A collective bargaining election: Issues and faculty voting behavior

Following the election of a faculty collective bargaining agent at the 14 Pennsylvania state colleges, the authors administered a survey questionnaire to a 50% sample of the bargaining unit. The objectives of the research were to identify relationships between faculty choice of a bargaining agent and several collective bargaining issues: attitudes about the contending associations, the extent to which internal versus external governance matters influenced voting behavior, attitudes about the scope of negotiations, attitudes about the defined bargaining unit, attitudes about faculty strikes, and demographic faculty characteristics. The authors provide primarily a narrative of the research findings and end with a succinct general summary of their findings. A brief discussion is also presented on the potential impact on elections of voters who fail to vote their conscience.     

University administrators and faculty bargaining

This study presents empirical data suggesting that middle-level university administrators tend to oppose faculty bargaining, especially by an aggressive union. Findings cover administrators' perceptions of and attitudes toward faculty bargaining, prebargaining conditions in their work milieu, and expectations as to potential outcomes of bargaining under alternative agents. Factor analysis is used to identify underlying perceptual structures for which specific expectations may serve as indicators. Multivariate analysis suggests that perceptual-attitudinal variables related to prebargaining conditions explain little of the variance in support for bargaining. Most of the variance explained by the model derives from expectations concerning outcomes, perceptions of how well bargaining is working in higher education, and personal political orientation. Policy and research implications are suggested.     

大学教师发展：教学学术的新视角

数以万计的大学教师发展问题亟待解决,这也是当前提高高等教育质量和建设高等教育强国面临的艰巨任务。引入教学学术理论,从教学学术的视角研究大学教师发展将具有重要意义。教育者、研究者和学习者角色的统一融合体就应该是大学教师最核心和最重要的角色,这样的角色定位有利于大学教师的发展。好的教学还应意味着,教师既是学者又是学生,因此应该加强教师与学生之间的交流,形成一个师生学习共同体。教师与教师之间的学习共同体和教师与学生之间的学习共同体都可以促进大学教师的发展,大学教师的发展也都需要这些学习共同体的熏陶和培养。每位教师都必须坚持忠诚的最高标准,既要重视教师职业道德修养也要加强学术道德修养。     

Collective bargaining goals of university faculty

This paper examines the collective bargaining goals of 1,800 faculty members at eight Canadian universities. A particular focus of the study was the relationship between bargaining goals and traditional academic governance. The results of the analysis showed that faculty distinguish firmly between academic and nonacademic issues and deliberately choose to restrict the scope of bargaining to a relatively narrow range of issues involving money, job security, and grievance procedures. A major factor influencing this restricted bargaining scope was the confidence with and perceived influence of the traditional system of academic governance. The way in which the governance system functions helps determine whether academic and policy issues reach the bargaining table, suggesting that strong governance structures are not threatened by the advent of collective bargaining.     

Academic achievement and personality traits of faculty members of Indian agricultural universities: their effect on teaching and research performance

Purpose: The present study was undertaken to assess academic achievement, teaching aptitude and research attitude of Indian agricultural universities’ faculty, to predict indicators for successful teachers and researchers, and thereby enhancing the quality of higher agricultural education. Methodology: Five hundred faculty members were selected to elicit information on academic, teaching and research achievements. Teaching aptitude and attitude of faculty towards research were measured through standard psychometric tests. Correlation and regression analysis was carried out to establish the relationship among selected variables. Findings: Combination of academic achievement and teaching aptitude was a superior predictor for the teaching achievement compared to either of them alone. Similarly, research achievement of faculty was predicted better by the combination of academic achievement and research attitude. Practical Implications: The study showed the need for training faculty members in interpersonal relationships for effective teaching, and in research methodology and research processes for improving research attitude of faculty. Theoretical Implications: The expectancy-value model provides a useful framework to understand the role of attitude/aptitude in better prediction of research and teaching behavior. Originality/Value: The present study showed that teaching aptitude and research attitude be considered along with academic achievements for promoting quality teaching and research and hence the educational programmes.     

