高校高等教育工作的若干思考

以人为本，搞好高校教师思想教育工作，就是以教师为本，尊重教师的人格尊严、教师的根本利益、教师的理想追求，促进教师全面发展，发挥教师积极作用，实现教师人生价值。为此，要促进高校教师思想教育观念的突破与更新、思想教育核心内容的把握与拓展、思想教育运作的完善与创新、思想教育目标的反思与明确、思想教育机制的改革与强化。     

Student ratings and various instructional variables from a within-instructor perspective

The relationship between class size, instructional method, course level, reason for enrollment, and student ratings of instruction was assessed from a within-instructor perspective. Two hundred fifty-four pairs of courses taught by the same instructor were correspondingly identified and subjected to a stepwise multiple regression procedure. Only class size was found to be a significant predictor of ratings once individual differences between instructors were controlled, hence underlining the importance of (1) taking cognizance of the size of the course when using student ratings of instructors as a measure of teaching effectiveness, and (2) controlling for systematic variation due to instructor idiosyncracies in instructional research.     

Faculty Entrepreneurialism and the Challenge to Undergraduate Education at Research Universities

This study attempts to unravel the complex relationships between faculty entrepreneurialism and teaching. Specifically, this study (1) compares the extent of entrepreneurial activities (i.e., using funds for research and consulting activity) across disciplinary fields and levels of teaching commitment and (2) examines the relative effects of faculty entrepreneurialism on commitment to teaching. Using a national database of four-year college faculty, research findings demonstrate variations of teaching commitment with respect to disciplinary fields and forms of entrepreneurial activities. More important, this study reveals rather strong negative relationships between using funds for research and teaching commitment. Such findings have important implications for policy makers, administrative leaders, and university faculty as they seek to balance the institution's instructional mission in light of the increasing trend toward entrepreneurialism.     

Faculty-exchange programs promoting change: motivations,experiences, and influence of participants in the Carnegie Mellon University-Portugal Faculty Exchange Program

The international mobility of faculty is increasing worldwide. Although studies have considered the experiences of academics abroad, less is known about faculty-exchange programs with policy objectives. This study helps to fill this gap by analyzing a nationwide structured faculty exchange program established by Carnegie Mellon University and Portuguese universities to bring change to Portuguese higher education. The findings are based on interviews with Portuguese program participants, whose motivation to participate and experiences with the program, in addition to the influence of their experience abroad on their home institution, were explored. We find that, although the alignment of individual motivations with institutional interests is important to such programs, the complex transposition of individual experiences to the institutional level may be impeded by cultural resistance as well as resource and organizational constraints. Our exploration of the features that determine the success or failure of these experiences provides insights for policymakers seeking to implement faculty-mobility programs in the future.     

Searching for Educational Technology Faculty

Since educational technology has become an integral component in teacher education programs, an analysis was conducted of educational technology positions listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Weekly job listings were coded from August, 2000 through July, 2001. Over this time period, 70 positions were advertised. Results found that the majority of the positions were tenure track and tended to be at nonresearch/doctoral granting institutions. These positions were typically for a generalist rather than a specialist.     

Measuring the Quality of Faculty and Administrative Worklife: Implications for College and University Campuses

There seems to be a presumption that the quality of worklife on college and university campuses has declined for faculty and administrative staff. What is not known is how generally true this is perceived to be, to what extent the quality of worklife varies by campus, and for what reasons it varies. Most importantly, it is not clear what impact the quality of worklife of faculty and staff members has on their performance or retention. The following article reviews the recent empirical literature devoted to this topic and offers a framework that conceptualizes these studies in three groups: those that describe and explore differences in the quality of worklife, those that determine the impact of worklife on attitudes, and those that attempt to explain behavioral outcomes. The implications of this work for practice and policy on college and university campuses is discussed. The author argues that campus leaders who want to improve the performance and retention of faculty and administrative staff must identify and address the particular issues that matter to those employed on their campuses.     

美国大学的学术休假制度

学术休假是美国大学教师发展的一种重要制度形式,它源于19世纪末美国研究型大学的崛起及其对教师国际化的需求。后被证实在提升教师教学水平,促进科研创新能力,提高教师队伍士气,缓解教师职业倦怠等方面有明显功效。本文介绍了美国大学的学术休假制度的起源、价值、目标及制度规章,并对围绕这一制度的争议与实证研究做了探讨。     

Steady state effects of a later mandatory retirement law for tenured faculty

Recently a new law was enacted that would raise the mandatory retirement age from 65 to 70 for all occupational groups except tenured faculty in higher educational institutions. The exception for faculty, which extends to 1 July 1982, was granted because tenure holding professors enjoy a measure of job security that is unknown outside the academic sphere; this uniqueness led many to feel that an extension of faculty lifetime careers could possibly have very serious effects on the fiscal and academic health of colleges and universities, and that a delay was necessary in order that the situation could be carefully researched. This paper analytically investigates these conjectures and rigorously shows that they have been greatly exaggerated. By using a four stage model of the tenure system, it is easy to show the effect of progressively later retirements on the tenure ratio, flow of new faculty, and faculty salary budget. As many researchers would intuitively feel, neither early nor late retirement has an unusually disruptive effect on any of these critical variables.     

Towards Contextual Experimentation: Creating a Faculty Learning Community to Cultivate Writing-to-Learn Practices

In order to explore ways to integrate new pedagogical practices, five faculty members created an informal faculty learning community focused on writing-to-learn practices, an inquiry and process-based writing pedagogy. The faculty members learned the writing-to-learn practices together, periodically met to discuss how they implemented the practices, and reflected on each other’s instructional methods in the contexts of their own experiences. The faculty members engaged in a self-study in order to understand how the collaborative nature of the learning community helped them to learn and use the new teaching practices. After participating in a series of workshops together, they shared written reflections about their experiences of employing the practices in their own classrooms. The findings of this study reveal that participation in a faculty learning community provided an engaging and effective way to learn and make use of new pedagogical practices. Participants gained practical adaptive strategies from each other, felt supported in their experimentation with the new practices, and analyzed more deeply the ways in which the new practices could be integrated into their teaching. The authors describe how an informal faculty learning community can be an effective tool for faculty to research, learn, and analyze the learning of specific pedagogical practices.     

Departmental Contexts and Faculty Research Activity in Norway

The aim of the paper is to examine the relationship between departmental attributes and university faculty research activity. Since individual and departmental factors are highly interrelated, individual attributes are included in a hierarchical linear model taking into consideration the nested structure of the data. Research activity is measured by research input in terms of time spent on research activities, and research output in terms of publications. The contextual factors have greatest impact on the indicator that is considered to be most essential when assessing research performance: published scientific articles. Department climate, age structure, as well as proportion of faculty members’ with PhD’s have significant impact on research output.