Oh,won’t you stay? Predictors of faculty intent to leave a public research university

Understanding and predicting faculty intent to leave is important to the development of improved conceptual frameworks of faculty success as well as the implementation of effective retention strategies for academic leaders and institutions that invest considerable resources in recruitment, institutional support, and compensation. This study examined the relationship between various research-based factors and faculty intent to leave by integrating components identified in the extant literature for employee turnover more generally and faculty intent to leave more specifically. The results of binary logistic regression models identified workplace stress, being in a “soft-pure” discipline, fewer years of service at the university, and higher research productivity as key predictors of faculty having considered leaving for another institution. Key predictors for faculty having considered leaving academe altogether were being in a “hard-applied” discipline, not having a spouse or partner, a perceived lack of support, a perceived lack of fit, stress of raising a family, and dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the “faculty job”. The implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.     

The Canada Research Chairs Program: the good,the bad,and the ugly

Drawing on 60 qualitative interviews with Canada research chairs (CRCs), we explore their careers in context. We develop a model to understand the intersection of individual and institutional factors that shape the everyday experiences of the CRCs. The model shows the dialectical relationship between faculty identity, research, relations with colleagues and students, and institutional practices and structures. We classify individuals’ experiences as “good,” “bad,” or “ugly.” The interviews show that while a majority of CRCs have a positive experience, others have a negative experience that is prone to becoming ugly when institutional practices and systemic factors impede the work of the CRC. We discuss the perceived problems with the CRC program from the standpoint of Chairholders, and the implications of our findings for the CRC program and universities. As well, we propose that additional research on the professoriate is needed to determine whether or not the model from our study is generalizable beyond our sample.     

A Culture of Teaching: Policy, Perception, and Practice in Higher Education

In an effort to identify policies that foster an institutional “culture of teaching,” or encourage use of effective pedagogies, this study uses data from 5,612 faculty members at 45 institutions to examine connections between institutional policies and faculty members’ perceptions and practices related to teaching and learning. A series of multi-level models suggests that academic policy variables have small and generally insignificant relationships to such faculty perceptions or practices. Instead, conventional institutional characteristics, such as selectivity and Carnegie classification, appear to be more influential factors.     

Nurturing Careers in Psychology: Combining Work and Family

The academic workplace, with its requirements for achieving tenure within the first 6 years of employment, is designed in ways that discriminate against young faculty with family care responsibilities, most notably mothers. Mason and Goulden (Academe, http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2002/02nd/02ndmas.htm, 2002, Academe, http://www.aaup.org/publications/Academe/2004/04nd/04ndmaso.htm, 2004) found that women faculty who have babies within the first 5 years following the receipt of their doctorate are less likely to earn tenure than women without babies or men in general. Women at research-intensive universities are twice as likely as their male colleagues to report that they had fewer children than they wanted. In addition, only one-third of women who begin their academic career at research-intensive institutions without children will become a mother. These inequities, sometimes called the “baby gap” or “motherhood penalty” make academic institutions difficult places for new faculty with family care responsibilities. Suggestions are provided to assist new faculty in successfully combining their work and family roles (e.g., establish gender equity in parenting and negotiate for family-friendly policies) and to senior faculty and administrators who want to nurture the careers of their younger colleagues (e.g., support the use of family-friendly policies on campus).     

Attending a Presentation at a Distance in Real-time via Skype

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” as the saying goes, and in this case, it surely was. A telecommuting faculty for a Midwest public university wanted to see a graduate student’s presentation as a guest speaker in an instructional technology course on campus. However, this faculty lives in another state, so that was impossible. As a daily user and enthusiast of Skype, she thought of using it to “attend” this presentation. Skype is a software-based Internet telephone and videophone service for making free, computerto-computer voice calls over the Internet Pcmag.com Encyclopedia (n.d.). to anyone else who is also using Skype. This article details the logistics involved in setting up and using Skype, with the assistance of an on-site faculty member, for attending a presentation in real-time at a distance.     

Workplace correlates and scholarly performance of clinical pharmacy faculty

The workplace, especially the academic department or division, provides an intriguing research site for study of correlates of scholarly performance. The objective of this study was to estimate a correlate model of three-year scholarly performance of clinical faculty in colleges of pharmacy. Two-hundred and ninety-six clinical faculty in pharmacy responded to an author-developed questionnaire. The scholarly performance items factored into three dimensions: “Refereed Research,”, “Grants/Books Research,” and “Nonresearch Scholarship.” A fourth single-item variable, “Contracts,” was also used as a dependent dimension. Eight correlates, including two related to the departmental workplace, emerged as factors significantly explaining the variation in scholarly performance. The two most significant were “Off-Campus Conversations” and “Department: Percent Time in Research.” These results as well as others were contrasted with prior correlate studies and suggestions were made for future additional study.     

