Faculty Development Programs: Applications in Teaching and Learning

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS:

Applications in Teaching

and Learning

ALUSINE M. KANU, D.A.

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Faculty Development Programs:

Applications in Teaching and Learning

Copyright © 2011 by Alusine M. Kanu, D.A.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-2449-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-2450-6 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 10/25/2011

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Effectively Developing Multicultural Faculty

Chapter 2

Approaches to Faculty Development

Chapter 3

Instructional Development

Chapter 4

Organizational Development

Chapter 5

Faculty Development on Gender Issues

Chapter 6

Media and New Technology Applications

Chapter 7

Faculty and Leadership Development

Chapter 8

Curriculum Models, Design and Development

Chapter 9

Improving Academic Advising

Conclusion

Book Summary

Faculty development programs: Applications in teaching and learning suggests contemporary underlying research and practice on the influences of education. An array of chapters includes developing multicultural faculty, faculty development, instructional development, organizational development, gender and communication issues, media and new technologies, leadership and development, curriculum development, and academic advising. This book provides students and faculty with positive ways of educational development.

The Author

Dr. Alusine M. Kanu is Professor in Communication at Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale VA, and adjunct faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax VA. Kanu, a three-time graduate of George Mason, is author of Experiencing interactive interpersonal communication, Connecting intercultural communication: Strategies for communicating effectively across cultures, and Reflections in communication: An Interdisciplinary approach. Kanu is a member of The Speech Communication Association, American Society for Training and Development, the National Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists, and a Madison’s Who’s Who.

Acknowledgements

To family as first relationship teacher, to all the teachers who led me this far, including those who said, Cram and pass; understand later, and to learning friendships within and between cultures and God’s guidance. The author acknowledges faculty administrators, deans and the many teaching faculty and staff who helped in carrying out program initiatives.

Introduction

The text Faculty Development Programs: Applications in Teaching and Learning by Alusine M. Kanu is designed for teaching professionals and for those seeking careers in education, communication or in organizational training and development. Research indicates faculty development should be an ongoing endeavor for all faculty members because their growth as instructors has a profound impact on students. The underlying themes involve a discussion of goals of improved teaching and learning and the influences that come into play in finding ways to foster student development, faculty development, institutional and organizational development, gender and communication issues, media and new technologies, leadership and development, curriculum models, designs and academic advising.

• This introductory text includes discussions of goals and objectives of teaching and learning, activities to facilitate discussion of issues and techniques affecting teaching and learning, what it means to be educated, literature review on faculty development and understanding faculty as leaders. The goals include the development of human skills for communicative benefits and to enhance and empower higher institutions to contribute more effectively to development and transformation of faculty.

Objectives in faculty development programs include:

1. Developing expert systems to solve problems by addressing the multitude of factors which influence faculties and individual performance.

2. Increasing skills and knowledge on the basis of stated criteria with goals that include the building and maintenance of a professional network that will improve human faculty and student interactions and transactions. Program design and implementation will increase understanding of self and appreciation of skills and styles that build trust and cooperation with other people in democratic societies.

3. Discussing various individual and organizational transferring technologies with added hands-on experience in the application of organizational analysis and innovative practices.

4. Practicing performance and instruction by assessing needs, task analysis, and feedback systems by enhancing their repertoires of strategies for managing projects and managing change.

5. Presenting observable, measurable, and specific description of what faculty and students will be able to do based on research, time frames and methods. Of added significance are education and faculty training and preparation with outcomes of faculty development, curriculum development, and institutional leadership, conducting research, utilizing technology and improving research facilities and advising.

6. Discussing a variety of factors that affect advising, including such things as current advising models, level of support, diversity and overall demographics and methods for collection of advising data.

The topic of developing teaching faculty has extensive literature reviews with participation and effective programs. The most effective faculty development methods are those that respect faculty’s desires to be experts in specialized disciplinary knowledge and specific teaching skills. In Teaching faculty to conduct problem-based learning, Hitchcock et al. (2000) focus on three questions: (a) What is known from past research about training faculty in the skills of problem-based learning? (b) What skills are important to teach faculty and how does one teach them? and (c) What options are available for training faculty in problem-based learning? The development of faculty with such skills must be a primary and ongoing concern of faculty development programs or schools launching such efforts. The efforts and processes for faculty development include combining content, process, and premise reflection, instrumental, communicative, and emancipatory knowledge within the instructional pedagogical and curricular domains (Kreber, 2000). In faculty development, Murray (1999) distinguishes successful development programs and describes a survey administered in 1998 to faculty development officers at 250 randomly selected community colleges. Based on responses from 130 colleges, the author profiles those responsible for faculty development, summarizes the extent that each development activity is used, and articulates the need for concerted faculty development efforts.