What Tertiary Institutions will be like and how we are to manage them through the 1980s

This essay relates collective bargaining in American higher education to the evolution of collegial governance and its erosion on some campuses. The diversity of American higher education and the industrial model of collective bargaining being transplanted to campuses explain the modest contribution made by collective bargaining to university governance. Based on the author's experience as sometime General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors, he concludes that faculty should have the right to decide to bargain collectively but that the cost of collective bargaining usually outweighs its benefits. He recommends that strengthening collegial governance is a preferable strategy for the future.     

Academic penetration in faculty collective bargaining contracts in higher education

The purpose of this research was to analyze faculty collective bargaining contracts at 124 institutions of higher education that had a 10-year history of collective bargaining from 1975 to 1985 to determine if contracts negotiated in 1975 significantly differed from those negotiated in 1985 with regard to 18 selected academic items. Each academic item in both the 1975 and 1985 contracts was coded according to a scaling code with rankings showing the direction of faculty control. The findings revealed that the 1985 contracts contained both an increased number of academic items and an increased level of faculty control over most of those academic items compared with the 1975 contracts.     

Conflict,risk and authority: female faculty members' stories of change

Abstract

Most studies of gender and information technology have investigated gender differences in the relationships between education and achievement, and attitudes towards and use of computers. Few have explored gendered experiences of faculty members using learning technologies in higher education. The study on which this article is based explored the experiences of 47 Canadian female faculty members integrating information and communications technologies (ICTs) into the higher education learning environment. The stories they told suggest that learning to use ICT in ways coherent with their values may be an intensely personal process of cognitive and cultural change for these women, in which beliefs and values may be examined and even realignedas they develop personal, moral authority. When faculty members explicitly contextualize the process as social, relational learning, it has the potential to be transformative at personal and societal (institutional) levels. The interrelated theoretical constructs of transformative or action learning, the development of authority-into-agency, and technology issues related to feminist pedagogy frame the three illustrative narratives of experience presented.     

The organizational impact of university labor unions

The current review presents both postulated and empirically tested consequences of university unionization and labor strikes on the North American institution’s administration, faculty, and students. The review explores the impact of collective bargaining on employee working conditions including job security, academic freedom, university governance, and due process. More importantly, this review examines the much neglected issue of organizational work relationships in a unionized academic environment. The relationships discussed include those between faculty members, between the faculty and administration, between the faculty and the university as an institution, and between the faculty and their union. The threat of unionization and labor strikes to the professor–student or mentor–mentee relationship has been a central concern of those opposed to graduate student unions, and this issue is also addressed here. The text concludes with the identification of potential areas for future research.     

Determinants of faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining in university graduate departments: An organizational climate approach

This study examines the relationship between some facets of organizational climate in university departments and faculty attitudes toward various aspects of faculty unionization. The dimensions of organizational climate explored are: the perceived power structure, assessment of rewards, and perceived organizational goals. The major findings of this study are: (a) The perceived power structure is an important determinant of attitudes toward an egalitarian system, especially in the social sciences. Perceived individual power is negatively related to egalitarian attitude in the physical sciences whereas perceived faculty group power is negatively related to favorable attitudes toward collective bargaining in the social sciences. (b) Perceived emphasis on consulting activities is positively related to attitudes toward seniority-based aspects of collective bargaining in the physical sciences while perceived emphasis on personal factors is positively related to all aspects of attitude toward collective bargaining in the social sciences. (c) Inequity is positively related to attitudes toward unionization both in the physical and social sciences. The policy implications of these findings to faculty and university administration are discussed.     

