faculty development programs and presents data from several studies conducted at two institutions. These data were consistent with those previously reported in that faculty participants consistently expressed satisfaction with development services. In addition, one study found that most faculty members voluntarily took some action to improve their instructional effectiveness, though only a minority pursued these efforts in depth. Volunteers who worked intensively with a faculty development consultant improved more on objective measures of effectiveness than did those who were only superficially involved in improvement efforts; those who received no consultative assistance failed to improve significantly. Evidence from a final study provided a control for faculty motivation and led to the conclusion that improvement was contingent both on faculty desire to improve and on the availability of professional assistance.     

Motivators and Inhibitors for University Faculty in Distance and e-learning

This article reports on four United States studies of how rewards systems, extrinsic and intrinsic, could play an important role in providing incentives for university faculty to teach (or remain teaching) electronic and distance education courses. The first three studies conducted prior to 2003 reported faculty were inherently motivated to teach e-learning and distance education. The fourth study in 2003 reported key findings that differed from the earlier studies. Using a principal components analysis, the researchers found nine indicators of motivation to participate or not participate in electronic or distance education. The implications from the fourth study indicated that, while faculty members were inherently committed to helping students, faculty members wanted their basic physiological needs met by university administration through extrinsic motivators, such as salary increases and course releases.     

Now I’m Ready: The Impact of a Professional Development Initiative on Faculty Concerns with Program Assessment

This article examines the impact of a faculty professional development effort on the understanding, confidence, and attitudes of education faculty related to program assessment activities. We applied literature on the adoption of innovations, institutional effectiveness, and professional development to a case study of a series of workshops on assessment. The results suggest that faculty members had improved skills and knowledge, understanding, confidence, and attitudes regarding assessment following the workshops. The opportunity for faculty members to collaborate with colleagues on assessment and to develop an understanding of the kinds of supports in place for assessment work were important elements in the gains.     

Faculty integration of technology in teacher preparation: outcomes of a development model

This article reports on a faculty development model that uses a variety of approaches and strategies to help faculty restructure their curricula and effectively model technology integration for their students. A multifaceted model, funded in part by the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) initiative, was implemented at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The model included training, technical and collegial support, access, and incentives. Questionnaires and qualitative data indicated substantive changes in faculty expectations and assumptions regarding technology as well as increases in faculty and student technology skills and the degree to which faculty members integrate technology into their curricula. The model helped to facilitate the collaborative efforts of a cadre of faculty to model and integrate technology throughout their teacher preparation programs.