IT Entry knowledge and skills of university teachers vis-à-vis their interest levels: the case of the oldest university in Asia

Technology, considered as the new language of teaching and learning, is an irrevocable reality. Any institution of higher learning is expected to look into the future without losing sight of its core capabilities-the malleability of its faculty members. Today, more than ever, teachers are expected to operate in an environment where “hiteach”, “hi-touch” and “hi-tech” govern their instructional behaviors. It is in this light that this study was conducted to situate teachers coming from a time-tested institution, such as the University of Santo Tomas, the oldest university in Asia, in terms of their IT knowledge, skills, and interests with a view to identifying implications on how faculty development programs may be made more responsive to the present-day educational structure.     

Comparing efficiency in a cross-country perspective: the case of Italian and Spanish state universities

The growing internationalization of European Higher Education requires more emphasis on cross-country comparisons. In this paper, an efficiency analysis of Italian and Spanish universities is conducted; as well as from a comparative perspective. The efficiency scores are obtained using data envelopment analysis. The results demonstrate a good average efficiency in both countries relative to each “country-specific” frontier; but when compared together, Italian universities seem relatively more efficient. Malmquist indexes show, in both cases, efficiency improvements in the period considered. In the Italian case, this improvement is due to major “technological changes”; that is, the introduction of some structural reforms in the sector (e.g., Bachelor/Master curricula). In the Spanish case, there is an improvement in “pure” efficiency, which is due to new funding models. Further stages of the study underline the role of “regional effects”, probably due to different socio-economic conditions in Italy, and to the decentralization process in Spain.     

On the sovereignty of school rhetoric: Representations of science among scientists and guidance counsellors

This article sheds light on views held by actors who enjoy a certain degree of institutional legitimacy for “talking about science,” either as practitioners in the field of science or as guidance counsellors working with youths interested in having a science-related career. One hundred and seven scientists and technologists who worked either in a university or industrial research centre and 182 guidance counsellors working in high school settings participated in our survey; the main instrument for data collection was a questionnaire developed using the bank of items from “VOSTS.” Excepting a few aspects of the production of scientific knowledge, the predominant tendency suggests that both professional groups share a relatively similar discursive outlook on science—an outlook which presents a “family resemblance” with the usual school rhetoric on the exceptional status of science.     

Mathematics turned inside out: the intensive faculty versus the extensive faculty

Research universities in the United States have larger mathematics faculties outside their mathematics departments than inside. Members of this “extensive” faculty conduct most mathematics research, their interests are the most heavily published areas of mathematics, and they teach this mathematics in upper division courses independent of mathematics departments. The existence of this de facto faculty challenges the pertinence of institutional and national policies for higher education in mathematics, and of philosophical and sociological studies of mathematics that are limited to mathematics departments alone.     

Academic inbreeding: exploring its characteristics and rationale in Japanese universities using a qualitative perspective

This study analyses why and how academic inbreeding as a recruitment practice continues to prevail in Japan, a country with a mature higher education system, where high rates of academic inbreeding endure in most of the research-oriented universities in spite of several higher education reforms. Based on a qualitative analysis, we disclose three characteristics that lead academics to become inbred at Japanese universities. One characteristic—the adoption of “open recruitment processes” in detriment of “closed recruitment processes”—changed over time, limiting academic inbreeding practices, but two other characteristics remained unchanged over time: the “one university learning experience” and the “concentration of doctoral supervisors at the same university”. These latter characteristics represent difficult challenges to be tackled as they are also traditional characteristics of the Japanese higher education system. The research also shows that academic inbreeding practices are a means to assure organizational stability and institutional identity, features perceived as important by Japanese universities. A central challenge for the Japanese universities is then to guarantee these features without needing to rely on academic inbreeding practices to obtain them. However, devising policies to meet this challenge calls for institutional will to change, proactive strategies and time.     