全球进步最快教育体系因何持续进步?——解读麦肯锡2010教育报告

国际最负盛名的咨询公司麦肯锡在2010年11月29日发布了一份长达126页的教育报告:《全球进步最快教育体系因何持续进步?》(How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better)。这份报告在全球五大洲选取了20个教育体系作为研究对象回答了教育体系之所以成功的许多问题,并给我们的教育许多有益的启示。     

Building capacity: challenges and opportunities in large class pedagogy (LCP) in Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the past 20 years most countries, particularly developing countries, have seen a large increase in the number of students seeking higher education. A consequence of this growth is increasing pressure on teaching staff and institutions, usually resulting in, among other effects, increased class size. Large classes of between 300 and 1,000, and even more, at the undergraduate level are not uncommon in a number of countries (Mulryan-Kyne in Teach High Educ 15(2):175–185, 2010). Large classes are often perceived as one of the major obstacles to the attainment of quality education. Despite the difficulties associated with teaching and learning in large classes, they remain a reality in many countries affecting learners across all levels of the education system and are often the only perceived option available to meet growing demand for higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mohamedbhai in The effects of massification on higher education in Africa. Report from the Working Group on Higher Education of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, 2008). We contend that the challenges of delivering large classes can be confronted, and in many ways diminished, through the use of current and emerging technologies and enhanced faculty development. In this expository paper, we present findings from project activities focused on higher education faculty development and capacity building. The findings include both formative and summative development activities, as well as data collected in faculty professional development workshops and the results of two surveys. We use these data to lay out issues, challenges (e.g., skills, resources, logistics—including poor campus infrastructure), and opportunities (e.g., mobile capacity, distance tools such as Moodle) of large class pedagogy using a design-based research framework.     

Academic salary compression across disciplines and over time

Academic salary compression occurs when professors of lower professorial rank earn salaries close to—or even higher than—salaries of more senior faculty. We present a modified maximum likelihood method for fitting flexible Dagum distributions to limited data that provide only the minimum, maximum, mean, and sample size, and we use this method to study salary compression across 15 academic disciplines over the past 22 years. After examining mean-based compression ratios, we estimate salary percentiles and explore stochastic dominance relationships between estimated salary distributions for different disciplines and professorial ranks. Although salary compression is not seen in most academic disciplines, it is prevalent in business-related disciplines, is increasing in these disciplines, and exhibits examples of stochastic dominance. In addition, salary compression increases as competing nonacademic salaries increase. Finally, we evaluate our methodology, showing that it would likely be useful in a variety of settings.     

Some Influences of On-line Distance Learning on US Higher Education

Distance education issues affect nearly all participants in higher education, whether or not they are planning to offer (or to take) on-line courses. These issues are affecting business-university interactions as well as the relationship between faculty mem bers and their institutions. This article discusses an assortment of concerns in the USA and many other Western nations related to the nexus between on-line distance education and the traditional classroom, including intellectual property, evaluation and equity. These matters are being heavily influenced by the emerging international market for higher education offerings and by heightened competition from for-profit institutions. Discourse on distance education issues is likely to stimulate thinking about the nature of higher education, especially on the part of students who are being presented with an increasing array of educational options. Faculty members are facing issues of critical importance (especially in the realm of intellectual property rights), issues that will shape the nature of higher education as an entity.     

夕阳无限好——从美国大学教授发表期刊文章看年龄与科研能力之间的关系

年龄与科研能力的关系是一个对科技与教育政策有重大影响的科研课题。围绕教授科研生涯的轨迹和近期的科研行为。本文试图应用人生过程理论来探索年龄与科研能力之间的动态关系。使用来自2004年美国最新的全国高等院校教授研究,以发表同行评审期刊文章的数量作为判定科研能力的依据,本研究发现,年龄对科研能力有明显的正面影响,科研能力的巅峰不只是出现在一个年龄段而是多个年龄段。当引入性别、专业、大学声望、出生地作为控制变量时,年龄对科研能力的正面影响依然存在,而且还显得斑斓多彩。在寿命预期大幅增长、科研复杂程度日益加深的大背景下,本研究的结果应当唤起人们对年龄与科研政策的重新审视。     