An important component of any faculty development programs includes institutional support, that is, a climate that fosters and encourages faculty development, a formalized, structured, and goal-directed development program. Faculty development works best with support from colleagues for investments in teaching and a belief that good teaching valued by administrators should be the desired outcome.

Hansen and Williams (2003) compare cross-cultural course changes from traditional lecture course to contemporary course with biblio-learning, video learning and experiential exercises. They inform us that as the population is becoming more and more diverse, the need for cross-cultural education is becoming more apparent. Professionals are now working toward understanding and promoting the appropriate education necessary for working with diverse clientele (Constantine, 2002). Guidelines for faculty training and practice are now being developed to ensure that minority or culturally divergent clients receive effective treatment. There is still much to be understood in order to produce cross-culturally competent faculty.

Credible research strategies exist to improve teaching with suggestions for developing workshops, student ratings, fellowships, and effective strategies for changing the teaching action with comprehensiveness, built on professional development, instructional development, peer coaching, mentoring, and (or) consultations, leadership development, organizational development, and rewarding teaching, and continual learning.

According to Lamport (1993), there is the underlying assumption in higher education that there is a relationship between student and faculty and that it extends beyond formal interaction. Faculty are agents of socialization, academic achievement, satisfaction with institution, intellectual and personal development, persistence and attrition, career and educational classroom atmosphere and evaluation. Faculty influence appears more profound at institutions where association between faculty and students is normal and frequent, and students find faculty receptive to unhurried conversations out of class. Feldman and Newcomb (1969) state that the influence of student peers and of faculty complements and reinforces each other. There is a potential for faculty impact. Thus, as faculty take on an increasingly significant quality relationship in the students’ social environment, the more likely are the students to be influenced by faculty attitudes and other socializing variables. Terenzini (1996) reviews research literature by examining the effects of college students’ out-of-class experiences on academic, intellectual, or cognitive learning outcomes and control through policy or pragmatic interventions. There should be satisfaction with faculty development programs. The efforts of faculty should be acceptable and relevant to the goals of teaching and learning.

Where effective faculty development programs are practiced, there is increased knowledge of education and gains in teaching skills. There are productive changes in teaching behavior and changes in organizational practice and student learning, but more can be investigated. The use of activities contributes to effectiveness by the use of experiential learning, provision of feedback, effective peer and colleague relationships, well designed interventions following principles of teaching and learning, and the use of a diversity of educational methods within interventions. This project task on faculty development is valuable to learnings about research interest. C. J. Bland (1986) offers valuable ideas on a productive research literature review. The characteristic is the goal that should serve as the coordinating function. A research goal primarily is to discuss existing views and refine findings to the topic of faculty development programs.

Research emphasis, based on reviews on literature, is to promote communities with reference to promoting a distinctive culture, positive group climate, assertiveness, analysis of research and resources, leadership, organizational contribution and being able to identify the effective working of faculty in individual, organizational, and leadership characteristics. What are needed are not just more programs, but a larger purpose, a larger sense of mission and a larger clarity of direction. The scholarship of engaging teaching faculty includes creating a special climate in which the academic and civic cultures communicate more continuously and more creatively with each other. This text is a presentation and analysis of issues dealing with techniques in teaching and learning and would incorporate the following chapters.

Chapter 1 Developing Multicultural Faculty

Chapter 2 Faculty Development

Chapter 3 Instructional Development

Chapter 4 Organizational Development

Chapter 5 Gender and Communication Issues

Chapter 6 Media and New Technologies

Chapter 7 Leadership and Development

Chapter 8 Curriculum Models and Designs

Chapter 9 Faculty and Academic Advising

Faculty development programs, Applications in teaching and learning, are collaborative planning that includes processes and the continuation and establishment of relationships to accomplish objectives. Some tools that are used in planning and coordinating involve communicating about faculty development practices. Communicating about faculty development includes assessing knowledge, skills, faculty productive outcomes, community impact with analysis that identify multiple purposes. There are certain characteristics that identify the educated person. To be educated means to know at least one field with some thoroughness. Education should be in part a preparation for one’s vocation. To be educated means to be able to communicate with others, to be able to speak and write with a high degree of competence. Those who cannot communicate freely live in a small and isolated world. Only through communication are we able to acquire the understanding of our rich cultural heritage so essential to the development of the individual.