Increasing student engagement by usingMorrowind to analyze choices and consequences

Conclusions Using Morrowind to bring up moral issues proved highly successful in raising the engagement level in my classes. I observedagreaternumberandvarietyofstudentsvolunteering, which cut across lines of race, class and gender. Students’ body language implied that they were actively paying attention. And the students themselves noticed greater engagement and understanding. “I think it [using a video game] was a good idea,” wrote one of my students, “Sometimes when you look at situations in a different perspective you get a better understanding.”     

Faculty Emphases on Alternative Course-Specific Learning Outcomes in Holland’s Model Environments: The Role of Environmental Consistency

This study examines variability in the extent to which faculty members in the disciplinary-based academic environments of Holland’s theory emphasize different student learning outcomes in their classes and whether such differences are comparable for those in “consistent” versus “inconsistent” environments. The findings show wide variation in the extent to which faculty members in four of the academic environments of Holland’s theory emphasize the alternative student learning outcomes and that such differences vary based on the level of consistency or inconsistency in the environmental profiles of the environments. The implications of these findings for future research using Holland’s theory to understand longitudinal patterns of change and stability in the attitudes, interests, and abilities of college students as well as variability in the patterns of professional attitudes and behaviors of college faculty are discussed. Attention is also devoted to the policy development and practical implications of these findings for academic advisors, career counselors, and other college and university leaders.     

“DOING AND UNDOING GENDER”: FEMALE HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, female higher education has been characterised by a paradoxical combination of discrimination and exclusion, on the one hand, and increasing equality and empowerment, on the other. This study focuses on the triangle of education, equality and empowerment, using Sara Longwe’s women’s empowerment framework to analyse the interplay between the three. State policies to Islamise the universities during the 1980–1983 Cultural Revolution determined the “gender appropriateness” of each specialisation and led to the exclusion of women from “masculine” fields of study during the early years of the revolution. Despite such discriminatory measures, women today represent the majority of students in all fields, except engineering. Women, however, remain underrepresented at graduate levels of education and as faculty members. An important challenge is to understand why men are not entering different specialisations and whether there is a possibility of “re-doing gender” – this time in addressing male inequality and disempowerment at undergraduate levels.     

Prevention of fatherhood disorders — Accompanying early father-child interaction in day-care centers

Over the last fifteen years, increasing numbers of fathers have been attending medical or day-care centers for young children, traditionally “reserved” for mothers and babies. Thus the professionals who work there are able to take an active part in the “co-construction of the fathers” by accompanying their emerging fatherhood. The Research-Action-Training approach used in partnership with the public health service (“Mother and Child Protection” in Paris) has proven to be a particularly interesting tool for modifying the routine found in day-care centers. Through the transfer of knowledge on fatherhood processes and new triadic models, it has led to improvements in the manner fathers are welcome but also babies and the whole family.     

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.     

Global Social Responsibility: Developing a Scale for Senior High School Students in Japan

This research was conducted with the aim of clarifying a concept of “global social responsibility.” A total sample of 395 senior high school students in Japan responded to a pool of items mostly adapted from a scale developed by Starrett (1996) and provided additional data concerning their social experiences. The data were used in the development of a Japanese version of the Global Social Responsibility (GSR) scale. It was found that “global altruism,” “active involvement with society,” and “understanding of interdependence” constituted a construct of global social responsibility. It was also found that females, those who discussed social problems with their family, those who revealed a high awareness of responsibility and those who had multiple experiences of volunteer activities for community service showed high GSR scores. The scale provides both an awareness of the concept and a measure for determining levels of global social responsibility. Counseling professionals are encouraged to consider their roles from a global and social perspective, with the notion of responsibility being seen as central to the concepts of freedom and personal development.     

To Involve Parents in the Assessment of the Child in Parent–Teacher Conferences: A Case Study

This article explores the face-to-face interactions between parents and teachers in parent–teacher conferences in the Swedish preschool. The article highlights how the preschool teacher introduces the conference by using a specific artifact, so-called “strength cards” with words relating to characteristic behaviour and qualities. The theoretical framework is adopted from research of institutional talk and discourse analysis. The empirical material consists of two cases included in a larger study of parent–teacher conferences. The analysis reveals that the talk not only focuses on the assessment of the individual child but also is directed at the cards, the procedure, and the importance of parents being active and involved in learning the procedure. In addition, the cards are used by the teacher as a tool that governs parents towards becoming ‘good enough preschool parents’ who are cooperative and able to categorise and label their own children, that is, follow the institutional discourse. The analysis also shows that parents take control in order to overcome institutional barriers to parents’ involvement.