远程教育教师发展途径的成效分析

随着远程教育的快速发展,教师发展问题已经受到远程教育机构越来越多的重视。如何更好地促进远程教育教师的发展,即教师发展途径的问题,在理论和政策上已有诸多探讨,但这些探讨大多是从应然的角度对远程教育教师和教育机构提出的理想化要求,并没有切身关注教师的实际需求、期望和实效。以这一研究视角为切入点,通过调查某开放大学全体专职教师对教师发展途径实效的看法,结果发现：在我国远程教育系统目前主要存在的8种教师发展途径中,＂学历深造＂的认可度最高,＂自我反思＂是最具弹性和自主化的发展途径,＂同行交流与互助＂比＂专家指导＂具有更大的实效,＂校外培训＂比＂校本培训＂的实效更好,＂教研活动＂的实际帮助程度较低,＂竞赛和公开课＂的实效最低。为了促进远程教育教师持续而系统的发展,远程教育机构应积极探索新的远程教育教师发展系统,既要明确身份和定位,从制度和组织层面进行系统规划,又要为教师发展途径的选择提供弹性和灵活性,更要注重教师发展途径具体的实践性和情境性,以此来重构、重组和优化远程教育教师发展系统的可能空间。     

Five Faculty Labor Market Dilemmas Facing Community Colleges in the New Economy

Community colleges employ more than one-third of the nation's higher education faculty. Nevertheless, the labor market through which faculty are recruited, selected, hired, evaluated and retained or replaced is one of the least understood aspects of these institutions. Functional management and effective policy both require a clear understanding of the workplace dynamics and employment dilemmas associated with this labor market. This article begins by recognizing that the 21st century economy is being transformed by large scale social, political, and technological developments—developments often referred to as the emergence of a new economy. This new economy is transforming the nature of work and the character of worker-employer relations. Four core ideas in the new economy literature are developed to show how they are creating fundamental labor market dilemmas for community colleges. The concepts are (a) information age technology, (b) globalization, (c) neo-institutional theories of organization, and (d) work spatialization. Analysis of these concepts shows how the transformation of work and of workplace relationships produced by the new economy is creating five troublesome dilemmas for community college management, policy, and research. These dilemmas are examined to build theory and frame policy issues for research and action. The dilemmas involve distinguishing work spatialization from secondary labor market status, separating institutional from bureaucratic forms of control, identifying symbolic and substantive faculty work roles, clarifying managerial control structures and roles, and identifying the career pipelines that bring individuals into this occupation. Responding to these dilemmas shapes college management, frames higher education policy issues, and defines a research agenda for anyone interested in understanding and improving community college performance.     

INSTITUTIONAL PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE PREPARATION OF COLLEGE ADMINISTRATORS

This article looks at the relative usefulness of 12 selected factors in the preparation of college administrators as seen by practicing administrators and faculty in comprehensive community colleges, four‐year liberal arts colleges, and universities.

Three hundred randomly selected faculty and administrators in the state of Iowa were sent survey questionnaires. The returned surveys and research data were then analyzed in order to answer the research question.

The findings suggested that graduates from programs in higher education administration may be more accepted in community colleges than in liberal arts colleges or universities. The findings also showed that university personnel perceived the major research experience as being significantly more useful than the other personnel. Nonclassroom experiences were thought to be the most useful by all personnel, with faculty experience in higher education perceived to be the most useful. This study also showed that both administrators and faculty perceived majoring in higher education administration to be less useful than any of the other 11 preparation variables.

One of the recommendations of this study is that students, graduates, and professors in higher education administration programs attempt to educate the participants in higher education and the public on the strengths and uses of their programs. It was also recommended that further research is needed in the area of administrative task analysis at the different types of institutions.     

The Gender Agenda in Teacher Education

This paper explores some of the relationships between the understanding of gender equity and gender issues in education held by academic staff in an institute of higher education, and their views on the importance of incorporating gender into the curriculum. The paper discusses findings pertaining to how academics approach gender issues in their teaching in their relationships with students and with other members of staff. In so doing the question is raised—what messages are trainee teachers receiving about gender issues? The findings also discuss some of the pedagogical implications arising from the absence of theoretical perspectives or orientations in relation to gender in preservice teacher education.