To be educated means to be able to live in a changing world and to entertain new ideas. Readiness to use new discoveries and insights with a dynamic integration of the past and the present is a valid competency. Educated people realize that the present has grown out of the past, and they want the future to grow out of the present by a process of orderly and intelligent change. To be educated means to be able to get along with others by living cooperatively with other individuals and groups. The history of civilization is in part the story of people learning to become involved in larger and larger relationships. We need to learn to be interested in others and live peacefully together. To be well educated means to be able to entertain and to be able to interpret, present and understand multiple perspectives and to establish relationships by developing a rich inner life and a wide range of appreciation and inner controls. Real education takes place within the person, who needs to develop a wide range of interests. To be educated is to be sensitive to the larger spiritual order of which people are a part. Peoples’ lives are not self-contained. They are linked to a reality that reinforces them and with which there is fellowship.

Learning has progressed from pre Industrial Revolution, to scientific management, human relations, systems theory, human resources, critical, cultural studies, contingency theory and post modern approaches. There is growing recognition that institutions of higher education are called to be good citizens in and with communities, including scholarly work, and this view is consistent with the goals of providing leadership to others and engaging educators, staff and students in activities that benefit their communities as well as themselves.

A review of literature shows extensive research to support faculty development. The findings are that all levels of education have a positive and statistically significant effect on the growth rate of per capita income. The results of the importance of education differ from those of earlier research that no significant relationship exists between higher education human capital and income growth. It is estimated that the growth elasticity of higher education capital is about 0.09%, an estimate that is twice as large as the growth impact of higher education. It is robust to different specifications and points to the need for opportunities in education to effectively use higher education capital in growth policies. Assessing the values of faculty development takes challenging tasks for students and faculty to help promote sustained inquiry into teaching and learning. In designing faculty development programs, research mindfully offers designs for learning approaches that address student and motivational needs using rationales. Research tells us the aim is to support faculty and directors in setting up classroom environments that facilitate peaceful problem solving. To improve interactions in any classroom involves making sure the environment supports positive interactions.

Research indicates that educators can equip students with the fundamentals of literacy and creativity. They can focus on these fundamentals by knowing their students and themselves and can choose to empower actions and attitudes by deepening their understanding of teaching, learning, and curriculum. They must see that the liberating side of literacy emerges when students believe that they are learners and that learning experiences are personally relevant to them and must understand that literacy and identity are interrelated. They must know students in terms of self-beliefs that make up their sense of self and recognize the role that these self-beliefs play in engagement. Finally, they can choose attitudes of encouragement, hope, and personal freedom to make a positive difference in students’ lives.

The components of an adequate education involve the costs of educating these students. It is necessary to specify the goals of instruction such as academic proficiency and academic gaps. The role of faculty in the modern school system is increasingly important and complex. The best faculty do know their material and also much about the process of teaching. They have at their disposal a repertoire of instructional methods, strategies, and approaches—a repertoire that continually grows, just as their content develops. Faculty need a high level of professional knowledge and autonomous decision-making when faced with professional challenges.

The faculty development program encompasses several areas of professional activities. It is noted that establishing the declarative goals by themselves is not enough for successful faculty development, as the achievement of reform goals in practice is highly dependent on faculty perceptions and how actively they are involved in all phases of the reform. Studies examine how faculty understand the main aim of education and how to evaluate their own level of competence in areas which have gained importance.

In one study, faculty interns were used to evaluate the extent that faculty engagement in curriculum decision-making processes within two school-based curriculum development teams has led to faculty professional development which was triangulated with the videotaped meetings and tryout lessons. Qualitative evidence has revealed positively that participating faculty have developed themselves professionally through the process of planning, experimenting and reflecting upon curriculum practice and innovation under certain conditions. The complexity of the structures and processes that were established for involving faculty in curriculum decision-making processes needs further empirical and theoretical work. The development of both reflective critical practice and innovation or creative approaches are some of the reasons why we teach. For a sense of discovery, for self improvement, for developing our communities and because it matters are some of the reasons why we teach.

Understanding faculty motivations and curriculum development is a complex relational dynamic that is shaped by multiple social and cultural contexts in which faculty and learners acquire mindful ways in which discursive practices simultaneously include and exclude. As we move forward with projects we should consider how we might engage more deeply with practitioners in critical conversations about curricula content and form. Consideration should be given to the possibilities of emancipatory and collaborative action, research with practitioners that will, in the final analysis, enable us to extend the evaluative question Are the results good, for whom and in what ways? to Says who?

