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Understanding the Work and Perceptions of Teaching Focused Faculty in a Changing Academic Landscape

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Abstract

Teaching Focused Faculty (TFF) roles are growing across Canada and around the world, raising questions about how to understand the nature of faculty work and how faculty in non-traditional work distributions feel about their work. Our study is the first attempt to survey TFF members’ work and job attitudes at large research intensive universities in Canada. Our data contribute to the literature on the nature of faculty work, by revealing that TFF engage in a wide variety of work, including teaching, service, curriculum leadership, and often research in pedagogy and/or disciplines. TFF report mixed messages about what their departments and institutions expect of them. Our data also contribute to the literature on how faculty feel about their work. Consistent with other research on faculty job attitudes, TFF report valuing their jobs highly. Our data also reveal that feeling integrated into mainstream institutional culture is a particularly important contributor to this sense of value. Taken together, our findings can be used to inform the research literature on faculty work, as well as by administrators seeing to implement or enhance TFF ranks at their institutions.

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Notes

  1. Results reported here do not change substantially when data from all 251 TFF are included.

  2. This response pattern indicates the variable is highly negatively skewed. Attempting to engage in typical transformations (e.g., Log10, square root; Tabachnick and Fidell 2001) failed to correct for skewness. Therefore, we have maintained the raw scores. The recommended sample size for up to six predictors is 110 (Tabachnick and Fidell); because our sample size for this analysis is 165, our analyses should be robust to this assumption violation, or at worst underestimate the effects.

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Acknowledgement

We thank Nataly Kaufman for her assistance with the survey and recruitment, and the Faculty of Arts at The University of British Columbia for an Arts Undergraduate Research Award supporting her work. We also thank Kari Grain for her assistance with the analysis of survey responses and the Centre for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at The University of British Columbia for supporting her work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, The University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Catherine D. Rawn

  2. UBC Vantage College and Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

    Joanne A. Fox

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  1. Catherine D. Rawn
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Correspondence to Catherine D. Rawn.

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Rawn, C.D., Fox, J.A. Understanding the Work and Perceptions of Teaching Focused Faculty in a Changing Academic Landscape. Res High Educ 59, 591–622 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9479-6

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