P. Thompson in Educational action research, (2007) reports on a formative evaluation study of 10 practitioner research projects linked together under the title Better Communication Skills as a Means of Reducing the Barriers to Learning, which aimed to identify conditions through which practitioner research could help faculty to improve the quality of pupils’ classroom talk. The analysis explores the viability of practitioner research as a medium for the development of classroom talk. At its best, the research process is shown to have acted as a catalyst for improved theoretical understanding of the value of talk in learning and to have led to consequent impact on the talk curriculum. Where the project was less effective, faculty had concentrated on the development of resources rather than systematic data collection; this reflected a problematic tension between the process of research and curriculum development at the heart of the enterprise as a whole. The research by Thompson concludes that practitioner research is most likely to be helpful in developing the talk curriculum where motivated participants have sufficient time for data collection and are convinced of and clear about its value and significance.

Sobiechowska and M. Maisch (2006) present an article that draws upon 10 years of pedagogic experience in developing delivery work based learning programs within the United Kingdom national social work post-qualifying framework. The article is a retrospective, reflective and thematic account of work. It briefly outlines the history of post-qualifying social work education and describes the evolution of two curricula managed and developed through an action research orientation. The discussion highlights some of the issues that have emerged for learners and describes how the programs have responded to their needs. Through discussions and the writing, critical questions have arisen about the framing of autonomous work-based learning. In conclusion the writers reflect upon the feasibility of using action research as a curriculum development tool.

Foskett (2005) explains the emergence of Foundation Degree programs in response to employer workforce development needs and provides a rich environment for the study of undergraduate curriculum innovation in the context of cross-sector partnerships in post-compulsory education. This article presents the findings of a case study of three sectors. All three sectors shared a common goal of widening participation and the development of skills, yet contrasts in the range of other aims that each sought generated significant challenges to the curriculum development team. This qualitative study draws on evidence from documentary analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews of the major stakeholders over a period of two years. It highlights the barriers to effective curriculum change within partnership contexts and the benefits that can accrue.

Studies show quality systems within the subject institution show emphasis on measurement of standards by examination of evidence-based review of the quality of the program team’s quality assurance processes. In 2002 a major review of the institutional program quality assurance system concluded that an element of performance measurement was required as the emphasis on process was affecting the quality status of program teams, some of which were able to demonstrate that they had produced good quality graduates but were less able to show the quality processes which supported their work.

Drawing on the international best practice, the institution developed a set of graduate outcomes and linked these to the revised academic quality assurance model. Student output was reviewed by external and internal peer reviewers, and initial results indicate that the introduction of an element of measurement has had a positive impact on curriculum development, staff knowledge and involvement in quality activities and has raised the level of debate about what quality means in the institution. This case study includes an overview of the higher education context in the United Arab Emirates; an outline of the institutional program quality assurance system and the revisions made; the graduate outcomes and how they were linked to the quality system; and a discussion of the implications of the pilot. Claire Smith, Yaseen Akhtar; and Soneeta Reynolds (2005) discuss the research approach adopted by one higher education institution in the United Kingdom (UK) to explore employers’ and employees’ responses to local skills, recruitment and training issues on how these responses were used to develop a curriculum for Foundation degrees. The article discusses skills issues, the varying research methods employed, barriers to development and how specific problems were resolved. A brief discussion on reactions and attitudes towards foundation degrees and responses from public and private sector organizations is also presented. The results of the research are currently being used to inform curriculum development processes.

Ann R. J. Briggs (2004) reports on aspects of a Nuffield-funded study carried out in 2001-2002 into the impact of government policy upon sixth form colleges. Case study research was carried out at five colleges, following regional and national surveys of sixth form colleges, general further education colleges and schools. Briggs examines the environment for competition and collaboration within which the colleges work with definitions and examples of positive and negative competition, and offers evidence of collaboration, largely to support curriculum development and provision. The implications of working within a market-driven environment are examined.

An examination of gender issues about new computerized technology was made by one researcher in 1998. The examination reveals that patterns of gender stereotyping have moved across the various media and are now evident in the World Wide Web environment. Moreover, it suggests that these advertisements reflect characteristics found elsewhere about technology, thereby maintaining technology in the male domain by promoting continued gender stereotyping. Faculty must be aware of this gender bias and take steps to help correct it. Gender roles include masculinity, femininity and androgyny, the meanings of